Two Wheel Blogs

Where did the weekend go? Talk about time flying. This one was here and gone in a flash.

I managed to get in a couple of good and decent rides in though.

Saturday night ride
Saturday evening Unit and I headed into the woods for some night time Ouachita Challenge preparation. That was the plan, of course, but as Unit wrote in his post, a good portion of the ride was comedic at best. We'd tool along just fine for a while, then turn a corner and find only glare ice where there should have been trail. Some places probably took us the better part of 10 minutes to get though because we literally could not get traction and there was no level place to stand. Getting through was an exercise in using any available twig, rock, root or clump of grass to advance mere inches at a time. After about two hours of "all night" pace constantly interrupted by the ice follies, I said I'd had enough and exercised my veto rights.

My logic for the veto was simply that we weren't getting any training benefit if any from the time spent. I'm willing to concede Unit's argument there is a handling skills benefit. It occurred to me more than once last night that riding that icy trail put a premium on balance and smooth force application - acceleration, braking and turning. I'll grant that. If the trails are iced over at the Ouachita Challenge then I will have missed a terrific training opportunity last night.

Sunday afternoon on the road
I checked the temperature this afternoon and couldn't believe my eyes. It's been 14° for so long... Suddenly the thermometer says it's in the 50's. It was already getting late in the afternoon by the time I could get away for a ride so there was no time to load up everything and drive to the nearest trail. I sure wasn't about to ride the trainer, not when it's sunny and reasonably warm out. I headed out for a quick road workout.

Everyone else must have been out earlier in the day. I didn't see a single other rider the whole time I was out. Just as well, with only a little over an hour of daylight to ride I didn't have time for socializing. I put the hammer down.

Sure enough, last night's ride hadn't been much of a workout. It was a TSB raiser if there ever was one: A few hard efforts. A lot of low intensity riding. A lot of rest throughout. Today's Normalized Power was 3 watts higher than my Functional Threshold Power, making the Intensity Factor 1.01. I estimate my TSB was/is right around zero for this "test"; but it's been trending towards the negative since my recent business trip and battle with the Rhinovirus.

So even though it went by entirely too fast it was a good weekend for me. My Ouachita Challenge training plans may not be progressing as well as they should be but Functional Threshold Power seems to be responding well to my No Plan© training plan.