This week I intended to swim, but when I went down to my bicycle on Tuesday morning, intending to swim, the tire was flat. No problem, just pull out the pump and see if it holds air. Except when I attached the pump the nozzle attachment came off. So no way to fix the tire.
I ended up taking the bicycle to the shop on Tuesday afternoon with the car. That mean I was without my wheels. I had done a 4.5 mile run on Monday, did another on Wednesday afternoon. That Wednesday run I stepped out the door, heard one thunder and nothing else, no drops, for 2 miles. But apparently it poured buckets at my house the whole time I was gone. It was only the last half to three-quarter mile that I found any rain during the run, but with the dousing buckets I was soaked coming in the door. I had to put my running shoes in front of a fan to blow them dry all night.
The bike was supposed to be read on Thursday, so I packed all my work stuff in my backpack, 14.3 pounds of stuff, and ran the 6.1 miles to work with the pack on my back. It slowed me a bit, and I gained an appreciation of hikers and military people who do forced marches with 40 pound packs.
This put me up to 15 miles for the week of running.
When I picked up the bicycle from the shop, I asked them if the new odometer (it had broken recently as well) was all programmed. They assured me it was. But then I started getting these very high speeds. I figured out it was on kilometers not miles per hour, but even at that rate 99.8 KPH (62 MPH) was awfully fast for my highest speed on the 12 mile route home.
My assumption was that they had the tire size misprogrammed, so when I got home I looked up the manual for me Cateye Velo 9 odometer, and programmed it myself. Friday morning on the way to work I was still getting high numbers, but in MPH instead of KPH, so they looked smaller. I’m not sure how I got the angle while riding to look down at the front wheel, but I happened to notice the magnet on the wheel that actuates the odometer, and thought I was seeing two of them. When I stopped and took a look at my destination, I realized they had taken off all of the old odometer to put on the new one EXCEPT for the magnet. They had left the old one on and just added the new one.
Since they sort of squeeze the magnet clip to hold it on, and since I didn’t have any tools to pry it loose (nor did I want to damage the spoke it was on), I tried sliding it up the spoke, which worked. It not sits on the outside of spoke by the rim, far away from where it can actuate the odometer and double all my numbers.
Saturday was my day for the long run. I went over to the Riverside Levee and jogged an 11-mile course I had plotted that was part of the 13.18 mile route for the Half Marathon I will be doing April 23. When I got done with it I had taken 99 minutes: a pace of a 9-minute mile. If I can hold that pace for the half marathon I will finish with 119 minutes — one minute less than the 2 hours that is my goal. So I think my practice is right on schedule.
So as long as the weather is suitable for the half marathon, and doesn’t skew my speeds, I should be good, since the adrenaline of the other runners on race day should ensure that I do at least as good or better than my practice runs, barring other mitigating factors.
So total running for the week 26.1 miles.
My final note of the week is that after picking up the bicycle I did 54 miles of biking for the week. Total miles for the year is 921. I need to be at 1000 by the end of April to stay on tempo, so I expect to be a bit ahead (which won’t hurt since I’ll lose tempo during all the vacation travelling this summer, not to mention what the cold weather months do to getting miles in).
At The Rainbow 