Today's ride - odd experience.

01-15-2005, 06:55 PM

Had an odd experience on today's ride. On a whim, I rode over to a 3/4 mile
hill, after about 20 min warmup - my regular route had been covered in mud
after the torrential down pours Friday night.

This difficult hill is one I've been dreaming of riding, with significantly
steeper sections than I'm used to, and I was basically able to sprint up
it, seated. Just a few months ago I rode -down- this hill and hit speeds
over 35mph not even pedalling, even braking a couple times.

Going up it a glance at my inclinometer pegged it at 11-12% in the last
100yds, 7-8% for most of the run-up.

Even when I've been doing a lot of small but modestly steep hills, I've
been a bit out of breath at the 1/2 mile point. Today, breath was
completely calm, no pain in the quads -at all-, though they did seem
pleasantly slightly pumped at the top, for a moment. Very strange. I felt
like I could just step off the bike, yawn, and stretch and take a nap or
something, lol. Could the darling wife be slipping me EPO in my geritol?
;-D

Wonder what could happen that would give an old clydesdale such a jump in
ability. I was trying to stay 'light on the bike', and be a little more
aero, as I mentioned early.

I've been averaging only about 70-100 miles/week since Oct, about half my
normal mileage, very little of it in the foot-hills, and I've be-moaning my
apparent loss of conditioning. Last week I had been picking up speed, and
have been doing some modest intervals, but not enough quantity and quality
of training to justify this insane jump in ability - or so it seemed to me.

I get out every day, rain or shine. Rode ~330 days in 2004, 3200 miles -
fairly modest mileage, imo.

Anyway, I'm psyched.

jj