Nepal and 70.3

Rode the Road to Nepal again today. Warmer and not as windy as it was Thursday. That's not to say that it was warm and calm. It started off about 9 or 10 C and warmed up a bit. An armwarmer sort of day. The mountains were beautiful. There were lots of other cyclists out on the road.

The goal for today was to keep the cadence up and try to be stronger on the hills. Mostly this went well, though I felt slow on the way out.
2:21:21 travel time
21.9 Kph average speed
73 rpm average cadance
76.8 Kph max speed
127 bpm average heart rate

5:22 transition (park bike, pee, nibble a cookie, stretch back and calves)

34 min run for pretty close to 5K. I found my running legs in 8 to 10 min, and settled into a nice pace. Heart rate was nice a and low (upper zone 2) while finding legs, and I was hardly breathing at all. The rest of the run was nice and steady, mid zone 3 sort of pace.

I'm really pleased with this workout.

Weekly totals
Swim 3.0 hrs
Bike 5.8 hrs
Run 4.0 hrs (revised after, since I forgot to blog about Friday's run.)
Total 12.8 hrs

Now, let's set a goal here, in front of blog buddies and everybody. This year I want to ride to the bottom of the Road to Nepal and back, in under 2 hours, for an average speed of at least 25 Kph. Now the details.

The Road to Nepal is about 51 K from my house to the intersection of 773 and 549, depending on just how much you cut the corners and exactly how your bike computer is calibrated. The pavement for the hilly part of the route is new and wonderful; as good as it gets. (What am I saying, it's ALL hilly.) Each way there is a stoplight where I have to turn left, and two stop signs (at 22X) that you have to pay serious attention to; the others can be blown off. Traffic is sometimes a factor, but I don't get to use it as an excuse. The wind is a big factor, but if it hurts one way, it helps on the other. I don't get to use it for a excuse either. And I can't do a sprint for the driveway that leaves me falling off the bike with exhaustion. The idea is to get off the bike and be able to do a run like normal.

If anybody wants to try out this route, or some of the many routes that this can be part of, drop me a line, and we'll work out a time. keith at nucleus dot com

Now the 70.3.
Some of us have signed up for the Calgary 70.3. Here's a map of the bike route. I've done parts of it north of Cochrane, and it's great, but I haven't done from Cochrane to T2. And, it just so happens that T2 is about 8 K by bike path from our house. I've mentioned it to some people, but I'm looking at putting together a group of people that want to ride the course, then do a BBQ at our place after. I figure the 8 K ride from T2 can either be a cool down ride, or if you want to arrange to have someone pick up your bike, you could do it as a brick. Or you could do a brick from here, then BBQ. Changing, showers, and some crash space for overnight is not a problem.

So far, I haven't done any thinking about the logistics of getting us and bikes to T1, and getting the cars to our place for after. Susi lives in Cochrane and has indicated being willing to help out. There may be sufficient spouses, or carpooling that makes it all work out. Naturally, people can ride at whatever pace they want, but I was thinking of doing it as a group. Safety in numbers on Lower Springbank road and all.

I'm thinking that May 2 or 9 might work well, but some of the people that would like to do it are from out of town, and I'd kind of like to give them a chance to have first input about dates if something else might work better. So, my email was earlier in this post; drop me a line if you're interested.