Independence Weekend

I hope that everyone had a fine Independence Day weekend.

I’m not sure why but I have a problem with calling it the 4^th of July…  We don’t call Christmas the 25^th of December…  but I digress

Saturday

5k

Judi, her daughter, and my two daughters were all registered for the Cherry Picker Big Bang 5k in Ponte Vedra Beach

We got to the race site in plenty of time yet managed to get to the start line with *literally* 5 seconds to spare.

I love the 5k…  really I do.  I have a 3.1 sticker on the back of my car.

I don’t, however, train for the distance and thusly pay for the effort when I do one (roughly once a year).  The race is basically a loop with an out and back section in the middle.  At the turnaround I was in 5^th.  While I had 1-4 in sight most of the time…  and had delusions of a scorching 3^rd mile where I would go all Mark Cavendish on ‘em and speed to victory…  in reality I simply held on to 5^th… while watching the leader slip to 4^th.  My time of 21:22 was about 30 seconds off my time from last year which surprised me not at all.

Judi finished a couple of minutes later and after grabbing a bottle of water we headed back out on the course in search of our children…  We found them a ½ mile back out on the course and each ran in with our respective offspring.

In the end we all got awards (it’s a pretty small race)

After the race we got changed and headed out on our bikes….  And by the time we hit the road it was near 10:00 and getting hotter by the minute.  In a word I felt crappy…  from the first pedal revolution.  The plan was to ride our normal 65 mile loop.  I successfully lobbied for a 50ish mile out and back so that we would encounter “less traffic”.    I pulled all the way to the turnaround into a head/cross wind but it was nothing smooth, easy or fast.  Judi even commented once that I could kick it up a MPH or 2 if I wanted…  in my head Scotty from Star Trek answered her “I caan’t go any faster Captain, we don’t have the po’er”.

  On the way back we traded pulls and I was really happy that there was no transition run to do.  We stopped with just a couple of miles to go and bought lunch which I stuffed into my jersey pockets.

Beach and beer afterwards with aforementioned lunch…  My core temp and the outside temp were both so high that the sea breeze did nothing to cool me down….  But the beer helped.

Sunday

Ended up with just 6 miles…  ran the trails at UNF with our friend Mark…  nothing much better than running in the woods just after dawn…  even saw a fat Raccoon.

Monday

Got up early to try and get back and out of the way of holiday traffic…  almost did too.  62/3 brick…  nothing spectacular but the run did feel good.