I headed over to Coeur D'Alene (CDA) this weekend to ride the course and get a lay of the land.
Saturday I headed out to ride the bike course armed with food, drink and a very small map of the course. It was supposed to be 70 degrees on Saturday but as I headed out it was overcast, cool and breezy.
The bike course is a two loop course so my only challenge was figuring out the first loop then it would be smooth sailing. As I headed out I passed a couple organized group of riders on their way back from the short out and back along the lake. The first part of the course was easy as I headed back through CDA I headed towards Hayden Lake and managed to follow the tight series of turns to stay on track. I missed a turn and ended up going about 2 miles on the wrong road before back tracking to find the missed turn. After another 20 minutes I caught one of the slower groups and got some general directions but it didn't help as I continued to make wrong turns lots of back tracking to get back on course. Finally after a few more miles I caught another group of faster riders who I rode with for about 15 miles despite a very pedestrian pace. I was riding next to a woman and realized it was Paula Newby-Fraser former IM world champion and also in the group was Michael Lovato who is one of the top US IM triathletes who were providing coaching for this organized camp. It was with this group that I found out that they had put tape down on the road to mark the course as I moved ahead of them I managed to stay on course the rest of the day. I was also plagued by a temperamental rear derailleur when in the small chain ring but I ended up riding in the big chain ring the whole day which made things challenging and really worked my quads.
With all of my wrong turns however my version of the course was 118 miles instead of 112 so at this point I decided to just keep riding and make it a long ride day. I ended up riding 132 miles for the day in just over 7 hours. Not all that fast in my mind but based on the way my legs felt Sunday it was a pretty tough workout.
I had planned to ride and run on Sunday but I opted to just do half the marathon course given my tired legs. It turned out to be a good plan and I had an enjoyable sunny albeit cool 1/2 marathon in 1:35.
Overall I'm feeling good about the progression of my training to date just 8 more weeks till race day!!!
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