A backwards two thirds of a triathalon!

Continuing the mix it up theme Sunday's long ride became Saturday's not quite so long as I planned ride. I was aiming for duration rather than elevation knowing that 70 miles through the canyons could take up to at least 5 hours (I average around 13mph on the hilly rides), so I headed off to the coast with the plan of slingshoting myself North along PCH and hoping to get it done somewhere around, ideally under 4 hours. I arrived to find that the sky was as flat as the ocean, billowing grey clouds, that did not offer rain but there was no break fro the sun, and warmth was going to be driven by activity.

I layered up adding additional clothing as set off. It always takes a the first 10 or so miles to settle in and after getting over the initial horror that my iPod's battery was flat, I hit a comfortable pace of 16mph, the first hour clicked by and just after the hour and half mark I reached the turnaround with 24.5 miles on the clock. I knew from previous rides that I would have to added extra "there and backs" to make up the mileage so after 5 miles of heading South again I switched direction again thereby adding at least another 10 miles to the total. I also stopped to take to pictures dolphins that were heading South just out to sea; awesome! The half way point mileage wise came at around 2:15 so I started figuring out what I could achieve in four hours and settled for 60 miles. At the three hour mark my 16mph was being maintained and I had 48 miles covered, at three and a half hours I was at 56 miles covered and it was at this point I realized I was going to run out of road, 3 miles later I rolled up to my car. I took the advantage of being back a fraction earlier than anticipated, stashed my gear, mounted my rack and bike and headed home stopping to pick up some bacon on the way; eggs and bacon sounded pretty good at this point.

I got home fried up the eggs and bacon and threw a couple of waffles in the toaster, grabbed a shower and 40 minutes later I was back in the car with my wife heading off to our swim class. We had rebooked the last two weeks so my expectations were really low. The instructor had suggested that I get some paddles to practice with in between lessons, well I had the paddles but had not practiced. I jumped in and did a couple of warm up laps, after which I slipped on the paddles and started freestyle; as a kid I was taught to swim but never freestyle so I am horrible at this; all elbows and mouthfuls of water and of course as a runner my upper body strength is for squat! However with this paddles, my stoke slowed, I found I made the time to breath effectively and efficiently and managed to only swallow several pints of water instead of the usual gallons. Switching to breast stroke, we discovered that I am actually pretty good at it and it was long before I had changed my usual form of the head boobing along out of the water to one where I was stroking through the water with my head under, much more effective. And so after an hour of this and somewhere around 800-900m we were done and heading for the hot tub!

After such a good lesson I rationalized the missing 11 bike away maybe just maybe this was a swimming turning point! So a mark on my training book but not a black one like from earlier in the week.

Most of Sunday was spent sailing, I am not a sailor nor nautical in anyway but it was a kind of job interview; unfortunately despite all the winds at the beginning of the week we suffering from the quiet after the storm and so there was not much wind, which, with hindsight was probably a good thing given that it meant we could talk. Anyway the interview thing went really well and it looks like there might be something that I can pull out of it.

And that wraps up the week that was!

Here's the MotionBased data and a few photos of bike ride including the dolphin ones.