Sunday I did a 3 hour bike ride. I was hoping to get in ~50 miles but due to navigational errors, I came up short (and did 5 min extra "bonus" riding to make up for it.) Denver has a TON of paved bike trails which go all over the city. Its going to take a bit for me to become familiar with things, so Sunday I stuck with what I knew. Temperature was in the low 40s. I wore medium weight socks, tri tank, long sleeve tech shirt, jacket, bike shorts, fleecy medium weight running tights, and regular fingerless cycling gloves. A bit chilly at first, but once I got going, I was fine. The other trick is figuring out where to access these bike trails, so I decided to start at South Platte Park, ride along the South Platte trail to Confluence Park, then hang a right on Cherry Creek until I needed to turn around. Nice flat trail, no road crossings, AND I've ridden it before (although it was in 1993). Ride was fun. Only problem was the lack of bathroom stops. After a failed stop at a park where the bathrooms were locked, I ended up stopping at a hotel which was right off of the Cherry Creek trail. This could make things interesting on longer rides, if I also need to get more water.
Mile High Stadium from South Platte Trail:
View of downtown just south of Confluence Park on the SPT:
REI kayak demo course at Confluence Park:
This was the longest ride I've done in months. Surprisingly, I felt fine :)
Monday was swim day. The area where we're renting in gives you access to 4 rec centers as part of your HOA dues. The rec center 5 min from our house is the one with a masters team. I'm a bit nervous about the M-W-F Masters team (the one I want to join) because you have to swim 3500 yards in 1.5 hrs (easy) and hold 8 x 100 free on a 1:40 interval. I could hold the interval, but it'd leave me with ~5 sec rest btwn 100s. Hopefully they're not sticklers on that. There's also a "triathletes" masters on Tu-Th, but my swimming snobbery doesn't allow me to consider joining this group. I'm a swimmer first, then a triathlete, even though my swimming is MUCH slower since I started this whole tri thing.
I swam on my own, 3000 yd distance set. Pool is nice. 8 lanes, wake-eating gutters, water temp around 80-81 (I think). Could be colder, but definitely much better than the 86 degree indoor pool at MAC.
The rest of this week will be interesting.... 2 hr brick today, 2-3 a day workouts through Friday. Saturday is a 4,000 yard swim and a 4 hr bike. Sunday is a 2 hr run, chill out for 3-4 hours, then run another 40 min. Ouch. At least it will be warm (50's) and sunny here. No need to be tortured inside on the trainer... yet.
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