Saturday Ride

Ride - Celo Pacific Club Ride
Route - Inland Route

Starting this ride my goal was to stay with the group up the main climb, and let the chips fall as they may after that.  As we started the ride it looked like I would be able to accomplish that because the pace was pretty slow, however as we hit the hill my quads started to burn.  I was dropped climbing to Deer Springs Road, but was able to hang during the run towards Circle R Dr.  I was unable to stay with the lead group during the main climb, I just did not have the power.  That I understood, but the annoying thing was that I was completely dropped on the run towards the school house which is a rolling downhill run.  I definitely need to work on my burst accelerations, top speed, and cornering.

After the regroup I was able to pull myself together and did a couple of strong pulls during the run in to Oceanside.  In all it was a good ride that provided some valuable feedback.

A Nice Casual Ride

Tonight was supposed to be a nice easy going ride. After 6 months off I finally got my friend on a bicycle. And i was easily cruising at about 18 mph.

But then...

I almost ran over a skunk and got sprayed.

Then to make matters worse I fell at the train tracks trying to move backwards away from the tracks as a train came through.

Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Rollers

I bought some rollers tonight.  I am a excited to try them out, but also a little scared.   I will report about what happens.

Cycling Clubs

I have been thinking of joining a cycling club, not only so that I can have someone to talk to (my wife is a little sick of it), but really so I could have some training partners.  Looking around the internet I found that Celo Pacific was my local club and I went on a couple of rides with them and had a blast.  As there training rides start only a mile away from my house I was ready to send in my membership info, until the Boulevard Road Race.

At the race I was dissapointed to only see two guys from the club entered (actually there were two more that I did not see) and that they did not prepare together for the race.  On the other hand, I saw a nice tent for San Diego Bike Club, and they had a lot of guys entered that all lined up together at the start.  After doing some research on them it appeared that they put a lot of effort into their bike teams.  The Cat IV / V guys even do a mini training camp, have a designated coach, and the club rides work on specific goals.  The downside would be that I would have to drive to La Jolla for them.

So I was in a quandary, choose the local club, or go for the more "team" atmosphere.  While I was trying to make this decision I chose to stay away from the Celo Pacific group rides.  I feel bad using a club without any intention of joining them. But the other day, when I went to go do my time trial I saw ended up passing them on the road and was recognized instantly (Riding a classic Bianchi might have helped).  That has helped me make my decision.  Due to the fact that I would have to drive to ride with SDBC, and the size (I think I would get lost in the shuffle) I have decided to Join Celo Pacific.  Now I just need to save some money for the member's dues.

Weekend Workouts

Saturday-

I have come to the conclusion that I need to start quantifying my training so that I can get the most out of the road races that I am entering.  My hear rate monitor was the first step, the next step is time trials.  I decided on two courses, a long course of 14 miles which is an out and back along the San Luis Rey River, and a short course that has a hill (to be disclosed later).

My inaugural time trial results were:

Time - 42:10 minutes

Dist - 14.54 miles

Avg. Spd. - 20.6

Max Spd.- 26.7

Misc. Notes - My legs were still a bit sore from my run on Tuesday, and the trail had some wet spots in the run-in / run-out that slowed me down.

Sunday-

Saturday night I watched "Super Bad", very hilarious, well at least 'till I passed out.  My ability to drink has dropped, and I was out at 8:30.  I think it might be due to the weight lost.  I am down to 169 from 183!  Unfortunately, two days later my head is still hurting.  I decided to take it easy and did leg isolation drills at the gym.  Another new workout for me and something I need to do more of.

Thursday Workout

Today I did my typical Thursday night spin class.  However I did it with a new angle by bringing my heart monitor.  My goal was to channel the energy of the spin class, but be a little more scientific.  What I found was that the class easily pushed me into VO2Max, but the recovery was not there if I had just followed the leader.  So I didn't.  

In the end I modified the workout so that I could recover in the cardio zone, but overload myself in the "sprints."  

Running

I consider myself in decent shape.  In the last 6 months I have lost 10 pounds and am slowly but surly moving toward my goal weight of 160.  Also, a couple of weekends ago I rode 80 miles and was fine.

Yesterday, to help my wife out, we went on a run instead of dealing with the chaos of the gym.  This was probably the first run that I have been on in 6 months as I have been focusing on getting stronger on a bicycle.  Together we did a 2 mile jog and from there I did four .8 mile loops around the neighborhood with one solid hill at he beginning of each hill.  My goal was to take it up to my LT threshold (by feel, I use to run track and cross country) and recover.

The laps felt great and I was happy to get my workout in, but today I could not walk.  I guess my legs are not used to gravity.

Hopefully my workout I did tonight will help ease that pain.  60 minutes in zone 2 on the stationary bike at the gym to help get some blood in the muscles.