Apr 7, 04:27 PM by Steve | Training 3/31-4/6

Posted in Cycling & Data

Straight away I’ll admit I rode too much last week. I’m so used to it sometimes I don’t even realize it, but when you ride everywhere instead of drive, a silly errand like going downtown to pick up a new chain tacks on another hour to the totals. After finishing my ride on Saturday I looked at my totals and realized to keep it under 20 hours I couldn’t do more than 3 hours on Sunday. That’s just the amount of time Worlds takes…

But after I get back from Worlds, Kim wants to go riding, so a few hours later I’m off again. I mention during lunch at Beachbreak Cafe (her favorite) that she should challenge herself, so now we are going up Gibraltar. So I’m a few hours over, but I got a nice recovery ride in and I feel good today, so we will just have to see how it goes.

Where’s the Wisdom?
Monday I had my wisdom teeth pulled. 3 of them anyway. The knocked me out and an hour later Kim was driving me home. I got to watch movies all day, and when the pain started to flood in I popped some Hydrocodone (generic Vicodin). I’ve had a constant dull headache since then, for which I’ve been taking mostly Tylenol… At least I didn’t get a dry socket, so hopefully this will be over with soon enough. I was warned that the operation, pain, drugs, etc. would pretty much knock me out for the week but I didn’t believe it. And I was right, because by the end of Tuesday I went out for an easy spin, and on Wednesday I was back at work all systems normal, except for that damn headache. Oh well, can’t win em all.

Bridge to Nowhere
Friday after making sure I was sufficiently rested and recovered from all things, Marco took me up to Via Chaparral for some punishment training. He wanted to assess my anerobic capacity and see “how far above threshold effort I can go”. We rode up once at a brisk but aerobic pace so I could get a feel for the road—the distance, grade, surface, etc. Back down and up again at a harder but not maximum effort. Whoops I went too hard, maybe 90%. One more time at max. I felt like I was going to die well before I was at the top but I pushed through knowing that it was almost done and hearing his shouts of encouragement. 1:30 even to the bridge, 10 seconds faster than the previous run. When I hit the end I stopped pedaling for a moment and almost wasn’t able to start again! Ok, one more time. I didn’t recover enough and my HR was too high at the start. I pushed through too hard at the start and halfway up I just stopped, or nearly came to a stop, but got moving again and continued up to the top at a regular effort. I had always been curious about the bridge so we went across it and I could see that it went… nowhere.

Valley Ride
Skipping out on racing for the weekend, I used the opportunity to hook up for a “fun” ride with the Echelon crowd—a modified Solvang Century route that many of our members enjoyed a few weeks ago. For several reasons (some of them stupid), I decided to challenge myself by riding to it from home, and spending as much time as possible on or near the front. From past rides, I estimated that it would take me 2 hours to get to Solvang. Mondo wanted to leave at 8:30 sharp, so giving myself a little cushion I planned to leave at 6:15. When I woke up in the morning, the wind was howling and I was a little worried and briefly considered driving up instead. I decided just to leave a little earlier to give myself plenty of time. Of course I didn’t make it out early and ended up leaving at my originally scheduled 6:15. The wind was insane riding up OSM and a few times I almost came to a standstill or was nearly blown over. I encountered thick fog at the top of 154 and made my way cautiously down Stagecoach. Fortunately visibility was fine when I popped out on the 154 again, but after a quick mental calculation I realized I was going to have to ride fast to make it on time! Fast I rode, about 19mph avg from Stagecoach to Solvang, finishing just under 2 hours and 15 minutes early.

Mondo and several others were late getting there & ready, and it was 8:45 when we rolled out. The ride itself was fun—the group pretty much blew apart on all the climbs but we regrouped several times at the end of Santa Rosa Road, the bottom of Harris Grade, Los Alamos, and Foxen. Most of us went for lunch at El Rancho Market in Santa Ynez. The best part was going all out up Alisos Canyon with Carlos on my wheel complaining about all the crap on the road I was pulling him through. Of course the road was all crap so there wasn’t much else I could do. We had a good laugh about that later… good times.

Tu: 2 hr moderate pace group ride to carp
W: 1 hr morning ride, < 19:30 OSM at medium effort
Th: .75 hr easy morning ride, 1.5 hr moderate evening group
F: 1 hr easy morning ride, anerobic intervals on Via Chaparral with Marco
Sat: 2 hrs to Solvang, 4 hrs modified “Solvang Century” route with Echelon
Sun: 3 hrs “Worlds”, 3 hrs easy with Kim

Polar Data
Total time: 22.2 hours
Below 50%: 1:37:12
Zone 1 (50%-55%): 2:40:01
Zone 2 (56%-69%): 6:41:30
Zone 3 (70%-79%): 5:44:03
Zone 4 (80%-89%): 4:44:16
Zone 5 (90%-99%): 0:47:27
Calories burned: 15,996

Edge Data
Total: 361.53 miles, 22.7 hours, 21,092 feet
Racing: none
Average (all days): 51.65 miles, 3.2 hours, 3,013 feet
Average (work days): 35.56 miles, 2.1 hours, 1,870 feet

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