Saturday was a good day.

In a brief update, last week was a good week.  Wednesday was the 3 hours test (see here) which did me good.  Thursday legs felt sharp on the ride to and from work on Thursday and Friday was a rest/eating day.  Which lead into Saturday.

Saturday ride.

The plan had been to head back up towards the >400 km mark so I plotted a 300km-ish course around the Fens and back home with a second loop to top up over the 400 km mark.  In other weekends, I'd found one of the biggest hurdles had been clothing - too hot during the day and warm at night or cool during the day and freezing at night?  I had learnt the lesson so opted for a big loop plus a smaller loop depending on fatigue, time and energy.  The benefit would be a second punch with switched kit, the downside would be the mental battle of "do I have to leave the house again????"

In numbers:


So how did it go?
Looking at the numbers in review, I'm not sure.  It's my second longest ride to date and my power, speed and energy did well.  Although I didn't do 260 miles as planned (250 miles instead) what I did do I think was with a good quality so rather pleased with it.  The riding into the wind and tail wind heading South down the Fens kind of nullified the wind advantage/disadvantage so possibly a fair comparison to other rides.  Although not as long as the 438 km from a few weeks ago, this ride was more "measured" as I tried to stick to around 130 bpm for the first 150-200 km and ignore all other metrics following on from how I felt with the test the previous Wednesday.

There was a couple of bad bits - wrong drink choice at one point - but nothing nothing crushingly bad (there's an update pending with the real details).  My Sunday ride was a lot more relaxed (2km to the park and back with a 4 yr old on a tag-a-long and a 6 yr old spinning freely) and my body is bouncing back relatively quickly.

In bullet points:

  • I'm sure there's a reality/TMI blog post in the offing about the impact this has on my body, but this was a good yet tough day.  Speed wise, endurance, stamina and everything else went well.  
  • A minor mechanical issue on the way up with the headwinds made me seek a LBS around Brig and eat pasties from the pie shop next door.  The southbound leg was good and fast with a route modification helping - it'll be harder to get onto, but the straighter route will help.
  • The climbs coming back through Leicestershire were tough on the legs and stomach and thankfully on the route post-Richmond in July, the route will be flatter so I won't be doing climbs at this distance into the ride.
  • The loop back and out again worked well.  Swapping clothes made sense and will help plan for this weeks night ride into London.
  • Carbon fiber battery works well.

Comments

Popular Posts