Took Thursday and Friday off, Thursday because I was finishing the playset and Friday back in the office.
Had plans to go for 3+ hours this morning but I woke up with rain and reconsidered. So decided to take the CX bike out and do some hill repeats:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/7884572
Warmed up for over 30 minutes with 3 small climbs of 1 minute each to try and get warm enough for these. This is my first real hill and/or high-end effort of the year. Didn't really know what to expect. I popped a gel before I started.
The first hill was about 4 minutes long. It was brutal by the end. I was panting like a dog at the top and just hung my head, my heart pounding away. Cruised down the other side of the hill and went back up, and repeated. Back side was 2 minutes, so this was 4, 2, 4, and 2 minutes. Total of 3 in the warmup and 12 on the first set.
Crossed the swamp on a soft pedal to rest a bit and have an Accel Gel and catch up a bit. Felt ok, not amazing but not terrible. The hill was steady but in the last minute got steep which was difficult because I needed to drop my pace to keep the effort level the same. The first time up the hill I didn't do that well, and it hurt.
I hit another 3 minute long climb on the other side of the swamp 3 times. Up, down, up, down, up, then I soft pedaled for a minute before hitting a shorter but steeper hill for 1 minute. I rested a few minutes, then dropped down the other side towards the High Gear shop and then back up for a last 5 minute climb (plus crest/flat to top it off). At the end, I was panting like the dog again, but managed to crank out 30 minutes of high-end effort.
All in all not a bad day, given it was my first effort of this kind this year. The last 5 minute effort really added up, and definitely hurt at the end. In all, 30 minutes of work and a ride total of 1:46. I won't go into this kind of detail every time I do something like this. But I figure if people are actually interested in what I'm doing this gives some sort of indication. I don't have the mental fortitude to pick a single 3 minute hill and do it 10 times. So I mix it up as I can handle it mentally.
This was only my 3rd ride of the week, but all of them were quality workouts so I'm not bothered that I won't end up with much volume this week. Tomorrow is an unknown but looking like rain. I've gotten a good amount of volume this year so far so the fact I didn't get in a big ride today is no big deal.
Spent about 4 hours at Halters after that, where many familiar faces were present, as usual. Got the Niner back and discussed possibly adding another Niner to the stable. That damn FrankenMary is too heavy, I tell ya. Gotta swap that out with something SingleSpeed-a-Palooza worthy if possible...
