The first 2/3 of the ride was The Tour of Seth - PDX style. We started out climbing, continued to climb and finished climbing. Are we supposed to ride short any other way? Watts and power were nice - maintained a comfortable 171 normalized avg for the 2:20 hr duration with some nice 10-20 minute climbs between 200-240w.
The 2nd part of the brick was an easy LSD trail run up Lower McClay Park onto Wildwood. I found the run highly therapeutic. Visualization is key.
The end of taper week 1 - finished off with 13.5 hours, a 25% time duration reduction over the week prior. The bee sting at the beginning of the week helped me cut back on the training - see, everything does happen for a reason :). I could see the effects of taper taking place as my power grew on bike ride Saturday. Now I just have to let that continue to grow and keep it bottled up for race day. "Popping" the cork with be nice.
I got to spend what was left of the afternoon at a special tri clinic listening to Cliff English and 70.3 World Champion and Olympian Sam McGlone. This I have to say was the highlight of the day. I've followed and looked up to Sam since I started triathlon, meeting her and hearing her speak was pretty much a dream come true. Watching her race the next day was just the icing on the cake.
Evening came around and I indulged in a bit too much wine, really good pizza, fun company and a decent movie - District 9. Oddly I felt like I could relate to the aliens, I'm not going to go into that much further. The people who should know, know what that means. The movie was not really what I was expecting but good none-the-less. My legs started cramping mid-way through which kind of sucked. It would have helped if I had rolled them earlier in the day but there are only so many hours/minutes! My bad.
Sunday - Pacing, Volunteering and cheering at Hulaman HIM
Mark and I were up bright and early to support, cheer and pace some friends out at the Hulaman HIM. The first part of the morning was guiding athlete's out of T1 on to the run course, directing the HIM and 1/2 marathon finishers in and keeping spectators in place. During this time I got to watch Sam McGlone come in off the bike, Luke McKenzie take first place finish (HOT, HOT, HOT Aussie!) and PDX local badass Jeff Henderson to win the AG. Many other friends came in with stellar performances - great job on the 1/2 Marathon Joe English!
I joined Dave out of T2 for his first 2.5 miles of the run - he was strong, energetic and had a great attitude! On my way back to the start I passed by Joie - another smilie face :) and then MaryJane. MJ had the misfortune of getting stung not 1, not 2 but 3 times on the face on the bike. I wouldn't have been able to tell if she hadn't told me - she was running with high spirits, great posture and run form and a massive smile on her face - the TNT way. Once back at the finish I was able to take some time to congratulate friends coming in, chow down on a little granola and hydrate a bit before heading back out. Mark and I run back out to pace Dave back in. We ran into Sam who Mark departed and ended up fartleking with. Hehe, that just sounds funny. I end up catching Dave around mile 10. He was running down a long stretch of road with no shade from the sun and the day was getting hot....he was still in good spirits! We paced along for the next couple miles until he "unleashed the beast"....I'll leave it at that since it was his first HIM and he really needs to tell the story, I'm just honored I was able to "run" in a small part of the epic day.
Big Ups to Gary for directing a kick ass HIM and getting some big name PROS and locals out for a "small" town event.
I recovered my 10-11 mile pacing/recovery run at the post race luau with good food and great friends. Then it was on to McMennamins for carb loading hard cider and one tasty vanilla milkshake!
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