Weeks Highlights

Well this was a week of transition of sorts. From this point forward most of the workouts will be longer but less frequent. Thursday was a long day in that I worked all night Wed. stayed up and then met up with Stan and his buddy Tim at 1 pm for a ride. I had only planned on about a 30-35 miler. However I felt good and kept going. When we got to CDA I decided though that I had better not continue to hammer with these guys because I didn't want to screw up the rest of the weekends training. To ride from Spokane to CDA is very slightly uphill. The issue here was one of knowing my own fitness. This was the longest ride of the year, which totally sucks. So it was more important for me to get the saddle time without killing myself. The first 25miles I hammered with them and felt great. As the fatigue of the 25 miles@ 19 mph combined with the nearly 24 hrs without sleep began to get the better of me. So I made a choice. I told Stan and Tim to go on and I cruised at a comfortable yet steady pace. We had a pretty good headwind which upped the challenge and I also picked up a tail. Some guy that got on my back wheel and I pulled for about 10 miles.
Every time I would slow up a little he would then pass me thank me for the pull then ride ahead. But he was not able to hold his pace then I would catch him again and he would latch on again. Probably good for me.
Friday was a good 8.5 mile tempo run through the woods,caveman style. Felt real good. Swim later on Friday didn't go as well as I had hoped but I logged some time. Saturday was weights and fun. We got together with the Hobbit and his wife and took the dogs up to their lake place. The pups had a blast as you can see in the picture. Those 2 love to play with each other. The cool thing was since we were on neutral and new territory. They actually stopped wrestling a few times and just explored together. Which is what Tony and I hoped would happen.
Sunday was a 20 mile run. Hard! that's just along run. It went ok though. My training plan called for me to run this at 8:36 pace. I pushed it a little and was on pace to run it at 8:10 pace. The last 3 miles were a bit of a challenge and my pace fell off. Total for the run was 8:18 pace. I plan on doing this run 2 more times so I hope to run this more consistently as I get closer to IM.