Beaches Ride

Today was a beautiful spring day- finally! The forecast said sunny and 65, my Jeep said 66. The best part was I had the day off after working this weekend.
So to start the day in the morning I ran with Cecilie (training partner) and Diane (nitritionist from 3 posts ago). Cecilie is tapering for a marathon so we only did 5 miles. It was supposed to be a nice easy run but she was in a fast mood, so we ended up doing an 8:24 pace and that included walking at the traffic intersections. When we were stretching afterwards, Cecilie said I had improved alot and didn't even start breathing hard on the first hill like before. Then a small 1000 meter swim.
Then in the afternoon I was able to do the Beaches ride that is every Monday afternoon but at a time when I'm normally at work. Anyway, we start at the Beaches restaurant in Vancouver and ride through town to warm up and then out the Vancouver Lake road which is flat and has a great shoulder until the lake. There were six of us including coach Denise (the only girl there). Once on the lake road we got in a pace line and went around 23-25 taking 3-4 minute pulls. I was winded, but fine until the way back and 3/4 done when Brandon a 2006 Florida ironman finisher did his second pull. He bumped it up to 28, last year the Florida group would ride 30-32 on Beaches everytime so he was probably taking it easy, but I couldn't sustain that speed (28), so I fell off. Kept the group in sight for most of the rest of the way and even going real slow though town I averaged 19.2 for the whole 28.7 mile ride. Then into Beaches for a shrimp salad and a mango-chicken pizza.
On the drive home I realized I didn't have a picture, so I took a picture of Mt Hood while on the I-205 bridge crossing back into Oregon. I was going around 60 when I took that picture- good camera.