I had a super ride tonight!

Wow! What a great ride, and I couldn't ask for a better confidence builder a week from my race. IG wanted an aerobic build workout. I'm still figuring out how to slowly build through the ride, taking into account hills, the wind, how tired I am, and all that stuff. So for tonight, I wanted to start easy, and build into a strong steady pace (sort of between what I used to ride, and what I did during the tempo rides) and see how I could maintain it. My goal was to keep the cadence up, trying for between 90 and 100 rpm, but more importantly, keep the pedals going around smoothly. I haven't thought about that for a while, and realized on my last ride that I'm getting a little jerky.

I took just under 20 minutes warmup to get to 37th and 22x, was at 22 and 22x at the 44 min mark, was at the 549 turn off at the 70 min mark, was at the bottom of the road to Nepal at the 98 min mark, back to 22X at the 140 min mark, and back home just a hair under the 160 min mark. It was the perfect temperature for a ride, with only a bit of wind that gradually died out during the ride.

The ride out 22X and down 22 I felt strong, keeping the average cadence up at 87 rpm or so, and an average speed over 28 Kph. I got down to 549 feeling good. For a while I rode with a guy in a strung out group, but dropped him when they stopped to get together again. At that point we were chatting, and both of us were cruising along at the upper end of aerobic zone. My heart rate was a bit all over the place for the first half of the ride. At one point I thought I was working pretty hard into the wind on a slight downhill, and heart rate was 115 or so.

I had forgotten how rough 549 is. It didn't seem that bad when Lori and I rode it last weekend. Maybe pumping up the tires makes that much of a difference. It was sure nice to get onto Road to Nepal. I had taken it just a little bit easier on 549 stretch, but not much. Then I blasted up the Road. I treated it like a full out race. I rode like IG was behind me with a cattle prod. Pedalled up to about 120 rpm downhill, and pushed really hard uphill. Then from 22X back to the house took it easier, trying to spin and cool down the legs.

Not counting the warm up and cool down, I did a solid 2 hr workout with the average speed 27.5 kph. My legs feel the workout, but I could still run. My lungs feel good, that nice clean feeling when you've been breathing hard. That's a huge improvement from Chinook and other rides earlier this year, where I could barely maintain 22Kph. It gives me confidence to have a strong ride for the race. That course can't be hillier than Nepal, can it? Then do my slow and steady run. I'm really looking forward to the race!

Normally I'd spend IMC day looking you all up and watching for you on the streaming video. But I figure by the time I do my race, the awards, the banquet, the drive home, all of you will be finished, partying, and talking about signing up for next year. I hope all of you have a super race, and I look forward to hearing about it!

Here's the numbers:

70.1 K ride
2:39:40 total time
26.4 Kph average speed overall inc warm up and cooldown.
83 rpm Average cadance overall, just before Nepal it was 87.
78 Kph max speed
1429 calories (so I feel no guilt about the brownies they treated me to at work, and the 3 pieces of pizza for supper after.)
124 bpm overall average heartrate
148 peak heart rate (one of the Nepal hills, I'm sure.)
67 min heart rate

Oh, and last of all, the new Legend shirt is my incentive to work on abs. It looks great, but turns into a belly shirt on me pretty quick. There's still a bit (well, maybe more than a bit) of a roll that must go. I wore it over another shirt so I didn't gross anyone out.