Holiday weekend - running and riding and fireworks

We had a good group for the Saturday ride. We met on 28th and headed out. The weather was cooler than last week. It is funny but it did not feel like Mississippi in July. The temperature was in the high 80’s. It was still humid but not 100 percent. In the first ½ mile JD started yelling. I sounded like he said “I lost my helmet.” I looked back and his helmet was on – we all pulled over to see what was going on. It turned out that he had a wasp in his helmet. He got stung a couple of times but this did not seem to affect his ride any. There are a couple of us that call ourselves the B-Team (because we are not as fast as the A-Team). JD made that joke a couple of times.


The first 25 miles was at a rather sedate pace. We just rolled on. We were hitting hills and looping back and forth through the countryside. About half way the pace picked up. I enjoy being the rabbit and attacking. I am never going to get away but I like to keep the group honest. They always chase me down but we end up getting out average speed up. In these rides, I am not the fastest; I just don’t have that top end like some people (I’m working on it). But I do have a little bit of endurance. I have fuel in the tank after 30 or 40 miles when so people are starting to get tired.

Saturday Group Ride: 50.74 Miles
1579 ft elevation gain
19.0 Ave moving speed

I got up Sunday for a run. I wanted to do 4 miles fast with a warm up and cool down. I had a rough time getting started. I messed around for nearly an hour just trying to get out of the door. I bricked my MP3 player. It got stuck on docked and I could not get it unstuck. I looked up how to reset the device and got a paper click to punch the button. The whole dang button went into the MP3 player. I had to look around and grab the girl’s player. (I am stealing ‘the girl’ idea from DC Rainmaker.) I loaded up some of my music on her player. So after an hour I headed outside. About half a mile into the run I realized that I did not have my heart rate strap. Oh well – I had wanted to see where my heart rate was at the pace I wanted to run – to see if it was above or below my LTHR.

I paced myself out at 7:30 pace then picked up the pace. I wanted 4 miles at 6:30 pace. The weather was still cooler than it has been but not cool by any stretch of the imagination. The miles clicked off easily. I want to be able to run this pace during my next triathlon. I seem to be stuck at 3 miles for this run. I have attempted it several times and always stumble at 3 miles. I do not know where my heart rate was but I made the decision to slow down. I slowed the pace. My fourth mile was at 7:04. My splits were as follows:

7:30
6:28
6:32
6:37
7:04
6:51

I am going to keep trying this workout until I can pull off 4 x 6:30. It should not be that tough. That is right around 20 minute 5k time. I am faster than that. I mean, during the winter I did a 12k (7.45 miles) at 6:39 pace and a half marathon at 6:53 pace. I need to work on the speed. I have the endurance but I need to find that high gear.

Sunday Run: 6.00 Miles
179 ft elevation gain
6:49 Ave moving speed (includes warm up)

The afternoon would be another group ride. There were only about 8 of us on this Independence Day. Several riders from the day before. We headed out to Sumrall and then went north. Once we left the trace the pace picked up. I was not needed as a rabbit – it was just a good fast paced ride. Riding during the afternoon was much hotter than the morning ride the previous day. My legs were a little tired but nothing bad. I was able to do a few pulls. I felt strong the entire ride.

Sunday Group Ride: 57.24 Miles
1085 ft elevation gain
19.5 Ave moving speed

My neighborhood has its own fireworks display. It is put on by Ron who lives just down the street. I guess Ron is just a fireworks aficionado. He has a big BBQ party that culminates with a 45 minute firework show. People drive to my neighborhood to watch! We had some friends over and had the lawn chairs in the front yard. We had food and drink and good company. It has been a fantastic Fourth of July!