Back in the saddle

I got back in the swing of thing this weekend. While I was in Boston the temperature was 93 degrees. Now, that is hot but it was nothing compared to Mississippi. As soon as I walked off of the airplane it hit me. Prior to the plane landing I took off my sweater. The gang plank was hot and humid. New Orleans was having that same mid nineties temperature but the humidity was also high. It was sweltering.

Super geeky cycling jersey (I got it last week in Boston)

That did not stop the cycling. I was not able to locate a group ride of Saturday due to a race taking place. There were several people participating. Raland won the Clydesdale division, Chris placed third overall all and Sam won the dang thing. I would say that Hattiesburg was well represented!

So, without the group ride I jumped on the mountain bike. I rode several different trails and racked up nearly an hour of off road adventure. This was only like 6 miles. This mountain bike riding is so much different than road bike riding. This is a poor analogy but for me it is more like swimming. It is all technical based. On the road I can select intensity and just churn out the miles. With the off rode it is constant up and down and speeding up and slowing down. It is intense but the workouts were not focused. I still had a great time. In fact later in the day I had another opportunity to get out after the heat had subsided some and rode another 4 miles. Prior to the plane landing I took off my sweater.

On Sunday I did a good tempo ride on the triathlon bike. I rode just under an hour (20 miles) at a set intensity. I tried to peg my heart rate at my Zone 4 LTHR (164 – 173 BPM). I was able to keep it right in that range. I made sure my heart rate did not drop below 165 and backed off when I approached 170 BPM. It was a solid ride and I was dripping when I finished.

A little later in the day I grabbed the Sunday group ride. I was heading to the trail head and ran into Raland at Jackson Station. We were going to ride together but he noticed he had a slow leak in his front tire. He shot it full of CO2 but it continued to leak. The ride had a gash in it so he had to hurry back home to grab a new tube AND tire. I went to the trail head without him.

There was a large group of rides considering that it was such a hot day. I was talking with some of the guys as we rolled along at an easy pace when we heard the distinctive sound of bikes on bikes. I slowed down and it looked like one of those wrecks you see during a tour. Well, it was not that bad but people were trying to avoid the three bikes on the ground. There were no serious injuries but one helmet had hit rather hard. After the situation was surveyed and it was seen that everyone was okay we started out again. It is fortunate that we were riding of the trace. There were no cars or any kind of traffic to deal with!

After Sumrall we left the trace and hit a few rolling hills. This was a strong group and the pace was fast at times. Raland was back in the group and he made a breakaway. I let a bit of a gap widen before I took off in pursuit. I was able to grab his wheel and we were riding strong. However, it did not take long for some of the others to bridge the gap and reel us in. It was a hard fun ride. I think I consumed 5 bottles of water in the 40 miles. It was hot!

So I rode for about 4 and half hours this past weekend. I made up for a little bit of lost time last week.