Lots of Biking (and a Weekly Bike PR!)

I showed a few vacation pics in my last post about ANOTHER "best long run ever," and on that vacation I racked up the bike miles:

119.33 biking miles last week!!

Those nearly 120 weekly miles beats last year's weekly vacation riding PR of 104.57 miles. Here's a bit about each ride:

TUESDAY I headed out for a long ride. I wanted to hit around 40 miles, but I tacked on more at the end to go over 46 miles - my longest bike ride since an early spring training ride in 2009 for a half IM. I didn't really know what I was going to do for this workout, but I ended up riding easier for 5 miles (19 mph average) and then went hard for the next 20 miles (miles 5-25, while turning around at mile 20). Here are 3 pics of heading out fast on the Central Lakes Trail and 1 heading back easier on my cool down:

Proof I was on my bike.


Lots of views like this.


Riding back easier into the sun somewhere around mile 30.


From Alexandria through Garfield through Brandon through Evansville up to Melby and back.

You can kind of see that my harder miles ended back at Evansville with a few bits of orange and red. I finished those 20 harder miles with a 22.30 mph average. (I did a similar ride last year with 30 hard miles with a 21.6 mph ave.) My overall average including warm-up and cool down was over 20.8 mph for 46 miles.

THURSDAY I didn't want to go too hard. I had a short/hard/important interval workout the next day, and I didn't want to be fried for that. I figured I'd go about 30 miles, but ended up going 37 still feeling good. I kept just over a 20 mph average the whole time just riding moderately.

Same old views of the Central Lakes Trail.


Easy riding selfie.


My bike with Big Ole along the trail in Alex.


Shorter, but still long-ish!

And that afternoon, my boys and newphew and I biked to Lake Brophy Park to do some mountain bike riding! I road with them for just a little (that's the 6 miles on the calendar) before giving my brother-in-law his MTB back so he could ride with them some more.

My newphew after riding down those FUN berms in the background and then climbing back up.


My boys going off a little drop.

SATURDAY was a BUMMER OF A DAY. A storm started rolling through around 4 a.m. And then I was planning on getting up at 5:30 to get in a nice ride before packing up and leaving the cabin, but the weather still looked like this when my alarm went off:

HEAVY rain, slowly starting to ease up... when I need to be done and loading the car.


Gross.

So I didn't get my ride in up in Alexandria. We got home on mostly dry roads, and then it started pouring as we unloaded the car. I had a short window if I was going to get in my ride, so I had to head out in the pouring rain and hope for the best. So I told my wife I'd just be going up and down a 5-mile stretch of road in case lightning became an issue:

South, then north, then south, then north, then some extra to the east and back.

I did 3x5 mile intervals down the road and back. My first was in the POURING rain. The 2nd was a little wet, and then 3rd was a bit better. I was SOAKED and GROSS, but I was happy I got out for a ride.

Started going hard nearly from the start not knowing what the ride would hold in store!


The 3 intervals highlighted.


GROSS legs post-ride.

Again, it was pouring for my first interval, and even through #1 and #3 were more into the wind, they were also a bit "net downhill," so they were faster than #2:

#1: 13:07, 22.9 mph (22.9 mph halfway, then dropping, then back up)

#2: 13:52, 21.6 mph (21.4 mph halfway)

#3: 12:12, 24.6 mph (24.1 mph halfway, up to 24.7, wondering if I could get it to 25!)

SIDENOTE: one reason my last one was so fast was that I was honked at from behind because I rolled through a stop sign on River Road. He then passed me a minute later, yelled to me about "following the laws" as he sped by (yes, he was speeding), and then I caught up to him at the next stoplight. His window was still down, and I rolled up to it with him yelling "HEY, YOU DON'T HAVE DIFFERENT LAWS!" To which I responded, "Well, yes, I do actually..." and then explained to him Minnesota's "Idaho stop" law that says cyclists need to be able to stop if there are vehicles around, but can otherwise go through a stop sign. I was pretty pissed that someone would go out of the way to HONK and YELL and SPEED past a cyclist (who did not impact his travel in any way what-so-ever) when the cyclist was following the law. It's really not always safe out there for cyclists, because people in cars tend to think they own the road. So I was "riding hot" for the rest of that interval, and I used it to try to be faster! :)

Anyway, that was a great week of cycling with 119.33 total miles with 113.01 of those miles being true "training" miles.

And the first 2 weeks of July look good as well, with weekly totals of 75.33 miles and 119.33 miles (both seen at the right below) for 194.66 miles of riding in the first 2 weeks of the month:

To start the month, I had that long slower ride with my cutie on July 4th, and then the 6th was my hilly "tempo loop" ride that averaged 21.71 mph, which I think is my 2nd fastest all time... but it WAS a beautiful morning to ride!

Back with more "vacation" workouts and thoughts on an upcoming race shortly!