Week 11: Not as Many Miles BUT...

This week's mileage was not as high as expected or as easy. We took 3 days off with only one (Today) due to rain. It's feels ok to end a ride in rain which happened Monday in the last half mile uphill to the Xterra. It has always amazed me how wet you can get in 4 minutes. But in my mind it's hard to start a ride in the rain if you don't have too. Another good reason to not start a ride in the rain was yesterdays (Friday) ride with my old Albuquerque riding buddy Dean Marvin. Dean came up Thursday to escape the heat in Tucson and scout the race course for the Mormon Lake Road Race in late August.

We train with heart rate monitors and try to stay in a certain range for base building. Occasionally we exceed the planned range up hill or to bridge up to a rider ahead. I know better but catching a 25 year old is so much fun. The other problem is a HRM that is giving us trouble. I have 2 monitors for my heart rate, one that I can see, and one that Lee D can see.  So she has both her and my heart rate on her bars to watch. It is her job to keep up with me or slow down her output as I do. This keeps the workload on the tandem equal. Yea I trust her to keep up, plus I've been riding a tandem so long I know when someone is slacking.

Now that you have a concept of our training, re-enter Mr. Marvin. For many years Dean and Lee (Dean's wife, stoker, etc; not my partner Lee D) and  I trained together and no matter what tried to hammer each other. Hammer in this instance is not smashing a finger, it is hurting or pushing your riding mates to make them stronger or trying to kill them. Well unfortunately for our training plan (nice low heart rates) old habits die hard for me. We rode hard to bridge up to Dean after almost every uphill blowing our training plan, but it was fun and it hurt and Lee D loved it. So for it to be raining this morning was probably a good thing since we did 50 miles in 2:35 or 19.4 average hanging with Dean. A little early for this speed over this terrain. Needed a rest day.

So we only did 229.3 miles this week
12.8 hours of riding
17.9 mph average for the week

So we had two firsts this week, the Century and our fastest average speed 19.4, in a 50 mile ride.