Tuesday riding

Tuesday, for some reason, has been designated as my toughest riding day of the week. Actually, my philosophy is that riding hard on Tuesday gives you Wednesday as an easy spin day, Thursday as a medium effort day before racing on the weekend.

I'm not sure if that's a good way to train, but I don't know any better. Last Tuesday I crushed myself with repeated hill sprints around a new loop I'm riding in Rock Creek Park. My legs haven't felt that sore in a while. Usually they can get pretty tired, but not really too sore. I think it was the heavy sprinting and big ring, low cadence climbing.

Last night I was able to get out for an hour and a half ride before sunset. I chose the same Rock Creek Park loop/course, but instead of crushing myself, I set out for a medium effort ride in some sort of attempt to do a taper before Jeff Cup this weekend. It feels a little silly to me to be tapering for a 30-mile road race, but that's what is making me feel more comfortable, so I'm going with it.

You can see the ride here: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2745298

and the splits here: http://connect.garmin.com/splits/2745298

Laps 1 and 8 are going to and coming from the loop. I did one relatively hard effort (lap 5), but didn't crush it like last week. What's interesting is that effort gave me my fastest time on the loop yet and I think it's because last week I was sort of doing intervals and tried to destroy myself on the first part of the loop going up the main hill of the loop and then do some other sprints up the smaller hills on the loop and kind of used the back side as recovery before the next loop and sprints started. Yesterday I just moderated my effort around the whole loop and surprise surprise, a faster time. I guess it's not rocket science.

Last week's splits (with less warmup): http://connect.garmin.com/splits/2606661

The elevation profile of the ride is interesting. It shows the climbing loop, but at constantly adjusting baseline elevation for each lap. I guess it may have something to do with the changing pressure the closer it gets to sunset. I honestly forget how the 705 calculates the elevation (if it's GPS, barometric altimeter, or both).

To see the elevation, click on the ride link: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2745298, then click on the "elevation" tab towards the bottom of the page.

On the way home last night I saw 3 deer (pic above). They were just half a block from Connecticut Ave, a pretty busy area. Good news is that no squirrels tried to jump out into the road and kill me yesterday.

I'm off to drop my bike off at the "Bicycle Pro Shop" in Georgetown for a tune-up...hasn't had one since I got the new frame last June... Poor bike, I feel like a dead-beat Dad.

By the way, in reference to my post about the Milan-San Remo results, cyclingnews.com eventually posted the corrected results (with no explanation of course). In other race results news, yesterday it took cyclingnews.com a few hours after the Castilla y Leon Time Trial ended to post more than the top 5 results. Lame! Almost as lame as this blog!