The ArcenCiel team has an annual ride that's called the "LBL" and I was fortunate to be a part of it this Sunday. Your hero had a terrible day of cramping and low energy, but the good people in today's ride got me to the end of the 66 miles with lots of generous pacing, pushing and encouragement. I think the total TSS of Friday and Saturday was more than I realized, and that the six or so beers I uncharacteristically consumed late into Friday night did me no favors. (It was a very rare guy's night out- and such nights are not to be wasted on sobriety) Anyway, it was a hilly and scenic ride where I had no idea where we were most of the time, and I never knew when the next hill would appear, or how far it was to the top. This is never an advantage. The first hill where I cramped hard was in CT- actually on the Stonington RR course, heading up to the winery in reverse. I was doing A-ok up until about 2/3 the way up, then I fell apart very hard and very suddenly when the cramps attacked. Then we hit a steep pitch not long afterward where I was cramped so badly I thought the legs were going to just lock up and send me to the ground. The profile chart below shows two similar hills in succession- these are the ones which hurt me, and ironically on the really big hump afterwards I was able to hold it together without too much difficulty. Humor me as I make my excuses- it's the fourth week of a strong and gradual build-up of TSS- to wit, I've gone from 50 to 70 in the span of 31 days. (Same period last year I went from 43 to 53) Check it:
The next chart tells the story in detail. I also pasted in the values of todays CP60- which gives a very encouraging 255 watts of normalized power. On this date last year, my best Norm CP60 was 243 watts, and I was 7-8 pounds heavier too. Need to look for the positive in today's poor performance, and there it is. Even on an off day, at the end of a challenging 4 weeks, the data proves that I'm way ahead of the curve relative to 2008.
Thanks for reading. Here's the profile of today's ride: 
4 comments:
Ha! I out-trained you this weekend. Friday night was 5 x 22 oz at BBC followed by 2 x 16 oz at Vegas Lounge.
You sure did! I had six Sam Adams LIGHTS, and one [first-ever] Mojito.
Are you still under 170?
No and yes. The 169.5 that I showed you last weekend was after my ride- dehydration. I went back up to 172 within a bout 24 hours.
But this morning I got onto the scale and saw the readout flickering between 169.5 and 170. Might still be a touch of dehydration, but I'm encouraged.
I also tried the Bodyfat calculator built into my scale and it tells me I'm at 20%. About a month ago it was saying 23%. Again, the data is only as good as the device reading it, but this is one of those $80 Tanita scales.
I'm fired up about being well under 170 in the next 10-20 days.
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