Beautiful Brick

This weekend held for us the longest Brick of the season so far: 42 mile bike, 6+ mile run. Weather forecast suddenly made a change for the better from all the dreariness we've been experiencing and although we woke to a little drizzle, I had high hopes the weatherman was going to earn his pay for the day. My team headed out in shifts - the early shift (aka: slow peeps) took off sometime after 8am, with the late shift (ie: fast as lightning peeps) trailing behind us....and eventually passing us and still getting back into transition before us>>>they are ROCK STARS, I tell ya! Most of them are heading on to Ironman Canada in August. The ride started fast and flat before we hit 13 miles of pretty steady climbing. I was trying to keep up with my rabbit, but she was on her new fast bike yesterday and my lungs were having NONE OF IT! I dropped back just a tad, still having a bit of trouble keeping up with two friends. Flats are a huge struggle for me. I think I've come to be a much better climber than speedster.

We eventually hit The Portland Women's Forum and stopped to take in the view and snap some pictures.

Diane, Me, Lauren

Diane, Hani, Me

About a mile or so later we made the turn onto Larch Mountain where the climb gets tougher...although admittedly much less tough than it has been in previous years! The best part was arriving at the aid station and then getting to bomb back down to the bottom...and then a fast 12 miles back to our starting point. 42 miles done!

Slip on shoes, a visor and some body glide and we're off on our run. The sun is shining down nice and bright by now and we finally get to work out in some heat that we'll need prior to our hot race in June. Diane and I kept up a nice 9m/m pace for the first few miles. We let it drop off a little in the middle and picked it back up at the end. I felt great about our run!

Back home to walk the dog with kids in tow...

...then to Jack's baseball game...and unfortunately no ice bath. My legs feel pretty lovely today, though...and I've got a 45 mile ride on the schedule for today.

Speaking of legs...Eugene 1/2 Marathon is coming up next weekend!! I DO have a 55 mile bike ride the day before, but I was in the same situation last year (I think last year it was more like 65 miles) and my legs still held out for Eugene. Track workouts have been great this season. We did some mile repeats on Tuesday with me running some of my speediest miles since probably 2003! First mile was an 8:05, 2nd was 8:15 and 3rd was 8:10. I was more than happy. My heel felt fine until I slowed down for my cool down laps...and it wasn't too bad the next day. I'm planning on trying to get my sub 2 at this race - so I'll be printing out a pace band and getting my play list ready this week!

>>>>>>>>If you are going to be in Eugene and haven't gotten the blogger get together info from Raina yet, leave me a comment and I'll get the meet up info to you!<<<<<<<<

I also want to announce I will be starting my fundraising raffle next week. So far we have some great items from:

Sheebody

INKnBURN

GymBoss

Bondi Bands

and a new donation of a $25 Gift Certificate from Sarah Wilson at Fashletics!!

I hope you'll all consider making a donation to Team in Training and enter yourself in the drawing. I will hopefully have some more items by the end of the week, but don't let that stop you from entering now. You can go to my PAGE and donate $5 for one entry, $10 for 5 entries and starting next week you can get add'l entries by tweeting and/or blogging about it! Thanks for all your support! Just make a note on your donation that you're entering the raffle :-)