Hills

My ride on Saturday was interesting. I realized two things about this upcoming race; that my competitive nature will likely cause me to kill myself on this race, and I am not ready for the hills.

There are a million cyclists around the route that I ride. Amazingly though, I only really see them when they are flying passed me or they are on the other side of the street. Saturday I was heading up a small but long incline when I got this funny feeling. I realized that there was somebody riding right on my tail. I looked over my shoulder for a brief enough time to see that this person was completely decked out in cycling gear. Without even thinking about it my competitive nature kicked in and the next thing I knew I was pedaling as fast as I could, lowering the gear to get more speed up the hill. If you had asked me 3 minutes earlier I would have said I was doing my best up that hill and could not do any better. When I got to the top of the hill I was dead. I no longer saw the rider out of the corner of my eye and took the opportunity to attempt to recover at all costs. Towards the end of the ride I found myself passing quite a few riders who, if not really hard core, at least spent money on bike gear like they were hard core. This made me feel great considering I don't even have shoes. How about that, me using only half my leg, passing a rider wearing a "Ride for the Roses" jersey!

My big goal of the day was to conquer one of the larger hills in this neighborhood. The elevation is about on par with some of the worst hills on the ride but the hill overall is shorter. I did the hill twice. The first time I did not raise my gear enough and found myself mashing for distance very quickly. I have no idea how I made it up that hill in the gear I was in. I felt like I was going to die. About half way up I passed an old man working in his lawn. By the look on his face when he saw me I can only guess that I looked as bad as I felt. The second time I changed gears much earlier and got the peddles going as fast as possible, knowing that the hill would slow them down quickly. I think I was doing better at the halfway point but after that the decline was exponential. In a high gear it's much harder to keep the bike under control and once my feel slowed down I didn't have any momentum and ended up mashing my way to the top again. The main result of the whole thing is that I bought some clip shoes on Sunday. I'll have to take my bike in to get the peddles put on this week.

Spin class and 16 mile ride

Saturday I did another round of spin class followed by a good outdoor ride. It had just rained so I had a good 10-15 mph head wind for a good part of the ride. I wasn't able to hit any really challenging hills so instead I focused on not lowering my gear while tackling the hills. Adding the wind made this even more relevant.

My next ride I have a hill that I would like to try. The problem is I am only finding steep hills, what I really want are long ones.

They posted the actual route but it's got some pretty dangerous roads so I wont ride it alone. I'm going to drive it next week to get a feel for the terrain. I also need to take the maintenance class for my bike soon because I'm sure flats will be common on these roads.

20-mile ride and spin class

Today my goal was to do the 8:30 spin class and follow it up with a 20 mile bike ride. Stacy's class was extra hard. We did endurance drills at a quick pace adding some small resistance for the first half of class. Then for the first 15 minutes of the second half of class we did a huge hill followed by two songs of sprints. After that I wasn't sure how well I would do on my 20 mile bike ride. The ride I picked doesn't have many large hills though it does have some pretty short ones. I finished in 1 hour 35 minutes which includes all of the stop lights and the 5 minute break I took at the car to refill my camel pack. All in all I think I rode about 15 mph. I figure I can probably average about 14 mph riding with 5 minute breaks each hour which would put me at about 13 mph recorded time. This means my goal should be ~3:15.

The elevation map posted on the LiveStrong sight shows some pretty massive hills so some point soon I'm going to have to find a training group to get on some roads with better hills. I was pretty happy with my ability to tackle the hills I did. I know I could do much better if I had the clip in peddles so I could use my whole leg.

The beginning

I want to thank everybody who has donated so far (Judy and Lou, Jenn, Dad, Sarah, Iffy). It means so much to me.

My first update is that I bought a bike 3 weeks ago. It took me a while to decide what I wanted. I actually test rode many bikes over a 4 week period and was going to get a hybrid when Sarah convinced me I really needed a road bike. I settled on a Specialized Dolce, which is an entry-level road bike designed for women. I got a great deal on a 44cm 2006 that they were desperate to get rid of now that the 2008 line is coming out. I love the bike.

So far I've done two 12 mile rides and one 16 mile ride. The first ride I was still getting used to the bike. By the third ride I'd really settled into the bike and things felt great. My ride is 40 miles but I'm not worried because the 16 mile ride I did right after my hour long spin class so I effectively did ~35 miles (including some killer hills in spin). I need to find some good "real" hills to practice on.