Two Wheel Blogs

I really felt like I wanted to ride tonight but I knew if I tried it would end in disaster. My legs have a good and deep tired in them from all the work I've put on them the last couple of weeks. Even though I was dragging somewhat I still had the motivation to ride. The solution to what kind of ride to do when your mind says go but the legs say no is the old easy ride, also known as JRA. Also known as recovery.

For me recovery riding is a beggars can be choosers proposition. Today it was that or nothing and I didn't want to do nothing. At least recovery is something.

This is amazing. As long as I've lived in these parts the standard "30% chance of scattered thundershowers" forecast has always meant "You might see some clouds this afternoon. Other than that, have a great ride." I must have missed the announcement where they turned that upside down.

Good thing for me I got mine before the tempest. This morning was perfect for a ride. When the thunder started rumbling in the distance it was time to head for the barn. Just like yesterday, but this time without quite as much thunder and lightening.

Ah yeah, we got one awesome Monday here today. I can't say enough how nice it was out there. Middle 70's at ride time I would guess. Recovery / Tempo today. In all I rode about 1½ hours. That's 1½ hours' ride time. It doesn't count the stops to help a family out of a jam.

You see, it's mushroom hunting season around here. Morels are aplenty. Just about everywhere there are woods you might see one or more vehicles pulled off to the side, the driver nowhere to be found. They're off in the woods hunting 'shrooms.

In preparation for this weekend's trail ride through the mountains of Arkansas I took my road bike out for a recovery ride this afternoon. I figure I'll get to know my Karate Monkey quite well by Sunday afternoon. Besides, can you really ride recovery on a 29er singlespeed?

So road bike it was. I rode so easily I barely broke a sweat. Can you register a negative PE? As I was leaving the house I realized it would probably be more trouble that it was worth to load up with water. For one thing it was cooler out today and for another I really and truly wanted to make sure I did indeed ride easily. So I didn't even bother to carry water with me.

Today would have made a great day for another Ouachita Challenge training ride. I'm just an old guy with a house to keep up, and it's spring. Sort of. It's that time of year when you get a good couple of days and you decide it really is time to rake those leaves. And you know how those little spring cleanup chores go. You start one and it leads to another, and then another. Pretty soon the whole day is gone.

So that's sort of what happened. The leaves, the fertilizing, the fixing the holes in the siding... all that. But a body can only do that stuff for so long. When I reached a stopping point I hopped on the bike for a recovery ride.

Boy am I glad I did. Yesterday trashed my legs pretty good. About 4 seconds after mounting up today I was ready to quit. I checked my powermeter. It read about 150 watts. My legs were begging me to stop this inhumane torture. I kept going, pedaling slowly in an easy gear.

OK! The power's back on. Hopefully this time it'll stay on.

We had a little ice storm that took out our power for most of the last 2½ days. For the most part we've been living in the cold and dark, listening to the trees cracking and falling. This was a bad one. The temperatures hovered right around the freezing mark. Local humidity approached 100%, which meant fog. The combination was perfect for ice to grow on the tree limbs.

Breakage was only the first threat for the trees however. With the ground saturated from all the recent rain we've had many of their root systems couldn't hold the combined weight of the tree and ice. Those trees just fell over. My neighbor has one like that on his garage.

Needless to say I haven't been doing a lot of training lately. About all I could do the past couple of days was look out the window and wonder whether the big tree next door was tall enough to reach the house if it fell, or if it would only take out the garage. As a diversion from the stress, and to pass the time, we decided to do what everyone else was doing. We got in the car and drove around to look at the damage and destruction. If you click through to see the rest of this article you'll see some of the photos we took.

As far as training goes. I guess I'll probably get back to it today now that my nerves have settled down a bit. I'm not sure I can accurately classify the last couple of days as recovery in my training diary; but I'm sure my CTL's dropped a few points. I should be pretty well recovered from my previous workout, whenever that was. Legs should be primed and ready to rock and roll. I'll find out later on today.