First Outdoor Ride of the Year. FINALLY.

Yesterday was the day. The 16 inches of snow we got 9 days before was pretty much all melted, and it was 50 degrees. I headed out for my first ride of the year BEFORE RACING A DUATHLON IN 3 MORE DAYS. I just did a simple 21 mile ride down the Greenway Trail, and I decided a mile into the ride that I’d do the first 15 miles pretty hard (not quite “all out” because I didn’t want to have shot legs for the race on Saturday). It was slightly into the wind for 10 miles, and then slightly with the wind for the final 5. I was at 20.3 mph at the 10 mile turn-around, and my overall average climbed to 20.8 mph at mile 15. Nothing spectacular.

I looked back in my training log (which I’ve kept online since Sept of 2009) to see when my first outdoor rides have been. The last 2 years, I’ve started the season in GREAT shape riding outside ASAP, but I didn’t recall how soon I got outside in the years before. Here’s what I found:

- Mid-March/2009 *
- 3/18/2010
- 4/2/2011
- 3/11/2012
- 4/5/2013
- 4/6/2014
- 3/14/2015
- 2/7/2016
- 2/12/2017
- 4/24/2018

* In 2009, I did NOLA 70.3 in early April, so I recall getting out for a 60 mile ride and maybe more in mid-March before shipping my bike down south for the race.

The Falls Duathlon was my first multisport race last year and this year. There was a big difference in training (based on the weather) between these 2 years: last year, I had logged 457 miles outside on my bike, and this year, I’ve just got yesterday’s 21 miles outside on my bike. Yikes.

I biked about as far as I should have yesterday - any more could have been overdoing it. Plus, I had to get back right away to take our cat to visit Charlie’s preschool. Here are 2 photos I posted on Instagram yesterday:

A pic from Charlie’s teacher showing our cat Ella’s visit.


Posted with the caption: ”In today’s episode of ‘Things We Should Probably Never Do Again,’
our cat Ella got to go to Charlie’s preschool and meet all his classmates.”


A final photo that I didn’t post. Pretty cute.

Regarding this weekend’s duathlon, I REALLY don’t have any specific goals. I’m a little timid to push too much on the first run or the bike because of my lack of speed work on the run and my lack of outdoor cycling. It’s really going to be a “game day decision” to determine my effort level out there. It’s possible that I could run my slowest runs ever at this race (it will be my 6th time racing this event), and that’s OK. My bike split shouldn’t be HORRIBLE, and if it’s not crazy/stupid windy, I expect that I’ll post an overall time that is slower than my last 2 years at this race, but faster than my first 3. As I learned in a tempo run with Charlie last week, I should keep the pace a bit easier at first on the final run, and try to build into it. Otherwise (and this isn’t a horrible thing), I could see myself having to walk a time or 2 over those final 3 miles.

I can SAY that my goal is to place in my age group, but I realistically can’t get too caught up in that - last year, I raced my butt off, and I was 3rd in my age group (only the 2nd time I’d placed in my age group at this race).

So I guess we’ll just see what decisions I make at this race, and I’ll just go out there and suffer for 70+ minutes! Wish us luck! Back with a “Thursday Thursday” post tomorrow, and then a handful of “Friday Funnies” on Friday.