On Training

By now, some of you have noticed that I might ride my bikes a bit, now and then, and sometimes go for a run.  Organized training?  Not so much.

There is a half marathon with my name on it in 5 weeks.  I am not running intervals.  I am not following the "4 runs a week" plan.  I am trying to get out 3 times a week, 2 medium kinds of run (intervals?  what, are you kidding?), and one really long one (10 miles last week!) with a friend who really does train.  I figure, at this rate, I will be able to finish.  Not so worried about time.  I run to, well, run.  Plonk plonk plonk plonk plonk...

And that bicycling stuff?  Again, I don't train.  No intervals.  No plans.  I commute to work 4 days a week (10 miles RT, with a hill).  I try to do something on weekends, but it usually a club ride or something with Cecil (something with Cecil is always longer and harder than the club ride.  But definitely fun).  Or I might think I should be working on the climbing, and go ride up some hills - we've got some nice ones within easy riding distance of my house.

I have been averaging about 400 miles a month, except for August.  Somehow I found myself, at the end of the last week, with only 3.5 miles to go to hit 700 miles.  One bike commute later, and there I was.

Last week, I wondered if Cecil wanted to ride somewhere.  Her weekend schedule was such that "if you wanted to do hill repeats for a couple of hours on Mt Tabor early Saturday..."

As I still think I should be working on my climbing, we arranged to meet up at Kettleman's at 6am for bagel and hot beverage of choice, then head over to Mt Tabor at 6:30.  Left my house at 5am on Sweetpea (very dark!  good test of the Supernova E3!), up over Sylvan, and arrived at 5:55am.  A minute or two later, another bright bike headlight appeared.

Then over to Mt Tabor.  I have never ridden loops around it.  We ride over a lower part of it on our way out to the Gorge, and that's it.  Two loops so I'd know where I was going (I have no illusions about keeping up with Cecil on a climb.  Few people do.)  She only lapped me once over the two hours.  I got in 10.5 repeats.

Then, of course, I had to ride home, again, up over Sylvan.

Being the number crunching sort, I now know that the loop is 2.24 miles, and I averaged 11:11 around it.  (If you don't do a baseline, you'll never really know if you are getting better).



For me it was a 49+ mile ride, with almost 4300 vertical feet.  That's a lot of climbing.

Next time I do this (when?  good question?), I can see if I got any faster.