a nice longer ride...

Sunday morning:

After no long run on Saturday as I just needed a break from it for at least one weekend so far this year as I already had plans to get in a longer hilly bike ride on Sunday morning. I haven’t had much outdoor ride time in this season yet as the weather has been not so cooperative especially during the weekends plus I needed some more saddle time on the Ridley Dean TT bike especially at the mid-distance ride time. The Galena Duathlon is next Saturday so I also wanted to make sure the bike & I were working right before the hills of Galena.

I parked the car early (6:45am) Sunday morning in a Park & Recreation lot close to the Cary Grove high school where the March Madness half marathon starts and ends at in mid-March. This region is really the starting point is for where the hilliness is in our region so this is why I choose this region to ride in as from there I was able to get in 4 repeats up the March Madness mile 9 hill climb plus I was able to head northwest from this region get in a long ride towards McHenry. About the halfway point between these two cities on the county roads is even a steeper hill that I eventually worked 8 hill climb repeats in also. The rest of the ride has a lot of rolling hills to it but none as steep as those two which is fine as those repeats allow me to test my current abilities and most important to make sure I have enough teeth on my largest cassette gear for me to be able to handle Galena which I’m happy to say it does!

I timed the ride perfectly as I wanted to ride for 2.5 hours at intense training pace. I rode 46 miles in 2:30:02 for an average hilly pace of 18.4mph with a max coasting down the bigger down hill at 35.8mph free wheeling as the bike was rock solid at speed. My average HR for the ride was at 127bpm which a max HR on my last hill climb repeat at 150bpm as I pushed it standing up on the pedals which for me takes more effort that sitting while climbing but I was tiring at this point.

After I packed up everything in the car and was heading home I realized that was one fantastic ride for myself this earlier in the outdoor cycling season plus that Ridley Dean sure is one awesome bike :-)

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