Monday, April 27, 2009

Not much to write about

Weekly miles 297
Tuesday: 47 hard group ride
Wednesday: 70 tempo
Thursday: 19 easy
Friday: 40 Funk's hill repeats
Saturday: 101 endurance pace
Sunday: 20 recovery

The ride Saturday was an unexpected century. Caleb was supposed to play tennis at 1:00 and the forecast was for rain off and on. I headed out at 8:45 with the plan of riding 60 or so. At 1:00 Connie called to say tennis was cancelled. Looking at the sky I thought 100 was a possibility. I did not got very far from home and covered almost every road in western Muscatine county and some in northern Louisa. Lunch stop was at Grandview for Godfathers pizza at the C-store. I can't ever remember having pizza in the middle of a ride but it sat pretty well. This is a great option for RAW.

Friday was the first hill workout I had done in while. It as super windy and Caleb had tennis at 5:00 so my time was limited to 2 hours. Funk's hill is pretty protected so I decided to do five repeats of the hill, then go back in G28 and back out the Burlington road to the start of the hill. This loop is 3.75 miles and gives you two pretty good climbs plus the head wind out Burlington road. I wanted each climb to be faster then the previous for all 5. My times were 2:36, 2:32, 2:26, 2:19 and 2:12. The last time up the heart rate was 187. To finish the workout I went up Miller's hill (Fletcher street) on the way to the high school. Afterwards my legs felt pretty good as if I should have pushed it more.

I need at least one hard hill workout each week leading up to the race. I have attached a YouTube video of the Yarnell pass in Arizona to show why. This 8 mile climb is just out of Congress AZ on the way to Prescott AZ and comes at around the 300 miles mark of the race. Since the race starts at noon I hope to hit this part of the ride around 7-8 AM. The goal will be to get there before it gets too hot. Last year in the afternoon is was 110 at the bottom of the climb. In Prescott they had a wading pool in the shade for the rides to cool off. You will see some of the teams doing "exchanges" during the climbs. They are usally the ones going really fast. There are many You Tube videos from RAAM 2008.


1 comment:

Chad Bishop said...

That's funny, I did that same funk's hill workout. At first I thought you meant you climbed it 40 times... I was a bit overwhelmed thinking you were that strong, as I only did about 6 repeats of that loop before I got bored.

I appreciate the link to the bike club. Adding the logo would be an even more appreciated touch. Keep up the good training.