The plan was to run three miles with the L.A. Leggers, take a small break, do about thirty on the bike and then seven more miles running immediately after the bike.
The run with the Leggers should have been easy. I run with the 11.5 mile a minute pace group, not very fast. It is easier to run with a group than by oneself. Last week, I sprinted ahead of the group at the end. But every day is different and today was hard. I wasn't sure why it was so hard, but when I down loaded my stats from my Garmin, I saw that my heart rate averaged about 160 beats per minute. Yikes! I usually average about 140 when running at that pace. Why so high? I haven't the foggiest idea, but it certainly explains why I was not feeling too good.
I started my bike ride from a different location. I drove to San Vicente Boulevard, to the Brentwood Country Club as a base. The is always plenty of parking in the shade. San Vicente has a great bike lane and I like running around the country club and down the median on San Vicente. Perfect.
I rode west on San Vicente and when I got to Ocean Avenue I took a right instead of my usual left. This led me down the hill and eventually to Pacific Coast Highway. I started riding and figured I'd go to Pepperdine University in Malibu and back. That would be a good ride and probably a thirty mile round trip. The ride north, even though it seem to be slightly down hill most of the time was harder than expected. I figured the must be a head wind. I was averaging about 16 to 17 mph. Without a wind, I would have figured over 20 since it was slightly down hill. Also, the riders on the other side of the highway seemed to be cruising quite fast. I thought it is very possible they are much better riders than me, but even still there seemed to be a wind factor.
The ride out was pleasant enough. I did get passed twice by groups of riders who seemed to be very serious roadies. But I was doing okay. I finally got to Pepperdine, did a little loop around and got behind a group of riders waiting to turn back onto PCH. They were geeked out on serious bikes, with really expensive wheels and power taps and every accessory that a cycle geek can buy. I figured I would ride behind them for a mile or two before I got dropped. I wasn't going to truly join them, because I hate riding in groups with crossing wheels. I don't think my cycling skills are good enough and I certainly don't trust others to not do something erratic. But if I stayed about a bike length back, I would still get their draft and would get pushed to stay up.
Going south, what was a head wind was now a tailwind. I was drafting off of a group of riders and it was not very difficult to keep an average pace of about 22 mph, even though we were now going slightly uphill. There were times when I even had to break slightly as not to get too close to the wheels of the riders I was following. This was a lot easier than I had anticipated. About five miles into this another group of five riders passed and then joined the peloton. The pace picked up slightly, but I was still able to comfortably keep up. This was nice. Eventually they broke off at the beach bike path and I went up Channel Road to get back to my car. But I was quite pleased that I was able to keep up with a group of some serious roadies for more than 10 miles. I'm sure I could have kept up for much longer than that.
I got to my car about 15 minutes later and put away the bike and changed into my running shoes as fast as I could. I started the second run of the day with a run around the Brentwood Country Club. I like this run, it is scenic is is mostly on dirt, so it is easier on the knees than concrete. Everything was going fine until I was approaching a roach coach parked on the side of the street. a guy out in front of it saw me approaching and warned me to watch me head as it had an overhang over the order window. My plan was just to run around it, but I kind of took his advice and lowered my head just a little and must have done something weird to my hip in the process. I felt a twinge in my right hip. Oh oh. I stopped running. This felt exactly like a hip injury I suffered in March between the Ironman California 70.3 and the L.A. Marathon. In that case it wasn't too serious and this doesn't appear to be either, but I was not going to continue to run and risk further injury. I ended up doing a total of five miles, three in the morning and two after my bike, instead of the ten I had planned. I guess I do more swimming and biking in the next few days and let the hip heal.
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