Quality Brick

It was a nice day today and I could have ridden outside, but I rode inside. Who am I?? Well, really I rode inside because Ben was teaching me how to set up the bike on the Computrainers at HTC and set up the programming and hook up the audiovisual, etc. Tomorrow night I'm actually going to be leading my first Computrainer session (!) so I needed to know how to get it all set up and functioning. The program is cool how you type it all in and tell the computer what intervals you want to do and what watts you want to hit and it basically just makes you hit the watts for as long as you said you were going to. I think this is good for me because commonly when I'm riding on the road I just make up what I do along the way based on how I'm feeling and it happens sometimes where I bail out or whatever. No bailing out once the program is set in the studio though! Anyway, I rode for 2:15 and that included a main set of 5x3min @230w, a 30min piece building from 160-170w just steady, then a 30min piece at 190w which didn't feel as hard as I thought it was going to feel.

My plan was to run afterward, but when I was done riding I had a ton of reasons why I shouldn't run. I forgot my iPod (is that a reason to not run?? #no). It was sunny and HOT (this was legit). It was 1PM and I hadn't had lunch. BUT, I have an Ironman next month. And physically I felt fine after that ride. And I was in a place where I could run flat. So I sucked down a gel, drank some ice cold SOS Rehydrate and turned on my Garmin. I ran 4x1 mile repeats on a flat stretch of road. I didn't have a pace goal in mind but more an effort goal... I wanted it to feel strong and solid but also controlled (not forced). I was shocked when my garmin buzzed and I saw 7:50?! It didn't feel as hard as I would have thought a 7:50 mile would/should feel... I recovered until my HR came down to 130 (which was only about a minute) then went again. 7:47. So it wasn't a fluke! Then 7:46... I made a mental note to NOT drill myself into a hole trying to continue the descend, but I tried to focus on staying relaxed and keeping my hips stable and just floating through that last one... 7:39! What a difference stable hips make. Also confirms my belief that you can do a lot of slow/easy running and yet still run faster when it's time to do so.