So, yep, you guessed it. I **obviously** proceeded to break it down into little bits. Duh... Wouldn't you? (don't answer that). I looked at how much time to do each section, based on distance and grade. Based on recent rides. The number I came up with did not please me. "Well that is just not going to be good enough" I said out loud as I added up the numbers in excel (yes, excel...shut up). As I have said several times - No Damn Way am I having a bike that is more than 6 hours.
Now Chris seems to be very confident that this is very doable for me. And I'll admit, that 18.6 mph (what it would take to finish bike leg in 6 hours) is seemingly very doable for me. But hello! We're talking about climbing MOUNTAINS. My best bike was Augusta last year, half ironman, at 21.1 mph. And granted I've gotten stronger this year. But Augusta might be considered flat as a pancake when compared to IMC. And yes, I realize I 've been climbing mountains in training, and yes, mountains that are harder than IMC, but I'm fricking slow as molasses on them, and hence my "I am just going to have to get faster because no damn way am I have a bike split that is more than 6 hours" recent mantra.
So as I said, the numbers didn't please me. David was sitting in one of the living room chairs the other day, and picked up a piece of paper with all the numbers on it...all in a column: distance and time to do it...and asked me what it was. I'm like "it's nothing"...I get a look..."ok. I was figuring out how long I think it might take to do the IMC bike course". And then as he starts to look at it (not that he could make any sense of it really) I said "just give that to me...those numbers are no good anyway". And I ripped it up. Because dammit, my bike split is going to be 6 hours or better. And that's that.
So this weekend we are riding the Gaps. 6 Climbs. Twice up Neel's Gap. I am actually really excited about this, because Neel's is a very very close replica of Richter Pass. So my time on that will be a reasonable predictor of what I can do on Richter. Now of course, I am tired, with all the training. So I can't make a 1:1 comparison...but I can get an idea. So Saturday will be a good measuring stick for me.
On a good note - I finally had a good run again. I was seriously starting to think this was not going to happen till the race and that I'd just have to slog through a whole lotta awful runs. This morning's (yesterday's now that I am finally getting this posted) 10mile step-up was awesome, not in the least due to some cooler temps (hilarious that I now think 72 degrees is cool), and considerably lower humidity. This workout has you run 3mi warmup, 3mi @zone 3HR, then 3 miles @zone 4-5a (ouch) and 1mi cooldown. Managed to pull in an overall 8:15 pace for the 10 miles, with the 3 key miles at a suh-weeeet 7:28!! Hooray!
So, got a big weekend in front of me, and I am actually psyched about it. I'm especially psyched that next week is a recovery week.
Happy Canada Day!!!!
Happy Training!
Kat
No comments:
Post a Comment