Holy Cow! I'm running again! Well . . . wonders never cease! I have actually run 3 days in a row. None of it long and none of it hard, but three days of running. My total for the week is already higher than the previous five weeks combined, and that's sad when my total for the week is about 12 miles. Anyhoo . . . here's the workout for yesterday and today:

Sunday, March 11

This was an awesome day. Despite the "Spring forward" time change, I decided to get up early and meet my friend Shelley for her group ride with the Team in Training group she hooked up with to train for the Wildflower half-iron distance race. The team is coached by Adam from Jack and Adam's Bicycles, with whom I am on pretty good terms, so I figured I'd be welcome on the ride. I was right!

All I knew before the ride was that it would be a "long" ride starting at 7:30 AM. I still didn't know much when we started out. All I knew is that we were going to head south toward Buda. About 30 minutes into the ride, Shelley told me it was going to be a 65-mile ride . . . about 20 miles longer than I'd gone on any ride since October. In fact, the longest I'd ridden before yesterday was 44 miles with Hao last Sunday, and that was an easy spin ride to recover from the hard 30-miler that Saturday.

Well . . . I must say that some of the folks in the TnT group are pretty darn good cyclists. We rode as a group for about 8 miles to the south part of town. When we hit County Road 1626, Adam turned us loose with instructions to meet up at the "T" in Buda. One of the other guys in the group (Ed) and I took off, taking turns leading each other down Old San Antonio Road. For most of the rest of the first half of the ride, we would ride about 5-8 miles on our own and wait up for the group at various stops. To make a long story short, we hit the half-way point in San Marcos and rested up at a Sac'n'Pac. Then, we turned around and headed back the way we came. After about 5 miles, Ed and I decided to just pour it on. We were followed by two of the faster women in the group a few minutes back. Basically, Ed and I (and eventually a solo road cyclist we came up on) hammered from San Marcos back to the Austin city limits. The two women ended up about 4 and 5 minutes behind us respectively. We cruised back into the Jack and Adam's parking lot about 4 hours after we started.

That could've been the end of it, as my legs were tired. However, everybody else was going to do a short run, so who am I to be a stick in the mud? Besides, since Lisa was out of town, I didn't have anywhere I had to be. So, I did a five-mile run and turned the workout into a brick. My legs were REALLY heavy, especially since I'd done a short brick the previous day. Still, I did it, with a little bit of walking, but I did it nonetheless. Today, my legs aren't nearly as sore as I thought they would be. They're tired, but not horribly sore. Anyway, I'm very pleased with how I feel considering the back-to-back bricks.

Edit: I forgot to mention in the original post that I went over 2000 miles on my bike computer on this ride. So, since August 1, 2006, I've ridden approximately 2045 miles on my tri bike. That's an average of about 291 miles per month, which doesn't sound like a lot, but considering that I haven't ridden much in December, January, and February, I seemed to be averaging almost 500 miles a month in August, September, and October. Yikes, that's a lot!!

Monday, March 12

So, today it was supposed to rain. Couple that with the fact that I had a ton of work to do today and I decided not to even take the bike to work. Turns out, the rain never came and it was a beautiful day for a ride. Since I didn't have the bike (or the time, really, to ride), I decided to run Town Lake again. This time, I ran the six-mile loop between MoPac and Congress Ave. I took it very easy, but did run the whole route . . . no stopping, no walking. The legs were still tired, but not sore. It was a beautiful day to be out there, and I'm very happy with the fact that my running is not painful. I might just get myself in shape for IMMoo yet!

Tomorrow is an off day. I travel for work and won't really have time to do anything. If it's not rainy, I may do more running in the evening when I get home. Not likely, however, as I am usually pretty beat after a day of traveling.

More to come!!

P.S. Two days until I get my fully-built road bike back!