The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

So this past week of workouts was a story of the good, the bad and the ugly.  Weather continues to be a bit of hit and miss but I can't really use that as an excuse.  On the Good side, went out with Heidi and Rick and did a strong ride on a good part of the Great White North course.  When we started the temp was relatively low and there was a reasonable breeze.  This was further compounded by a lot of smoke floating in from the wildfires in northern Alberta.  So there was a lot of "discussion" amongst the three of us about how seriously we wanted to undertake the ride but eventually no one had the guts to call off the ride.  At the end of the ride we were all good with the decision to go.

When we first started Rick scared me with the strength of the start.  It made me worried that I was completely behind the 8-ball with my Ironman prep.  Heidi was even more worried having even had less opportunity to train than I have.  As my legs warmed up, however, things got better and I had a really strong ride out to the Genesee power plant.  The only problems that I really had was with my Timex watch which continuously kicked back into regular time mode versus workout mode.  So I'll have to see what I can do to that.  I probably biked in a mostly Zone 3 level, hoping at lower Zone 3. 

On the way back in we really hit up against the headwind, especially when we turned south.  However, I still managed to make about 80 km in 2 hours, 45 minutes.  Heidi did very well for her first outdoor ride in many a year with probably a 60 km ride.

The rest of the weekend and the start of the new week was a bit more challenging with family in town and variety of other excuses. So didn't get in my weekend run as was part of the plan. 

And as for the ugly, not sure if it was my strong outdoor ride in adverse conditions (e.g., cold, smoky) that did it, but later Sunday and into this week I have now developed a head and chest cold that is impacting my aerobic capacity and my ability to sleep!  And, of course, work is a gong show this week with meetings set it seems from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on too many days.  And then again we have a U2 concert on June 1 as well!!

So now only about 8-10 weeks of workouts left before the big day at the end of August!!  Next big test is Great White North at beginning of July!