Long TT Ride (and a February PR)

It's been a GLORIOUS week here in MN. It's been 50+ degrees every day, but a snow storm is coming tonight. Dang. This is NOT what mid-February usually looks like in MN:

Pushing my boys down River Road on a 5.25 mile run earlier this week.
They were just in hoodies. I was just in shorts and a t-shirt.

Over 10 days this mid-February (which was 4 rides), I logged 94 miles OUTSIDE on my tri-bike. I looked back through my training log at every February since I was recording my miles online (2009), and I saw that I biked 28 miles outside last year in February. But NO miles outside during ANY OTHER FEBRUARY in my recorded history. I just quadrupled my life-time February bike miles in the last 10 days. Sweet. So YAY for 2017. (But BOO to the snow storm that's coming!)

My last ride was 2 days ago when I rode to work and got in a long tempo ride over lunch. (I started doing this 2 years ago, but now it's much harder because I have to get Henry to school JUST before heading off to class. But my wife was off on Tuesday, so she took care of him as I biked out the door.) Over lunch, I did a longer version of my "go to" 15.X mile loop from home. Only this version started near the University where I teach before heading past home. Here was the loop:

Counter-clockwise.


Average speed was 20.7 mph! That dip at mile 14 is climbing Ramsey Hill.

I've only done that big 20 mile loop a few times, and this week I was the fastest. I also took my split riding past home (both "out" and "back") so I'd have a split of my normal, shorter, 15.X mile TT loop as well. For that middle part of this 20 mile loop, I had a 20.31 mph average, and that's probably my 4th or 5th fastest for that segment. (My fastest on my old bike was 20.51, and my fastest just over a year ago on my new bike is 20.64 mph.) So things are looking good right now! I just need to keep it up and ward off the injuries!

Oh, and I downloaded my Garmin data for the first time since last year (really), and I noticed there are "segments" where your get ranked against everyone else who's done that "segment" of road before. (I've never dug that deeply through my data before - I don't know when they started doing this.) Out of 2200+ people that rode this part of Summit Ave, I was ranked 9th:

And the fastest of 2017 so far!

I don't know how prestigious it is to be at (or near) the top of one of these, but I'll TOTALLY try to kill it the next time I'm riding that segment to see if I can better my position.

Anyway, that's enough of thinking about outside biking for now. Right now, it's time to brace for some snow. D'oh.