Longest Bike Ride
This was one of the perfect weekends in the Seattle area. Tempatures in the mid 60's and lots of sunshine. I arranged to spend Sunday doing a long bike ride and it finished up being just over 53 miles.
it was good to be out on a long ride. Time is starting to run out on my 70 Mile Tour de Cure ride in May.
I also added in a 'big ass' hill to get over which you can see below at as the near vertical black line. This is Lakemont blvd starting at the end of W. Lake Sammamish and ending at the Newcastle Golf Course. My buddy John has done this ride a couple of times and he's told me about how tough it is. After my recent success with Bell-Red road (see below) I thought I'd be able to tackle this hill with no problems. Good grief, I couldn't have been more incorrect.
The hill feels like it never ends. It's a couple of miles long and is severly elevated. At one point I had to stop and walk the bike up for a couple of hundred yards. It was so steep at the point I was walking that my heart-rate was still in the mid 150's! This will be my new test ride that I will come back to every couple of weeks. Besides increasing my physical fitness to handle this hill, I need to really think about either adding a 3rd front gear or at least getting a compact crank which changes my gearing so that on severe hills I can spin away without coming off the bike.
Aside from the hill, I didn't have many other problems. My wrists started getting sore around the 40 mile mark. I was having to change hand positions often to keep them from getting numb.
I did make a big mistake in my liquids that I took with me. I had read that salt loss is the biggest thing that saps energy and performance on longer distance training, and even gatorade doesn't provide as much as you need, so I decided to add some table salt to the gatorades I took with me (and in my Camelbak). I got the mixture all wrong and it tasted like I was downing salt-water the whole ride. It was just annoying enough to anger me, but wasn't so bad that I felt compelled to stop and change out all the water bottles. In hindsight now I think the first gas station I went by I should've switched the stuff out.
Quick Stats: 53.2 miles, 14.1 mph average, heart-rate 152bpm average for 3:54 minutes. 4256 Calories total
it was good to be out on a long ride. Time is starting to run out on my 70 Mile Tour de Cure ride in May.
I also added in a 'big ass' hill to get over which you can see below at as the near vertical black line. This is Lakemont blvd starting at the end of W. Lake Sammamish and ending at the Newcastle Golf Course. My buddy John has done this ride a couple of times and he's told me about how tough it is. After my recent success with Bell-Red road (see below) I thought I'd be able to tackle this hill with no problems. Good grief, I couldn't have been more incorrect.
The hill feels like it never ends. It's a couple of miles long and is severly elevated. At one point I had to stop and walk the bike up for a couple of hundred yards. It was so steep at the point I was walking that my heart-rate was still in the mid 150's! This will be my new test ride that I will come back to every couple of weeks. Besides increasing my physical fitness to handle this hill, I need to really think about either adding a 3rd front gear or at least getting a compact crank which changes my gearing so that on severe hills I can spin away without coming off the bike.
Aside from the hill, I didn't have many other problems. My wrists started getting sore around the 40 mile mark. I was having to change hand positions often to keep them from getting numb.
I did make a big mistake in my liquids that I took with me. I had read that salt loss is the biggest thing that saps energy and performance on longer distance training, and even gatorade doesn't provide as much as you need, so I decided to add some table salt to the gatorades I took with me (and in my Camelbak). I got the mixture all wrong and it tasted like I was downing salt-water the whole ride. It was just annoying enough to anger me, but wasn't so bad that I felt compelled to stop and change out all the water bottles. In hindsight now I think the first gas station I went by I should've switched the stuff out.
Quick Stats: 53.2 miles, 14.1 mph average, heart-rate 152bpm average for 3:54 minutes. 4256 Calories total
posted by daryl @ 9:04 PM
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