Rusty Pol

Sometimes it rains on race day. Those were the last words I said to Mrs. Pol as I headed out for a bike/run brick, yesterday. I have GOT to have my head examined.

Sunday's excitement notwithstanding, it was a good training weekend. Saturday started early with another 1000 yard swim. It went very well, and reasonably quickly. The term reasonably is used fairly loosely, with my own past times as the comparison. I did the 1000 yards in roughly 35 minutes, which includes the breaks (100 yard sets). It won't set any records, but it's solid improvement on the Pol standard.

After the swim, it was off to Green Bay for WalkAmerica. In a classic move, I missed the split off for the 6 mile route and wound up doing the entire 3 mile walk. I realized that about the time we reach the finish. At that point, I started running the 6 mile route backwards, as I needed to get pictures of volunteers at the checkpoint my employer sponsored. I ran to the checkpoint, thinking to myself that it must have been fairly close to the middle. A quick check on MapMyRun proved that to be fairly accurate. The "short" run to get some pictures was a 5 mile round trip. Luckily, the organizers had some goodies at the end of the walk.

Then, there was yesterday. The plan was for a 20 mile bike and 6.5 mile run. As it was rainy and 45F, I thought long and hard about just calling the whole thing a bad idea. Then the training monster got the best of me, and I knew I would feel guilty about missing ANOTHER Sunday. So, I got Toddler Pol down for a nap and threw on the biking shorts. At 45F, I opted for a long sleeve shirt under the biking jersey (good idea). I gathered up all the other toys (gels, stopwatches, fanny pack, hat, etc), and headed out the door. At Mrs. Pol's questioning look, I said, "Sometimes it rains on race day."

The bike went fairly well. Given the conditions, I did opt to shorten it to one 10-mile loop. Luckily, the rain was somewhat light during the bike leg, as the winds were horrendous. And, with bike ride magic, the wind seemed to be in my face the whole way. My time for the trip was about 43 minutes. That's something like 14 MPH, which isn't bad considering the wind, route (through town), and vehicle (mountain bike). I need to get some longer rides in, though. My butt was numb at the end. Of course, I don't know if that was the ride, or the cold water being thrown by my tires.

My transition time was about 4 minutes, including changing socks, as the bike pair were completely soaked. Both bike and transition times are rough guesses, as my stopwatch died when I hit the final button to stop it. Apparently, the conditions were tougher than the Timex. It took a licking, and died.

The run went very well. Changing socks helped, and my legs felt great, even after the ride. I pulled the pace in a bit, as I took off a bit fast. I completed the 6.65 mile loop in almost exactly an hour, an average pace of just over 9 minutes.

The entire Pol family was in the living room when I walked into the house. Mrs. Pol just asked, "So, how was it?" Toddler Pol wanted to know where I'd gone swimming. All he knew was I had on my "swimming shorts" and was dripping wet. In the mind of a 2-year old, that means swimming. He didn't believe me when I told him I'd been running. "Daddy, you can't run outside, it's raining."

From the mouths of babes...