Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Well, today turned out to be a super active day, which is a good thing. It also seems to continue a pattern in the winter months of combining riding and hiking which I think I could really get to like.

The day started with the usual weekly excursion with the Pain Train. We're slowly building up our distance and today was the first metric century. We did roads I was mostly familiar with though one section I hadn't done in the direction we did it. That section, which includes four leg burner climbs (followed by breakneck descents-steriod rollers I call them), was definitely easier the way we went today. Things were mostly flat with a couple a big climb sections. I definitely felt better than last week and while I still can't climb with the best riders in the group, I certainly did better. I also got a couple of chances to practice my time trialing skills with the group gapping me after a pee stop and someone later letting a gap open up during the attack zone. I had no problem holding a 170+ heart rate for long stretches and there was a good climbing section where I sat at 181 for a good 2 minutes, dropped to 172 to recover and then did it again. For the first time in a while I actually seemed to be sort of enjoying the suffering which was very cool. I really do seem to need these group rides to get me to train hard.

After the ride I came home, did a few things and then went on a hiking date with my wife at a local state park. While we don't have spectacular colors here, what fall color we do have was certainly on display on the trail today. It really was lovely. We took the two puppies on the hike and they discovered that they are trial dogs. Made the hike a little more vigorous than I wanted but that was OK. This is the second time I've done the bike-n-hike combo and I have to say that I like it. I think I spent four hours today doing something that really got my heart rate up and I'm guessing I burned about 3000 extra calories. I probably should have eaten and drank a bit more on the hike but other than that it was really great. I think we're planning on another jaunt in a couple of weeks, weather permitting.

The next week looks pretty promising on the training front. While I hesitate to say that I'll have a great training block because it always seems like something spoils it when I do, the schedule and the weather are looking good. Finding that I seem to be coming into some form is helping as well. Nothing is harder than a long training ride where you can tell that your legs just don't care anymore. We'll be travelling to LA for the holiday so I'll get the added bonus of some not quite so familiar roads to spur my training.

I hope your weekend has gotten off to as good a start as mine has. Thanks for reading.

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