same day...round two...

Thursday evening:

Right after work I headed over to the local bike shop for the Thursday evening one mile repeats group of that they do weekly on this evening. They basically ride on an industrial parkway area that allows us to have a perfect 1.1 mile straight away in both directions connected by roads at each end so it’s a nice 2.2 mile loop. I attended this once about a month ago so this would be my second round for this outdoor cycling season. Temps were perfect at 54 degrees with a nice strong breeze out of the NE at 16mph. Since I was dressed properly for this biking session I was perfectly comfortable out there last night.

At one point we had 38 bike riders out there last night with about 90% of them being roadies and the last 10% comprised of triathletes/duathletes. The roadies ride the mile repeat as a large peloton (group) but in the tri/du/time trial racing world drafting is illegal in races. So for my full benefit of this workout I would hang back about an 1/4th of a mile then I would drop the throttle with full power on with peaking during the repeat in the second half of the repeat distance. So my repeat distances were each different because I would end up catching the peloton or getting pinched out on road space. I also made it a point to ride out of the pack on the recovery mile which just so happened to be into the headwind but that’s a big benefit training and racing wise…no drafting for me!

So I was able to get in 8 repeats in various distances with the 1st one not being recorded by me because I considered it my stride-out repeat and the 8th one being a cool-down repeat…so below is my repeat mile distance, time for the repeat, average & max HR for repeat and average & max speed for repeat:

.9 mile – 2:00 – AHR 139bpm – MHR 150bpm – Average 26.7mph – Max 32.8mph
.75 mile – 1:36 – AHR 144bpm – MHR 153bpm – Average 27.2mph – Max 30.1mph
.75 mile – 1:31 – AHR 145bpm – MHR 158bpm – Average 28.8mph – Max 30.3mph
.85 mile – 1:53 – AHR 150bpm – MHR 163bpm – Average 27.1mph – Max 28.8mph
.5 mile – 1:08 – AHR 145bpm – MHR 151bpm – Average 27.3mph – Max 29.3mph
.85 mile – 1:51 – AHR 148bpm – MHR 152bpm – Average 26.5mph – Max 28.5mph

I rode on the bike for a total time of 1:04:12 for 19.6 miles with and average speed of 18.3mph. My average HR was 128bpm with an average cadence of 94rpm & a max cadence at one point of 116rpm. I would have ridden more but the sunlight was going down quickly as I felt quite good on the bike during the whole duration. Actually I was amazed at how good I felt out there on the bike, no pain what-so-ever like running even though I have a very specific tri-bike to help activate running muscles. Plus in the morning I ran those 400’s & 800’s repeats and on the bike I felt like I never ran them...

I hope to carry this great feeling into the Galena Duathlon on May 17th…

b