Last Ride of 08

I went out for a solo ride this morning, and added a little structure. I did 3 x 20 minutes at SST pace with about 3 or 4 minutes of rest between the efforts. It was real windy today, which made some sections slow, but others real fast. On the second 20 minute effort, there was a 10 minute span where the average speed was 27.1.

Even though I am in the middle of a long break from work, I don't feel like turning it into a personal training camp and riding a ton of miles yet. I'm content to keep most rides under 2 hours right now. I've got a few projects around the house that I'm working on that are keeping me busy this week. I'll ramp things up in a few weeks.

Happy New Years everyone! Be safe tonight.

Afternoon Group Ride

This afternoon, I took part in a six man ride from LL's house in Wildewood. We rolled out at 2 pm in near perfect conditions with sunshine, 66 degrees and light wind. It was a damn good day to be off from work. Traffic was a little heavy in the Clemson Road, Two Notch area, but I guess that is always the case.

I think the intent of the ride was to ride at an endurance pace, but riding single paceline the whole way we kept a fast pace. Throwing out the first and last five minute segments where we were piddling around in the neighborhood, we averaged 22.1 mph. I'd still call this an endurance pace ride, but the 239 watt NP is right at the bottom of L3.

The 833 watt max was set as JB and I kicked it up to get into the draft of a truck on Sparkleberry near the end. We passed at least 3 county line signs today, and no one flinched. I need to at least attempt a sprint soon, just to remember what that feels like.

Sunday Bonus Ride

I was fully expecting to take three days completely off from riding, so any riding during this time period is a bonus. I woke up Sunday morning with no plans at all for the day, since I was supposed to be out of town. I woke up drank coffee, ate breakfast, sat around playing on the computer, then eventually went out to ride once the temperature was up to 65 degrees. On the bike I had no plan either. I just rode a moderate pace and stayed out for a couple of hours.

After the ride I was lazy and watched almost the entire Panthers - Saints football game.

I'm Still Home

My trip to Ohio was canceled. One of our two cats got sick Friday night, so we took her to the vet first thing Saturday morning. She was dehydrated and ended up staying at the vet until Monday afternoon. She was diagnosed with a hyperactive thyroid and may have some kidney issues, but she is on medication and doing much better today.

We had planned to drive to Ohio Saturday morning to visit Lynda's parents and relatives, but had to call the trip off.

I managed to do a short little trainer ride totaling 38 minutes, while Lynda was out running.

Day After Christmas Ride

LL and I met this morning for an endurance pace ride through Blythewood, and up to Ridgeway this morning. The rain did move through before we started, but a fine mist persisted, keeping the roads wet and the temperatures from reaching 50. I felt fine riding, but with wet feet and legs this ride would've really sucked if the temps were 5 or 10 degrees lower.

When I got back home I was surprised to see that my wife had ventured out on her bike. It turns out she did 1 1/2 hours solo in the crappy weather, and was a little underdressed. Needless to say she came inside shivering.

I'm taking a little training break until the middle of next week. Tomorrow morning, we are off to Strongsville, Ohio for a few days to visit the in laws.

Tuesday morning trainer fun

This morning it was time for more sprint work on the trainer. After three of these workouts this month, I'm starting to get adjusted to the high RPMs of seated trainer sprinting. Looks like my cadence topped 140 on some of these.

I thought I would actually get outdoors on weekday mornings at least occasionally this fall and winter, but that hasn't happened. It's just too damn cold in the pre-dawn hours, or if its warm enough its raining or foggy. That's not a problem for the next week and a half though. I'm off from work, so that means I'll ditch the trainer for a while.

Sunday SST Ride

The goal for today's workout was simple - ride for 1.5 hours with at least one hour in the sweet spot. I wasn't sure the plan would work since my legs felt like crap yesterday and I've spent the last two days indulging in holiday related feasts and drinking beer. None of that seemed to matter though. After a short warm-up I did 1:13 at 271 watts and a little under 22 mph. I felt great today and could've held this pace for much longer I think.

Saturday Distance Ride

Saturday morning I was going to meet up with a small group as they rolled through Blythewood, but I missed them. I ended up riding to Winnsboro, then back home via 269 and Cedar Creek Road. The weather was awesome, probably 70 degrees, with sun and light wind. I just cruised along at a steady pace, but my legs felt heavy so I didn't push it.

For me right now a 2 hour ride is a distance ride. I'm still in off season mode, trying to do some weight training, and recharge mentally. I seem to be maintaining FTP pretty well with about 6 to 7 hours of riding a week with a lot of SST.

Saturday Group Ride

Saturday morning I met up with a group of about a dozen or so for a short endurance ride from Blythewood to Ridgeway and back. It was a good group with about half on road bikes and half on TT rigs. Since I rode from my house to the starting point, about 1 1/2 hours of this ride were actually spent with the group, and we averaged about 20.5 mph, so it was a good steady pace, but not too fast.

By the way, don't read anything into my recorded max HR of 211. I seem to always get some high readings at a particular point about 2 miles into every ride. When I throw that out, the max was actually 161.

Trainer Sprints

I did do some training this week, but nothing was really blog worthy except for this little sprint workout I did Friday morning. I did 3 sets of 4 x 15 sec seated sprints, with 1 minute recovery between sprints and 4 minutes between sets. This is a good workout to compliment a weight training program, by training the legs to use strength gained from weight training to turn the pedals faster. For me it's a way to work on a weakness. I'm not the greatest sprinter, but I do see improvement after doing this sort of workout. I was only able to do about 625 watts on these, but I should be able to bump that up by at least 50 watts after several weeks.

Sunday Ride

Didn't have a whole lot of time to devote to riding today, so I did about an hour pretty hard after a 30 minute or so warm-up. It was only in the 30's when I rode, but it felt fine with the sun, compared to yesterday's 2.5 hour ride in the cold fog with LL. The batteries in my PT hub went dead 20 minutes into the ride yesterday, so no data.

Holiday Weekend Riding Recap

The weather was awesome on Friday, so I did a third consecutive day of road riding, getting in about 2 hours. I basically rode tempo after a long warm-up. I decided to skip LL's 95 mile ride around Lake Wateree. I'm just not up for 5 hours on a bike right now.

I almost made it through Black Friday without shopping, but ended up making a trip to Walmart late in the day to pick up some Christmas lights, so we could get every bush in the front lit up. To my surprise Walmart wasn't crowded at all.

I did not venture out on my bike on Saturday or Sunday because it rained the entire time. I actually did 1 hour on the trainer each morning with 40+ minutes of SST each workout. The weekly summary shows six consecutive days on the bike with a good portion of that time spend in L3 and L4. I also managed to lift weights a couple of days. I've probably never trained this much on Thanksgiving week, but this year I wasn't traveling and I had plenty of time.