The Road

Dan: "I don't need no Stinkin Electrolytes"



Bob hits the Climb (He's confued by the deraileurs)



Cody clears Alpe de Huez



The only one to keep me company on the way home.....

Quantifying improvement

I have had my new Garmin Edge heart rate monitor now for almost 2 months and I am starting to see some results. You don't need a high tech piece of equipment to train, but it sure does make it easier to do things right. Last year I used a very basic HRM and after a while I stopped using it. The Edge makes it very easy for me to maintain target Heart rates during workouts and gauge how well the workout went. Below is one of my basic interval workouts, one from Yesterday and the other from a few weeks ago. the Interval consisted of 6 minutes in zone 5 followed by 2:30 rest repeated 4 times. After a few weeks i have gotten a little bit better. Time to step it up.

Camp Hilbert VA

We headed down to VA for some racing action this weekend, very nice. Iwas fortunate to have the company of two very cool riders from PA who kicked some ass and It was good to actually get on some dirt with all of the snow we had this month up north. I opted to sign up for the 5 hour race. We were 30 strong at the start line and we were set to head off one minute behind 30 sport riders. I wasn't planning on taking off fast but with 60 riders on the trail I didn't want to get caught up in the carnage. The starting siren rang and I tore off with the lead seven riders like it was a short track race.

We ripped by dozens of sport riders, which I thought was unusual. On the first lap my heart rate started climing from 175 to 180 to 188 and it stayed high through the 2nd lap, I actually taped the side of the HRM a few times and adjusted the strap on my chest as I have never seen my heart rate stay so high for so long. After a few laps I settled in. During Lap 5 I had a horrible crash. I think I was zoning out when my front wheel went off of a ledge.
I sumer salted over the bars hard and the bike launched into a tree, I was sure that if wasnt hurt bad that the bike would be toast. I got up dusted myself off and adjusted the levers on my bars and I was off. I was able to chase down one more rider and secure a fifth place finsh. 48 Miles of single track and sunshine, a good day. Time for some recovery.