Day 6: Playing Tourist

Bree killed it in her half marathon yesterday, running a 1:21 and placing third OVERALL! To celebrate, we did the best ride I've done thus far, South Loop. The ride is hilly, the road is smooth, the drivers are laid back, there are lots of quaint towns, and the views are spectacular. And it seemed like everybody was giving away free stuff today, and Bree and I were happy to oblige. For the first 15 miles, we spent almost as much time stopping to take pics and grabbing free stuff as we spent riding. The Painted Church up in the hill with its cemetery made for some great pictures. Then it was an awesome descent down to Captain Cook's Cove and onto Hot Road, now deemed Sexy Hot Road. Bree gives a good explanation in the video. And then a nice steady climb back up where we stopped for lunch. I learned that instead of putting cream cheese on your bagel, spread on an avocado and top with tomatoes, yummy. After lunch, all of the blood was in our belly and we had some dead, heavy legs. When I have dead and heavy legs, it's counter intuitive but I push the big gears (a little tip I picked up from Brett Sutton). Bree did not like this and thus, I got my nickname of Pinoy Monster, or just PM. I'm not Pinoy, and Bree knows this. But apparently I remind her of another small, svelt, dark boy that beats her up in training. We ran into Dave doing his long run on Alii a mile from Bree's place. We also ran into some more free stuff, and I think Bree will post that pic on her blog. After dropping Bree off I had some energy left in me so I decided to chip away at that hundo. I was at 50 miles and 4.5 hours. I decided to hit the Queen K and the plan was to add another 25 miles to make it 75. I'm an innie and Bree is an outie when it comes to training mentality. I tend to go internal (tunnel vision and block everything out) as effort increases while Bree goes external (notices her surrounding and external environment). Supposedly, the best athletes can do both. An example was when we were riding with our dead, heavy legs after lunch. There was a guy carrying a huge sign saying 25 cent beers and I never even saw him, while Bree immediately noticed him. I bring this up because as I was going internal on the Queen K, I completely blew by my turnaround. The good news is that I ended up much closer to the hundo, 80 miles. Then it was a transition run. The plan was to do 4 miles but I was feeling sprite and got in a 10K in 42 minutes. Not bragging, just documenting. The first six days of training equated to 10,000 yards of swimming, 240 miles of riding, and 36 miles of running. And a growing love for Kona and the people here.