Lake Bryan Extravaganza!

16 Miles

So I got up on time this morning, woke up Israel and Steven, then ate a bowl of frosted shredded wheat, some of those tiny chocolate donuts and a banana. I kicked everyone out the door and had some Gatorade on the drive over to pick up Laura and Jennifer. We loaded up their bikes and headed out to the lake for our second time. We decided to do another "before picture" since we had Jennifer and Steven with us this time around. Girls complain too much about looking like crap in pictures early in the morning. FU girls...nobody looks good at 6 in the morning, haha!

We took off, and things were going good for a few miles before the girls started having problems with their bike seats. We needed a break, so we adjusted them and kept going. Israel had decided that he was going to cut his run down to 10 and just hang out by the truck until we finished up. I didn't blame him after the ab workout he did a couple days before, so every step probably felt like he was getting punched in the kidneys. Except for one point on the run when I actually did punch him in the kidney...in my defense he started it.

About 6 or 7 miles into it, Jennifer was hurting too much from her bike seat. I was jealous since she got to go sleep the rest of the time in the truck. Shortly after we hit 10 and Israel broke off, Laura, Steven and I decided to try our luck running on some of the more technical trails. Initially we avoided them in hopes that enough bikers would ride through all the spider webs (FYI- running through spider webs sucks!) We didn't really have any problems, except for Laura busting it on her bike about 40 yards into it, haha. We were scared until we saw that she was okay for the most part. We did the last few miles on the winding bike trails before I told Steven I was cutting it from 18 to 16. He had originally planned on 15, so it worked out ok. I was starting to have more pain in my knee than I thought was healthy at this stage in my training. We met back with Israel and Jennifer at the truck, got cleaned up, loaded the bikes and went home.

A little later everyone picked up fajita stuff and met me at the apartment pool where I was taking an ice bath and drinking beer. That's right, an ice bath...it was a little embarrassing, and painful, but very worth it. We ate fajitas by the pool while I sat in my tub full of ice and pool water. Steven and Israel took turns trying it out while I rotated between the bath and the pool:

7 min, 7 min, 7 min, 10 min, 10 min. I was keeping my beer in the tub to stay cold, and by the time I was finished I had drank most of them and taken a shot Israel gave me...I was pretty sauced.

Well during the run, I dicovered that I would have to alter my training plan a little to make this whole thing work. Initially, I was going to work up to 40 miles (60%) as my longest training run, but after this one, I realized that wasn't feasible with the time I have to train. I'm going to go for 30 miles (50%) instead.