Ironman Arizona is almost exactly two months away. I see the numbers on the countdown clock on this blog getting frighteningly small. It is definitely time to increase the time and intensity of training. Starting next Friday, I will be taking every other Friday off of work to spend three solid days doing nothing but concentrating on my training.
This weekend was not too bad. I ran ten miles with the L.A. Leggers on Saturday morning. I then followed that up with a sixty mile bike ride into Glendale and Pasadena. I chose a route with the help of the MTA Bike Map. It was quite useful, but I decided to take Griffith Park Blvd. from Los Feliz to get into Hollywood and discovered a bike lane that was in such bad shape that I ended up riding in the street instead.
On Sunday I swam a mile with a couple of other L.A. Tri Club members at Ocean Park, went to church and then met up with Paul Imellezzeri of the Giving It A Tri blog at the Rose Bowl for some riding.
After a couple of laps around the Rose Bowl we headed in a similar direction that I took last week. But instead of heading back to Glendale, we headed north from Montrose and eventually found our way to Foothill Blvd. The plan was to hook up with a road that Paul knew about that would take us up through the mountains and back to Pasadena. Unfortunately, I developed a flat. It wasn't all the way flat, obviously a slow leak. I decided to test how slow and inflate my tire with a CO2 cartridge. I had three on hand, so if it didn't work, what the heck. After a mile or so we were headed down a hill into Tujunga. It was the sort of down hill that I usually like, but I could feel my rear tire getting squirrelly, and I didn't feel safe going too fast. We ended up pulling into a gas station and I knew I had to change my tube.
I have never actually had to change the tube in my rear tire. It is not so different from the front, but it is a little more difficult. I did discover that one of the CO2 cartridges I had was spent, so after inflating my tire, I didn't have any others. Paul didn't have any with him and so we decided not to go into the mountains. It is out of cell phone range and with no way to change a flat we felt it was best to head back.
The plan was to do forty miles, but we ended up doing thirty with a lot of hills, that is almost as good. I got a couple of hours of saddle time and it was close enough to the goal.
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