Training

My training schedule is to try to get out and ride for an hour a day during the week and then a few hours one day on the weekend. I have a full time job, so I have to work around that. The good news is that I work from home which gives me a lot of flexibility. The bad news is that it seems that every time I decide to escape and go ride, all hell breaks loose at work. Today I was out for two hours, since everything was so quiet this morning. I come back to 30+ emails and two urgent issues that I needed to attend to. Sitting here at my desk for a couple of hours in my riding shorts and jersey wasn’t fun (for me or my wife whose desk is right behind mine). Oh well.

So today was a longer than usual ride, I normally ride up the mountain for 45 minutes, trying to extend the distance a bit each day (or at least not shorten it), then zoom back home. That puts me out about an hour and 5-10 minutes. Today I decide to ride up the mountain ten miles, then back. That put me out an hour and 42 minutes. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to ride up and less than 30 minutes to ride down. I gained about 2,000 feet of elevation in that time. The ride profile (by time) looked like this:

The blue line is my speed, you can see how it jumped on the way down. It varies quite a bit because the road has a number of sharp curves that I need to slow down for.

Here is the course that I rode today up into the mountains:

I felt strong today, I even passed someone! O.K., it was a 90 year old lady (she may have been younger but she look very old to me!) but she had on cycling clothes, nice jersey so she was a serious rider (like me!). It still made me feel like a big dog. I get passed by all the skinny kids on the mountain like I am standing still. Kills the ego.

The other benefit from my daily rides is the views. I am so lucky to live in Colorado! What a beautiful area this is!

By the way, you can see all my training details for today at http://tpks.ws/v0zn