Planned on a century this morning before the taper for Racine, but cut it back to 56 miles. Couldn't bring myself to get up at 3 this morning and ride in the dark for an hour and a half, and had to get home by 8:30am to go work on a classroom at the school. Although short, a great ride. Met up with Chris at Fermi, headed out toward Johnsons for hill repeats, then a beeline back to Geneva to get home in time.

Fermi/Campton/Johnson by rjhill4th at Garmin Connect - Details

Chris gave me a really good reminder: He quoted an article from a couple of ironman coaches, who said "there's no such thing as having a great bike and a lousy run..." which is to say, if you had a bad run, you went to hard on the bike. Often strong cyclists will have an attitude of going all-out on the bike, figuring it's they're strength and they should give it their all and hang on for dear life on the run. The argument the coaches make is that you wind up giving far more away by blowing up on the run, than you gain by having a strong bike leg.

I think this applies strongly to me. The only time I've done a longer race, a half ironman in the Hudson Valley of New York, it looked a lot like the above description. There were 500 people in the race. I'm not a strong swimmer--my weakest leg--but by some fluke involving a sandbar in the swim that allowed you to legally "lope" or run for a third of the swim, I came out of the water 21st overall. I blazed on the bike, and even though I jammed and dropped my chain on a climb, costing me a minute or so, by the end of the 59 (longer than standard Half Ironman distance) mile bike, I was in 3rd place overall. Then came the run. One guy after another passed me, each one congratulating me "hey dude, great bike leg" as they passed me by. I wound up 11th overall, 3rd in my age group. Still a happy result, but the point is I gave to much back on the run, and where that REALLY happened was in giving too much to the bike.

Now it's time to taper. An easy, low volume week with a few intense burst workouts early in the week.