jschen

With too much time spent watching the Tour on TV and trying to get myself to spend a bit of time on the trainer, I hadn't been on a solo ride in July until this morning. Well, the Tour is over, and I managed to drag myself out of bed this morning, so it was time to go for a pre-breakfast ride.

There was a nice cool mist in the air and I was feeling pretty good, so there was only one choice of routes. My favored hilly morning loop, 15.4 miles long with about 1700 feet of climbing (2000 according to Topo) and a max grade of 17%. I started out on the ride and felt as if I was riding with a tailwind. Checked the wind direction at a red light. Nope, no tailwind. Hmm, maybe I can break my personal record today! So I picked up the pace a bit.

Hit Mt Soledad and felt a bit sluggish on the first steep section of the 700 foot climb, but I got into a rhythm and started feeling pretty good about things as I approached the 17% section at the top. Quickly checked my time at the top, and I was ahead of PR pace. Descending the other side, my speeds were a bit lower than normal, suggesting a slight headwind. Yay... the home stretch will have a tailwind.

Continued around the loop feeling good and pushing hard over every incline. The home stretch indeed had a slight tailwind, resulting in 45 MPH speeds on two short descents. Stopped the clock at 59:01, 2:17 ahead of PR pace. My goal for this loop for 2006 was 60 minutes (66:xx at the end of 2005), so it means I met this 2006 goal.

superdex

congrats!


(sometimes I'm a little envious of you waify climber boys)

PrfectHair4ever

nice, do you think having to stop for lights can help/hurt your time?

jschen

Definitely hurts my time. Yeah, I get a bit of recovery time off the clock (since I only count time on the move), but it doesn't make up for slowing down and speeding back up. And I'm not exactly braking hard for red lights. But the difference is measured in seconds, so it's not that big a deal.

It helped today that I hit green lights at each of the 3 stoplights in the route that are at the bottom of 40+ MPH descents. If I had hit red lights at all three stoplights, I probably would have been a few seconds over the one hour mark. On the other hand, there were two places today where I slowed down waiting for a gap in traffic to get into the left turn lane. Normally, that's not an issue, and those slow downs cost me a sub-59 minute time.

In the long term, though, those seconds here and there are just noise. But there is a slight tendency for my best times to be set on Saturday mornings when all these factors are more likely to be in my favor.

blue_nose

Congrats. I have ridden up to Mt. Solidad a number of times, there are some really steep stretches that certainly do bring a nice burn to the legs. A nice way to start a day!