After the Mini

Saturday was the Madison Mini Marathon. I posted the recap HERE. I felt great Sunday morning - got up, took the dog for a walk / little run and went to church. Husband and I then decided to bike to Sauk City. From the park and ride where we started from in Middleton it was a 35 mile round trip bike ride. I looked up a couple different routes using Map My Ride and after some deliberation decided on the path that DID NOT include biking along State Hwy 12. This is a busy road and I didn't really think that was the best option. There is a bike path along some of the route, so we stated on a paved bike path and then turned off onto county roads. Holy cow - hills, hills and more hills. To be honest they were not too bad, but I felt pretty sorry for my husband. I bike a lot - he doesn't and he weighs a lot more than me, so it takes a lot out of him to bike up hills. Added to the hills was the STRONG wind coming out of the North / northwest - which was exactly the direction of the wind, which was blowing close to 13 mph with gusts up to 18 mph. At the summit of every hill, I would wait for my husband - we would head down the hill together and just about every time, there was another hill. We took a couple of breaks, where we stopped for water and to regroup and then kept going. He was a trooper. Once in Sauk City, we stopped and spent some time watching the Wisconsin River and then headed to find someplace to stop for a bike to eat and to figure out a different route to get home. We settled on Culver's, a local "fast food, made to order" restaurant offering sandwiches, burgers and frozen custard . . . neither of us ordered frozen custard. ;-)


We decided that we would head back to Middleton on the other route, biking on Hwy 12 for 2.3 miles. WOW oh WOW was that a different bike ride home. Granted we had the wind at our backs, which clearly make a difference, but this route was considerable flatter! We were on a bike path for about 2 miles coming out of Sauk City, then a couple of back roads for another 4 miles (with all of these being very flat to moderately rolling), then we turned onto the Hwy - which has really wide shoulders (a car width) and as long as you are mentally OK with cars buzzing by you at 55-65 mph it is OK. Once off the Hwy, another section of back road, and then we crossed over and were back on the bike path for the last 9 miles. What a difference a route makes.

It took us close to 1hr and 20 minutes to get to Sauk City and a little over 1 hr to get home. We will do this ride again - I would be fine with the hilly route - husband would like to stick to the flatter path. ;-)

On running news - I took Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday off from running. I got back into the swing of things and ran both yesterday and this morning. I looked over some training plans - in preparation of the Haunted Hustle, which is my next half marathon at the end of October. I am going to actually train to cut time off of my 1/2 marathon pace. Last year I finished the Haunted Hustle in 2:07:41 and would like to break that record this year. So I need a plan - I am going to try and follow Ryan Hall's Half Marathon plan from Runners World - hardest part will be "really following it". I tend to modify things as I go - don't wake up early enough - skip that particular workout. So far so good. Although I "missed the Tuesday workout - I did both the Thursday 30-40 minute easy run . . . doing 3.8 miles in 37 minutes and this morning doing a 1m warm-up - 4 mile tempo and then 1m cool-down (cut a little short). My avg tempo pace was 9:34 for the 4 miles - pretty happy with that.

Hoping that Irene backs away from the East coast and that all the bloggers running the Hood to Coast relay on the West coast have a great time.

Those of us in the middle have a super beautiful weekend coming up. We are going out to eat with some friends tonight - taking the boat out for a little ride on the lake and then heading to Nau-ti-gal, a local restaurant on the lake for dinner. Then tomorrow it looks like we are biking to New Glarus again. Hubby picked up a New Glarus Spotted Cow t-shirt on our last trip to the brewery (I got a "I got Totally Naked at New Glarus Brewery" t-shirt (my fav beer)) but he picked up a 2XL size . . . soooooo big . . . while he isn't a small person - he isn't that large! Obviously we could drive there - but biking is so much more fun!

Looking forward to tonight's dinner with friends

        tomorrows bike ride

                  and Sunday's long run - 8 miles

Enjoy the moment!