Live Healthy: Getting back to it

I've been doing okay, I just haven't been posting about it.

+ The actual ride last Saturday was not great. Had to walk up the first hill because I couldn't get my borrowed bike to change gears. Seriously deflating. Tom was having problems with his bike, too, so we were hanging back. I finally started to get the hang of my bike, but Tom continued to have problems with his. After about 8 miles of struggling, he decided to just go back. But we lost quite a bit of time.

I wasn't dressed warmly enough. It was about 40 degrees and rainy and I only had on two cotton layers. I brought my fleece, but left it in the car. That was ok for going up the hills, but I was freezing going down hill. It became two bad choices: labor uphill but don't freeze, or coast downhill but freeze ;-)

Made it to the planned refueling stop. Had 1.5 Snickers and some coffee. Should have asked Eric for his windbreaker before we left. Asked him back on the road if I could borrow it at the next stop (which did happen).

I forget when we made the decision to shorten the ride. We were supposed to be meeting some people for dinner at 5:30 and it was going to start getting dark. The final mileage was a little over 30 miles. We had to settle for 40 km for Bryan's 40th birthday instead of 40 miles, but these things happen. Don't know if I could have made the full 40, the way things went. I think I could have if I'd had a better start...

Thankfully, most of the last part of the ride was flat or downhill because my legs were gone. Limped to the end.

It took me quite a while to recover. I continued to shiver some while we waited at the restaurant for a seat. Maybe it was from being cold, but I felt like it was more from being drained. Maybe I didn't refuel enough as we went along. I wasn't incredibly sore the next day or anything. (But I'm still keeping my promise to take a week off of biking. Back to it Monday :-)

Well, that's enough of that. The main thing is: it was a good visit with my friend, Bryan.

+ Bryan and Sarah eat incredibly healthy! There's not unhealthy food in their house. So, I ate pretty well while I was visiting there. I ate a little too much and am back up a little on the scale, but that was all expected and I am not alarmed. I am getting back to my program now.

+ My primary training focus now is the Sleigh Bell Trot on November 24th. I will probably shoot for 3 10 minutes miles or 31 minutes overall. We'll see as we get closer if I can really pull that off. Started jogging again yesterday after taking 5 days off. Went fine. Actually was my 2nd fastest pace so far, 11:14/mile.

+ I never did get around to doing my September evaluation and a new October contract. I should definitely do it again for November...