Saturday ROP Ride

Today was the epic ROP (Ride of Pain), which is 93 miles of rolling hills on a route that circumnavigates Lake Wateree in a clockwise direction, passing through Ridgeway, Great Falls, Camden, Lugoff and Elgin. The last 20 or so miles probably has the most climbing and some rough pavement and is often into the wind as you head west.

Five of us rolled out from LL's house at 9 am with the temp at 31 degrees, but sunny. It warmed up to maybe 50 by the end of the ride so the cold wasn't a big deal. About 40 miles in LL anounced that his prescribed workout plan called for a 20 minute threshold effort, so he went to the front and hammered along at 351 watts while the rest of us hung on.

For most of the ride I was content to take 5 minute or so pulls at about 85 to 90% of threshold, then sit in for several minutes. It never seemed like I did a lot of work, but after 4 hours I was wearing down and couldn't wait to get off the bike. At mile 82 or so, Nick, Marc and Stephen(who had joined us in Lugoff) peeled off and headed to Stephen's house to end things there. RW, LL and I continued on. I managed to take the one sprint of the day at mile 87. I am far from being a great sprinter, but my odds increase greatly after everyone is tired.

This ride ended up being harder than I was expecting. The IF was .74 and I was thinking it would be in the .65 to .70 range. As a result I had the highest TSS I've seen on a ride since 2007.