Tulsa Weekend

Last Friday, I decided (on a whim, as usual) that the beautiful upcoming weekend would be best spent in Tulsa, where I can see old friends and revisit my favorite running and riding trails at the place where my triathlon adventures started a few years ago. Coming off a big rest week, I expected to have to struggle to reign myself in from doing too much too fast as energy simply burst out of me. I didn't. And it didn't. I didn't really feel any different. And after a good, hard, but fairly normal trail run, I actually felt like maybe I was right back to where I was before the rest week as I took to the road for some additional miles my legs felt as they nearly always did now. Tired. Slow. Slightly lethargic. But still handling 8:00 minute per mile pace with relative ease. So the next day, starting to become sore from the difficult trails, I decided on another hour long trail run. This one quite a bit slower, however, and without the second run. I figured my body had gotten plenty of rest. It was going to respond. I just needed to push through and wake it up again. And so the next day came. Martin Luther King Day. It was a beautiful one. Temps were already nice at 8AM and they looked to stay that way throughout. I had nothing to do this day. Nothing. Except train. It was time to test that theory about pushing through. Forget what I said about doing too much too fast. Today was too nice not to go big. Really, really big.

The morning started off with, again, another trail run at my favorite place in the country to run trails, Turkey Mountain in Tulsa, OK. Yes, I have ran trails all over the country, and though I might agree that some, are probably better for various and differing reasons, Turkey Mountain still holds that special place in my heart for being the place where I discovered how wonderful trail running can be. It doesn't hurt that the constant difficulty and largely varying terrain keep one focused the entire time, and that this weekend I still discovered new trails and areas that I had never before seen. With it's proximity to downtown Tulsa, it truly is a gem to be treasured.

This run, however, I cut quite a bit shorter than the last two for a nice 4 mile loop through my favorite terrain, as I struggled to get my legs warmed up from the soreness already kicking in pretty hard. The plan from there was to pick up my bike from the shop and ride it the rest of the day until I met up with my good friend and training buddy, Paul, for a good 7-8 miles on Riverside (or however much I could handle by that time). Problem was, I came to find my bike shop did not open until noon on Mondays. So how do you kill 2 beautiful winter hours on a big training day? Well I decided some more running and eating would be appropriate and hit up another 5 miles on the road to try and keep my legs loose. It wasn't particularly easy. I had to stick to an 8:30/mile pace to keep my heart rate in recovery mode and by the time I finished, I felt it very likely I would be done by the time I got halfway through my bike ride. I couldn't have been more wrong.

By the time I picked up the bike and got back to the trails, it was looking as though 50 miles was going to be a stretch to get done by the time I had scheduled for my last run of the day. But I picked out the route and stuck to it, and hit 51 miles with time to spare, riding a good pace the whole way as I cut through the wind and climbed effortlessly up the hills. I was definitely feeling the resting effects of not riding at all the previous week. Surely this would be it, though, and my run was about to be doomed, right? To my pleasant surprise, not at all. The bike ride, somehow having revitalized my legs, seemed to propel my heart rate back to where it should be as we clocked off a 7:30/mile average for an hour with surges thrown in to spice things up. I finished feeling stronger and more energized than when I started the day (though that feeling did not last long...). Not to mention much faster. This day marked my biggest single training day yet at 51 miles biked and 17 miles ran. The rest week did work. It just took some time to realize it. Pushing through was the right call.