89 miles, 6,648 elevation gain, bugs flying off the teeth EPIC ride

Sunday I did my long bike ride. I have a friend training for the bike part of Vineman (112 miles) so he came down and we went on what was planned to be a 122 mile ride with over 11,000 ft of climbing. Now, to be honest, I didn't think we'd get the whole ride in before we ran of daylight and there was one part that I had no intention of doing but put in to be nice. But I still thought the ride was somewhat doable with maybe a little bit of walking up some of the Mount Hamilton part. I had seen many versions of this ride on ridewithgps.com so I know it can be done and is a semi-popular route.

My first  indication that it might not go as planned was when I put in my mileage for everything I'd done for the week into my training plan spreadsheet and realized I had already earned 136 activity points. That's almost as many as I earned for last week and doing this ride would add on another 122 points. Not good or realistic. I should probably have done a short 50-60 miler ride instead.

But my friend was coming down and was excited about doing the Tour de California Stage 4 part of the ride and I have really had this urge to do an epic ride lately so we set out.

Why is it pronounced del-VAL?

Today I was driving to Lake Del Valle to swim and run. I kind of didn't want to go but there was sort of a chance someone was meeting me there so I figured I had to show up since it was my idea. But there was enough of a chance no one else would show up and then I'd have to decide if I was going to swim by myself, which technically is dangerous.

I'm thinking these random thoughts as I force my body into the car with wetsuit and assorted paraphanellia and I'm driving out to Livermore when my GPS tells me to turn on "valley-ceeto" road. "Hey, moron," I yell at my GPS (yes, I talk to inanimate objects. A lot.), "it's Vi-yay-ceetos. Valle is pronounced vi-yay, not valley. And there's an S on the end, too."

My GPS is not cowed by my correction and continues to mispronounce the road until we move onto a new one.

The importance of getting enough sleep

I had a great workout today. I rode the SVTC Hill course 3 minutes faster than last time and I didn't push as hard during the warm-up phase. As I was coming into the parking lot and getting ready to do my run, I realized that I had also had 12 hours of sleep for the past couple of days.

I think that getting more sleep (after weeks of not enough) has made a difference in my ability to workout longer. Normally, I can't workout much more than 10-12 hours a week without getting really ground down but I've been doing a lot more workouts and long bike rides and I feel great.

The first thing I changed was to drink Fluid Recovery Drink after every workout and that made a difference as well. Add in the sleep and I think I may actually be ready for Ironman Canada when it happens. I was seriously worried about that a few weeks ago. But, if I am able to keep this up, I'll be doing 3 bikes and 3 runs a week with 2-3 swims and 1-2 strength workouts. That's a lot more than I've been able to do in the past.

Please help the Obesity Action Coalition

Click on the badge below to vote for the Obesity Action Coalition. You can vote once per day!



Thank you!