50 Miler

On Sunday we hit the halfway mark in our training... This may seem like not that big deal to a lot of people, or it may seem like an enormous deal. The size of the deal of this is somewhere in the middle. On one hand, we will never again do a training ride that is less than half of the eventual total distance that we're training for... On the other hand, it means that this week's ride was only half of where we ultimately need to be. So I guess it's a mixed bag in that regard, but that is why we're training in the first place.

Sunday was by far and away the easiest ride for Ben, and by far and away the most difficult for me. It was unfortunate that the two occurrences happened to coincide with each other, because it only compounded my issues on the bike. I can't be 100% sure what exactly it was that made me struggle so much this week. My diet in the day and a half leading up Sunday was certainly poor (Five Guys, pancakes, and Ruby Tuesday's), and I was also still tired from a Friday-night CAKE concert, but it's possible that I was also just having a bad day. This is bound to happen when you're doing long endurance rides -- I'm glad it's over, and I'm looking forward to the coming long ride (which we'll be doing Friday morning to accomodate for Easter weekend... Holiday ride!).

My position as a biking failure on Sunday gave me a better perspective on how Ben is progressing on these endurance rides. He's gotten a lot stronger and a lot faster. This is good, because I'm assuming that I'm making similar strides. If his performance on Sunday is any indication of where we can be at when we're both firing on all cylinders, than it's great news.

One final thing... When we go out on these long bike rides, there are, naturally, many other bikers (they almost always pass us). These guys/gals always look so professional, and I feel like Ben and I look like a couple of scrubs, with our long sleeve/short sleeve combo. With that, I decided to snazz up my look a bit, with a more professional looking getup to be debuted the day of the race... Or before... Really, it just depends on when I get  my new biking threads in the mail.