Week 13 (I think)

The first week of February turned into a pretty crazy one, but for today I’m just going to cover the riding. The other, bigger news of the week can wait. I need to digest it, ponder it, determine if it is blog material and then, if it is blog material, write something that does it justice. Right now I don’t know how to do the material justice, so it will sit.

Early week training was mellow and light, knowing that Friday would be the biggest day of the year thus far. With the nice weather predicted and my approaching (now past) birthday taking off from work to log big miles seemed like the right thing to do. My quest for Leadville (which now looks unrealistic) spurred me on to go for 100 miles, so when I left the house at 7:30 that was the plan. 5:30 minutes later I returned home, 7 miles shy of the 100 but feeling good about the ride. After putting in that long of a day I’m not sure 100 mile rides are possible solo. The energy expended on a solo ride of that distance, not to mention the mind tricks are tough. I had a varied route with flats, climbs, dirt roads and bike path time, but still my mind was going a bit crazy toward the end (little did I know how crazy my mind would soon turn).

I did learn a lot about nutrition on the ride. I started eating 1 hour in and was downing about 200-250 calories of food/drink per hour. A lot of ultra endurance racers say that number needs to be more like 300+ calories per hour, which should be possible just something that needs to be practiced. I was fine food wise until about 4:40 in when no matter what I did I wasn’t able to keep the force up on the bike. In the last hour I ate about 400 calories, just too late to really help. Lessoned learned to eat more early to keep the energy topped off for the entire ride.

Saturday I was spent, the thought of a ride was there early but it never happened. Good thing the weather men on TV were wrong yet again, as I woke up Sunday to a cool/cold day but no rain or snow as promised. That made the riding choice easy and I put in 2:00 on the dirt at Green Mountain. I’ve been riding a time trail there through the winter and today knocked 30 seconds off my fastest time so the fitness continues to improve. With no Leadville on the schedule (I assume) I’ve got some time to figure out racing, fitness and training. I’ll try to get that all figured out this week.