Another Brick In The Wall

Was it a brick or just three training sessions in one day? I ran ten miles with the L.A Leggers on Saturday before I rode my bike 36 miles before I swam for a half a mile. Sort of a brick, except there was about a half an hour between each activity. Ah, who cares? Not a bad workout for a Saturday in February.

The run was great, finished strong, ran up the hill from the pier to Palisades Park. I don’t know why it is so much easier to run with a group than it is to run by myself, but it is easier without a doubt.

I drove to Ocean Park and was considering a swim in the ocean, but it was awfully choppy and there wasn’t a lot of people out. I decided to ride the bike first and then do my swim in the pool. I rode north from Ocean Park to the end of the bike path in Malibu. I am starting to think that it is safer to ride on the streets than it is on the beach portion of the bike path. There are just so many bad riders/roller-bladers/walkers/etc. on the sandy bike path, that I think I would rather deal with the traffic.

Once I was in some traffic, I was behind a guy on Washington Blvd. Who must have hit a rock or something and just went down hard. I passed him and stopped as fast as I could. Another cyclist and I helped him to the sidewalk and picked up the large chunk of his helmet that was still on the street. He was shaken up, but okay. If he didn’t have his helmet, he would have been in very bad shape and possibly dead. Scary.

It was my first ride with my new aero-bars. It certainly took some getting used to, but I could feel the difference as soon as I went into the aero position. I spent about an hour getting a new fit on the bike with the aero-bars, but still need to do a bit of tweaking.

I did the swim at the Bally’s West Los Angeles pool. A 20 yard pool. Not ideal, but it works. The odd thing is that there was a guy in the pool who looked to be world-class. He made it across the 20 yard pool in about 4 strokes. I am not kidding. The ease and grace was really something to watch and to envy.

John Thum