Mike's Bike Blog

On Saturday I set out for one last Hugel tune up ride. I wanted to get in some hills and distance for final preparation for the ride. The Gawd Dam Loop is my own creation that basically follows the traditional dam loop, but I throw in a sprinkling of the Hugel route hills of Bluegrass, Beauford, Courtyard and Cuernavaca. I also threw in Alexan just for fun.

The Garmin reported back 5695 feet of climbing in 59 miles. It took me 3 hours 17 minutes of riding time. I stopped for 10 minutes, that includes 1 water stop and stop lights. I averaged 17.9 mph for the ride. Most of all I felt great the entire time even going up the Austin cobbles of Beauford. I also did this ride with my 11x23 cassette, not really the gearing I'd want to do the full Hugel with. Next week I'll switch out my cassette and put on the 12x25. I have been contemplating purchasing a 11x26 for my hill and all around cassette and leave the 11x23 for most racing. One last noteworthy piece to the ride was on the home stretch on 620 I opened it up a bit for a 5 minute interval I still had enough to average 23.9 mph and maxed it out at 30.8 mph.

Next week will be business as usual, I'll have hill repeats and intervals just no rides over 3 hours. I will pull back the week before Hugel, the number of intervals will be cut down along with the time. Since Hugel is not one of my A priority events I won't be doing a full taper. I'll just take a week of tapering to lower the fatigue and be fresh and ready for November 14th.