Mountain Dude

I went for the Saturday morning group bike ride yesterday. In order to prepare for the heat of the Hawaii 70.3 a bunch of us are doing next month, Gerald suggested we start the ride later in the morning. Sounded fine to me, I have no problem sleeping in later on the weekend. We didn't get rolling until about 9:30.

We took a fairly normal route, about 50 miles with a solid 6-mile climb near the end. (East Fork Road for you locals.) After that, I did a 30-minute run. I wanted to do about 15 minutes, but Jen passively guilted  - errrrr - "inspired" me to do 30. It was probably around 1:30pm with temperatures in the low 80s by the time we were done.

We were all moaning a bit at the end, but truth be told I didn't feel all that bad. I'd certainly felt better, but this wasn't one of those truly killer workouts.

It wasn't until it was time to clean up my living room today that I realized what a toll the ride had taken on me. This is what I saw:



That's 8 cans of Mountain Dew. And that's not counting the 24-ounce bottle I had in the car on the way home from the ride. I drank nearly a gallon of Dew without even realizing it, because my body felt so depleted. That's a lot of caffeinated sugary goodness, even for me.

The moral of the story? Make sure I'm stocked up on Mountain Dew at home before I go on these weekend rides.