Week 7 of 9

M - 4.5 miles, easy
T - 9 miles, ran hardish (as hard as I can at 5:15am)
W - Off
R - 7 miles
F - 3.5, yuck
S - CheqFatTire!
N - Off

Kind of a weird week - I guess that is what happens when you throw in a 40 mile mtb race in the midst of a running only block of training. The week was plagued by some GI distress - most runs had some sort of manifestation of it. Friday was the worst - I had to stop and walk it off one per mile. Saturday came (we drove over from St Paul in the early a.m.) and the routine was about as I remembered it. I thought my gate assignment had been 3 but when I picked up the bib it was 4. No bother, since I've ridden a bike a handful of times since February, I knew this one was going to be more tour than race.

The roll out was fun - I wasn't really worried about position so I just tucked in and enjoyed the ride. Rosie's field was fine, I took a different line than recent years and it was better. Then, it was get through the rolling grassy stuff without going too deep and pushing hard on the gravel road sections. I must have passed 60 riders on the first extended section of road. Was fine until fire tower, that was a cluster but managed to ride up 2 of the climbing tiers. As I was descending the back side I stood to pedal hard and both quads cramped up - so I spent the next several miles going easy and taking in food/water. I finally started feeling better at the next section of birkie trail but lost a lot of spots. Pushed as hard as I could to the finish - definitely not nearly my best finish but one of the more fun races. I kept thinking how lucky I was to be able to be out there racing. Robin asked me what the heck I was smiling about at the finish - the true answer I was just really happy to be there!

Place: 387th in 2:42




Looking back to 1997 (the last time I tried this goofy CTF/TCM double) my results were:

Place: 1064th in 3:39

So I guess I've improved my ability to bike race on run training only!

I wonder how many others do this double? Anyway, still feeling the effects so opted to take today off. Back at it tomorrow - looking for a 11 day block of training and then it's go time again! Happy Monday.

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