Had some left patella tendon pain going on, 1 on a scale of 10. Otherwise felt pretty good all things considered. I'm actually kind of achy all over, hopefully just because of being sick.

Big thank-you to Garmin for letting me know I was near death for a good portion of my run today (downhill at a 10:30/mi pace). I hate how the HR reading sometimes does that.

Put Brynn's front wheel on my Trek (haven't put a new tube on from the flat I had a few weeks ago) and took some comp photos from the bike. Probably didn't take much longer than it would have if I had taken my car. Wish they were all this close :)

86 RPM average

Glad to see that I spent 1:07 in Z1 and Z2. Was running late so I drove to the meeting spot for the group ride but they had already left (turns out they left EARLY anyway--butts!) So I started down the trail to catch them. I know they go at a pretty easy pace down the trail until they get to Hwy 77, then the real ride begins. I saw my friend Brad at Old Cheney waiting for a friend so I rode with him. He decided it would be faster to go down 14th St instead of the trail to try to catch the crew, but I absent-mindedly took the turn to go on the trail. D'oh! Ah well. They got caught at a stop light anyway so it didn't do them any good. I was pretty far ahead of them so I just settled into an upper Z2 pace and tried to catch the group. When I was turning onto HWY 77 I could juuuust see two riders cresting a hill about 3/4 of a mile away, so I figured I could catch them. I had to wait for the stop light though and by the time I got to the Roca Rd exit I had NO clue where anybody was. I waited for Brad to catch up and he ended up going under the overpass instead of on the exit. Apparently he thought that they were doing the Sprague loop and I was thinking they would do the Roca loop, that's why he kept going. So I just rode with him and his friend down to Sprague. Turns out he was right! We saw the group coming back as we were getting ready to go down the huge hill into Sprague. We ended up having a little sprint down into Sprague on the big hill. I guess I only got up to 36 mph (missed my triple crank today :))

After we turned around in Sprague we caught back up to the group and rode in with them. All the regulars were really excited to see my new bike, and I told them I wouldn't be bringing it on the group rides much (let's face it, it's not that comfortable to ride a tri bike upright and have to shift using the bar-end shifters on a group ride). Ned, who is this 60 year-old 125-lb bag of muscle, told me I'll have to spend more time at the front now that I have that bike :) Oh Neddy!

LT Test. Didn't realize the cadence sensor was actually working. The speed sensor was too far away from the magnet, but it's good to know that it's there so I can keep track of my speed on the trainer. In fact, I'm half-tempted to do more riding on the trainer now that I know I have those two helpful little bits of information! I'll definitely be moving the magnet from my Trek to the other rear wheel for my P2 so that my Garmin can coordinate actual distance with the sensor.

Felt REALLY good on this run--finished the last 0.6 miles or so at a sub-9:22 pace! Excited for the recovery week this week to let the knees heal up (they felt pretty good today) and hit the last 7 weeks of training like a beast.

The first part was super windy (well the whole thing was super windy) and the flapping of my shirt was messing up my HR reading, so it was spiking up into the 170s. I did a couple new things today. First, I changed my HR alert to 165, because when it was at 160 my "average" was always under 160. I also set a timer that went off at 4:30 intervals, that way I walked the first :30 and then it would go off 4:00 later. I'm having a new found appreciation for the Forerunner 305. I know the 310 and 910xt are out there, but don't underestimate this very affordable training tool. Especially when you can get them used pretty much all day on BT for $100.

Turned around after Unadilla at about 19.75 miles. Average speed was 15.2mph on the way out and I was on track to finish 40 miles at over 16 mph average. The kicker is my very low HR for this ride which was the goal. I believe the first time I was training for Kansas I was doing all my Z2 rides at 142bpm or less, so to be at 137 for this ride is just swell. I'm thinking I'll try and average 16 mph on race day, which will be about 1 mph faster than I did in 2008. That's a 14 minute savings on the bike leg--suhweet! I might actually go even faster on race day, we'll have to see how the next month or so of training goes.