Monday, April 6, 2009

A Little Riding Companion

Today was beautiful!! It was around 70 degrees, and I was so happy! 

My training plan for today:
B: 90 minutes mostly even paced ride. Do some 60 second accelarations
(like the running strides) every 8 minutes, settle back into RPE 3 otherwise.
This morning I lovingly brought my bike down, put it on the trainer, and cleaned it really good. It was so dirty from my Saturday ride in the rain/snow/hail. It looked like I'd been mountain biking or something! Ok, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it was really dirty. I was even tempted to just take it outside and spray it off with the hose. Luckily, Pete caught me trying to get the bike out the door and asked me what I was doing. When I told him, he said, "That's a terrible idea." He explained to me that the hose-spray-down could ruin numerous things on my bike. So, if you ever get your bike really dirty and think, "Maybe I'll just spray it off then wipe it down really well." Don't do it.

I was half-way reluctant to take my bike outside again after getting it so clean, but there was no resisting when it was so nice outside! Pete even helped me get the bike trailer on since I had so much trouble last time.

I wore my new tri shorts to see if they would be more comfortable than last time. I wore them last time I rode on the trainer, and they were very irritating. Today, I wore them with knee warmers, though, so it wasn't the same, but at least I didn't feel too skimpy. They were Pete's knee warmers, and I'd never warn them before so when they were totally falling down by the time I got to Ethan's school, I thought they were just too big. I was going to just take them off, but I decided to give them another try (I'm so fair to my articles of clothing aren't I?) and I just had to pull them up further and put them under my shorts. Then they were just great! It was just chilly enough that I was glad to have them, but It was also nice to feel the air on my legs a little. What perfect weather! Too bad it is so fickle here . . . 

I rode for an hour and a half and I pushed it pretty hard. My heart-rate was above 150 pretty much the whole time. This was probably because, while I was cleaning my bike, Pete helped me move my speedometer to the front wheel where the computer could pick it up. I could tell how fast I was going now, and it was never fast enough!  

I didn't have time to check my training plan before I left, but I remembered the time and that I was supposed to do accelerations, but I couldn't remember how often I was supposed to do them. I decided to do them every 10 minutes, so whenever my timer beeped, I would take a drink of my power-aid, then go as hard as I could for about 40 seconds. I was supposed to do them for 60 seconds every 8 minutes, but that was pretty close. 

Elle stayed awake the entire time, probably because she actually slept all night last night, then slept in until 8:30 this morning. It was amazing! (This is what I thought at the time, but later Mindy told me that she actually did wake up and fuss a little in the middle of the night, and that she just went and tucked her back in and they went back to sleep! What a sweet sister hu? I'm so grateful to her for that!) Anyway, she kept up a running commentary the whole time. Most of the time I couldn't really tell what she was saying except when she would yell, "Cows!" or "Airplane!" "Uh-oh" when she would see a hill coming up. That just made my ride that much more fun. She of course wanted to go see the ducks since she thinks that's what we do on bike rides now, so we did that at the end. We'll have to bring something to feed them next time.

On the way home, just after passing one of the hills that Elle said "Uh-oh" about, a group of 6 or 7 guys went zooming past me. They said hello, and were soon out of sight. A little while later, I came upon three of them stopped to change a flat tire. One of them looks at me and says, "Uh, oh, she's kicking our a__ again!" as I rode by. Despite the profanity, I just had to laugh! At what point was I ever going faster than them? I'm sure he just said that for my benefit, but it was nice, and it made me smile for a while.

When I got home, I looked at my average speed and was surprised to see that it was 16.5 mph! That's including the 5 minutes or so while we stopped at the ducks, and the few minutes I had to stop because Elle was sticking her arm out of the bike trailer. Ah, I'm such a good mom.

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