Saturday Training

Hi

Power-Tap

Cold and damp morning today and a wind which started as quite strong and gusty and just got worse as the ride went on. We went and rode the two loop circuit which gives a total ride distance of just over 60 miles with 2 circuits of 26.8 miles each plus a warm up and a cool down at the end.

Not to put too fine a point on it the ride didn't go as well as my recent rides, in fact I suffered more that I have for many months today! I'm completely unworried about this as it's all down to a combination of recent events, ongoing training, inadequate nutritional and hydration preparation and perhaps most of all poor sleep for a couple of nights. These days I only get concerned if things go poorly if I have no explanation and that doesn't apply here.

Anyhow, with a little help from my friends I got round. The average speed for the 2 combined circuits, a distance of 53.67 miles, was 20.2mph. The average speeds for circuits 1 and 2 were 20.6 and 19.7mph respectively which on a cold windy day in January is perfectly respectable I reckon. The actual times for the circuits were 1:17:58 and 1:21:50. Given that our previous best for a circuit is 1:16:17 in better conditions we did just fine :-)

For the combined circuits my power data is as follows:

TSS 177.4
NP 249W
VI 1.11

All in all a good training ride and it's in the bag and in the legs, it's certainly easier to make yourself work harder when in company! It would have been pretty easy today to have decided that it was too cold and windy but when you are meeting up with people, well that's somehow different!

Tour Down Under tomorrow, time for a rest now :-)

[Uploaded 17/01/2009 15:21:10]