So after my embarrassing outing last Thursday (read below) I decided I needed to try and redeem myself and requested to join Bill and the group again today. (I am a glutton for punishment, and carrot cake, but that's neither here nor there). I was just praying the same group that joined us last time didn't make a repeat appearance. If they did, I had a plan in place to take a spill early in the ride, and call it quits. I figured better to sacrifice my body and maybe a shifter, then to endure the pain and humiliation of last week all over again.
Today was a new route however as one of the group expressed an interest in getting in some "good hill intervals." After some batting around of ideas, they decided to let Bill take the helm and determine the morning's route on his own accord. At this point I began to have serious second thoughts about my prior, "I'm in" assertion.
With the route briefly explained, and still being kinda lost, we took off on what would be a pretty awesome ride. Apparently Bill usually completes this loop 3 times (Nutcase), one forming each "leaf" of the clover, hence the moniker. But given time constraints, 2/3rds was all the group could squeeze in and all I could stomach. When all was said and done, the ride covered 35mi, with a little over 4,100ft of climbing, in just under two hours. On the second loop I got gapped a couple times but was able to catch back up due to some fortunate stop light activity, and the groups guilty conscience at leaving me drooling and hyperventilating all by my lonesome.
That 4,100 number made a repeat appearance a couple hours later when my swim schedule was unveiled. After that ride, those yards weren't "Ohh so quick" to come by. But they all were happily banked.
Happy St. Patrick's Day!
solid workouts!
ReplyDeleteSometimes I really love stoplights!
ReplyDeleteAs for flip turns, back when mine were down right awful (but I was still doing them), it was explained to me like this...learn flipturns so you can swim with the people you should be swimming with. Meaning, the faster people do them, and if I could do them right I could swim against them in practice, thus getting faster. And in races you don't get a 'break' to stick your head up every 45 seconds or so. But I do know a couple of sub 1 hour IM swimmers who don't do them.