Originally Posted by
Roadiedvm
Thanks for writing back. Now that I know that RAIN is 160 miles, that's impressive. I was feeling pretty good about my century time for the Hotter n Hell until I saw that it was almost 5 mph slower than the top guy (but 3 mph faster than last year). At least it gave me encouragement that there is room for improvement, as do your times. Do you base your training on your experience, use a trainer or training program such as Friel or some combination of all these?
Hmmmm. I guess all of the above. I've done a lot of reading about training and up until a couple of years ago I followed a training plan, but recently I've just been winging it, since I seem to be slowing down no matter what I do. I ride a trainer around 100 miles/week in the winter, but I don't do as many really hard training days as I used to. The biggest problem at my age is recovery. So for instance, I've ridden pretty hard 4 days in a row just because of circumstances and ride invitations that were too good to pass up and I would really like to ride today, but I think I should just rest since my legs feel pretty dead. This happens a lot, but the upside is that I feel free to have a life off the bicycle. The hotter-n-hell is a tough ride (one of the hardest I've done) because of the heat. One of the things I liked was moving between different groups, but I was scared stiff during the first 20 miles, worrying that I would get dumped by someone falling in front of me.