Big Ride

We had a lovely 4th of July vacation at Kim and Ed's river house. I have been planning for some time to try for a sort of time trial personal best on the bike during this vacation. It was almost thwarted because I forgot to bring my heart rate monitor chest strap. For most of the Sunday before I was expecting that the cyclocomputer wouldn't work unless I was wearing the chest strap. As I drove out to my starting point I even went by the only bike shop listed in lowly Parker, AZ to see if they looked serious enough to have a chest strap I could buy. They didn't look very serious. There was a sign in the window that stated they were closed for the Summer.

When I was setting up for the ride I could tell that the cyclocomputer does work without the chest strap. I started at about 5:30am so as to avoid as much hot weather as possible. Wade drove up and said goodbye as I was getting ready. It seems to me this happened once before, or he has passed me once or twice before on the Ehrenberg road.

My goal was to go 60 miles at a minimum 20mph pace. I was pretty sure that I should avoid going out hard, maybe take it a little easy for the first 30-40 minutes. But, as it was I didn't feel like I was pushing. and I still went at a pretty good clip from early on. It was fairly easy for me to maintain 22-23 mph for long stretches. I took my camel back with about 2/3rds of it frozen and then the rest filled up with water before the ride. I also had two bottles of Cytomax and two Clif bars. I started eating one of the Clif bars 30 minutes into the ride. But, I don't think I am going to buy things like that anymore. In between hard breathing, it took me 40 minutes to eat the silly thing. I could just see someone aspirating a big chunk of the stuff and being found in a putrifying heap on the side of the road two weeks later.

There were four houses with dogs on the loose that I had to make sure I stayed ahead of. I tried to make a mental note of where they were and on the way back I crossed over to the opposite side of the road to avoid them. They must have been inside with the growing heat of the day. Whenever a car or truck passed me, I tried to catch as much of their windstream as possible. It sometimes helped a lot. But, many of the cars would swing clear over into the opposing lanes to avoid scaring me, I guess.

At the halfway point I was about 6 minutes ahead of pace. I stopped my bike to make a nature call. When I got back on I was hurting real badly. I had a very sore spot of cramping/pulled muscle/bruising high on my left hamstring where it connects to the pelvis. Unfortunately, this spot also bears a lot of bodyweight on the saddle. I had to take it real easy for a couple of minutes and move around until I got comfortable and I must have worked some of the tightness out because I was able to continue without it bothering me. But, I was sore for the next two days, weird.

By now there was only a little ice in my camel back. I wanted to douse myself good with water but wasn't able to. There were a couple of good long spells where my speed was down in the 17-19 mph range. But, I kept gauging and computing and it seemed like I was going to make my goal. After a while, it is really just a mental thing. If I had needed to ride farther I would have needed more nutrition and more water/drink. As it was I barely had enough. But, I don't think I suffered for lacking. The road doglegs from due north to NE for the last 5 miles. I was fighting a bit of a headwind from about mile 45-55 and was so hoping that would ease when I turned NE. It did, and I made it back to my car with almost 4 minutes to spare.

I'm not sure I'm going to do this again. Perhaps the next big goal (besides going 22 miles solo in 1 hour) will be more team time trial type rides. (Fast 100 miles or fast 1 hour)