Hitt’n the trails
The week has been pretty mild as far as rides go. I was pretty tired Monday and a bit stressed out, so I opted to leave the bike in the garage for the day and just took care of some errands. Seemed to be the wise choice, since my full days off lately have been used up with long, tiring rides.
Tuesday only held a brief ride to and from the gym to throw some steel, do some core and flex in front of the mirror. I used to really dislike my body…too skinny for what I wanted to do at the time, which was post’n up fools in the paint! Now I find that it works for me just fine. At some point in college I learned to embrace the fact that I am skinny, you can see all my ribs and I have toothpick legs. Just fine for a cyclist, thank you very much!
Anyway…Wednesday brought about my low cadence, high cadence zone 3 workout. I like this one, but it’s been hard to get my cadence as low as I would like to on the trainer (Single ring up front). Basically I got in an hour of riding outside before night set in, then I hit up the living room for the focused part of the ride. 7 min, high zone 3, low cadence (around 70, but should be 60) then 3 min, same watts, but high cadence (100ish). Repeat. Repeat. No rest in between sets. Not a good one to do outside if it’s cold. Lots of stress on the joints, so I’ve just been doing them inside. Oh yeah, I got a deep tissue massage on Wednesday too. Long overdue.
Thursday, after I converted my cross bike to more roadie style (i.e 2 rings up front, road pedals), Timmy and I rode to Redmond in great weather. 3 hours, no arm or knee warmers. Brilliant. First ride like that of the year. Anyway 2 hr endurance pace, 45 min tempo, 15 cool down. Timmy was with me for 40 min of the tempo, but by then we were back in town. He went straight home and I turned onto Archie Briggs for the last 5 minutes of tempo. Anyone out there done the Cascade Classic the last few years? Archie Briggs is used on Saturday in the circuit race. It’s basically a wall at the base of the climbing, mellows out, then kicks up for the last 300ish meters. It’s hard to stay in a lower zone, so I decided to test the legs and drill it a bit for the last 300. Um…it hurt.
That brings us to today. Today was a good day, but more on that later. I got to work all day and look at all the cyclists go by in the 70? degree weather. Oh man, so nice out. After work I slipped into the bike shop (sunnyside sports) and chatted it up with Don for a few before heading home. Loaded up the car with my newly roadied up cross bike and the dog, then headed to the trails for the last hour+ of daylight. What a great way to end the work week. Me, dirt and James. I love riding with him, even if I do slack off on it right now, and he loves running with me. It’s a great way to spend an easier day on the bike. Now, if I could only get kitty to go…
James the dog
Still on the trail…getting late
Faster group ride tomorrow (or solo intervals), then my first road race in almost a year on Sunday. 77 miles with Doug O and Even E, as well as the CMG guys should be fun! I’m interested to see how this training thing is working out.
If You’re wondering where I get my workouts, check out Bart Bowen. Thanks for reading!
