July Lessons

I rode in the Scripps Ranch Old Pros 50miler on July 4.  There were about 11 hills per my Garmin. I was pleased that I felt physically good since I have been in PT 8 times now working on my neck and shoulder strength.  I also added one more day of weight training to compliment the 2x a week PT.  I want to get in the habit of going 3x a week.  I finished the 50 miles avg speed 15.6 which is good for me.  I always want to stay above 15mph avg because I need that minimum pace at Oceanside's 56 miler to finish in 3:30.

My next July event was on the 29th running the 1st half Marathon in San Francisco.  I was quite worried about the hills in SF but my excitement to run across the Golden Gate Bridge twice was greater!  We stayed .9 mi from the start so we decided to jog to the start line and that was a perfect warmup since it was 58 degrees and misty.  I trained hard to mimic the hills at grade elevations by combining treadmill runs for the 3 biggest hills/grade and outside hill runs for long and gradual false flats.  It worked perfectly.  The hills were exactly as I expected except at mile 11. After pounding downhill mile 10 we then ran gradual rollers up to the near end. That was exhausting and I kept pleading for them to stop. The finale was awesome as we were wrapped in aluminum foil blankets and handed irish coffee and wonderful baked treats, greek yogurt, fresh fruit, etc.  The shuttle line was hell to return to the start since we only ran half and we unfortunately put our bags in the marathon truck instead of 1/2 marathon so we didn't have our stuff until after the shuttle. Lesson learned when we return next year for 2nd half Marathon (and Father's Day 6/16/13) and earn our Half It All medal.  We wore our Half Fanatics shirts proudly and the arm warmers were perfect for SF weather!

 

JULY MONTHLY TOTALS

SWIM 13 MILES

BIKE 366 MILES

RUN 66 MILES

TOTAL 53 HOURS

AVERAGE 13.5 WEEKLY