It's Been Over a Week

My bike, the one I sold my Gibson Les Paul for, has made an excellent clothes hanger for the past 9 days or so.  It's not that I've wanted to neglect it's carbon fiber frame, light wheels, SRAM Force components...it's just that, well ...  I've got a lot of responsibilities.  How did THAT  happen?

The last time I rode I had a so-so ride to my in-laws' home about 75 miles north.  Last week I missed a ride due to illness, another to weather, one to work and another because of family obligations.  Then, I didn't want to tire myself before the trail pikermi (which killed me anyway), so I skipped another.  This week was more of the same, work, work, family, work.

The upshot of missing rides is that I get to run more, and run hard!  But, I'm smack dab in the middle of training for a race that I'm taking very seriously.

Today it sure looked like I was going to miss my ride again.  I was at a meeting that ran an hour late, but it was a bit important and a bit personal, so I wanted to stay.  My wife and oldest daughter were off doing some important work and couldn't pick up my youngest from track practice, which meant, no ride again for me.

Unfortunately for my daughter, but luckily for me, her practice was canceled.

I decided to take the toughest local route there is, to Pena Blanca Lake.  It's a route I often take because it's scenic, the road is superb, traffic is minimal, and it's challenging.  What more could one want?

I completed the approximately 32 mile route in 1:46, the official average speed of 17.6 mph.  Now that's not a great speed most of the time, but this has over 2000 feet of climbing and the nature of the climbs is challenging.  I'll have to look up my previous best, but I know it was less than 17 mph, making this a significant improvement. 

Along the way I shot down two miles in 3:51!  I was smoking and that was fun!  It felt good.  I have learned a lot about how far I can push myself over the past month or so and am more confident about my abilities to recover from a near all-out effort.


I think that the cross training with jump rope until death, pushups, pullups and other various body-weight exercises has helped me recruit/develop fast-twitch muscles and improve anaerobic capacity.  While it's true I've not ridden for a while, my legs were a bit tired from running hard and I'm feeling kind of flat due to a bug that's going around. 

And since I've been feeling kinda ... eh, about my lack of weight loss lately, I decided to look at some old pics.  Here's one after about 2 months of weight loss:

And here's the one that makes me feel better because I weigh the same in both shots, in fact, am wearing the same exact clothes!  And in the pic on the left, I was lifting weights, regularly.