Sorry. Got lazy for a second there...

Nice ride!! Must be a beautiful river view at the top!

Another thing about the Ironman LP bike course is that you do 95% of the descending in one hill (Keene) and the other 5% over perhaps 5 other hills lasting less than 30 seconds each. In the course of a say a 6 hour bike split, an athlete will coast for no more than 25 minutes TOTAL. How many training rides do you do where you are turning the pedals with almost no coasting and recovery for 5:30 hours. To succeed at Ironman LP, you have to not only train on hills, but you have to find terrain where you can keep pedaling downhill and on flats.

The zero coasting, zero drafting, zero latte stops, zero pee stops, bolted to the aerobars with your nose in the wind for 5-6 hours is a great thing to practice if you want a fast bike split at LP and still have legs for the run. As Trevor pointed out last fall, there are too many dudes going out for their club's 5 hour "latte ride" which is really 30 min of riding, 4 hours of sitting up in a pack, coasting, stopping at bakeries, and stopping every 20 min when club members have to stop for a pee, flats, and Starbucks breaks. If you plan to do this on race day...then go for the "latte ride". If not, get used to turning the pedals for 5+ hours.

Good luck. See you in LP. I just did 4+ hours of "non latte riding" This morning 1:20 plus 40 min swim. This evening 3 hours in the hills (zero coasting downhill). Gotta like daylight savings time. I guess there will be no early morning workout tomorrow...hmmm maybe I could go for a latte now that I am on the couch watching Calgary playing Anaheim...go SENATORS ...

Dev