Unofficial Covered Bridge Tour

What a great training weekend!  I sit here on Monday morning with my legs a little sore, my eyes a bit droopy, but with my confidence as high as can be.  My Saturday ride and run were a lot of fun....tough, but fun.  My Sunday ride and run started out slow, but finished great.  I am starting to think that doing an Ironman is something that I might be able to complete successfully and also within the initial goals I am setting for myself (under 12 hours).  I have tried to make my long Saturday rides challenging, lots of hills with long flat stretches sandwiched in between more hills.  My long Sunday runs I have started off at a slow pace and try to pick them up to sub-marathon pace for the last two miles.  Everything is going really well.

Saturday - Covered Bridges Training Ride
I got the idea on Friday afternoon to do an informal tour of the Bucks County Covered Bridges, well, not all of them, but most of them.  So I plotted out a course, wrote down some general directions and at 6:00AM on Saturday morning I began my trek.  My first bridge would be The Loux Bridge, about 7.5 miles from my house (I look like a tired old man in this picture, not a good thing)

From there it was a two mile ride to the Cabin Run Bridge...no that isn't a "peace sign", it is me trying to keep track of what bridge I was at (#2)...starting to wake up a bit, but still not all there, notice the dazed look.

After Cabin Run, I had a little six or seven mile ride to the Frankenfield Bridge (15.5 miles or so into my ride).  A note about the ride thus far, every bridge was in a little valley.  I would be screaming down a hill and bam I would have to stop when I got to the bridge, take a picture, and then have to climb out of the valley from a dead stop. 

A quick rolling ride, and about two miles later I was at the Erwinna Bridge.  It is definitely one of the less stellar looking bridges that I saw on the day.  It was a quick pic and then I was moving on (I didn't even bother taking off the helmet and glasses).

Two and a half miles down the road, and just on the other side of Frenchtown, NJ is the Uhlestown Bridge.  This is the only bridge that I didn't ride through, I don't know why; I guess it was because I had to ride up to it and turn around to go back over to Frenchtown.

Alright, so that was five bridges and I had only ridden about 20 miles, about 35 short of my planned total for the day.  It was time to get to work, so I went over into Frenchtown and then rode south along the river for about 16 miles or so, keeping my speed and cadence at respectable levels.  Then it was onto my last bridge of the day.....the Van Sant Bridge down in Solebury, PA, 40 miles into my ride.

I still had a bit of riding left to do and there would be no more picture stops.  The last 14 - 15 miles or so were a bear, pretty much a net uphill by the time I was done.  There were definitely some decent climbs and not a lot of downhills.  My average MPH isn't representative of how I rode; there was a lot of stopping early on to take pictures, thus killing my average.  No worries though, still a great ride.  Total ride stats:  54.28 miles, 3:01:00, 18 MPH.

Immediately after the ride I had a 30 minute run ahead of me and I felt so good.  I ran 3.9 miles at 7:48/mile pace.  I kept my heart rate in Zone 2 the whole time, and I probably could have gone faster if I needed to.  Such a good run.

The rest of Saturday was a family day.  After giving my bike a good cleaning (much needed), my oldest daughter and I ran out to get some Italian ice will my wife and youngest were doing some shopping.  Then we all went to the pool until around 5:30PM, lots of diving and submersion.  We finished up the night with a Family Room picnic while eating pizza.

Sunday
I slept in until around 6:30AM, I was pretty tired as one might imagine.  I did want to get my training done early though, so I immediately went into the basement and put in my 45 minutes on the bike trainer while watching the third episode of Jersey Shore (I love that show).  45 minutes of spinning at ~100 RPMs while laughing my ass off at The Situation, Pauly D, Snooki and the rest of them.

I then had an hour and half run waiting for me.  Ugh, I didn't want to do it, but I had to.  I threw on my new Fuel Belt (thank you honey!) and I headed out.  I ran into Doylestown Borough, past the YMCA, where there was a kid's triathlon going on, then back through town and all the way home.  I felt much better with ever step that I took, but it took a while to get there.  I am happy with the last mile or so that I ran, right around 7:45 pace, that after a pedestrian 8:35/mile for the entire run.  Finishing strong always make you feel good about an average run.  Total run stats:  10.6 miles, 1:30:45, 155 BPM

The rest of the day was spent lying on the couch watching moves (2012) and golf.  I was really beat and not looking forward to the weekend being over.

Today
Rest day today and I will be resting.  I slept until about 6:20AM and even that was way too early to get up.  I wanted nothing to do with getting up at that time.  Sayonara!