Saturday Training

Long ride in the hills today with a couple of mates, weather very cold and mixed with periods of high wind and heavy rain. The worst of the weather was the strong headwind for the last 40 or so miles of the route which was pretty wearing.

The ride didn't go according to plan from the off when one of the chaps broke a spoke very early on. This resulted in a 2nd spoke coming loose which clearly wasn't safe and wasn't going to last the distance.
The route was altered and we went to one of the guy's houses and picked up a spare wheel and then made the route up from there on. It worked out really well and by the end of the ride we had covered just over a hundred miles, my first century ride this year.

From a personal perspective the ride went fine. It was very hilly but I was never in trouble and I didn't feel done in at the end of the ride. It will be interesting to see how I recover this evening and how I feel tomorrow on what will not be a long ride.

Average HR for the ride came in at 133 which is well inside L2 as an average and my NP was 228. I know I can ride with a NP of 250-260W for this period of time so I was riding well within my comfort zone.
My plan in the lead up to the tour ride has always been to train at a higher intensity than I intend to ride on the tour route. I'm confident now that as planned I am not heavily dependent on carbohydrate for energy which is good and I'm going to plan for an overall average speed for each riding day of about 15mph which should be very comfortable and yet not make each riding day too long and so allow adequate recovery time.

In the end I can do no more than my best, and that is exactly what I am going to try to do.

Ride Time: 06:13 hh:mm
Work Done: 4011kJ
Training Stress Score: 347
Intensity Factor: 0.747
Normalised Power: 228W
Variability Index: 1.27
Ride Distance: 102.02 miles
Cumulative Distance: n/a miles
Elevation Gain: 7172 feet
Maximum Power: 693W
Average Power: 179W
Average Heart Rate: 133bpm
Average Speed: 16.4mph
Acute Training Load: 120.7
Chronic Training Load: 89.6
Training Stress Balance: -9.1

To review the route and data: click here.