Two Wheel Blogs

Good to be home again. I'm just back from a stage race in Denver Colorado. The race is known as the Tour d'Hotel. It's a 6 day stage race held in the fitness center of the Adams Mark hotel in downtown Denver. I'm putting this one high on my list of races to be avoided in the future.

Good for me. I got one right. I'm sitting here looking out the window at a dark, cold and rainy afternoon. I wouldn't want to train hard in this crap. I don't even want to go out and get the mail.

My log will show Recovery today. A Recovery ride was just the perfect sauce for the dish the weather man served up today, and after the las couple of day's workouts. The thing about recovery is, I can do recovery anywhere, even on my trainer.

And that's what I did. And today, for once, I got it right, too.

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I am one worn down puppy. After the Tour de Ste. Genevieve race last Saturday I packed up and headed for the airport Sunday morning to catch a flight out. Another business trip - 4 days plus a Sunday.

I'm going through bike withdrawal.

I did manage to keep up some manner of training while on the road. The hotel I stayed at had one of the finest arrays of health club equipment I've seen outside a real honest to goodness health club. I don't remember the brand, but their electronic bikes seemed like they were fairly accurate in estimating work per hour. Granted, it was all based on perceived exertion, so who knows whether they really were anywhere near accurate.

Now if they'd just make one that can be set up like a real bike.

I guess we got lucky today. The forecast I had last heard said it would be cooler this weekend, but wet. Yesterday certainly was. Today started out looking every bit the rainy day we all expected. Even thought the clouds threatened, they couldn't hold back the sun for long. Put it all together and it added up to dry, mostly sunny and a high in the mid 80's.

With weather like this, how could I not get out and do something serious? I saddled up for a match burning ride.

Some days are just better than others and today was some day. Probably it was only the excellently restrained 25 miles of recovery yesterday, but whatever the reason, I'll take it.

The watts came easy today - big numbers with low perceived exertion. In two hours' riding time I managed a Normalized Power of just a tad over 250 watts. Not bad for an old fart like me with a gimpy back. Not bad considering it included stops for traffic and a bite to eat. Good weather and a tailwind will do that for you.

Speaking of tailwinds... Wow I love it when the wind pushes you up a climb in the big ring. Pond Rd headed west today was a breeze, literally. What a scream.

Somebody toss me a life jacket will ya? I hope there weren't many riders caught out unawares at this storm. If I'd been out in it I'd have been looking for shelter in a hurry. Strong stuff, these thunderstorms.

Being in the woods would have been worse.

It doesn't seem right to start out the month of June riding on the stationary trainer. Indoors. Unfortunately it was the only safe and sane place to ride around these parts this afternoon.

It's good though. More or less steady state sweet spot stuff hasn't been on my menu lately. I doubt I can attribute any loss of FTP to that; but for sure these sessions do more to build Functional Threshold Power than most all the other riding I've been doing lately.