29.1.06

The art of solo riding

Here's a reminder to yall'...

If you tell a teamate, "I'll ride with you tommorow at 10"--
Then ride with that person!
Now don't get me wrong: I completely understand that events come up that may be more important than the ride that you had promised to do. But at the very least it's nice to let your riding buddy know that you are going to be a no show.
So today began with the brilliant, exciting, daunting...

You guessed it--the trainer! I haven't touched this thing for a serious ride since before Tucson, so I figured my mind was set to go for a 3 hour spin.

WRONG! I had all the usual motivations in place--great tunes on my Ipod, TV tuned to an old Bond movie, lots of H20 and a few Hammer Endurolytes, scheduled hill-simulation intervals...but to no avail. After 1.5 hours with 30 min of "hill simulation" riding, my mind was cooked.

When I took a look out the window, however, the weatherman proved to be wrong about the bad weather for the day--it was cloudy, and the ground was wet, but no rain to be seen. The radar confirmed my hunch: there was not a drop of precipitation coming for several hours. Revitalized, I took a quick lunch break and returned to dress for the worst weather possilbe.

Turns out I didn't need a single rain jacket or neoprene sock for the entire 3 hours out and around Bellville. The legs took quite a while to warm up, but after 45 min of spinning those 2 pistons were ready to go again. I kept the wattage in the endurance zone and enjoyed the cleansing therapy of an extended solo ride during the winter. Not bad boys--I racked up a 3129 Calorie workload today and 163 TSS points. In other words, I got some seriously good base miles in without ever pushing too hard in the hills.

I can feel my endurance form coming along very well now. 2.5-3 hour rides feel short and easy. Just 12 more days of base II before a full recovery week, and then the begining of some real race work in Base III.

Matt Waite (currently in Italy) took my advice and started up a blog today. Check out the life of a cyclist in spagetti land on his blog, Wait for it Cycling.

3 comments:

Ryan Baumann said...

Hmmm...you've opened up a can that could lead into quite a legnthly discussion...

It's a method of measuring training load using power output. That's what I'll say for now. More TSS=more training stress score. A hard, short ride may give the same TSS as a long, endurance ride.

More infor here:
http://www.peakscoachinggroup.com/PowerTrainingChapter.pdf

Burrito Eater said...

Man, I think I saw you out by Belleville yesterday! One of the two riders I saw the whole ride!

Ryan Baumann said...

Yeah, that must've been me...I had a red WORS jacket underneath a clear Louis Garneau rain poncho.

Sunday was one of the rare days I only saw 2 other riders the entire way to Bellville...