Two Wheel Blogs

The local radio station is playing Tubular Bells all day today. Not the song, the entire album by Mike Oldfield. You think Mike planned it this way?

I figured I'd get into the holiday spirit with my own tribute to Hell - a nice and painful workout full of suffering. No doubt that meant doing some hills, a lot of them.

There are seven hills near here, any of which is a good test for legs and lungs. I designed a route to take me up each of them with minimal time and distance in between. That would maximize climbing per unit time.

I figured I would be able to do one circuit of the seven hills (seven deadly sins, get it?) in about an hour. That's because the total distance to do the circuit was right at 25km and I figured an extremely hilly hour of riding should take some serious time off my average speed so I estimated I might see somewhere around 25kph.

Checking the math here... 25km at about 25kph means an hour of pain and suffering. Was that enough pain to offer up? Sure, it would be painful but would it be painful enough? Today is 06-06-06 after all. Check, gotta do it twice.

So there it was a two hour ride with 14 significant humps. That oughta peg the pain-o-meter.

With Tubular Bells playing in my head and visions of spinning heads puking green goo I set out on my own Hell's Half-a-Hundred homage to 06-06-06.

The result - fully 30% of today's ride was above Critical Power (CP) and approximately 20% more was between 90-105% of CP, at the threshold level. It only took a bit over 1:45 to do the whole thing. TSS was 172. Intensity Factor was .986 (cool, body temperature!)

What do you have planned to celebrate the holiday from Hell?