Biggest Cycling Week in YEARS!

Last week was our family vacation as I showed in my last post. And without trying, I biked a lot!

At the end of last August, I had a week where I had 3 decent rides and I ended up with 100.42 miles of cycling, which was 5 hrs 4 mins 30 secs of time in the saddle. That was my biggest week since IM WI in 2007.

End of August 2020.

My long ride that week was down the Gateway Trail, and it was 38 miles. I bonked hard, just "wanted to be done" as I said in my blog post, and averaged 19.5 mph over those 38 miles.

This past week (well, Sunday through Saturday), I had 3 rides that totaled 98.03 miles, AND an hour on the trainer. That's a total of 5 hrs 5 mins 32 secs of outdoor riding, and then ANOTHER hour indoors.

July 25th - 31st: 3 rides totaling 98.03 miles, plus an hour on the trainer.

The big suprise is when I was doing my 40.22 mile ride last week, I didn't want to stop! I wanted to keep going, and I felt great! (To be fair, it was a very flat ride, but so was that 38 miler last year down the Gateway Trail.) I think all this time on the trainer over the last 4-6 months has helped my endurance, even if it started as a lot of just easy rides. My 38 miler last year was 19.5 mph and I was dead, and my 40 miler last week was 19.8 mph and I felt super fresh.

Also, had I known I was at 98.03 miles for the week after those 3 rides, I would have easily added 2 miles to that final long ride to make it 100+ miles outside for the week.

So 6:05:32 in the saddle is a weekly PR for me back until Ironman Wisconsin 2007! And calling my hour on the trainer 17 miles (which is a low estimate), I have a weekly biking total of 115.03 miles! There's lots more about other "long rides" in my recent history in this post from after my long week last August.

Here's a bit more about those 4 bike workouts:

• SUN, JULY 25th: a "test" ride with my wife. I'm still coming back from my achilles injury from the Brian Kraft 5K at the end of May, so I don't want to over-do anything. So my first outdoor ride in a long time wasn't going to be too fast or far. I rode "out" chatting with my wife for 13 miles, and then I rode "back" a bit harder because I was feeling good (as my wife rode a bit farther on her own):

With "Big Ole" pre-ride! (Yes, I forgot my bike jersey so I
just wore race shirts all week while biking. Oops.)


Behind my cutie.




Rolling back into the parking lot after she rode a bit farther than me.


A pretty clear graph showing "out" with my wife, and then a bit harder "back" on my own.
14.3 mph out, and 22.5 mph back (SLIGHTLY wind-aided).

• TUES, JULY 27th: 3x5 mile intervals. This is my simple "go to" bike workout. And that flat/open trail through Alexandria is great for something like this.

The empty lot when I got to town to ride. I was there early.


My intervals highlighted in red.

My intervals were:

- 14:14, 21.1 ave
- 13:52, 21.6 ave
- 13:47, 21.7 ave

That's nothing great, but not horrible either; it's about what I expected after little time spent outside this year.

• THUR, JULY 29th: long ride. No speed goals. The goal was just to ride for a while. And as I mentioned above, I hit 40 miles and was STILL feeling good, but I had to pick up some groceries and was afraid that they'd be waiting on me at the cabin, so I didn't go any farther. But I realistically could have been thinking about 50 miles for the first time in 14 years!

This was the day the wind changed and the smoke from Canada
hit us HARD! This is 7:30 a.m. on a cloudless day. Yikes.


Turning for home on a nice shaded part of the trail.


Through 2 small towns heading NW, then back to Alex, then 10 more miles to the east as well.

That was 19.85 mph overall, and I felt really good about myself after that ride! The ride on Tuesday showed I didn't have a TON of speed, but this ride on Thursday showed that at least my endurance was decent!

• SUN, JULY 31st: easy trainer ride. After a good week in the saddle, I didn't need to push myself any more. This was just an easy ride before some decent stretching.

I'll be back with a running update soon... Last week was my first time fully running outdoors since May!