Another long bike ride

Yesterday I ran 7 miles in the morning and then biked 44 miles in the afternoon.  Yikes - that is a lot of exercise for me for 1 day.

My run was great in the morning.  Felt pretty good and ran 1.5 miles with Sophie and then dropped her off and stopped to stretch my ham string - which has been bothering me the last couple of weeks.  The pain is in my right glut area and sometimes when I am sitting extends down my leg.  It doesn't bother me much during a run - just feels tight - but I really pay for it afterwards, so I am upping my stretching!  Hoping that helps.

Early yesterday afternoon, my son called to see if I wanted to again bike to New Glarus, his girlfriend works there, and then bike back.  Last week  we got a ride back to Madison - but not yesterday.  I said sure.  I had wanted to get a long bike ride in over the weekend so this would be it.  I had wanted to bike using my road bike, but the bike trail is only paved for about 6 out of the 23 miles - the rest is crushed rock and although I debated riding my road bike, once I got on the trail again, I know that just won't work.  Too many loose rocks and gravel.  Last week we met at his apartment - but yesterday we met at one of the trail heads, which cut off 4 miles - so the trip to New Glarus was 23 miles.  On the way we again got to go through the tunnel.  It was not foggy this week, but still a really cool experience.  Once we got out of the tunnel, we crossed a small bridge and I realized that the guy standing on the bridge was from Madison and used to be our neighbor.  Joe and I stopped and we chatted for a while.  He and his daughter were camping in New Glarus and had brought their bikes.  He did a double take when I said that we had not only biked from Madison, but were also biking back . . . he asked if we were biking back TODAY?  yup - That is the surprising thing.  I follow many blogs and all of you do so much.  I don't think it is that extraordinary to run and bike in the same day.  But for many people doing any amount of exercise is work . . . more on that later.

After stopping to chat, we hopped back on our bikes and road into New Glarus and stopped at the store to check in with Chelsea.  We were only there for about 1/2 hour and it was time to head back to Madison.  We stopped and bought a Gatorade, filled our bottles and I grabbed a snickers.  ;-)  We decided to ride back on some roads, instead of the bike trail, figuring that the smooth surface would be easier biking and we thought we could cut a couple miles off of the ride.  So we planned our route and took off.  Oh my gosh - within 1/2 mile we faced a big hill - and then another - I tried to attack - but the hill hit right after a turn off the highway, with little warning - I shifted to the lowest gear.  Usually I don't need the lowest gear, but I certainly was glad I had them yesterday.  Holy cow.  We followed the county road into Belleville and then hopped back on the bike path.  We only cut 2 miles off the ride and paid with steep hills, but it was a great workout!

Great weekend - great workouts.