Two Wheel Blogs

It's been a while since I posted one of these charts up here. I usually put up a shot of an interval session or a sweet spot workout. Today you get something rather boring: Just a plain ordinary recovery ride.

Plain, ordinary, boring, yes. But just as important as any interval or sweet spot session.

We have a arrived. The first big event of the season - the Ouachita Challenge - is only a week away. I'm as fit as I'll ever be for it. If the weather had cooperated more I might be even a little fitter, but you gotta play the hand that's dealt, don't you know.

Performance manager's telling me I need to ramp it down a little this week if I'm going to have endurance enough to take on 60 miles in the mountains of Arkansas. CTL is around 110 or so and TSB is way down below. I'll come up for a big gulp of freshness this week and I'll be as ready as I'll ever be.

This won't be a taper by any means. I'll just be letting up some. I won't be adding intensity this week. I'll just do the same kinds of things I've been doing, only with a little less intensity and for shorter duration.

Take my latest workout for instance. Just a couple of hours' ride time on the road. I went out to the local park and rode laps on the rolling part. No big climbs and no sustained efforts. Six 11km laps at tempo speed. And with fairly decent repeatability too:

I did it to myself again today. I went out just a little bit too lightly dressed for the weather. Honest to Pete it looked like a warm spring day out there; and as I headed out the door the sun felt good. I figured I had it about right - a little cool but not cold.

Boy was I wrong. It only took about 15 minutes before my feet started to get cold. I fought the good fight but fell just short of my goal of 2+ hours of threshold pace.

Like the title says, it must be the time of year. The temperatures look and feel warm but riding through it is a lot colder. I have ridden in much colder temperatures and not felt as cold as I did today. Lesson learned, add one more layer if it's only in the 40's but it looks like the 60's.

Just short of my 2 hour goal I lost the motivation. My feet were blocks of ice and my focus had shifted from riding well to just getting through it. I took the shortcut and headed for home.

Not a very good way to train for the Ouachita Challenge, eh?

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.

but trying.

I don't know who said that but I live by those words. If I don't know something won't work I'll just go ahead and try. Worst case, I fail. Well, worst case I get myself killed, but I don't usually try stuff like that. I'm not only 2 old 2 go slow but I'm 2 old 2 be that stupid.

Anyway, when I try something and fail it's an opportunity to learn something. It's an opportunity to learn:

1. it can't be done
2. I can't do it, or
3. I can't do it that way, so maybe I should try some other way

One thing I've been wanting to do lately is to install one of my SRMs on my Surly Karate Monkey. I really wanted - still want - to know how much power I'm putting out and how much TSS I'm accumulating out there in the woods. Estimating it is OK, and it appears I'm fairly accurate with my estimates judging by performances predicted by my Performance Manager chart; but still it's just an estimate. Why estimate power when you might be able to get real data?

We're still waiting to hear from G-Wiz and the crew about their epic ride in the woods today. The plan was to do 50 miles out and back. The temperatures here today might have gotten to the middle 20's. Might. It was windy out there, and the sun did shine most of the time. It didn't help much. This was not a day for the weak or the unprepared to ride outside.

Me, I must be one of the weak. I wimped out and opted to ride my trainer.

It's a good thing I did too, because this wasn't my best day on the bike. Not by a long shot. I found it hard to produce much power today. Even riding easily my legs just did not want to output much wattage. The reason probably has to do with my TSB being further under water than it has been in recent memory. There is no escaping the truth of Performance Manager.