Training

| UltraRob | Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 3:43 pm

Last week I didn’t ride much and what I did was pretty easy. I was tired after Hell Week and felt I really needed some recovery. Friday I did a few harder efforts to see what I thought I could do on the weekend. I actually felt really good which was good since I had 2 long rides planned for the weekend.

Saturday I rode with the 10:00 Acacia Park group ride. I think we had about 60 riders. As we got close to the Link Road hill, the pace got hard as normal and gaps started opening. I had been sitting in the middle and had to bridge up a couple times to stay with the front group. I managed to hang on over the top the hill which I hadn’t been before going to Texas. I really thought I’d get popped off as people started attacking and setting up for the sprint at PPIR but I stayed in the lead group as it got smaller. I was feeling good when we were a 100 yards out and was going to go for it. I realized that lead out guys were pulling off and saw the guys that were ready to go and decided not to look silly and sat up. Part way back into town I dropped back from the lead group to ride with my friend and save some for the rest of the ride. I then rode out through Black Forest and Palmer Lake and met with the rest of the family at some friends in Monument. Early in the day the wind wasn’t bad but by the time I was riding into Palmer Lake, I had a tough headwind. I got in 109 miles with 4619 feet of climbing.

Sunday it was very wind as forecast. I rode out to Elbert and had mainly a cross-wind with a little tailwind. I originally had planned to continue north and make a loop through Castle Rock getting about a 110 miles. I had started late and with the wind slowing me, it would have been after dark when I finished. According to the weather data from Black Forest near the Palmer Divide, the wind was pretty steady around 30 mph when I crossed the Palmer Divide. I also wasn’t feeling so great. I’m very allergic to cedar and according to the chart from pollen.com, there’s a lot of cedar pollen along with elm that I’m somewhat allergic to. Anyway it wasn’t fun to be riding and I nearly turned around early in the ride but managed to get in 92 miles with 3396 feet of climbing.