The overcast skies this morning fooled me into sleeping a few extra minutes, and as a result I had to hustle in order to meet the group. I guess I wasn't the only one lagging behind today, though. It seemed like everyone was running a few minutes behind schedule.
Today's long levee ride felt hard, although the speeds never really got much higher than 25-26 mph. Maybe it was just me? One thing for sure; it was plenty humid. It rained much of yesterday and into the night last night so there's a lot of moisture in the air now. When it's like this we have to keep the a/c running a bit during the day so that mold doesn't start growing on the surfaces in the house. Anyway, by the time I got home I was just completely soaked with sweat. Completely. Like I had been thrown into a pool of sweat and someone had held my head under. Halfway through the ride my glasses ended up in my pocket because it was getting too hard to see out of them.
We were talking the other day about how much training time people put in. Of course, if most of your training time is spent riding with a group, a lot of it is less effective than it would be if you were riding along. OTOH, if riding alone gets boring and tiresome enough that you start cutting it short or skipping it altogether, that's not good either. So the trick is to find the right balance for you. Personally, riding with the group really helps get me out the door in the morning, so it's worth it. Anyway, I figure that in a typical week uninterrupted by bad weather or a weekend race, I probably ride 15 hours or so. Last night I was talking with Gina who just started her residency at Emory hospital in Atlanta and she said she had ridden 20 hours last week. How does she do that? I'm sure that, if properly done, you can be very competitive with 10 hours a week, especially if you race in a class or category where most of your races are three hours or less.
The Daughter is still under the weather, and my guess is that she has Mono but the rapid test the did the other day didn't show it.
2 comments:
15 hours? 20!? Even 10? I get about 7. Maybe that's why I'm not racing this year.
15 hours a week is awesome, i'm envious of your group rides.
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