Training Log Archive: veinbuster

Day 2 soloflex and free weights.

Day 2 of my Alternative Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer.
Target 98km with 650m climb, but I planned to take credit for the extra 500m I climbed yesterday.

There was a bit of early fog and dampness to start, but proper sun did show up. The Greenspeed ride went like this:
38 km in the steering started to misbehave in that tiny adjustments were exaggerated. I fiddled the steering a bit to check if I had muscled one of the bars into the wrong position. That seemed ok to I reached back to check the pressure of the rear, which seemed reasonable, but I realized checking pressure 10cm from the contact point while rolling forward would not really serve as an accurate gauge. This might have been the longest tire change in history at 24 minutes. The rear wheel is very tight to get on and off - I had to pull the skewers to get it back on. And those tiny little high pressure tires are very hard to get on the rim.
At 67 km Mrs. Thought she would bring extra water and finish off the ride. I restocked the handy food and grabbed the empty wrappers to toss in the next trash bin. Mistake...
68 km I swung over to the trash by a gate across most of the path. Coming through the gate I leaned right to clear it, but the giant flag pole I keep on the left opted not to follow my example and snapped off. I heard it and was able to grab it before it landed. Not tragic because the bottom of the pole was showing Fibre glass splinters from repeated encounters with low tree branches. It does mean no road distance at all until I get something else - the original was already eaten by a tree.
80 km I dropped the pace so Mrs. Could ride with me instead of behind me. She did her longest ride ever at something between 35 and 40 km. She bonked about a km from home and I needed to get a couple more km of new so decided it was silly to stop at 98 when 100 was so close.

The difference between the GPS and the bike computer was more dramatic today with the bike saying 102.97 km. I know I forgot to restart the GPS after restocking until I smashed the flag, which would be about 1km of that.
The climb was also very far off, but that is interesting enough that it might warrant a thread to a wider audience.

C • Carbon 2

Day 1 of alternative Alberta Ride to Conquer Cancer.
Target was 116km with 450m of climbing. The bike computer says 119+ km, but I'll go with the Garmin reading.

The day on the Greenspeed went something like this:
I wanted to front load the climb because I wasn't sure how the legs would feel tomorrow and because a work day was a much better day to use the hillier part of the path I would spend most of my time on.
There was a tiny bit of rain in the first 49km, but nothing of consequence and the sky showed signs of lightening up.
Real rain fell from 49-68km at which point I took a break to restock fluids.
By 80 km the road was starting to dry up, which was nice because I was tired of eating the dirt in the road spray.
On the 19th interval (85-90km) I observed my heart rate escalating a bit so I backed of the pace a little to keep the trip average from going higher than 136 - it took about a 10% reduction in speed to do that.
At 91km it started raining again, but it would have been silly to stop that close to the finish.
The rain was steady for the rest of the ride, picking up a bit at 109km.
I really would have liked to climb a full km and feel like it was in range, but honestly I was ready to get clean and dry.
Interestingly, the road spray seemed warmer than the air or the falling rain - perhaps that is why they call my tires scorchers

Medical notes.
I clearly should have stood on my head for the full 30 minutes I know it takes to drain my legs rather than declaring myself good to go when my heart rate dropped below 70. I attribute a good portion of the heart rate escalation an 85km to that.
There is a bit more swelling in the left ankle than I would like. I'll watch for that to recur.
I feel pretty good, ever so slightly light headed.

C • Great Job! 1

Day 1 soloflex.

Greenspeed test run for tomorrow's attempt at an alternative Alberta RTCC.
It didn't seem to suffer from being in my car for two and a half weeks.
I will definitely have to find a place to stow a third water bottle since nobody is setting up any refill stations along the way.

Late day quickie to the sub shop with Mrs.

Big Unit with the commuters.
Tomorrow will be the challenging day to ride given that I have to work and then make the 7+ hour trip home.

Big Unit with Mrs. to the ice cream shop. I had to settle for white chocolate raspberry truffle. She had strawberry swirl. Red and white all around. The servings were giant so we didn't even burn it all off on the ride - good thing I'm only on day 3 of ride every day of the tour.