Saturday's Ride

I slept in this morning for the first time in a long time. Greg and I decided to ride later in the afternoon, since it was so cold today. So we headed out @ 3:00pm, for a 3 hour ride today. It was Sunny, but pretty cold. Fortunately the wind was not very strong out of the North. By the end of the ride, it had switched to the ENE or almost due east. I tried some feet warmers today to keep my feet warm. They didn't seem to be working for the first hour, and my toes started to get cold. But later in the ride i started to move my feet around a little bit and the warmers started to work. I think they needed a little friction to start getting warm. By the end of the ride, my feet were pretty warm.

Today was probably the best ride I have had since we started our base miles training. Every 3 hour ride I had done prior to today, I would get fairly tired and my knees and back would hurt by the end. I felt pretty strong going out today, and that proved to stay the same through the entire ride. My HR was low all day, even when I was pulling out front. At one point today we were moving about 24 mph, and my HR was sitting at 127bpm, which is below my base zone and into my recovery zone.

I tried playing around with some different positions on the handle bar, to try and get used to the new stem length I have been riding with. I found that when I would ride in the hoods and my elbows bent at 90 degrees, I feel like I am cutting my breathing off, and I cannot take as deep of breaths as I need to take in. Also I noticed I tend to go numb in that position with too much pressure from the seat. It wasn't too uncomfortable, but after a while, I needed to move to change my position.

Also, I didn't have any pain in my knees for the entire ride. Towards the end I had a little bit of tugging at the front of both my knees. I think its pretty evident that I have patella tendinitis. I took some Ibuprofen before the ride, and iced them when I got home. I think right now that is about all I can do for them, and hope it gets better. By the time we pulled back into Greg's neighborhood, I was still feeling pretty good, it was just about dark outside, and I felt like I could go another hour. Overall the ride was great. Hopefully I will start to see the same results on other rides in the future. Today's ride makes me more of a believer in the training I am doing, and I hope to see even better results in the future.
AVG HR 137.
Max HR 166
Time 2:54.07
Time in Zone 2:15
Above Zone 0:1.45
Below Zone: 0:38
Distanace 49.0 Miles
AVG Speed 16.9 mph
Max Speed 33.8 mph
Max Cadence 144
Avg Cadence 89
Kcal 1954