48 hours of Bike, Run, Climb, & Swim - A late weekend post

Well, I had quite the weekend. Let’s jump right in.

Bike
Saturday was the penultimate Montauk Century training ride: 80 miles.

Absolutely the best weather for a training ride yet - it was warm, but not too warm that we were sweating.

Likely due to the gorgeous weather, we had a significant turnout of 24 riders. While we started out as a single group, it was soon clear we would be stopping far too often to wait for everyone to regroup after short red lights and such.

The split groups worked well, until a member of our group (the lead group), had a flat tire. By the time we were back on the road, the second group was in the process of passing us. I ended up sandwiched between the second group’s sweep - Mario - and our sweep - Frankie.

Unfortunately, Mario had his rear cassette changed since the last training ride, and the gear sizes weren’t the right combination for him, forcing him to drop out about halfway through the ride.

We reached our farthest point - Iron Pier Beach - and stopped for moment to take in the beautiful views. We then started making our way back, but not without making a stop a Briermere Farms for…

PIE!

I had Cherry-Peach.

At our final rest stop, we realized the second group wasn’t going to have a sweep once their sweep who took over for Mario - Ashley - was going to be splitting off from the group shortly. Mario - I believe jokingly (I hope jokingly) - told a rider that she would be sweep. Now, she’s a very nice person, but not the strongest rider, and the sweep has to be responsible for ensuring nobody in the group gets left behind. A bit worried, I volunteered to take over sweep. As I mentioned in my post the other day, it went well!

I still felt great at the end of the ride, with a sore bottom and elevated heart rate as the only indicators I had just travelled 80 miles by bike. I definitely could have done more than a century if we had kept going.

It’s now officially the longest distance I’ve rode a bike too! My previous best was 72 miles, which I did years ago.

Run
The next morning, I had another race: Run As One.

This was the same four mile course as Run for the Parks the previous Sunday, but started a half hour later.

I came into the race knowing I shouldn’t push myself, having done so purposefully last week. After riding 80 miles, no matter how I felt, I wasn’t going to have the energy to PR.

But for some reason I pushed for it anyway. And I crashed and burned.

After running 6:54/6:41 on my first two miles, I suddenly lacked any ability to keep the pace up. Miles three and four were 7:13 and 7:25. I even decided to stop for some water at the end of mile three - I’ve never done that for a race shorter than five miles!

But whatever. I got out for an early run, and the race tee was a sweet Nike tech tee!

Climb
After the race, I joined one of my oldest and closest friends for a climbing session at Brooklyn Boulders. We did a little top rope climbing before doing a bit of bouldering. Now, I have pretty poor upper body strength, so here I am hardly completing the V0 problems, while kids less than half my age are scrambling up significantly more difficult problems. :\

It’s too bad Brooklyn Boulders is an hour away from my apartment - I would be there all the time if I could.

Swim
So you might think after a weekend filled with physical activity, I’d sleep in as much as possible before heading into the office Monday morning, right?

NOPE.

I was up bright and early at 5am to go to my triathlon swim class. As noted in my last post, I got the bad news that the class was going to be cancelled. However, the class was great. With only three of us, the instructor was able to put a lot of focus on helping to identify the problems each of us were having on our form. Despite only getting two classes, I can still say I learned a ton from it. Maybe once Astoria Pool opens for the season, I’ll go down and practice my form a bit more.

So now it’s Tuesday night and my body is still sore. Probably mostly from climbing.