Those Arduous First Miles

I've finally crossed the mythical 1000 miles threshold for 2009. Yep, 1140 as of yesterday. I'm 'happy' about it - honestly I thought I had about 50 hours, but it turns out its more like 66! Hold that praise a second, here are the numbers from the first four months of the year:

Month Duration Distance TSS kJ 1'w 5'w 20'w 60'w
Apr-2009 14:36:31 276.14 931 9914 454 310 265 237
Mar-2009 18:53:17 324.13 1242 12153 446 330 306 228
Feb-2009 15:24:12 257.49 789 10187 374 301 232 210
Jan-2009 17:34:07 284.32 866 10998 406 316 271 219

Not exactly tearing it up, but maintaining I guess. This past week was my best training since December - all 9 hours and ~178 miles of it. Rather than look at the time/miles as unrewarding I'm choosing to see it as a foundation upon which to continue my transition back to some fitness.



Saturday I jumped on the local 'race-ride' aka The Spectrum Ride. It starts near my house and is a good test-piece to see where you're at. There are a couple of 'ouch' sections - Arastradero, Alpine, and a couple of spots on Canada - but generally the ride is easy enough that getting dropped isn't a worry. Despite that fact, this was still the hardest sustained ride I've done this year. My peak 60min effort was 273Watts normalized and we averaged 23.5mph for the 40'ish mile ride. A solid Level 3 workout. Friday I'd done the 'noon ride' and knocked off a 20min effort at 293Wnorm - so the combination made for a nice couple of rides. One thing I did notice was that I just didn't have the leg strength to close a gap on a small, hard, rise one time. It's never fun to have the guys on your wheel give you a push to close the gap, it's embarassing, but I deserved it and was really trying (sorry guys). I've got a ways to go, but I can start to see some progress in my ability to push a bigger gear and sustain the effort. I'm optimistic enough to consider racing Cats Hill in two weeks in the M35+ 1/2/3's...though I should just continue training instead!