Big ole brick

After much negotiations and work schedule tweaking, Kirk and I met up for our inaugural Wednesday IM-prep brick in CDA. I haven't trained much with Kirk this year, but last year I am convinced that all the miles I put in with (or more acurately 'near') him really helped make me faster. He never lets me slack off, but also never makes me feel bad for holding him up.

So we met up at 11am, and the weather for the afternoon looked cool, but dry. The wind was up a bit, and I was somewhat apprehensive about how I would handle it, since I knew I'd be riding most of the day on my own. We set out from CDA Oz on the same 42 mile loop I had ridden on Saturday, and settled into a nice pace (thank you, tailwinds!) It took awhile for my legs to come around, but once we started the climbing, I amazingly felt pretty good. As I hit the first big hill of the course, I decided to do a little test to see if yesterday's Death Hill round 2 experiences were a fluke or not. I successfully made it up that first big hill seated, which was a big-time confidence booster. I specifically remember last year at IM how I was passing people on this hill pretty easily on both loops, and how that really made me feel good about my day. Knowing that we were only doing 1 loop, I felt ok about pushing the hills a little harder, and I was very happy that I made most of the course seated. The only times I really got out of the saddle was for a break....I think I could have easily made the whole loop seated if I had to. Coming back into town, I got caught up by a few lights/intersections, so Kirk dropped me pretty good. But it was a good chance for me to test out my mental strength as I was left to battle the headwinds solo. Compared to past rides, I felt pretty good with how I managed the conditions. Maybe a positive sign for things to come?? We'll see......

Once we got back to Oz, we changed into our running gear, refueled a bit and headed out to run one modified loop of the course. I'm not sure what I was thinking at this point, but I was assuming that by cutting out the City Park/NIC out-and-back section, that our run would end up being somewhere in the 9 mile range. Fortunately, fear kept me from looking at my watch for distance or pace during the run, and its a good thing I did not, because we ended up logging 11.2 miles. Whoa!! Kirk and I ran together out to the turnaround, and then, as I knew he would, Kirk slowly pulled away until I could no longer see him around the corners. The pace felt fairly steady thru 6, but there was no way I could have gone any faster without totally blowing up. The last 4 were a big-time struggle, and it felt like I was crawling. In hindsight, it was probably a good dress rehearsal for managing the discomfort and mental hurdles I know I'm going to face on race day. But, I'm happy to say that I did not stop and walk, even though I was sorely tempted to on a number of occasions. I was sure that I was averaging somewhere in the mid- to high-9:00s, so I was absolutely shocked and ecstatic when I saw my pace was 8:31! Maybe there is hope for a fast IM marathon after all!! I can't wait until our next Wed brick, to see if there is any improvement.

It was a great day, and the end of the longest, toughest stretch I've had so far this year. And my body knew it. I ended up doing an easy 2000 meter pull-buoy swim on Thursday just to keep my body moving, but after that, my body was screaming for a break. So this weekend, I'm going to do an easy 2.5hr ride and then try and run a conservative race at the Spokane River Run. Oh yeah, and its supposed to snow this weekend. Nice. Its April. Late April. Oh well...