Hotlanta

I moved to Atlanta in 2006. I had hot humid summer for several years now but nothing was like this weekend. It was a record breaking week for Atlanta and other parts of the country. The high of the day would be 105, with heat index 108 on Saturday. I had 95 mile ride on Saturday and 18 mile run on Sunday. Nice! I started planning my nutrition since Thursday. Mary sent an email to all her coached athletes on Friday. The summary of the email was listen to your body, don't do anything stupid (as far as focusing on the distance and ignoring what your body was telling you), hydrate and hydrate.

Real pic from the zoo. Even the polar bears felt the heat.

I met up with Eric and Sarah at the Sosebee bike park at 7AM. The plan was to ride the 66 mile route and 31 mile route. We were going to take a little shortcut in the beginning so at the end, the total miles were close to 95. My plan for the first loop was to stay conservative and stick with Sarah and Eric. I've been riding with them long enough to know what they were steady cyclists. It may feel a little slow in the beginning but that was fine, especially for a day like this. The first few miles were great. The temperature was perfect. I felt a little breeze. It was crazy to know that it would be 30F warmer 4 hours later. I felt great throughout the ride, didn't push hard, took it easy on hills and drank a lot. The last 5 miles of the ride, Eric dropped his bottle and I continued riding. I got to the park and they weren't behind me. I rode back and found them on the side of the road. Eric had a slow leak. He was changing his rear tire. I sat underneath a tree and felt comfortable. at one point, I thought I could nap there. The tire changing took much longer than anticipated. We decided to put some air in it and rode back to the park, which was just a couple miles away.

After a couple times of trial and error, we found out that the problem was on the tire itself, not the tube. Using a dollar bill or a Powerbar wrapper was his best bet, hoping it was going to be good enough for 31 miles. At this point, it had been over one hour since I stopped. By the time he was done fixing the tire, we would start riding again at 1PM. I checked the temp on my iPhone, 105F by 3PM. I didn't know what to do. Should I call it a day? go home and ride 1.5 hours on the the trainer? It would be stupid to wait and ride 31 miles in this kind of condition. That was assuming we wouldn't have more tire issues.

I called Mary and explained the situation. She said, just call it a day. 65 miles were good enough for today's ride. Go home, hydrate, and get ready for tomorrow's run. Even though it was hard not to finish and felt like a failure a little bit, I knew that was absolutely the right thing to do. I told Eric and Sarah that I was leaving. I didn't ask them what they were going to do. It was their own decision.

I got home and slept for 9+ hours that night. I was shooting for 6AM start time. I got to the Riverside park at 6:15AM. My plan was to run 6 miles on the trail toward Willeo and back to the car, and then run 12 miles on the loop that I created. I had never done it so it was a little bit exciting. From the park, ran to Eves, Scott passing the Centenial High School, then to Nesbit Ferry, turn to Old Alabama, back to the park. For sure it was hilly, but I felt good, just came out of recovery week last week and had a shorter ride yesterday. Canada course was hilly anyway, so I had to get out there and tackle the hills on the training.

I hit Mile 12 at the Shell station on Holcomb Bridge. I refilled my bottle with Coke. I love Coke on the run course. The sugar and caffeine helped. The last few miles were hot and I was the sidewalk with hardly any shades. When I was on the trail again, my Garmin said 17.4 miles. I finished strong for the last .6 mile. I stopped exactly at 18 miles even though I was a half a mile from the car. I did my cool down and walked back to the car. It was a solid run. 18 miles at 9:41 pace.