Yesterday after the ride of course my legs felt like rocks. Good thing we had a fanastic dinner to help the recovery process. We also had a living room discussion about nutrition on the bike. This was led by Russell Cree of Upper Echelon Fitness. Cycling House has Hammer Nutrition as a sponsor and have the products we can try out. The key tip I learned was to separate your fuels: hydration, electrolytes, and calories. The cool thing was being able to put the learning into action the next day during the ride. I thought it worked well.
Today we headed to the east side of town for a ride on Gates Pass. Tucson streets are a big grid with strip mall after strip mall. So, luckily we loaded the van to cross that mess.
We started the ride as a group and then the road headed up to Gates Pass. That's when the hammer was thrown - hell with the warm up. BigRing Ben lead the charge up to the top and finished very strong. I had to taper off with about a 1/4 mile to go and the top in sight since my voice of reason said "Zone 6 this early in the ride might not be a good idea". We descended a killer decent - one of those you wished was alot longer.
We did some loops on the other side that included alot of rollers. The decents were fast and we "spun out" the chain as we reached 40mph+.
At one point we did an out and back road on some rough pavement. We looked down at our power meters and said "wow, 25mph and only 60W". We all knew the ride back was going to be bruttal with numbers like that when the tailwind became a headwind. It was time for a SST (sweet spot training) ride back in the wind and up the road.
We stopped for water and got back on the bikes to head back on the steep side of Gates Pass. I was feeling alittle weary all the sudden, so I grabbed that "fueling" bottle of Hammer Perpetuem and took a few long pulls. I was feeling much better at the base. Pull off a strong climb, but I just couldn't hold onto BigRing's wheel once again (must have been all that pulling at the front I was doing during the day).
Once again a fantastic day on the bike. Tomorrow is "planned" to be an easier ride since Friday and Saturday are the big climbing days.
Distance: 50 miles
Elevation Gain: 4100ft'
Ride Time: ~3 hours
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