Mike's Bike Blog

This week I only racked up 124 miles. On Sunday I brought out the mountain bike and road the trails around my house for 6 miles. That was a great change of pace. The entire week was a bit different than what I have been doing. Going forward for the rest of the month Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday will be my intense workouts. They will be short yet focused, I'll alternate hills with intervals. Back to this week though, On Monday I was able to get out on Limecreek for a 15 miler. I hit the hill and made it up in 3 minutes and 46 seconds, which is 1 second off my personal best. I really attacked from the base, I set a 1 minute Peak Power Record at 501 watts. However, I went to hard at the base and could feel it on the other sisters.

On Tuesday I did my Graystone/ 360 / Mesa route route. As soon as I get up to Mesa and Graystone I start the timer and do a 20 or 30 minute Time Trial. The goal is to keep my power at or above my function threshold power. On tuesday I went for a 20 minute effort. I set a Peak Power Record at the 5 minute mark on the ride (336 watts).

Wednesday I went out on Mesa and did 4 climbing repeat intervals. Once again on this day I set a Peak Power Record at the 10 minute mark at 307.

Thursday I was back on doing the Graystone / 360 / Mesa route, this time a 30 minute effort. Thursdays ride felt really good, it was hard, but the effort felt like it went a lot better than the Tuesday ride. On Tuesday I seemed to struggle a bit to keep my power and speed up. For the 3rd time this week I set a Peak Power Record. This ride at 10 minutes the power was 307 and 30 minutes at 263. The normalized power for the ride was 305.

Now for today's ride, I got a late start so my plan of riding out to Volente twice was cut in half. I only had time for 1 time out and back. Since I only was going to do it once I wanted to make it count. For the first 10 miles out to Volente on Limecreek I averaged 20.31 mph. On the return trip I averaged 18.14 mph.

On the way down to Volente about 2 miles from Volente Beach I passed a guy on a mountain bike heading the other way. Judging from the squeaks coming from his bike I estimated I'd catch up to him around the Sisters. I nailed it right on, I caught him and passed him right at the base of the Sisters. Since I learned a good lesson of not going out too hard at the base after some pleasantries with the guy on the mountain bike I proceeded to jump out of the saddle and head up the hill, but not too hard. Before I knew it I was at the top of the 2nd Sister. As I'm going up the final Sister I thought to myself how much flatter the hill felt today. It was really crazy, but the hill didn't look as steep as I crested and hit the lap on my Garmin I almost fell over when it showed my time up the hill was 3 minutes and 35 seconds! I'm 5 seconds of from my goal time of 3 minutes and 30 seconds.

That was a great way to cap off a good week. Tomorrow I hope to get out for a long distance tune up before the Outlaw Trail 100.