Breaking the 10% rule

Bike - 4.5 hours
Run - 20 minutes

As I get into the longer distances, the age-old recommendation is that you do not increase your distance each week more than 10% from the previous week. Obviously this is to help prevent injuries from sneaking up and knocking you out. Last week, I did about 62 miles in 4 hours on the bike, primarily due to the tough wind and climb of El-Hajab. This week, though, I decided to go for 4.5 hours and see where that got me.

I started out at 5:30am so as to be done before the heat of the day. Unfortunately, the lights on all the roads start getting turned off about that time. On 3 different streets, it went from a well-lit bike ride to complete darkness. And with all the potholes and broken glass bottles everywhere, let's just say that first 45 minutes of my ride was on the slower, safer side.

Then it was back home to fix my breaks that squeaked louder than the grand taxis. But once that was done, it was off to the coffee shop to meet up with my biking buddies. As usual, they strolled in at a leisurely, late pace. But I knew that wasn't going to last long.

Once we were going and outside of the city, they were gone. The trek they chose for the day was new to me. And lots of hills accompanied that. At one point, they all waited for me to catch up. Hashuma!!! Get going and don't worry about me. I will pull up the rear...again. On the way back down the hills, I stayed up for a while, but still remembered that I had another 1.5 hours to tack on after they were done. Wasn't gonna be a race for me today.

The wall hit me about mile 50, and then the challenge began. I was thankful for a tougher ride. It was a push mentally as well as physically. But in the end, I knocked out 75 miles. That included a very slow first hour. Was thankful that in the end, I averaged about 17.5 mph. For me, that is great.

The final 2.5 mile run afterwards was more of a slow, warmup and stretching run. But by then, it was 11:15 in the morning and getting pretty darn hot.