It was a beautiful day with little to no wind and some good cloud cover as we pulled out onto the road around 6:15 a.m. The first 30 miles of the ride went by fast as we covered the same roads that I've ridden what seems like a million times since the beginning of the year. After mile 30, we start to hit some bumpy roads that jog along the ocean. It's not too scenic, but you do get some nice shots of Kaneohe bay in between some of the houses right on the bay. We pushed through mile 40 and headed out onto some really sweet, smooth roads that ride along the ocean out to Swanzy beach park. Swanzy is where the Honolulu Century ride turns around, so I'm somewhat familiar with it; especially after our 100 miler last Wednesday. We stopped at Swanzy (my coach Eric, his wife Wendy, and myself) to hit the bathrooms and refill water, then decided to push out another 5 miles as the roads and scenery were so nice. It is really beautiful out there and I catch myself "window shopping" when I should be paying more attention to the road....
We hit our turnaround at mile 55 or so and then headed back towards Kaneohe town. I've noticed, on my last 2 Century distance rides, that I tend to get tired somewhere near the 4 hour mark. I think I'm just tired of being on the bike as this point and everything seems to ache. What I've found is that just pushing through it and continuing on makes it go away eventually. Could be boredom as that is a long, long time to be out on the roads!! Anyway, we made our way back into Kaneohe after a few tough climbs and then onto Kailua. Once I hit Kailua, it signals to me that we are within 1.5 hours to go and I start to feel better. We stopped to get some much needed cold water, gatorade, etc.. We had logged about 85 miles at this point in the ride. There is one last section that can be somewhat tough due to winds and a climb called Waimanalo. The climb hit us around mile 95, so it can be tough just due to being tired and on the bike for upwards of 5 hours at that point. I know that once we get over that climb, then I'm home free as we pick up a nice tailwind as we head back towards our starting point. The top of the climb signals about 15 miles left in the ride and I was feeling really good again. It tells me that my nutrition is spot on for this distance!!! Nutrition can be one of the toughest things to figure out but I seem to have a good plan for my body and the distance....I guess we will see!!
I decided that since I was feeling good that I wanted to log at least 112 miles just to know mentally that I've conquered that distance. I pulled into the beach park right at 112 and felt really good getting off the bike. To start the day, I wasn't sure how my legs would respond after the race on Sunday, but I was pretty impressed with how well I bounced back and how good I was feeling that day!!!
So, that's 1 Century down and 2 more to go. I've also got 2 - 20 mile runs to finish in the next 10 days as well, so these 2 weeks are the Epic Ironman Training weeks that I've so often heard about. I'm very fortunate to have the time to recover properly during the day and looking forward to knocking off those distances this weekend.
5 Weeks till race day and really starting to look forward to it!!
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