Four weeks to go

This morning, like most Saturdays, I was on my bike just after the sun came up. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, depending on how you look at it, this now means much closer to 6:30 than to 5am, as it used to be back in June. Sure, I get to stay in bed longer, but I also thoroughly enjoyed being done with a really long workout by noon and now have to wait until closer to 2. Oh, well. Anyway, there was a chance of rain, and the roads were wet when I went out, but it didn't take too long before the sun actually made an appearance. It wasn't really warm, never got to be much more than 60 after starting out right around 50, and the sun did go away again after about 2 hours, but it never did rain. I think I really lucked out on that one, because it seems that it rained almost everywhere else in New England today. It did start raining a bit this afternoon, but I was warm and dry inside with my feet up, so it didn't really make any difference to me at that point.

Somewhere early on in the ride it suddenly occurred to me that it was probably going to be my last long ride I'd have to do solo. Next weekend a few of us are doing a training weekend, so of course that will be a group ride. And well, after that, we're kind of out of weekends for long rides. It's almost time to taper. That's just crazy! My schedule for the next 4 weeks confirms it: no more 6-hour bike rides. Ok, so there's a 7-hour ride next weekend, but after that, they just get shorter and shorter. Knowing that I wouldn't have to do too many more of these made today's ride a lot easier to tolerate.

Although not warm, it was certainly humid out today. It was one of those days where every bit of sweat just seemed to sit in my soaking clothes and never evaporate. I may as well have been wearing cotton. I really picked it up for the last 90 minutes, and my legs certainly weren't happy with me when I then had to go out and run for over an hour. But like all workouts, even the long ones, eventually it was over. Now if only I didn't have that pesky 5 more hours of training to get through tomorrow. I feel like I've hardly had a chance to really soak up the rest after today's workout and now I'm ready to go to bed so I can wake up and do it all again tomorrow. So close now though....

And a big congratulations to the QT2ers who raced this morning at Pumpkinman. Plus my good friends who raced at the Clough Triathlon. Sounds like everyone had great days!