Mudu93

I will preface this by saying after 5 weeks strait of 100 miles +, I will fall short this week. The primary reason was a long guys weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks. The secondary reason is that this morning my legs just did not have it in them. I had planned on a nice leisurely 20 mile ride but after my hard twenty yesterday followed up by 7 hours of fence staining in the heat of the day, I just could not do it.

The alarm went of at 5:45 and I attempted to get out of bed but the legs and knees said no we do not want to move we want to sleep. In the end they won. Unfortunatly I will not have the time for any longer rides on friday or saturday to make up what I lost today. So it looks like it will be around 90 mile for this week. On the plus side, I am 10 lbs down.

Tom Stormcrowe

Hey, it happens! Believe me I know! A rest day is a good thing anyway.

spencejm

You need to stay away from the Party Cove. You might have more strenght left!

Joe

Caincando1

LOTO will do that to a guy. We've haven't made it their yet, but I have many boating friends that frequent or live at LOTO.

Mudu93

Skip the Party Cove? And miss a rousing game of "real or fake". Not a chance. Of course Party Cove is much more pleasant when you have a friend with a 46 foot cruiser. Once a year some college friends of my brother and I descend on the lake for fun weekend of golf and boating. We still have fun but we sure do not recover as fast as we once did.

bdinger

I'm with you this week. I've logged like... 20 miles? And it's thursday? Yeaaaah, the total this week is going to hurt.

But oh well, I'm still riding. That's all that matters, right?

Caincando1

It's taken me a while, but I'm getting over my obsession with "miles". I look at hours now becasue I'm doing specific rides that doen't always add up to a lot of miles. Yesterday I did a 2 mile off road ride. Then jumped on the roadie and went out to learn how to climb hills while standing. I only ended up with a total of 10 miles yesterday. But damn did I get a work out.

JoeMetal

I tried climbing a fairly sizable hill standing up yesterday. I got to the top of the hill (it was only a quarter mile long, tops) but I was dead tired. It made the next series of rollers seem like torture. My overall speed was 1-2 mph slower than usual, but I felt like I had had MUCH more of a workout.

Neil_B

Some thoughts on quality vs quantity of miles, as posted to my blog:

Much of our conversation was about my recent complaints about slowing down on my local loop rides. My bike mentor, ever the perceptive friend, found a subtext to my complaints I hadn't even considered. "Neil," he said, "the fact you are concerned about the speed of your rides tells me that you are more than just a transportational cyclist. You want a quality ride, and not to just get from one place to another. And so you have to train properly. I don't want to see you get into the rut, and it's an easy rut to get into, of just grinding out numbers. They should be quality miles, and not just quantity."

As is often the case, Dan is right. I've been preoccupied with numbers - pounds lost, pounds remaining, miles achieved, a metric century completed. Yes, I completed a metric century, and that's something I'm proud of, but it took nearly six hours to do so, and it wasn't a display of good riding. Getting through something isn't the same as finishing well. As a writer, I don't accept bad work from my pen, and I shouldn't accept it on my bike.

I hadn't expected to hear this about myself, and I was stunned by Dan's follow-up suggestion that I not ride both days in the MS 150. During the relatively short time of our friendship, I've been continually pushed to do more, and now Dan was telling me to do less. I tried to argue with him over the point, but I found myself accepting his logic. Dan's reasoning for my riding one day can be broken down as follows:

- I've only ridden one comparable ride, the metric century in Delaware. As stated, that wasn't a great ride. The NJ ride is perhaps harder than the Delaware one.

- It's two days back to back, with the second day on a slight uphill. That's tough on any rider. While my progress as a cyclist has been remarkable, I'm still a novice. I could be taking on more than I can handle.

- The training I would need to ride both days has to be done in about two months. The risk of an injury is very real. Better to set a more realistic, safer goal.

- Even if I can complete both days, I'd be wrecked by the end of them. I wouldn't have any fun on the second day. Riding just the first day means I can finish with a sense of accomplishment, and not think "I have to do this again tomorrow."

- I had wanted to ride an English or Imperial century (100 miles) by this fall, and the MS ride offers a century option. So I could do that, and go "from 0 to 100 in eight months."

- Finally, the shorter duration allows me to focus on quality, not quantity, of miles.

Neil_B

I had the same thing happen yesterday. I've been carfree for the past week while my Neilmobile is in the shop. So I've been bike commuting - 16 hilly miles one way. After racking up 118 miles in three and a half days, my muscles rebelled last night. I rode 4 miles to meet a friend who took me and the bike home. I figure two days will allow my legs, and my sore left knee, to recover. Thank goodness the car is back this morning!

(51)

I try to get two days of rest in a week.

Caincando1

Very well put. I think, as we all grow a cyclist, we also grow as people. We not only learn the sport, but we learn something about ourselves. The personal growth has helped me become a better cyclist, because it's allowed me to property focus my traning where it is needed.

Mudu93

I did make it out this morning for a slow spinning 18 mile recovery type ride. Man it is sometimes hard to go slower than I am used to but it was nice just to spin and not worry about anything other than warming the legs up and then cooling them down. As an additional bonus I saw about 5 deer, 2 wild turkey's and a big ol' snapping turtle along the trail.

Thanks for the thoughts on quality vs quantity in rideing and it is alway's a bit of a struggle to not get caught up in the numbers.