Exciting riding

Lots going on, no time to write, it seems.  But let's try to catch up.

Monday was hosed up from start to finish.  I played the game too long to get a ride in, in the morning, so I wasn't able to do anything until afternoon.  I took my daughter to her piano lesson via bike, with mixed results.  That is, we were able to get there, but we had a couple of really steep hills that forced my daughter to walk her bike.

While she was taking her lesson, I got out for a hard ride, which went decently.  Except for the fact that my tire flatted while I was out.  Check out this graph for the ride, though; I find it hilarious:

Not exactly challenging to figure out when I was by myself, and when I was with my daughter.

It was a bit interesting of a ride, though, as I was going on different roads than the ones I'm used to (since I was starting from a couple miles from home, and because I didn't have a lot of time).  I managed a top-ten finish right by her piano lesson, and wandered around some bucolic streets.  It was a fairly pleasant ride, despite the heat of the day.

I spent that part of the ride at a 173 average heart rate, with a max of 190bpm.  That was pretty good.  Overall, it was twenty-two minutes in zones four and five, which was great (almost five of it was in zone five, which was even better).  Power-wise, it was almost eleven minutes at/above threshold, which isn't too bad, either.

The next day, though, did not start out well.  I'd left the tube with the patch glue drying overnight (overkill, but I like to do it when I can).  I woke up, played puzzles for a bit, then went to get the bike.  After two tries, I couldn't get the tube to hold air (patch, remove, re-patch, remove), so I finally looked for, and found, a new tube I had sitting around.

I put it on, and got out on the road.  And man, was I mad, so I decided to make it a hard ride, even though I'd done somewhat of a hard ride the day before (that is to say, I went plenty hard, but not for quite as long as I would have liked).  I didn't have a lot of time, either, so I did my normal fifteen mile loop (how much time?  I would never have finished it at my normal speed).

And I did more than ok.  Only one top-ten finish (eighth overall on Grove Ave in Falls Church), but a bunch of PRs.  And I had a stretch of over a mile and a half (on the W&OD, heading north from Shirlington) where I averaged 187bpm heart rate.  I used to not be capable of getting close to that; hitting 187bpm used to get my body to tell me, almost instantly, "stop now".  So my threshold must have increased, which is awesome.

For the overall ride, I managed 19.2mph (seriously, I was killing it), with thirty-nine minutes in zones four and five.  Pretty obviously, my zone definitions are off.  Power-wise, we're looking at sixteen minutes at/over threshold.

I think the numbers I'd used to set the threshold (260W, which I got from 95% of my best twenty-minute stretch) were wrong to begin with.  The best-twenty numbers I was using are, I think, weighted average rather than strict average, which means they were (way too?) high.  Well, they might be getting closer, now.

Wednesday morning, I decided to use that improvement, and set my target heart rate for my easy rides up to 130bpm.  That helped a bit, with staying under target, but not as well as I'd hoped.

I mostly kept it under the target, though I did hit 137bpm at one point and 133bpm a couple of other times (briefly, though).  And raising the target didn't result in much improvement in power numbers.  I averaged 122W, which isn't bad, but it didn't result in any apparent improvement in speed; I still only managed 14.0mph over the eighteen miles.

The next day is when things really went to hell.

Weekend of extremes

Yesterday, I got up at 0400, but didn't feel like going anywhere at that early time, so I went back to sleep until 0500.  Then I got up, got dressed, and got out on the road.  I wasn't feeling great, right away, and my power meter didn't help by crapping out again (battery, after only a week or two.  I even tried stopping, a mile in, to reseat the battery, but that didn't help).

Nevertheless, I kept going, and was feeling quite good after a few more minutes.  I did, indeed, do a variation of my Old Town loop, which worked out nicely.  One thing I noticed, that I normally don't, is that I averaged almost 16mph over the first hour, with which I was very pleased.  I was having no trouble with keeping my heart rate down, which also made me quite happy.

