slow 47km ride on MTB

Saturday 9th June; Cycled 47km in 2hours 44min 24 from Beechboro to Narrows Bridge in South Perth and back. Heart rate 138 at end.
Splits 1.21/1.23....

Well the red baron seems to be non-operational at the moment so unfortunately my fast light bike not available for me at the moment, and I can't afford to buy one at the moment, although I am thinking of laybying some $200 mountainbikes I saw recently...after i pay my WAMC membership and do 500 other things....Ive told myself a million times not to exaggerate! :-) *LOL*

So I got my tired old Mamba mountainbike puncture fixed at Bikeforce earlier in the week, and decided to take it easy this weekend, and do a ride into the city for something different (variety is the spice of training life), and also to keep something in reserve for Fremantle Half Marathon race tomorrow. Had a lot of trouble with the third cog on my bike, so just rode using the middle cog, which meant I didnt have the top 5 gears of my 15 speed mountain-bike. This combined with the rickety nature of a bike that has done well over 10,000km since I bought it, meant that I was going to be making heavy weather of it all the way....However it was nice to take a break from running my long run as I have done the last 2 weeks, and to have an easy long session. Enjoyed the riverside views of the Swan River, including the scenic helicopter flights ($60 a go), a speedboat going through the water , and lots of other runners,cyclists, and all sorts of people along the south perth foreshore...Was struggling to keep my average speed around the 17-18km/h mark which is the slowest I have been for awhile. I let the stopwatch run for 2 minutes when I got to the Narrows Bridge while I rested and downed my powerade (which would make my second split a 1.21 too.... On the way back, i tried to push the pace a bit doing the old "phantom tri-bars " routine as usual and even getting down low once or twice to reduce wind resistance. This seemed to nudge me into the 20-25km/h zone a bit despite not having my top 5 gears. Even on a steep downhill my max speed for the entire ride was only 32km/h which shows how slow it was...

Still I think I did enough to retain/maintain the long endurance base that I have developed over the last few weeks especially.

I did just over 24 hours at work this week in 4 days (public holiday monday), and would have done more, but they sent me to nedlands/claremont 4 days in a row, which combined with trying to get ahead and ante-natal class III in Subiaco, for our baby due next month, meant I drove to the Nedlands/claremont/subiaco area from beechboro and then back no less than 6 times in 4 days. Its a very tricky location to get to from beechboro during peak hour heavy traffic, even with my secret route to beat the traffic, its a tough drive. By Thursday I was had it from all the driving!
Friday night I had an even more harrowing drive in the darkness on wet stormy roads to get home in time to watch the Eagles (my wifes team) lose to the bombers by a point. Next week will hopefully be better. Worked very hard at work (when I wasn't driving to and fro from it), so that will hopefully help me with the Freo half race tomorrow.

Monday 4th June; Ran 5.25km in 25min 48 secs HR 138 Splits 12.14/13.34 Did 2 laps of Ottawa Park course...Pretty cruisy trying out running with special inserts in my shoes cos my normal sole inserts are getting rather worn out from the long runs I have been doing...