I have been meaning to get this post up for awhile, but didn’t have the time/drive/energy. (Blogging if you’re not naturally a writer by nature is a lot more challenging then I would have thought.) It is a change of plans for this summer’s riding!
So my initial goal is to get to 10,000 miles by this time next year. I was thinking 12,000 but with some of the changes this year I scaled that back. And it’s not as much as it sounds. With winter commuting I am averaging about 450 miles a month. Assuming that I do that for 5 months of the year it would come to 2250. In the summer, my commuting alone will be around 850 miles a month for 5 months, for a total of 4250. With two transition months of somewhere in between, before any other training I am over 7500 miles. That only leaves 2500 miles of racing and training or about 100 miles a week during the summer.
At one point there were possible plans to ride in Maui and a better chance to do the S2S. Both of those are on the shelf for now; instead it looks like in mid/late-June (when it isn’t so hot) that I will do a one day ride to Idaho. 340 miles and about 15,000 feet of climbing. It’s not a race (well against other people, there will be a “racing” aspect against the clock) or an organized ride, it’s just an endurance ride. A test to see if I’m cut out to do ultra-cycling, especially after my DNF on the S2S last year.
The positives are, I can set MY pace and not have to worry about what the group is doing, it’s early enough to avoid the really bad heat that I won’t have had time to acclimate to, I can start on my schedule with enough sleep and there is a possibility of multiple support vehicles, taking some of the pressure off of Trisha and the kids. There really is no need to race, as just by the nature of the ride it will be enough to finish. The best part: it’s on the way to final destination for a family vacation that includes cycling!
There is a wonderful cycling area where we go in the immediate area and a short drive to Montana. The extra support vehicles will be in the form of Trisha’s family all headed in the same direction. And my recovery can be spent while overlooking a beautiful wooded area above a lake. Between this ride and a plan to ride to Hurricane Ridge, I am down to under 2000 miles to complete my goal.
While not Haleakela , Hurricane Ride still rises from sea level to almost 8000 feet. It is a very consistent climb as well with switch backs similar to the one’s I would have ridden on Maui. This might be a July type ride. The best part is, I can leave any weekend day and be at the top by early afternoon from my house with a nice total ride similar in length to a century.
One of the things I will be working on is less speed...well not precisely, but that will be the end result. I have proven that for the amount of time I train as a recreational cyclist I am in the top 10% of the riders around here. I need to take that power and spread it out over a longer period of time and not burn myself out after 120 miles. One of the things I will be doing is less group training.
It has it's benefits, but I need to go out and get my own pace down on longer rides. That and to accommodate time with my family I have found very few groups that go out at five in the morning. I am looking forward to some nice challenges this year.
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