I ended up doing thirty-three miles, taking two hours and a few minutes, and covering 1100' of elevation (a bit less than I expected, but still a decent number).  That was enough to put me over the halfway point for the Strava Climbing Challenge, with nineteen days left.  Again, pleased as punch.

And best of all, I was still feeling great after finishing; I felt like I could have gone another hour without any stress.

Last night, I decided that I really needed to do another hard day, today, just because of scheduling.

Well, events interfered pretty quickly, as I had a flat before I even left the house.  I didn't even bother with trying to patch the tube, but just grabbed my spare tube and installed it.  That got me on the road fairly quickly, although still considerably later than I'd planned (and to emphasize that point, I saw the first pre-dawn light right by the house).

One good thing: I did remember to replace the battery in the power meter before leaving.

My plan was to attack the hills for forty-five to sixty minutes, then tack on some more recovery miles.  Well, getting to the hills starts with some mild uphill, and I wasn't feeling great, even with that.  I thought of taking that to mean that I should just go elsewhere for a gentler ride.  But I started feeling a little better almost right away, and held with the plan.

The first hill I attacked, I beat my PR by two seconds (again, more with better pacing than with all-out power).  But I was already feeling pretty toasted after that.  It could be that I was still feeling some residual effects from the century the other day.

Still, I persevered.  I can't say as I was pleased with my results (actually, they were pretty terrible), but I stayed roughly with the plan.  I didn't bike as far as I'd planned, although that was as much due to not knowing the time as anything.  But I still got twenty miles in, with 1700' of elevation.

And I broke my plan a little bit, too, by trying to push a couple times after finishing the hills.  I went to Highland Dr in Falls Church, and tried to push up that hill.  I was shocked, at the end, to find I'd gotten 9th place on the segment that covers the whole street, because I didn't start right at the beginning (couldn't remember where it started) and blew up while still close to the bottom of the hill.  With a decent try, I should be able to get into the top 3-5 without killing myself.  Not sure when I'll try, but I will.

Tomorrow and Tuesday will definitely both be easy days, with mileage mostly determined by what time I wake up.  I might try to wake up early both days to get 25-ish miles in; we'll see.

Better day

I was able to find a bike shop, yesterday, that could fix the derailleur yesterday.  Several good things came out of that: I was able to ride today, of course and I found out that the derailleur hanger had gotten bent (which probably caused the jog wheel problem).  This also led to the chain hosing up a number of the spokes, so they'll need to be replaced  (scheduled but not done).

The bad thing that happened yesterday was that I got roped into a teleconference for week in the early afternoon today, which really messed with my plans for doing a century today.

Last night, I decided to skip on the Caps game (I watched the first fifteen minutes of play earlier today, and will try to watch the rest tonight) and went to bed just after nine.

Then, when I woke up just after 0300 (bathroom call), it occurred to me that I could do a three-hour ride in the morning, then get the kids ready, then try to finish the century in the mid- to late-morning before the telecon.

So I got out the door a few minutes after 0400, and got on the road.  I was going to go Harbor Center (~35 miles, round trip), then add something else after.  But when I got to the foot of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, it occurred to me that I could turn left, instead, and head down to Mount Vernon.  Making a snap decision, I did that.  I made it down there, turned around, and headed for home.

That turned out to be just under a 3hr ride, at 50.9 miles, which would have been perfect if I hadn't had any stopped time.  I will say, though, that I did not like going down the Mount Vernon trail; south of Old Town, it had many wooden bridges over gullies or creeks, and those scared the hell out of me.  I avoided problems, but man, they made me nervous.  In fact, for much of that stretch, visibility was the limiting factor on how fast I could go (rather a new situation for me).

I got the kids ready and ate breakfast, then got back on the road.  I headed out towards Purcellville; my plan was to go out 24 miles and turn around.  Unfortunately, by this point, I realized that the work done on the front derailleur at the shop yesterday left the end of the cable rubbing the tire.  Nineteen or so miles out, that finally caused a pinch-flat which left me walking back towards a place where I would call a cab.

