Training Long

Saturday dawned clear and warm. The perfect day for a 100 mile ride and a short run off the bike. Other than the miles of riding, I had four ten-mile intervals thrown into the mix to keep me honest.

Two miles into my second interval I ran over an unknown object that sliced the sidewall of my tire. The explosion was impressive. I set to work fixing the tire so I could at least limp home to retrieve a replacement. New tube in place and first C02 cartridge did not work. Second resulted in the same. We decided maybe my C02 valve was bad, so Mike tried to use his valve (and our final cartridge). No luck. My tube was flat from the start.

Tip your head to the right (blogger will not play nice with this photo...). There could have been worse things than hanging out on the side of the road for over an hour waiting for my Dad. Mike and I had a jousting match with sticks. (I should stick to triathlon.) I sat on several different rocks (all of which were uncomfortable).

We had good scenery!

My parents showed up with spare tire, tubes, pump and C02. We were going to be able to continue riding! Until...........we realized the stem on the spare tubes was too short. 

Load bike in car. Ride home. Replace tire. Re-start.

Amazingly I got in 95 miles, all intervals and managed to do the 45 minute run off the bike without lamenting too much about the never-ending ride. (Coffee mid-ride definitely helped).

A huge thanks to my parents for the rescue & Mike for hanging out with me for a long time on the side of Olive Hill. These are actually the things I often remember most during hard parts of races - jousting with twigs and such mid-ride!