What a weekend..

I hate wind, I hate wind to ride in and I hate wind to run in, besides that I had a decent weekend of training. I learned a lot, especially making sure to take in enough water and calories or you will bonk.

We headed out on Saturday for a ride outside, it was suppose to be sunny and a high in the 70's, instead we got rain, wind gusts of up to 30 mph and some sun. It was brutal with the crosswinds but it was nice to get outside. Noel, Rick and I headed out from my house and ended up doing around 53 miles, it was definitely a struggle at times and really fun when you had the tailwind. The downside of the wind was that I was concentrating on grabbing the aero bars so much I really didn't eat enough or drink enough during the ride.

When we got back to my place the sun came out a bit. The good think about having others around is I would have probably bagged the run and got it in later but Noel kept us honest and we headed out. The goal was 40 minutes, we opted for an out and back as that way we could go more on time than on distance. The run was a struggle for me the whole time as I was really paying the price for not eating and drinking enough on the bike. I think I was in the comma the rest of the day and ate about anything I could get my hands on.

Sunday I had a long run on tap and the plan called for an hour forty-five, I was definitely feeling the work from Saturday so it took me a bit to get out the door and get moving. The goal for the day was to not pay to much attention to the pace but rather more on the heart rate monitor, I wanted to run the entire time at or under 160 heartrate. I also set a plan for the day on nutrition, I wanted to make sure I was eating a gel every 30 minutes and taking adequate water. I ran with a fuel belt which I am not a fan of and took 16 oz's of GU2O with me but in the future would definatley take more. I ended up running 13 miles and was happy with that especially after the beating I went through the day before.

I am really starting to see the importance of figuring out your nutrition/hydration plan. I think in the Sprint\Olympic distance races you can definitely wing it but once you get up in the Half IM or IM distance you better get your stuff together. That is going to be the main focus to figure out and have a definite plan going in to Kansas.

Overall I would say the weekend was a success even after feeling like crap yesterday afternoon. Looking forward to running a half-marathon in Palos next weekend as should be able to set a new PR.