Not going well

Thursday I had to take my daughter to golf camp, and I had the day off.  So I went for a ride while she was learning to golf.  And that went... poorly.

It actually started even before we got to golf camp, when I couldn't find my heart rate meter.  I found both straps, but no meter.  So the ride had no heart rate data.

I was starting from Hilltop Golf course, which is on Telegraph Rd in Alexandria, and didn't start out with a destination.  I started going up Telegraph, towards Alexandria proper (Hilltop is almost to Beulah), and decided I'd head towards the bridge and turn around.

About three miles in, I noticed that I had no air in my back tire, and stopped to put some in.  I couldn't, so I decided to try to limp back to Hilltop.  After a quarter- to half-mile, I realized that was stupid, and stopped to change tubes.

Well, after putting the valve extender on, I couldn't even get the tube to hold air.  Not even a little bit.  So I tried to put the old one back on, and was only able to get that one to hold a small amount.  A woman walked up, and asked me if I wanted to try with a real pump, so I did.

With that pump, I was able to inflate the tube I'd started with up to full pressure, and I started on my way.  Within a quarter mile, I was flat again.  Fantastic.  Well, before she'd shown up, I'd spent forty-five minutes or more trying to get air in either tube.  I wasn't going to go through that again, so I just started walking the bike back.  It took a while (I showed up having entirely missed the pizza party, and was even a few minutes late for pick-up time), but I made it back with sore feet.

In all, I managed about four miles of easy riding and another three of walking/jogging.  Man, was I pissed about the whole situation.

Things did not improve, as far as fixing those tubes, when I got home.  I had trouble even getting the pump on the nozzle, and I decided that I must have over-torqued the valve extender or the valve core.  Either way, I wasn't getting anywhere.

I ordered a new extender, a couple extra tubes, and another core remover tool (keep the one I had in my bike bag, and get another to keep at home).

So Friday, I went back to my old wheels, which have never had these sorts of problems.

And I still hadn't found the heart rate meter.  And the power meter, for some reason, never started up.  I managed to get out with a little more time, so I did the eighteen mile loop.  Two and a half to three miles in, I noticed that my distance was showing four miles.  I still don't know why, but it never did correct.  And the GPS map from afterward shows me doing some weird stuff between George Mason/Rt 29 and George Mason/Wilson.

It corrected itself from there, but that still left my speed being off for the whole ride (my max shows as 52.3mph, which is absurd.

Which basically means there was no meaningful data for the entire ride.  No heart rate, no power, and the speed data was suspect.

Still, it was a nice day, so I'm glad I got out.

Saturday, despite still not having my heart rate meter, I knew I needed to do a hard ride, and went to my normal hill route.  I was disappointed not to set any records in the hills (I was particularly hoping for a record on the 4.2-mile loop segment that I created, but missed that by fourteen seconds.  Still forty seconds ahead of number two on that segment, though), but did set one a bit later.

I took the big hill on Williamsburg on, towards the end of the ride (I think I wasn't going to, but cut the ride short due to the threat of rain, for which I was unprepared).  And I just killed it.  I wish I had the heart rate data, but I pushed 791W for the twenty-eight seconds to get up that hill.  I'm surprised to see that that's still a fair bit off from my record for that time; still, it felt really good.

Even better when I got home, and saw that that time was good for a tie for KOM.  I did not expect, half a year ago, to ever even challenge for KOM there.  As I said, very gratifying (though a tiny bit less so, in that it's a four-way tie for the position).

Other power numbers?  Well, I did do about thirteen and a quarter minutes at/over threshold, which is pretty good.  And almost four and a half of that was in zone seven, which is awesome.

Other than that, a not terribly remarkable ride.  Fifteen point seven miles, 1440' elevation, done at 16.0mph.  Nice, but not remarkable.  And my power curve was well under my records.  I'm still really happy about that Williamsburg hill, though.