Bloated and Full of...

Oh boy I'm still tired from Saturday's ride today. 4 hours of roll time out of 4:15 total time plus bad conditions really beat the hell out of me. Sprinkle in a little head cold and Sunday was a whole lotta nothing. Ride link:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/3553160

I did most of the second half of the 50k, climbed Cardiac, then tried to take the white trail back but somehow got lost and ended up on the tail end of the first half of the 50k to end the ride. So basically I packed in all the hardest parts of the race on a day where the trails were a complete mess. Thank god for the GPS or I'd still be out there.

The first hour of the ride was tough, probably the hardest stretch of the entire race course. It took me over an hour to do 5 miles, which is pretty poor. There really are no free miles in that section. It's a tough draw. I had also kept the Blue Grooves on and had them at 40 PSI which was bouncing me around like crazy. After an hour I let a bunch of air out of the rear and it got a lot better. Not sure where that stands now, maybe 30-35 in the rear? I need to check. I forgot that Allamuchy needs a lot less pressure than most places. Even at the Rattling Creek race last week 40 was perfectly fine. At Allamuchy it's like riding a jackhammer.

The good thing is that I think I'll be fine with the Blue Grooves for the race. With less pressure they seem to do well and I always have the Resolutions as a backup, among any number of tires in the basement.

By the end I was walking anything and everything. When I got home and weighed myself I had lost 10 pounds on the ride. Working out the math results in my needing to drink something like 55 ounces of water an hour in this heat. Blah, that's a tough chore. But the alternative is running into the severe dehydration realm which a 5% loss in body weight starts to do. So I'm dropping a ton of performance because I sweat way too much. I posted a question about it on MTBR and got some good conversation here:

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=325580

There are a few things to takeaway from that. One is that this is a long and sometimes painful process. Another is that most of these lessons are learned through experience, sometimes the hard way. I have a lot of tweaking to do with salt/electrolytes, calories, and fitness. But my weakest link in all of that is hydration. Obviously that's a major task right now.

So I'm on a rest week now. I took yesterday off because I was shot and starting to feel that sickness coming on. Plus my abs, chest, and triceps were really sore from all the jackhammering. It feels like the sick starting to fade already but it's still there, so time off is a good thing. If I don't get better through today I'll stay home tomorrow. I was going to take Monday through Friday off the bike but with Sunday an off day I may take off through Wednesday and go for a short spin Thursday. Then Friday off, maybe an hour Saturday then the Darkhorse 40 on Sunday. I'm still very undecided on that race though.

On one hand it's a chance to do a 40 mile race but on the other hand I'm not sure it does much for my getting ready for the 24 hour race. After this weekend it seems to me I'm not really beating myself up enough to be ready for that race. All indications are that the Darkhorse race is an "easy" 40 miles that a lot of roadies do. Does that help me?

My alternate option is to go to Allamuchy again and do a pair of big loops. That would give me a chance to hit the car in between and refuel as needed. It would give me a good chance to test my lap strategy in terms of salt/electrolytes, calories, and hydration. I would be a better park to be riding since that's where the race will be it will help me learn the park better. And it won't cost me $45 like the Darkhorse will. I could even do 3 laps of 90 minutes each to get an even better feel for the whole race and my routine. Plus it will only cost me half a day where the Darkhorse will cost me almost the whole day.

I sound insane but I think I've just convinced myself to bag the DH40 and do this. It will also give me an opportunity to let Woody ride and whoever else wants to since my pace won't be that fast. Slow and steady, loops begin at 6:00, 7:45, and 9:30. Now all I need to do is put together a good 90 minute loop, starting with Cardiac since the race always climbs out of the boy scout camp. But then so does white. I could go up and down white to start and end every lap.

My bike is in pieces on the basement floor after riding it through that mess Saturday. I'm trying to make sure I don't drop a million dollars on maintenance so I took it apart to clean it well. This off week gives me a good opportunity to use some of my down time to do that. Plus I get to learn more about the bike. Maybe I can try changing out the rest of the bearings if I have enough time as well.

Some Monday morning feedback from last week.

Steve

"LOL - Nice one 3rd. party. I have a very strong suspicion of who YOU are, so be careful - I now have full control."

Indeed he does! In true "inmates run the asylum" fashion Steve now runs the site with Jake and I'm a moderator. What next? Fred for governor?

Jake

"try to live moderately
i only eat when i am empty
beer is not poison"

I'd say that Jake's training for 2007 has gone the way of the Dodo. And he sucks at haiku.

Terren

"Multiplying ft/m with your pace (m/h) gives vertical feet per hour. It might be worth tracking. In true nerd fashion, I've been tracking some numbers of my own, now that I have a heart rate monitor. I multiply my avg heart rate (beats/min) with my pace (minutes/mile) to get beats/mile which turns out to be a pretty useful indicator of overall fitness (it's been slowly trending down), and fairly consistent despite workout intensity. It would work just as well with cycling as with running, although since you track speed, not pace, the calculation would be different but easy enough to work out. And Norm I've been silent on the weight issue more or less to help keep your spirits up. I know how much of a motivating factor it is for you to try to catch up with me - and how depressing it would be to see the finish line actually receding into the distance."

Good thought on the vertical feet/mile. That's probably useful for roughly similar hilly routes but I don't think it really does much when you throw in flat routes. Once you get going faster in the flats air resistance is everything and vertical feet don't register at all, but then wind also plays a huge role. Obviously I need a power meter but at a grand or more no thanks. There may be a power calculator online that would do the trick at least for rough comparison.

There is no finish line Terren. The race goes on forever. My strike date is December 26th. Be ready for the call. Even if I have to bike for 5 hours without water on Christmas day you're going down! Well for one day at least. Then I can slowly gravitate towards 300 again, right after I get out of the hospital.

Today's FGI: 191

A bit of a step back but normal for a Monday. After the ride Saturday I ate like a horse. Then yesterday my body was pissed at me, so I ate a lot again. After 189 Saturday and Sunday, a 191 Monday is actually out of the ordinary. It would usually be higher by a pound or 2. I would credit having enough salt on Saturday's ride for that but it's much too early in the experimentation game to say for sure. In any event I start Monday like I start every week, bloated and full of shit.