Since the B5 Challenge is over with tomorrow, I went out today and did my 3 mile time trial for it. I didn’t get a chance to look up my time from January but remembered it being somewhere around 12 minutes. I figured I’d shoot for 8 minutes and be happy with 9 minutes. I didn’t come lose to the 8 minutes and didn’t quite make the 9 minutes. I finished in 9:06. On the ride profile, the 2 flags mark the beginning and end of the time trail. As you can see it’s not exactly flat but it’s the best thing close to my house or work. After I got back I looked it up and I had done a 11:42 in January. I’m really happy with a 22% improvement since my training really isn’t targeted at 3 mile distances.

I lost weight the beginning of the month and now I’ve gained it back. Actually I was done half a pound this morning. That leaves me half a pound from my goal. Hopefully my weight swings down for tomorrow mornings weigh in instead of up. My weight peaked out at 197 pounds in December and I’m now at 174.5. I’ve really used DietPower to make sure I was cutting calories enough to lose weight but not so much as to affect my training.

After I did the time trial, I met up with the group for the lunch time training ride. I don’t know if I was tired from doing the time trial or from my heat training. I definitely felt a little tired but still pushed myself and finished 3rd but once again without the fast Rock Shox guys.

After not getting the temperature hot enough on Sunday for my heat training, I borrowed another 1500 watt heater from my sister and brother-in-law to use in addition to my Dad’s heater. In my last 2 heat training sessions, I got the temperature to 100 degrees one time and the other time I got it to 102 degrees. Last night once I turned off the heaters, I was actually fairly comfortable with the temperature around 100 degrees. When the heaters are on, they have a small fan that must be blowing 120 degree air on me so no air movement actually feels cooler. One thing is for sure, my sweat glands definitely work.

My RAAM training is pretty much over with. About the only thing long rides will do is make me tired for the race. I did the Acacia Park group ride on Saturday. It was only about 3 hours and I won’t even do anything that long between now and the start. I’ll do the Wednesday training race to help keep my high end fitness and a couple other rides with some short sprints.

About the only training now that will make a difference is getting used to heat. Last night I did my first heat training session. I put my trainer in the downstairs bathroom and turned on an electric heater. I borrowed a different heater from my dad than what I had used when preparing for the 2002 Furnace Creek 508. My dad thought this one would let me get it even hotter than the other one. It turned out I could only get it up to 87 degrees and with the other one I had gotten it to 93 degrees. This one does have a small fan in it so I pointed it at me and it felt like I had about 100 degree air blowing on me. We’ve remodeled since the last time I did heat training and there’s a bigger gap under the door so maybe I’m losing more heat out of the room.

In any case I did a lot of sweating in the 1 hour and 5 minutes I rode. My heart rate seemed at least 10 beats higher than it normally is for the easy effort I was doing. Danielle kept coming in and hanging out with me. She said I was going to be in big trouble for making such a mess on the floor with the puddles of sweat.

The RMCC 300k brevet results are posted.

Since riding 3 back to back long rides wasn’t enough, I did the lunch time training race today. The group was smaller than the last couple weeks and the fast Rock Shox guys weren’t there but still plenty of strong riders. I didn’t feel terrible but I certainly could feel fatigue in my legs. On the climb, I could only get my HR into the low 180s and normally I push it to the low 190s. On the first 2 laps, I managed to almost to hang with the lead group on the climb but had a small gap at the top. Both times I was able to work hard and get back on the flat. As soon as we started up the climb for the last time, I got dropped by 3 guys. I was tempted to back off and not push too hard but managed to stay motivated and keep the hammer down. By the top of the climb I had reeled in 2 of the guys to finish 2nd.

Yesterday I took off work so I could do my last 3 days in a row of long rides. Not only did I plan to ride long but also to do a lot of climbing to see how I felt when I was already tired. The first 1.5 hours has really tough and I was having my doubts on the climb up to Woodland Park. It just seemed like my legs were dead and had no power. They weren’t sore but I just couldn’t get them to work. I had 3 friends meeting me in Woodland Park or I likely would have turned around and done something flatter. A little ways before Woodland Park, my legs started feeling good.

I met my friends in Woodland Park and we had a nice spin to Deckers. Just after Deckers there is a 4 mile climb at 8% grade. I felt good and pushed pretty hard up the climb. Tom and Bruce went off the back about right away but Rich hung on for a while and never dropped out of sight. Our 50+ mph descent into Buffalo was interrupted by road construction. We then do the pretty ride along the river to Pine. Rich needed to get back so we didn’t do the 6 mile climb up to Pine Junction and headed back.

I continued to feel good on the way back and rode a good pace on the climbs. I got a little extra climbing in by dropping down to the other guys at the tops of the climbs. The other guys were suffering the last 15 miles in Woodland Park. I pulled into a fairly strong headwind but still had to be careful to keep from dropping them.

Since we hadn’t done the climb to Pine Junction, I was going to ride up to Divide. They clouds were getting dark and the temperature dropping so I thought it was probably better for me to drop to lower elevation. Since I was going to be descending for 15 miles, I decided to get a burger at Wendy’s. When I came back out, it was just starting to sprinkle. By the time I got to the other end of Woodland Park where Team Telecycle is, it was beginning to downpour. I stopped at Team Telecycle and Paul said a severe storm warning had just been issued and he thought I should keep going or I might get stuck there. I really didn’t that was a good idea because I was afraid I’d get hypothermic. Even in the middle of the summer, rain at 8400 feet is cold and this time of year it’s really cold. In fact, Pikes Peak got a several inches of snow out of the storm and there was fresh white down below timberline this morning. Fortunately my coach, Sharon, was there picking up rental bikes for some clients coming in this week and she had room to throw my bike in and give me a ride down into town.

I was thinking maybe I could get in some more riding down low and it was only sprinkling where Sharon dropped me off. To the south and east the clouds were very ugly with lots of lightening but along the foothills it didn’t look too bad. I decided to ride toward my house and see what happened. When I got close to my house, it started raining and didn’t look good so I stopped. It turned out it didn’t do much more than get the street wet until quite a bit later. Fortunately I wasn’t riding out east because they got 100 mph winds that tore some buildings apart and closed the road I was riding on the day before.

I had planned on doing 150 miles which would have gotten me 500 miles for the 3 days but instead I only got in 115 miles. It really was equivalent to more since I had gotten a ride down 2300 vertical feet. I got in 10,069 feet of climbing with an average speed of only 13.9 mph but that was affected by not riding down from Woodland Park.

After riding hard in the Saturday’s 300k, I went out east to Limon on Sunday to work on spending time in the aero bars. It was a beautiful day and not too windy unlike the last time I rode out to Limon. In spite of having very little moisture this year, the hills have greened up somewhat.

I felt much better than I expected too and rode well. I put in 165 miles with 3898 feet of climbing and averaged 17.5 mph.

Yesterday I rode the RMCC 300k brevet and felt good. My knee only felt a bit irritated early in the ride and then was fine. I stayed with the lead group almost all day. The only time I wasn’t with the lead group was for a little bit after the next to last control. I had gone to the restroom and apparently nobody else needed to go. They got ready to go and didn’t see me so they took off. I came out of the bathroom to see them disappearing up the road. We were setting a blazing speed and I really didn’t think I could catch back on. I had to chase for a few miles but finally caught them.

The previous course record was 10:10 and we did it in 9:53! Our ride time was only 9:13 giving an on the bike average of 20.1 mph for a 186 mile ride.