finally a note from Saturday June 20th 2009...

Saturday June 20th 2009:

Headed up really early to a town just southwest of Madison Wisconsin known as Verona to ride with the Vision Quest training group out of Chicago. Robbie Ventura whom raced as a teammate to Lance Armstrong (on US Postal) for many years started up his business Vision Quest after he retired from Professional Cycling. He wasn’t present this day as he has about 8 coaches riding with the various abilities of cyclists. The ride for the day was either one or two loops around the Wisconsin Ironman bike course for which each loop was about 41 miles. I was planning on only riding the first loop as I’m really not training for any longer distance bike races this year. Also I was demo’ing a PowerTap rear wheel for the ride from VQ to see what my bike riding wattage was going to be for the day. So I swapped out the rear wheels on the R. Dean and set-up the bike before the ride was to start at 8am.

We were all set to roll off on the ride as a group when immediately I heard my chain fall off the small chainring on the cranks. I put the chain back on the ‘ring as the same thing happens again as it turns out the axle hob on the PowerTap was not going to work with my SRAM Red components on the bike…I was upset for about a minute and realized some things are just out of your control and you have to except it! So I went back to my car and switched over everything back to my own rear wheel/tire assembly but 35 minutes passed so I decided eat some more foods & hydrate properly as the weather was hot, humid and windy. I figured then I would ride the second loop with the Advanced group so I calculated about an hour before they returned to start the second loop I would ride some of the IM WISC bike course solo to warm up the legs and make sure everything was working on the bike which it did. So I finished up this warm-up ride about 20 minutes before the advanced group finished its first loop as I was able to eat and hydrate once again properly before setting off with them. W/U ride was 10.1 miles in 34:26 with an average HR of 121bpm and max HR on a hill climb of 145bpm.

So I set off with 6 of the advanced riders on the second ~41 mile IM WI biking loop in the rolling hills of southwest Wisconsin. Since this was my first time riding this course I was conservative and sat towards the back of the group as I did not know this route plus I had to patient as this mileage in the rolling hills is something new to me. The terrain is quite similar to the Galena region just a lot more miles of it to ride. A couple of the riders dropped off the back within the opening 5 miles as the winds, heat and humidity were quite taxing this day. At about mile 11 our coach stopped riding (which I found out afterwards) so the remaining four of us just kept chugging onwards up and down the hills of the loop. The group size then went down to three of us a couple miles later and as I was feeling good with the group and ride I decided to charge the next hill climb to get my HR near or tapping into the red zone right around minute 42 into the ride. I have to say that the Ridley Dean is awesome, stable and light at hill climbing especially with the 28 tooth cassette ring on the back keeping my cadence in the perfect zone…the bike is great in all conditions!

At about mile 24 we stopped at the feed stop actually to quickly fill up our water bottles and a couple moments later the three of us were off again riding. I continued to feel great so I pretty much charged the rest of the ride especially pushing the hills. With only about 10 minutes left in the ride distance I purposely pulled back my pace and brought up my cadence for a cool-down session. As we wished the ride and rode into the parking lot area of Fireman’s Park I felt great to have ridden so well on this challenging course. Total distance was 41.3 (with a missed turn in there also) in 2:15:13 with an average HR of 134bpm and max HR during a long hill climb crawl of 156bpm. I packed everything back into the car, hung around for alittle bit and then drove back homewards.

A rock solid day of bike training except for the mechanical issues early on…

Below is my Polar HR chart from the IM WI portion of the ride:
http://www.twodogzdesign.com/cycle09/062009.JPG

b