Mike's Bike Blog

Sunday morning started with meeting Joe to head out on a small group ride for a 2 - 2 1/2 hour "recovery" ride. After meeting up with everybody on Shoal Creek we meandered through neighborhoods and made our way to MoPac. We cruised all the way down to Slaughter. I did run into a slight problem, I hit a pot hole that launched me straight up into the air and when I landed it made the nose of my saddle point up into the air. I tried to get it back to my comfy position but any little bump in the road and it was back up in the air. I was told a couple times to slow down, well it was a recovery ride.

On the way back there were a couple of spirited sprints that I was able to reach quadruple digits (1018 watts) on the power meter. The ride was 37.33 miles, I rode around warming up while enroute to the start. Total ride time was 2'22:09. After the ride I headed over to Nelo's to get the seat fixed. Two problems, the first being that Nelo's is not open on Sundays. Even if they were open the second problem is they've moved. I'm not sure where exactly, Joe mentioned that they were going to move, but I didn't see a note on the door as to where. A quick look at their website doesn't mention where they went either.

After my failed attempt with Nelo's the weather was looking really good. It was suppose to rain and be a miserable day. I was going to do the Dam Loop, but with it looking so good I called home to see if we should head up to Marble Falls to pick Strawberries.

Since we were leaving so late in the day my plan of the 100 mile route wasn't in the cards. I only had time to do the original 60 mile route, but the beauty of it would be with a few extra miles I could still come up with 100 miles for the day. This wasn't going to be a regular century, there was going to be 4-5 hours from when I got off the bike till when I started for round two. When I got on the bike and headed out my legs were rebelling. They were stiff and heavy, felt like about mile 80 on a 100 mile ride already. I thought I was going to be in store for a rough 63 mile haul back home. Luckily my legs woke up about 10 miles into it and offered no objections the rest of the ride. Last year I hit a stiff headwind on 281 up to Burnet and this year was more of the same. The wind pattern followed the same as last year, maybe not as intense, but there were times I felt the crosswind as well.

On the backroads outside of Bertram once again my saddle pointed up again when I bounced on the saddle. I pulled over and tried to get it back to my setting. While I was stopped I answered the call of nature, but mother nature had the last laugh when I got tangled up with a vine with thorns. It tore a few scratches into my leg.

How about some stats? I have last years ride info from the 1st Annual Strawberry Classic.

1st Annual Strawberry Classic (No power data)

• Avg. Speed: 16.27
• Active Time: 3'43:03
• Duration Time: 3'53:39
• Avg Cadence: 76

2nd Annual Strawberry Classic

• Avg. Speed: 19.8
• Active Time: 3'05:27
• Duration Time: 3'11:57
• Avg. Cadence: 79
• Avg. Power: 214
• Normalized Power: 237
• Energy (Kj): 2518

Looks like I cut almost 40 minutes off my active and duration times. One stat that looks very promising is the speed buckets. The time I was above 20 miles per hour

• 20-22: 29:27 for 14.7%
• 22-24: 28:14 for 14.1%
• 24-26: 18:45 for 9.4%
• 26-28: 9:33 for 4.8%

My legs felt great once I got going and felt like I had another 40 miles in them while I was cruising around to get the 3 extra miles. It is an unorthodox way to to do a century, but I have a feeling this is good preparation for doing team endurance events (24 to 48 hour type events) where a rider would do a set number of laps or mileage and then rest and wait while a team member does their laps before going out again.