Water and food management make a huge difference.
- Got up at 5:15 am, went to hot tub for 20 minutes, drank 16 ounces of water with lemon
- Had a good breakfast: 2 slices of bacon, 2 eggs, 1/2 of tofu block, 1/2 onion, coffee, 2 toasts with butter
- Drank another 16 ounces of water before I left at about 6:45 (about 1/2 hour after breakfast)
- I figured it would take about 2 hours for my body to process the breakfast, so I stopped after 1 hour and 45 minutes (Jay Road and Hwy 119), took a 5 minute break and consumed a power bar (protein, carbo)
- Kept hydrated during the ride - I have a 24 ounces bottle now, finished it when leaving Boulder (about 35 miles into the ride), took another 5 minutes, refilled the water bottle at a gas station at Table Mesa and Broadway, ate another power bar.
- Next fillup was at 120th and Main Street in Broomfield at Golden Bear bike shop. I am beginning to like these guys, they tuned my bike last week and did a good job. Finished off my bottle there, refilled with another 24 ounces.
- Got home about 20 minutes later, finished the water, ate second breakfast, scaled at 182 pounds, felt tired but didn't feel exhausted like I did last week.
- Took it easy for rest of the day, ate well (ate chocolate, too), spent some time in the hot tub, massaged my knee quite a bit, also used ice and hot wraps.
Problems
- My right knee started bugging me shortly before I entered Boulder, it got to the point of feeling a sharp pain in it twice on the right leg push down. The dilemma was to finish the ride or call Nancy. I decided to finish the ride but I took it really easy on the knee.
- So I was really using just 3/4 of my power stroke, I would push with my left while pulling up with my right, then pull up with my left and let the right leg glide down. I figured if I overload my left leg, I need to stop and call for a ride.
- Well, it kind of went OK, even I had 3 ugly hills ahead of me, one of Hwy 93 coming out of Boulder and two more on Hwy 128.
- It turned out this was a good experience since I also learned something about why do I have derailleurs and why I should use them climbing hills. I used to just push up the hill no matter what - and I think this has something to do with my knee pain. I would make the hill in reasonable time, but I would just be so freaking exhausted on top of it that it would take 1/2 hour to recover (I clocked my ticker in excess of 190 heart beats on more than one such occasion and I almost puked my guts out couple of times, too).
- This time I would just take my time, realizing that this is not a time race anymore, this is about endurance and well, in this case, just finishing it without having to call for a ride. I would drop the gears to a comfortable level, keep my eye on the heartbeat and not let it go over 160. Well, before I knew it, the hill was over with and I wasn't exhausted, I would just glide over to the next one and tackle it, too.
- Hmmm, I don't hate hills that much anymore.
The stats of the ride
- Lap one - Westminster->Longmont->Boulder (Diagonal & Foothills), 33.11 miles, 1:45:47 at average speed 18.7 mph and 151 bpm (heart beats per minute). Just the way I like it.
- Lap two - Boulder->Westminster, 24.9 miles, 2:05:52, 11.8 mph, 134 bpm - yeah, a bit slower. Well, you can't really zip through Boulder at 25 mph, then I had 3 ugly hills to climb with a crippled knee. However, now I think that next time I will not try to go any faster up the hills anyway.
- Total: 58.02 miles, 3:51:53, avg speed of 15.0 mph, average bpm 142. I set my target heart beat zone to 140 - 185, time spent in it was 2:19:38. Not too bad. I think I need to set my zone to about 135 - 165 for optimal sustained burn. This will take some experimenting.
Things learned
- Food and water matter
- Derailleur is a good thing
- I need endurance before I can aim for speed
- I don't think I'll go running today.
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