Keep on rollin'

The last two days have been pretty quiet, in terms of riding.  I went into the hills along Military Rd yesterday, and pushed pretty hard.  And today I did fifteen miles at a more relaxed pace.

I was moderately pleased with both rides.  Actually, that's a bit off; I was moderately pleased yesterday, and almost completely happy with this morning.

Yesterday, my little bit of disappointment is that I didn't set more records, or have higher power averages.  I also wish I'd ridden a bit further, although I'm not sure where I would have added the miles.  I did put a lot of power in, though, and felt pretty good when I was doing it.  I was certainly tired by the time I finished.

I'd like to improve my short-term power; I expected to do better on that than I have (I've mostly been a sprinter, all my life).  So when I was way short of my records (and even my records aren't all that high, comparatively), I wasn't thrilled.  But my numbers got closer and closer to my peaks, the longer the timeframe considered, until it basically reached them at about 45 minutes.  So, a weird feeling, but maybe that's a good thing.  Maybe I'm getting better at pacing myself.

And speaking of pacing, there was this morning's ride.  As a straight-out recovery ride, I was trying not to push it.  Basically, my goal on those rides is to average as close as possible to 120W without pushing my heart rate over 125.  If I can up my speed at the same time, that's even better (sign of better aero positioning, mostly).

This morning I managed an average of 111W, and spent two minutes at 125-131 bpm pulse.  Not perfect, but pretty darned close.  And I got in almost fifteen miles, which is pretty good.  And I got home at 0700 almost on the dot; that's pretty much always my target, but was especially important this morning, as my wife needed to leave early.

So, damned near a perfect ride.  The biggest question is, can I up my zone two power so I can target 140-150W.  Well, it hasn't happened yet, but maybe it will if I can keep doing rides like this (preferably without those couple minutes over 125bpm).  And I'm still losing weight; if I can lose a few more, that'll help with speed as well.  My real target, I guess, is to get back to doing twenty+ miles every day, but to be doing it in zone two instead of zone four.  Dunno how realistic that is; it would essentially mean getting to 16mph average on fairly flat ground.

Did get a little good news this morning.  The group with whom I've done a few fast group rides has shifted their start time back to 0600 (plus, I can now stay out until 0800 instead of 0730, thanks to a daughter's piano lesson moving), so I should be able to start going with them regularly.  At least, that's my hope.  Will definitely need to save hard rides for Saturday, then, as they'll leave me in their dust if I'm back in zone two.  I have enough trouble keeping up with them in zone four.  At least, I did last time we went out together; hopefully I've improved greatly since them.