Today was training with Team FAST (my tri training team) but I have bronchitis. So I asked my coach, Cheryl, about the route and explained I'm on day three of bronchitis so a hilly route might be too challenging for me. If I can keep my HR relatively low (140 or lower) I am fine, but if I start having to breathe heavily I cough so I wanted to go flat. She suggested it might make more sense to just do the trail as the course was challenging.

So I asked Lisa (my friend) if she wanted to ride any of it with me. It's always nice to have company, even though we don't talk too much on rides. She said she'd love to, so we planned to meet late enough that we could get some sleepin' in going on. No sense starting at 7:30 if we didn't have to! We met at Logboom Park in Kenmore and headed out toward Woodinville. It's actually a really beautiful trail, but I've biked and run it so many times that it's not very interesting. We biked out and back for 26 miles, and then Lisa peeled off so she could go throw a birthday bash for her son. (She really does birthdays great for her kids.)

I continued on trying not to look at my car beckoning to me from the parking lot. My goal was 56 miles, which is how long I'll have to ride in the half ironman. I'm telling you, my legs did NOT want to keep going after about mile 30. My knees were kind of cranky, probably due to the 22 mile run earlier in the week. I did fuel well; fig newtons, peanut butter filled pretzels, pumpkin flax bars (a recipe I made up), and a gu. I turned around a bit early and decided that if I still felt good, I'd just go past the car and do the whole 56. I knew, in my head, I wasn't fooling anyone. I never cut a workout short.

Hit the parking lot and kept going to finish up the full 56 miles. It took me a bit to rack the bike and change into my running gear, but I managed in about five minutes. Our car rack is tall so it's always hard for me to get my bike up there! Hit the trail and ran 3 miles.

It's interesting...I like to bike. I really do. But I love to run. I swear, I ran the trail I'd just come off, and I noticed 30 more things on my run than I had on my bike. I think that's a lot of what I enjoy about the run. I love seeing the flowers, the birds, the leaves on the trees, all the details that I miss on the bike.

Tomorrow we plan a bike ride around the tulip fields in Skagit County. The tulip festival is over, so I don't know that we can visit any of them, but we can ride alongside them and take pictures! Plan is only 20 miles, which is fine with me. I'm pretty clogged up tonight. I think someone poured malt-o-meal in my lungs!