It was a beautiful day for a ride and the rain that was threatening earlier had disappeared. The plan was to get in a 100 mile bike ride followed by a 2 mile run. My personal plan was to get my nutrition together for this ride and chopped up two power bars, prepared a shake and packed my Nuun.

We started out the ride climbing Juanita and that offered me very false sense of athletic ability because I climbed it easily and the ride from Bellevue to Redmond and around Lake Sammamish felt good despite CMcC's tude :). I was drinking and eating well and my legs felt strong. Then we hit Inglewood Hill and that completely kicked my ass...at one point I was actually hallucinating about the road that is perpendicular to it to the point where I thought I was almost there and looked up again and I was not even close. But we made it up and had a really nice ride to Carnation.

After Carnation, we re-fueled again and it the road. When we hit Redmond/Fall City road, my goal was to keep up with Ruth as we climbed and I worked my butt off to try to stick to her. She did drop me but I was able to keep her in my sights the entire time even though my breathing I am sure frightened all the wildlife within a mile radius and my HR hit almost 170 (at least that was what I could see between the black dots dancing in front of my eyes). Someday .

The best part of the ride was the descent back to Lake Sammamish -- one where I usually just ride my brakes and hang on for dear life. I remembered the article Ruth had me read a couple of weeks ago and focused on my breathing while descending -- and was able to almost keep up with her! Whoop Whoop!

I was pretty much DONE when we got back to the car and only had the tiniest of a tinge of guilt for not getting in the entire 100 miles. Did a quick run and then caught Ruth's bike when she went out on her run.

86.6 Mile Bike @ 05:35:00
132a

1.9 Mile Run @ 00:19:00
142a

Nutrition: C- (started out well but deteriorated)
Descending: B+