I was a lemonade making fool this morning.  For reasons beyond control I was the only one that showed up for the 2nd Annual Crane Lake Running Club triathlon.  It was a little disappointing, but it is what it is.  Steve decided to move to out-of-state next week so he’s busy getting ready for the move.  My buddy Pete is recovering from meniscus surgery.  Tammy has an abscessed tooth, so she couldn’t make it, nor the friend she was bringing with her…  It was a perfect storm of sucky, if you will.  On top of that, my preparation for the triathlon was terrible.  With the wife and kids out-of-town I had a terrible night’s sleep and I ate horribly.  When I woke up this morning, after skipping my planned bike maintenance last night (because I was too wiped out from my mountain biking excursion), I found that I’d managed to get a flat on my Thursday ride…

After eating a decent breakfast I hastily threw my stuff together and loaded.  On arriving at the running club I quickly changed my tube, found and removed a small piece of staple that had embedded in the tire, filled my water bottles and waited for everyone to show…  We normally start at 8, so by 8:15 I knew I wasn’t going to be running my tri today.

So there’s the lemons.

I decided that I’d keep it simple, to a 35.5 mile bike ride because the girls are still up at grandma’s but my wife is heading home this afternoon so we can attend a memorial for a dear friend that passed away last Friday.  After which, we’re hanging out with friends for a late dinner.  I wanted to have some gas left in the tank.  On the other hand, I didn’t want to just go with my standard effort because this was supposed to be a special day – so I decided to see how far I could go at max effort before I bonked, then I could spin the rest of the way back.

I started out at 9, with crystal clear skies and absolutely no wind, a rarity for this summer.  I used my first mile as a fast warmup, 3:07 and followed that with a 2:54.  Traffic lights caught me for the next two miles so they were a little slow, 3:07 and 3:03 respectively, but after that I was free for the next thirteen miles…  My slowest was 2:51, and fastest was 2:24, most of the others were between 2:34 and 2:41 – I was flying.  I got into downtown Swartz Creek and got caught by a couple of more lights which really tore my time up, but I was still averaging almost 22 mph overall.  In fact, my two slowest miles were in town waiting for stop lights, a 3:40 and 3:37 at miles 19 and 22.  The wind kicked up on mile 21.  Mile 25 is when I started to feel my power fade.  I was like a battery at the end of its life – I tried like hell to hold on but I was just about done.  I held it together for another five miles before sitting up but had dragged that 22 mph average down to 20.2 (no help from the traffic lights either).

I ended up with a personal best one hour of 21.1 mph, a personal best ten-mile of 25:58 (2:36 pace) and a personal best 20k of 32:48.

All in all, it was a great day and a great ride – I got to bust my butt for 30 miles and then spin back leisurely, enjoying the scenery for the last 5.5.

I’d have loved to get my tri in this morning, but that ride’ll do just fine.