112 miles

First day of training for next year's Ironman Tri started today. I decided to go ahead and go on a pretty lengthy bike ride.

I started the day off with making a really poor decision.

Feeling hungry, I toasted some bagels and slathered on some peanut butter. And that's all I ate. Taking with me a couple of powdered electrolytes and other misc items, I take off down PCH. At first, I told myself I'll only do a 60ish mile ride...but that soon changed after I made a new playlist on my iPod. It was then that I told myself I'm going to keep riding as far as I can until that playlist is over, THEN I'll turn around.

Bad idea.

Going south was nice and easy. There was a good tailwind and traffic was pretty light. There were a few times where I'd hit a few downhills and actually ended up passing a few vehicles. Pretty awesome. A bad habit I have while cycling is looking down a lot, either at my tires or computer. I guess that might have happened every time there was a sign telling me I was approaching San Clemente, because I did not realize I had entered that city until I passed it. My iPod finally ended it's playlist when I got to Oceanside and there, I turned around. Upon making the u-turn, the very first thing I noticed was the headwind. Good god, that headwind was horrible.

Riding into the headwind wasn't as bad, except that my stomach started rumbling consistently at about mile 70 and on. At about mile 83, my speed slowed down from an average of 22mph to 10-11mph. It was then that I had realized my body didn't have enough calories to burn off anymore. I looked at my computer, which told me I had burned off easily over 2,000 calories already...and we all know that a couple of bagels with peanut butter does not equal 2k cals.

I was losing it.

I started swerving in and out of the bike lane. I accidentally ran a red light in front of a cop (again, had my stupid head down)...and got off with a ticket for wearing my headphones instead of a $400 ticket for running the red light. The headwind seemed to be getting stronger and stronger with each mile. I felt like I could collapse at any moment. It was bad. Really bad. A few cyclists had passed me and as hard as I tried to yell at them to see if they had any spare clifbars, I couldn't even muster up the strength to get a peep out. I eventually made it to Wholefoods (my employer) which, thank goodness, is right off of PCH. There, I grabbed 5 clifbars, 2 bananas, some coconut water, a nice sandwich and got my grub on.

It was glorious.

I think I'll start my day off with some steak and potatoes next time.