Mighty Magnolia Pre-Race Ride

I sent out a broadcast email to see if anyone wanted to meet on Saturday morning to ride the Mighty Magnolia Course (and maybe get a swim). We would get to the race site at 7AM. The race takes place in an undeveloped subdivision on the west side of town. I was surprised to see all of the cars when I got there.


There were between 30 and 40 of us starting out on the course (16.5 miles). We were going to ride the first loop at a nice warm up pace and then hammer the second loop. We started out slow but, per normal, the pace picked up a little bit. Both loops ended up being at about the same pace. The B-team turned out in near full force. It was nice to touch base with JD after successfully completing the Redman last weekend. I had also not been on a ride with Lance or Dan in a while. I see Raland a couple of times a week at Adult Swim and on the bike.

After the two loops there were a few of us going for a swim. The water felt cool – about 79 – 80 degrees. If legal I would definitely wear a wetsuit but once you were swimming the lake felt great. It was near perfect temperature for racing.

After the ride / swim many of the same people met up to stuff the race packets for next weekend. We stuffed 390 packets! With 10 or so people the work was done in about an hour. This is where just having bodies’ helps so much.

After packet stuffing Jodie and I went to the October Fest. We met up with some friends from the university. I ate a bit and had one (1) beer – that was it. Later at home we ate some dinner and planned on watching a movie. I had been wearing my contacts all day and had a slight headache. I almost never feel bad but wearing contacts for too long is something that affects me. I usually only wear contacts when I exercise and then take them out for the rest of the day.

I looked in the medicine cabinet for something. I found some generic pain reliever and popped a few. Funny thing is that I did not realize that these were PM type pain relievers (pm = pain medication – nope). Well, we put in the movie around 7PM – I was out cold by 7:30PM. Jodie figured out what I had done and sent me to bed. I was a little grouchy from trying to stay awake.

I got up at 6AM for a total of 11 hours of sleep. I probably needed it.

Last weekend I rode 50 miles on Saturday, ran 14 miles on Sunday and rode another 30 something on Sunday afternoon. It was good fun but I took forever to recover from the weekend. I was run down the first half of the week. What good is working out if you can’t come back bigger and better? So I was going to run shorter (but faster) this Sunday. I decided to do my normal base building pace (right around 8 minutes per mile) but run a couple in the middle faster. So I ended up with only 6 miles but miles 2, 3 and 6 were at a 6:30 minute per mile pace. The cooler temperatures helped. I am going to start throwing in tempo runs more often. Sunday afternoon I would miss the group ride due to setting up the racks for next weekend’s race.