My longest bike ride so far...
Since I injured my calf and can't run, I've upped my biking mileage. Before the injury, I was scheduled to do three rides a week. This week, I did three rides on back-to-back days, and then, after one rest day, I did a long ride, which was today. The ride was scheduled for one hour and 55 minutes at a primarily 122 bpm pace.
The one thing I haven't been enjoying about the bike rides is the route I've been taking to get out to the apartment, which is all country roads. My route is on a busy street with a lot of trucks, many gravel trucks, and stones all over the road. I worry that they will cause a flat or cause me to wipe out into traffic.
Instead, I took a route through my old neighborhood today, which avoided all those hazards and had very little traffic. It was great, very relaxing. I was not on edge like the other route, and I decided that going through our old neighborhood would be my new route. I'm not sure why I hadn't been doing that before.
I was looking forward to today's ride because the allocated time would allow me to do one of my old rides, which is over 50 km long, beautiful, and very relaxing. It is also very hilly, which is good for building leg strength but not good for keeping the heart rate down.
This ride was also a test to see if my neck would hold out and not get sore. It didn't, at least not to the level of my first ride, which was only 54 minutes, and I had extreme neck pain after 30 minutes.
Even though I couldn't keep my heart rate near the right zone, I can. It's getting lower than the previous rides, which shows I'm getting in better shape. What I try to focus on the most is keeping my cadence between 85 - 90 rpm, which is harder than it sounds, but it was my norm in the past.
Before the ride, I intentionally didn't take beta-alanine or glutamine, as it seems that when I get home after taking them, I get into a bonk-type mode. Instead, I've decided to take them with my post-ride protein shake, and as I write this now, I have the tingling from the beta-alanine. It should take a couple of weeks before that feeling goes away.
I could have ended my ride at the two-hour mark but decided to go longer for three reasons: one, to build mental strength, as I didn't want to; two, that an additional 20 minutes when fatigued is when you get the most benefit out of the training (at least that's what I tell myself); and three, I wanted to make sure I got in a minimum of 50 km.
After the ride, I showered, and when I got out of the shower, I noticed in the mirror my left elbow looked like it had a golf ball in it. It was caused by my wipeout a couple weeks ago. It was the first time I noticed it visually. I felt it because I couldn't put any pressure on it, and even today, during my ride, I tried to go arrow, but my left elbow couldn't take it. It looks so bad, I can't believe it's the first time I saw it.
The beauty of this ride was that I started out the door at 8:30 a.m. and was back just before 11 a.m. It's great to get training done early in the morning and have your afternoon open. The later you start your training, the more you think about it. If you get it over early, you no longer think about it and that you still have to do it.
This afternoon, I went to Wheels of Oakville and got a new helmet, as my existing one is cracked. I hoped to get one last week, but they didn't have a red one, and I was going to check at the other store. Turns out they didn't have one either.
The only thing I didn't like was how it made me look when I put it on. I thought I looked like a "duffus," and I asked Alice what she thought. She told me all the helmets were the same, and she couldn't tell the difference between this helmet's look and my existing one.
When I got home, I compared it to my existing helmet, which was the same size. The existing helmet has a better paint job; this one is plain white. I also liked the name; the others were specialized helmets, and I don't know why, but I don't like the specialized brand.
Bike - 2:20:49 - 56.51 km - 24.1 kph avg pace
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