Today's training ride was a repeat of the Hillier Than Thou ride I did last week. Last week was the 1st time I did the 2009 course so it had an unknown factor which made it mentally a little bit easier. This week that was not the case because I knew the course, which made it soooo much harder to willingly go destroy my legs again. I got stuck at work pretty late Friday night so I got a real late start today, was riding my bike by 10am. Weather was insanely nice today, low/mid 80's and sunny. I see some weird stuff on my rides, like the picture above. It's a shrine for the Blue Army of Our Lady of Fatima. It's 1/2 way up one of the climbs in the 1st 1/2 of the ride.
They put oil and crushed gravel down on several of the roads in this ride. The road heats up and car traffic presses the crushed gravel into the pavement giving it a new surface. But before it gets compacted over time it's an inch, sometimes 2, of just rock and rock dust. I came dangerously close to going down last week because I didn't expect it...it's like hydroplaning in a car when bike tires plow into it. There was one hill that I wanted to try to get straight up where I stopped for a break last week. But they just graveled the road so when the incline hit 18% the back tire started spinning out and I had to dismount. That sucked.
The ride felt harder than last week, and let me tell you something...the last 22 miles are pretty much a 8-10% climb all the way freaking back (with some steeper leg busters sprinkled in as well). It's just brutal as hell and at times a little obnoxious. The ride spanked me good. After the ride I immediately did a 3 mile run. Every road leaving the school where I parked my car was a freaking hill, so I ran on the school's gravel track instead. After climbing 10,000 feet over 8 hours running was the last thing I wanted to do. Every lap of the track I wanted to quit. I have to run 18 miles tomorrow which is going to kill me. Probably going to be an end of day run so I can recover a little during the day.
I took a picture of those engineered corn seeds I told you about last week. I hope you enjoy these pictures because it's a pain in my butt to stop and take pictures during my sufferfest.
2 comments:
Jojo,
I'm glad to see you're getting some long rides in. Don't know how you can possibly go from <25 miles per week to 100mile rides, without serious damage. Did you do the centuries on the road bike or TT bike?
Best of luck in your final pre-taper week.
Keep on rocking,
Rooney
Hey Rooney! I did it all on my road bike. Way too much climbing for the TT bike. Which leaves me a little uneasy...on the one hand I'm getting awesome hill climbing power sessions in on the road bike but on the other hand I'm not getting a ton of time in the TT position using the tri bike. I'll go with trying to get strong legs and hope the back holds up in TT mode.
PS I don't know how I do it either without getting hurt, though my left side hip flexors are pretty beat up.
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