Longer Tempo Ride

The boys were at my parent's place this weekend as I worked on a lot a painting, but I was able to sneak away from my chores on Saturday morning for a nice ride.

I don't think I'd done any sort of "longer" effort this year, and I've been doing a lot of shorter intervals on the trainer, so I wanted to go a bit farther. I did 20 hard miles averaging 21.1 mph:

Across the Mississippi, south on Big Rivers well past I-494,
and back to finish along Water Street in Lilydale.

My fun wasn't done. I started a 12 mile cool-down with 2 of St. Paul's biggest hills:

Up Ohio, down the Smith Street High Bridge, and up Ramsey.

I feel like it has been a while since I've done Ohio, but I remembered my times being in the 2:20s. So I was happy when I climbed it in 2:20. I climb Ramsey all the time, and 1:26+ is slow, 1:22 is around average, and sub-1:20 is great. I was feeling pretty hashed 1/3 up that hill, but I still cranked out a 1:24 which I thought was about right. Then just some easy riding the rest of the way home. With those 2 nasty climbs, I only averaged 17.8 mph to end this ride, which was also mainly into a 16 mph wind.

Speed and elevation.


Here's the 2 climbs with the downhill between them labeled (as if you couldn't tell).