Franz and Anne » Two Sports, Two PR’s

It was one of those two sport days. If we were more into swimming maybe it could be a three sports day, but for us it means running and cycling.

It is still cold in the mornings here in Utah so we decided to run first. Even waiting until nearly 9 am, the temperatures were still in the mid 40′s. But running at that temperature is much easier than cycling when it is cold. We did a 6 mile run up and back down the Provo River Trail. On the way back I decided to do a little speed work. Although I have done intervals this year on the bike, and even the tandem, I have not done any running. I decided to do something very limited for this first time so I figured just 2 x half mile repeats would be a good start. At the four mile mark I took off. I was surprised how my legs felt, like I could hardly turn them over when I attempted to push the pace. Each half mile interval was done at only a 7:40 pace, which is slower than my half marathon race pace only 3 years ago. It is clear that I need to get in more speed work running.

After running, we helped Greg finish moving out of his apartment. He is headed out tomorrow back east to work for the summer. In the early afternoon, Anne and I took off for a 25 mile bike ride. It was much warmer now than when we ran, warm enough to ride with short sleeves. We found ourselves on the same Provo River trail we had run on earlier in the day when a couple of younger guys on road bikes passed us. I noticed them in particular because they were not wearing any helmets. We kept up our pace, going about 17 mph on this slight uphill. I could see the two young guys had just kicked it in to pass us but then had slowed down, so we eventually caught them and passed them.

Once we reached Vivian Park, we headed up South Fork. This is a 4.2 mile stretch with about 750 feet of climbing. Since the average grade is less than 4%, I don’t have this as a hill climb for time, but I did set it up as a time trail course on my Ultra Cycling website. Both Anne and I had timed ourselves up this stretch last week. With the run earlier in the day we were not too inclined to try to race up and set a new time. But soon after we started, here was one of the young guys coming by us fast. I guess he did not wear a helmet because he had flowing blond hair he wanted to show everyone. Maybe if I had hair like that, I might also be tempted to not wear a helmet (not really).

From the earlier encounter, I knew he could not hold his fast pace, so I decided to chase him. It didn’t take long to catch him. Seeing he was not able to go a lot faster, I decided to pass him. He then accelerated and trying to catch me., but I was surprised how fast I was moving up the hill. I guess a combination of a little competition and a little tailwind does wonders. It was not long before he was far enough behind that I felt I could back off. But backing off is not my normal approach and since I had set this up as a time trial course, I figured this was a good time to do faster than last week. I finished in 16:51, about 1:40 faster than last week. That time meant nearly a 15 mph average up hill but I had to take my heart rate to an average of 166 bpm (176 maximum).

At the end I had to stop for a few moments at the top to catch my breath. When I turned around there was no sight of the young guy so I headed back down to see where Anne was. I didn’t go down very far before we met, as she was also going up the hill very fast herself.

Anne finished with a new PR for herself, 20:42, nearly 4 minutes faster than her time last week. This table is from the Ultra Cycling website for this course and shows the times posted in the last few days.

It was fun that we both set new PRs on the same ride and not on the tandem. After making a descent back down to Vivian Park we stopped for a another picture.