The last long ride

Lake Placid is two weeks from tomorrow, and today was the last long ride. This past week was the week I think I hate most leading up to the race. It's the week where you're sort of tapering, at least relatively speaking, but really it's still not a whole lot less from a normal week (and probably a whole lot more than most people would ever want to do) So even though sure, technically a 5-hour ride is "shorter" than your normal long ride, it still feels like a heck of a long time to be out on your bike. And at this point, after months of expending loads of mental and physical energy on the training, it can sometimes feel just as bad, if not worse than the 6-hour rides.

The good news was that today I had some company, which certainly helped. The even better news was that there was no chance of getting rained on, and it actually felt like summer. I set off a bit later than normal as I would be meeting Jesse and Chrissie and taking them on a bit of a tour of some of my favorite places to ride. Chrissie's parents have a house over on Newfound Lake, not to far from my parents' house on Squam, so we rode towards each other until we met up about 30 minutes or so into our ride. We rode around Squam and got in some good hills before setting off a bit north towards Waterville Valley before it was time to turn back around and go our separate ways. It worked out quite nicely... or at least I think it did. I haven't heard back yet as to whether or not their ride ended in the time allotted, but at least mine did!

Then, like always, it was time to run. Another not-so-good thing about all of this unseasonably cold weather we've been having (for like 6 weeks now) is that when it finally does manage to warm up, even just a little, it can feel a whole lot hotter than it really is. We were struggling to hit 60 for a while, so suddenly being in the 70's, maybe even briefly flirting with 80, practically feels like Kona at noon. I am hoping that I can blame that on what was yet another crappy run. That, and the fact that I was once again desperately thirsty when I finished. After drinking an exceptional amount of water, I took off my shoes, walked down to the lake and jumped right in. I can't beging to describe how good that felt. It's also pretty sad that it is July 11th and that was actually the first time this summer that I have gone in the lake not because I had a workout, but just because I wanted to. That's ridiculous.

So the last real long ride is done, and tomorrow I have a long-ish run, but hopefully that won't go too badly, and then I'm really almost there. But with two weeks to go and months and months of training under my belt, another annoyance that seems to happen is some equipment failure. Nothing tragic, just, you know, annoying. For a while I was having some issues with my shifting and was in desperate need of some new cables, but my old bike shop, who used to take good care of me, suddenly has become staffed with all new people who are far less likely to help me out and seem to think that leaving my bike there for a week will give them enough time to get the job done. I have never understood that, because of course the work they have to do might take an hour or so, but for some reason your bike has to sit there in their back room on a hanger for 6 days so you can't ride it. Instead, I called a shop up near my parents place where my dad has been many times, and they seemed more than willing to help me out. So after a trip to Rhino Bike Works, I am happy to report that my bike issues are no longer issues.

The other thing is that my heart rate monitor seems to have stopped working properly. This is another thing that seems to notoriously happen to me right before the race. Although for it to happen weeks before in this case is a step in the right direction. In the past I've had others that decided two days before to start telling me my heart rate was always 220, and a replacement battery did nothing to fix the situation. At least two of my Ironmans have had be buying replacements right there at the expo in an emergency situation.

My latest started being somewhat finicky over our training weekend in Vermont, mostly on my long run. In the days following it seemed to mostly work fine. It even made it through my race last weekend with no issues. Then this past week it might work for some workouts, not for others. It would work fine on the bike but not on the run. But it would always tease me by working just long enough for me to decide I didn't have to do anything about it. That is, until yesterday, when I decided something definitely had to be done. Unless I really can ride at a heart rate of 85 at 20mph and run a decent pace at a heart rate of 106. I know being aerobically efficient is a good thing, but I don't think I've become that aerobically efficient. So this afternoon I had to drag myself to the hardware store instead of continuing drifting in and out of sleep in the post-workout stupor to pick up a new battery. I sincerely hope that this fixes the problem, but we will find out tomorrow. Let's hope that is the end of the equipment issues.