Training Log Archive: veinbuster

Highwood Pass from the North gate. I was reserving judgement about whether to do the 50km Flight was doing tandem or the 33km from the gate. The plan was to make a last minute call based on weather and how I felt. Mid way through the drive up, the mountains looked mean. There was some rain, but it brightened up a bit when I pulled into the 50km start. I decided not to risk an extra 45-60 minutes in cold rain - I could always do that extra distance at the end if it was nice and I wasn't too tired.

The ride started out quite friendly with less than 100m of elevation in the first 5km. Nice to warm up, but I was expecting to climb 600m so knew it would get worse. 2nd 5km had about double the elevation, still not bad. At 12km I picked up a bit of snow - not much, but after about 5 minutes I decided it would be a good idea to put on the rain jacket on the first flattish bit. From here the elevation started to add up. I was using this as a trail for Banff-Jasper so tried to keep a sustainable heart rate. I shifted to the granny at 7% and never observed a heart rate over 163, but Garmin appears to have seen a 166.

The last few km was where the mountain fought back. Grade mostly varied between 6&9% and I looked at my elevation every few minutes to see how much more I had to climb - and hoping that my Garmin was telling the truth. I was breathing heavy those last few km, but made the top feeling surprisingly fresh - no need to take a nap, or even elevate my legs. Walked around and took some photos and chatted a bit until Flight and her tandem buddy made the peak.

I had expected it could take me 2 hours to do the climb, and was prepared for it to stretch a bit longer than that.

C • Another nice ride 3

The descent from Highwood Pass.

As I was packing up my rain jacket I felt a nasty blast of north wind so I put it back on. The descent was very cold - frequent speeds of 50km/hr into the north wind. At one point there was a bit of sleet for a few minutes, then rain generally light - at least until I got the trike back in the car. The wind was strong enough at the end that I had to pedal on a 2% descent to keep the bike moving - no pedal, no go.

The big horn sheep I had not stopped to photo while climbing where gone by the time I got back down, so not photographic evidence. Maybe next time.

North Calgary path scouting. Forgot to turn Garmin back on after a brief photo stop so time and distance are from bike computer. Elevation and average heart are a bit low, but from Garmin.

Along Nose Hill, east to Nose Creek then around that park a bit. South along Deerfoot until a construction barricade about half way to the city.

Nose Creek has a nice set of trails suitable for the trike. A couple of women with their dogs wondered what the heck they were seeing with just the flags showing over the bushes and were quite excited to see the answer pop into view. One down hill hairpin turned into an unexpected steep uphill and I almost pulled my shoe off trying to get enough spin to downshift.

Flat part of the Bragg Creek ride with Flight. Heart rate is a bit high because I didn't drain my legs after the first ride of the day. This ride did show that there are great rides in the area that are well within my limits on a traditional bike. As a first ride of the day, I would expect an average rate in the 140s and a max below my 168 alarm, which I hit on 3 smallish climbs at 6%.

It will be interesting what Flight's heart monitor show - I expect a nice warm up level.

Very nice ride that a lot of cyclists were taking advantage of. Bonus that the rain missed us.

Took the trike out for a run along the NW paths before the rain that was promised for the morning. A few big drops started almost right away, but they stayed few and far between. The rain jacket in my bag must have scared it off.

North on 14th I approached a coyote that started trotting away from the weird thing and eventually decided it would be better to run across the road and back into Nose Hill. I tried two east-west paths. The one at the north end of Nose Hill came to a long staircase fairly early so I bailed on it because the Greenspeed is far from stair friendly. The one near Berckley Gate seemed to end at what looked like the airport grounds. I might be able to find a way around that on the road bike.

Oddly, signs at the two north most entrances on the east side of Nose Hill said the park was closed. It was very quite up there.

Tried out the oversized fat bike in the closet, about two sizes too big, but what the heck.

Started in to work with Flight but bailed before the big descent because I didn't want to have to climb back up it. Gearing on the bike was very low but I had to lean a fair bit to get a foot on the ground and that seemed less than ideal in commuter traffic. So I looped back and went to Nose Hill to see how the bike was in its element.

I had pumped the tires to 10-12 lbs for the ride into town on pavement, but that was no good on the gravel. It is hard to judge pressure that low but I reduced it to what I guessed was 7-8 lbs and looped around to try the same trail. It worked much better with no spinning uphill and a nice positive grip downhill. Getting back to pavement the lower pressure felt a bit bouncey on a power stroke.

All numbers are a bit low because I forgot to turn the timer on when I got back on after the pressure drop...by the climb from 64th st lot.

Nicely equipped Salsa with a 21in frame. I would be more suited to a 17. I have pretty much concluded that I'll stick with a mountain bike unless I can't settle into winter sports that suit me when I am home next winter. I'll be starting with skating and snow shoeing.

I should note that the compass reading on the Garmin proved useful.

Decent hotel gym so I did 3 sets at each upper body station. It ended up being a mix of things I would do across my 3 normal workouts. A bit heavily biased to chest and shoulders.

Ride the prairies.

It looked like there was a nice country road right beside the hotel, so I headed south on it only to have it turn to gravel. That scrabbled the 10,000 dead bugs off my tires but wasn't suitable for 23mm rubber so I came back to the man highway and headed south. Once I cleared the town's two traffic lights the road smoothed out and it was a nice quick ride. In fact, lightening fast with sub 9 intervals. I was tempted to clock 30 km in well under an hour, but knew there would be a wind penalty on the return...and Mrs. might get up on eastern time for her birthday, so I watched for an opening to loop back into wind.

Ouch. I had run at 160 bpm with the wind, but settled to low 150s coming back. I'm more comfortable letting it run up a bit when I'm not working too hard, but when I know it is going to be a sustained effort back off a bit. Turbulence from the trucks didn't help. Nor did the wind channelling around the grain elevators. Looped through town to see if there was anything to entertain the birthday girl with - not really, and pulled in on target at 7:30.

C • Solid ride! 3

Need some more of this to compensate for 10 hours a day driving. Nothing useful to me in today's gym, but I know tonight's is better equipped.

C • Where are you today? 4