Endurance

This weekend was all about endurance.  Yesterday morning I woke up early with intentions to go for a long ride outdoors.  I woke to see the temps in the low 30's and that quickly sapped my motivation to head out doors.  The prescribed workout was a 3 hour ride to get some saddle time.  There is a fair amount of acclimation that my body will need to have in order for me to  good ride for the race.  A great race bike time will be around 6 hours for me, and sitting on that seat for six hours will require my crotch area getting used to the bike seat.  This workout wasn't supposed to be about mileage, but more about this acclimation.  Because of the temps, i opted for the trainer and logged about 2.5 hours on it.  That is an eternity to be riding on a trainer.  I did watch a great show about ants on the discovery channel.  Ants are pretty amazing, destructive killers.  My interest in visiting jungles around the world has greatly decreased after seeing ants that will kill you via suffocation.  That's not how i want to go out.  I got my weekly dose of 30 Rock and a few episodes of Jeopardy.  I wanted to get this done early because the NCAA tourney games started up around 1 and I was looking forward to watching.  

Today was another endurance workout, this one a long run.  I headed out on my usual path up the West side Highway.  I was supposed to run 90 to 120 minutes.  I was determined not to bonk on this run and was prepared with a few gu's to keep me going.  I ran about 11 miles in about 95 minutes.  I felt really good, especially on my return trip.  I utilized my nutrition and hit a few water fountains to keep me going.  Such a simple addition made my run and post run so much more enjoyable.  This caloric consumption isn't a new theory for me, but for some reason i think i can do these long runs without ingesting any calories.  In my last post I talked about all the crazies on the path and encountered a few more this morning.  In no particular order, these were the highlights of what i saw on my run:

what seemed like hundreds of European tourists on rented bikes

a guy riding a bike in an army helmet

a women on roller skates

a kid rolling down the hill behind the trump building in the 60's on the west side

what had to be another euro tourist, this women walking on the path in pink open toed high heels.  She looked what I imagine a eastern European hooker would look like.  As a matter of fact, she was my favorite of the morning.  She was turning heads all over the place, it was fantastic.  

a broken down cab

3 bikes painted white in honor of cyclist that we killed while riding on the path

countless runner and cyclists

two fathers playing catch with their sons, this one brought back memories of playing catch with my dad in the back yard.  

It was a great morning run, I felt great, the sun was shining and it was a great temp to run.  Plus, when i got home, there were more college hoops games on.