Another day...another story!

My husband and I were both off work today and the kids were in school so the plan was to fit in our long swim and bike workout. Chris asked me to get him back in the pool since the swim is the weakest of his 3 sports, and Chris says he always slacks off when he swims on his own.

500m warm-up
10 sets x 100m slow/build/fast/slow
5 sets x 50m sprints
 cool down

After about an hour in the pool it was time to head home an get ready to ride.
My training partner Lisa, Chris and I headed out for a planned 80-90km ride.
It was a beautiful day and we started out a bit late but we were cruising along in the country at an easy 35-40km an hour pace. That should have been our first clue! We knew the wind was at our back and that we were in for a bit of a hard ride on the way home. We just had no idea HOW hard until we turned around!

It didn't help that we stopped at a stop sign for a minute and there was a bit of slant to the road. As I was getting ready to clip in, my cleat on my cycling shoe slipped on the pavement and I came crashing down on my bike, OUCH !!! ( I found some other choice words that Lisa has never heard me scream!) Let's just say at that moment I was wishing I was riding a women's specific leisure bike!
It seems there is always a story to tell when we train!

Chris road with us then he had to head back to get the kids from school. He put in a solid 60km ride.
Lisa and I continued on and enjoyed the ride. We rode for 40km before we started heading back. When we turned around it hit us like a brick wall.
Hello headwind! We were riding directly into a fierce headwind that left us practically standing still riding at 13km/hr at times.
After riding for 3 hours and going virtually nowhere we soon realized we were not going to make it back in time with this headwind. Lisa had plans to take her son to a Birthday party.
Family comes first and we didn't want her son missing a Birthday party, so we called Chris and he saved the day by picking us up! I think I was done at that point. I had been feeling not the best, slightly nauseous. I later found out I suffered a two inch gash from my bike incident so that may have had something to do with it! However we had only packed one gel and didn't bring any other liquid nutrition besides water, so that had a lot to do with it as well. Once depleted it's very difficult to make up for it.
Chris found Lisa and I sprawled out on the pavement of a church parking lot in the country, exhausted and laughing at ourselves.

It's early in the season and it was a reminder that we truly FORGET all that's involved when riding.
The weather conditions, packing proper nutrition, fuelling properly beforehand, building mileage slowly, all of that and more needs to be taken into account when heading out to ride.
We will get it together eventually!
Another lesson learned.

 Keep it safe and keep it fun!

This was the view earlier in the week so we were glad to have the snow gone and get out and ride!