I've realized on this journey to 140.6 I'll be hitting a lot of "longest ever" milestones. This past weekend I hit this "longest ride" milestone, 100 miles, beating my longest ride ever from just two weeks ago of 80 miles.
Going into the weekend ride I was feeling pretty confident about being able to ride 100 miles. The order of the day was going to be to start slow and build up to ironman pace for the last hour. It was the 5 mile run after the bike that I had me worried, how would I feel?
My goal for the day was to make things as close to my current race plan as possible. I wore my all3sports race kit to test for any chaffing issues and frankly to see if the tri chamois would be enough "comfort" (ha ha) over 100 miles. I also tested my nutrition plan and found some possible holes.
Nutrition was as follows:
constantly sip on EFS sports drink, finishing 1 bottle an hour (each bottle had one scoop of EFS)
every 40 min, EFS Liquid Shot (EFS LS)
every hour 1 salt stick caplet
I was pretty good about remembering everything when I needed too. I never felt low on energy, although I would get little spurts of "feeling really good" about 15 min after each EFS LS.
The ride itself was fun! We were riding two loops of the 48 mile option in Cartersville (a popular ride here in Atlanta). The plan was to pick up any remaining miles to hit 100 at the end of the second loop. I met up with my new friend Casey (he's training for IM Loiusville, which is two weeks before my race and we have the same coach). We had the exact same workout, so that made things easy (no pressure to go fast in that first few hours when I was supposed to be strictly zone 1-2). Casey had invited some folks from his masters group (Dynamo Multisport, fabulous group!!). Eric and Jackie are great folks and the miles just clicked by as if we were all just hanging out chatting.
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| From Racing and Training 2010 |
I couldn't believe how fast that first loop when by! We rolled into the parking lot at mile 48 and I honestly felt as fresh as I had that morning, possibly better having gotten all the junk out of my legs from the high intensity workouts during the week. We refreshed drinks, etc.
I have to say, there might not be anything better than ice cold EFS LS! It's like vanilla ice cream in the middle of a ride!
Heading out on loop two we continued our zone 2 riding, Eric and Jackie left us at the turn off for the 31 mile loop (they rode 80) and that's when things started to get more heads down... moving into zone 3 riding for the rest of the ride.
I just felt stronger and stronger through the ride and it was a huge confidence boost!
Rolling in to the parking lot at the end of the second loop (I had ridden the extra to make the second loop 52) I was on cloud nine! I had done it and I wasn't even feeling tired! Granted we had ridden it slowly (avg 17.7 mph), but that was the point of this ride so I'm fine with it.
Eric and Jackie had run after their rides, so they were there in the parking lot and Jackie was awesome about "it's your first 100 miles, let's commemorate the moment!"
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| From Racing and Training 2010 |
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| From Racing and Training 2010 |
As I headed out on the run I felt good. I'm really going to have to watch my pacing on race day, because even just the excitement of "1st 100 mile ride" had me cruising out of the parking lot at 7:18 pace (that's more like a 10k pace for me). It was a cooler day than we've been having and that really helped. The first three miles clicked by without any issue (I calmed myself down to around 8:10 pace). Around mile 4 my stomach was feeling sloshy and I was really really hungry. I also started feeling chilled and really ready to be done (good thing today was only 5 miles, not 26.2.)
Next ride I'm going to try to incorporate some actual food and see how it makes my stomach feel.
I was rolling that last mile to the parking lot and I saw EC Coach Dan headed the other way, he had ridden 113 miles and I think he was running 10 or so miles. He was flying! So I yelled across the street "I rode 100 miles today!!!" and he yelled back. It was the encouragement I needed to get that last mile done. whew!
When I got back to the car I texted Alex in triumph "I did it!".
I'm still in disbelief, in a way, that I moved my body 105 miles in one day. I only need to find 35.6 more in me :-)
Back at the car, I pulled out my jug of water and proceeded to pour it over my head and neck. Then I drank about a half gallon of water. Made my recover drink (1st Endurance Ultragen) but it wasn't sitting very well in the tummy. I dried off a little, put on a fresh shirt, and packed up. As I was heading out, Dan was running into the parking lot so I couldn't help but to yell out to him
"you call that running?!? You look like Betty White out there!"
haha - it's funny because he actually looked really strong.
Betty White Snickers Ad:
We had a nice chat and by the time were said good bye my stomach was good again and I finished up my recovery drink.
So I was very very proud of my "zen master" day out there. I took the beginning slow and was able to finish strong!
Apparently though, I still need to work on sunscreen application:
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| From Racing and Training 2010 |
Congratulations!! I'm glad you had a fun time, I seldomly had people to ride with when I was training, but when I did, it made it so much nicer! It's amazing what some encoragment and the security of having someone there can do for you. (I need to get a coach for my next IM.) great job! 100 miles is pretty dang far! :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats! Store this day away in your memory and draw from it on race day.
ReplyDeleteAwesome training day Jill!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on another milestone.
I have some of the same nutrition/sloshing issues somewhere after mile 80 of the bike sometimes. I'm convinced that how I feel for the first 5 miles of the ironman run will have WAY more to do with how I fuel on the bike than my actual run fitness.