Before I got there, a helpful biker stopped and talked me into taking a look at the tube to see if it could be fixed (the tire did look slashed, which is why I hadn't already done that).  With his help, we were able to effect a temporary fix (the tube had a small hole for a failure, not a slash.  We fixed that, then put a boot in the tire to keep the tube from bulging out from one spot that was slashed), that got me back home.

From there, I showered, ate lunch (two burritos without wraps) and watched that chunk of the Caps game, then did my telecon.  The telecon was, at least, useful.

Once it was over, I got back on the road to try to do the last twelve miles or so (which also required forty-ish minutes to get over six hours, for Competitive Cyclist purposes).  I lost half a mile or so when I forgot to hit the start button right away, but still was moving.  I wasn't moving super fast, although I did still manage to power up some of the hills (my peak power meter reading of 700W was actually hit right at the 99-mile mark, per Cyclemeter), and got back home at 99.8 miles.  Not wanting to get hosed by Strava, I did a small loop around the neighborhood to get to 100.5 by the time I got home.  And I was pretty beat, so I let it go at that.

I wish I hadn't; Strava calculated the ride at 99.3 miles, although it said almost 4000' of elevation.  That was enough to put me at second place for the Bike Arlington club on Strava, I think the highest I've ever been, there, and first on elevation.  It won't last till the end of the week, but it still made me feel good.  And final moving time was 6:12, so that'll be good for $6 at Competitive Cyclist (I think I'll save up to get to $80 by the end of next month, although I don't know what I'll use it for).

So, definitely less than a perfect day, but far from a bad one.  I just need to find a way to watch the rest of the Caps game and still get to bed early.

Tomorrow will certainly be an easy day (and I need to order the Apple Watch for my wife when I wake up).  We'll see how I feel on Saturday.  Normally, I would try to get in on the group ride then, although I'm not sure if I'll feel up to it (Strava rated the ride as an 'Epic Suffer Score').

Still, it's very cool to find myself twenty miles over my weekly goal in only four days.  Perhaps my goal will be to clear forty miles for the rest of the week, and beat my all-time record for mileage in a week (although that record might have been Sunday-Saturday, not Monday-Sunday; I don't remember).

One other cool thing is that I'm on track to destroy two of the challenges for this month.  In fact, I might even complete the monthly MTS challenge, which I've never even come close to, before.  December was the closest I came, at 120km short (I did 706 miles; I'm at 303 already, this month).

Running on empty

I started out on my normal bike ride this morning.  I was thinking that I needed to stop early (I usually do, on Tuesdays), so I was going to do laps in the hills nearby.  But half a mile or so out, I went over something.  I heard and felt it, so I was immediately suspicious.

If I'd been more experienced, I probably would have turned around during this suspicious time, but I just kept going, hoping I was wrong.  I wasn't; I was out of air very quickly.

Having no experience, I worried that I had some sort of flat where fixing the flat would immediately result in the fixed tube getting punctured again, so I started walking home.  I got to a nice and bright streetlight, though, and decided to stop and try to fix the tire there.

Well, I got one tire lever in, though it looked a little strange.  When I tried to get the second, though, I broke the lever (and this lever set only had two).  So, I walked the rest of the way home, and went to fix the tire.

Once I had plenty of light, and such, I saw that the problem was that the first lever had managed to get under both sides of the tire, which likely meant that the second did as well.  So breaking the lever made a lot of sense.

It probably took me a lot longer than it would for someone with more experience, but I had no trouble fixing the tube at home.  I thought I wouldn't be able to ride at all today until I remembered that my normal reason for leaving early on Tuesday didn't apply today.

So I had a little bit of time, and tore out on a high-intensity, short ride around the neighborhood (including one lap around the hills where I'd originally intended to do three or four laps).

The one bonus was getting a somewhat better handle on my FTP, since the reading was coming off a shorter, higher-intensity ride than my usual.  And that's what you're supposed to do when measuring FTP.  I learned that I'm a little closer to where I want to be, but still a ways off (around 3.6 W/kg, and I want to be more like 4-4.5.  And yes, I know that that's a wide range).