150 kilometer bicycle ride

I have been concerned that my ironman training has not included enough long rides.

The longest ride in the "13-weeks to 13-hour ironman" program I have been following is only 5 hours. Granted 5 hours is a long ride, but I have been extremely curious to see how well I could hold up over a ride closer to the 7-hour, 180-kilometer ironman ordeal I anticipate.

This morning I spotted a window of opportunity to squeeze in a longer ride, and somehow managed to wake up at 6am and head out of my apartment at 6:50. The traffic out to the Arakawa is a nightmare even at this early hour, but mercifully less so. With the sunshine and wind at my back, the morning ride up the Arakawa was extremely pleasant and I averaged close to 30-kilometers per hour.

However, after turning around toward home into a moderate wind, the extra distance begun to take a toll on me. The fatigue really started to hit around 120-kilometers - my thighs started to burn and I had a hard time staying down in my aero bars. Moreover, the exhaustation was making me uncharacteristically irritable - I found myself screaming at the alarmed little league baseball players loitering in the middle of the path: "Wake up!! Get out of the xxxing way! baka! migi!!!" . The final 10-kilometers through the traffic of east central Tokyo was a nightmare and I began to question signing up for a full ironman.

I staggered back into my apartment at a few minutes past 1pm, giving me 150-kilometers in just over 6 hours. In a much earlier part of my life I completed significantly longer rides, however they were stretched over the course of a long day filled with numerous meal breaks and opportunities to rest.

You may think that 150-kilometers is an adequate workout for the day. But the extraordinary triathlete, Mike Trees, I had told me that as much as possible, one should tack a run onto their cycle workouts.

So within about 9 minutes of getting off my bicycle, I was heading out the front of my apartment, much to the astonishment of the front desk staff. I had hopes of intercepting Keren Miers and Mika T who were doing a tempo run around Akasaka Palace, but apparently missed them by minutes.

I started slowly, but was able to measure my pace on a 1250 meter loop around Meiji Art Museum and picked up the pace to 4:20 per kilometer. I finished the run of approximately 12-kilometers at Michael Glenn's weekly "Yoga for Runners" session in nearby Hiroo along with Bob, Miyako, Dave Motoza, Keren, Mika and Taro. The more relaxing yoga poses were a pleasant and helpful way to finish a long training session, but I found my legs and arms trembling and cramping on the poses that required strength and balance.

So -- did I hold up OK on the long bike ride? I am encouraged that I was able to run as fast as I did today on my short followup run. But, all in all, I am even more concerned about riding 180k along with the swim and run than before. I tell Keren afterwords that next time (as if there is going to be a next time), during the base period of training I really want to go on some epic bike trek across western Australia or Canada or somewhere so that I am conditioned for longer rides.