Yellow

I now have a Saturday plan now. As usual I will get up before most of the East Coast and ride up to Albert's in Denville so we can roll out of his house before 7:00. The ride up there is 22 or 23 miles which takes about 1.5 hours at that time of day.

After Denville we'll head towards Chester coming close to Jake's house. I found out today that Jake also reads this blog so in the nature of trying to retain customers I will mention him directly. After Chester we'll head out old 24 and snake around Hacklebarney towards Terren's house, who is one of the few readers who actually comments on the blog. Presumably he will give us water but we may be forced to fight over the contents of the bird bath.

After that it's up and over a big fat hill to Cokesbury Road and circling Round Valley back into Whitehouse Station, through Lamington, and back through Basking Ridge to home. On paper it comes out to 85 miles and about 6800 vertical. If it's early enough and I have the energy I may add on the extra 15 to make the century though 6 hours is really more of my goal.

We may hook up with another guy Kris in the Chester area who will probably ride fast enough to make me happy to finish 85 by the time he gets done with us. Probably it won't work out because these things usually don't. That and he didn't reply to my email.

Anyway that's the plan. At some point I need to drop my mountain bike off at the bike shop. Not sure if I'll be able to squeeze that in between my ride and the end of Julia's nap. I guess I should call the shop and make sure the wait isn't 6 weeks.

This will be my first "overextension" ride of the year with the expected saddle time in the 6 hour realm. My previous long ride was the 4 hour, 66 mile ride on Sunday so this will test how I do in that end area where things typically start to break down. Up to 3-4 hours you can get away with any number of mistakes (pace, nutrition, water) but after that it starts to fall apart. Low calories, water, or electrolytes will start to pound you at some point in the 3-4 hour realm. For me it's usually the 3.5 hour mark as my breakdown point. Given that my first 1.5 hours will be solo I have every opportunity to not overdo it from the door. On the other hand if I'm lucky I will have been awake 45 minutes before I'm rolling Saturday morning so hopefully that doesn't work against me too much.

This morning I decided to sleep in which means waking up at about 6:20. I got 8 hours of sleep which is a good way to start your Friday. As usual when I sleep a lot I feel sluggish the next day. It usually takes me all day to snap out of it. I don't remember if I felt better last Friday when I did a recovery ride or not.

My muscles have felt a little tight lately so I started stretching a little bit in an attempt to alleviate that, and perhaps address my cramps in a different direction. With the step-up in intensity it seems my hamstrings, left calf, and one other small inner right thigh muscles are more prone to cramp lately. They don't actually cramp but it feels like they want to on some of the harder effort days.

Some kid just took the seat next to me. He must be all of 22 years old. His reading material? Trump: The Art of the Deal. Funny. I think a social scientist could have a field day just riding public transportation all day. On top of that, he's wearing a yellow shirt. There's nothing wrong with that but I'm also wearing a yellow shirt. You can't sit next to someone wearing such an obnoxious shirt color if you also have the same thing on. Same goes for orange. Don't they teach these fucking kids anything at college?