Less weather negative...

I did something I normally don't like doing when I'm getting close to a race, I rode with someone. I don't mind riding with someone, I rather enjoy it, it's just close to a race I try to stay perfectly in my heart zone and tend to ride faster alone.  I'm not one that minds riding long alone, I find once I get into the zone the time goes buy fast.

Instead I set up to met Rodney at 10:45 am. It was a great move. First it got me out of the house. Had I not had to meet him I wouldn't have got started until around noon. Secondly it was a great ride, I was able to keep my heart rate in the zone and the time flew, no radio silence, just good conversation. And with Rodney and I both being from Winnipeg originally we had lots to talk about when it came down to "what a shit hole of a place I'd never move back" speak.

The ride was good, my legs were tired, not sore, tired. I was slow. To be expected. This concussion and more importantly the sodium issue has taken a lot out of me. Rodney hung with me for 3 hours and then I went on my own for the next couple. I missed it. Now I was on my own and although my speed was a little faster I was more in the sore zone than ever before. All I could think about was that finishing the full 5:15 of this ride is important and I'm glad there is still 13 days to cram for the race. If I can get in a solid of training next week, especially the weekend in Vegas, I'll be in much better shape to race. My plan is to do a long ride on Friday or Saturday and ride the Las Vegas course. As I rode today I was thinking "this is your last long ride in the cold", it was comforting to know next week I'll be in Vegas.

When I got home I didn't feel to bad. I had eaten one bio bar on the bike and had three water bottles of GU orange flavour. I'm very paranoid about my sodium levels. When I got home I weighed myself and the scale was finally talking normal. I have an Ironman scale that shows body fat, water content, muscle mass, weight, etc. For the past week the readings have been all over the place, the scale hasn't been able to pick up accurately for some reason. It's done this in the past when my body was screwed up from something, like drinking too much beer. Today was the first day it started reading properly. I think I came home around 187 lbs.

First thing I did was eat when I got home, Alyssa had a 12 grain big pancake on the counter uneaten, I ate it. It was great. Then some salty party mix junk food. All guilt free, just paranoid if I don't get salt. I did read that the medication I'm on could also cause salt to be low. It's weird I've never had a salt issue in the past, I'm not sure if this was a regular thing or just a once in a lifetime anomaly.

My rubics cube right now has been trying to get my old blog back up on the Internet. I had it on blogspot, then I put it on a custom domain and it's not working. It hasn't for over a year. I just didn't bother. Howard mentioned that he was disappointed it wasn't up, he thought it was very inspiring and sends people there all the time. I figured I'll try to put it back up. I've spent hours on it, no problem. Although part of my problem is changing things before they can propagate the changes, which means waiting 48 hours so the worlds servers recognize the redirects.

For the rest of the night it was watching TV, playing on the computer and relaxing. I was very happy to get this long ride done and even more happy I got out the door by 10:30 am.  I must say I was quite surprised with how many riders where out today. It was 8 C and most all of them looked much more bundled up than me, most with balaclava's on.

Long Ride - 5:22:44 / 150.79 / 28.0 / 122 avg hr/3 hrs - 128 avg hr / 2:22 hrs
3007 calories