The coffee and cookies in the photo tasted great after my workout today. I did a bike/run brick workout today, and really enjoyed it.

The bike session was 2.5 hours long and included a couple of 25 minute intervals of hard effort.  I found a couple of nice long hills, that I was able to include in those hard effort intervals.  The hills were both just under a mile long, and both had an average grade of 6%.  That translated to about 6-7 minutes of hard climbing on each hill.

All told, I covered 44 miles on my ride and had 3,800 feet of elevation gain.  That’s the beauty of being in Western Pennsylvania; I get to practice a lot on hills, which really helps build strength.  It also prepares me to handle hills on race day.

In addition to my bike ride, I had an optional run workout today.  Towards the end of my bike ride, I decided I would do that run ‘off the bike’.  Running immediately after getting off a bike, is a little strange for a few minutes.  Your legs don’t feel right. Despite this feeling, I am always surprised that my pace off the bike is typically quite fast.  Today was the same, and I had to force myself to slow down, because the run was scheduled to be super easy.

Tomorrow I have a long run.  It’s 80 minutes long, which is about the cut off for where I feel runs start to get long for me. It’s the first time I will do 80 minutes this year and I am looking forward to it.  My volume is increasing and I love it…