First Ride Outside on My Road Bike

Pretty weird. It's March 14th and I'm about to go out on my second training ride outside on my road bike. This wouldn't be that special anywhere else, but last three years, while living here in the prairies, I've been shackled on my trainer this time of year. Yesterday it got up to +11 or +12 and it was pretty nice with sun and not much wind. Can't complain.

So all the highways are dry here and even the River Road was pretty good. Quite a bit of melt water on the road though so I won't be riding there today. It's pretty wet inside the city still but all the snow should be gone by the end of the week. Here's a picture from River Road. What makes me even happier is low water level in the river...shouldn't need to stress about flood this year and no roads blocked by water.


Of course I got bit excited, because of the good weather, and my first road ride outside and overcooked my first interval a bit. It just felt too good and the damage was done before I noticed anything. Had to take the second interval bit easier but kept going 10 minutes longer. So 28 and 38 minutes at bit below my threshold. Trying to get that 60 min of threshold/SST work in every outdoor session now. I removed all the power/speed/HR/torque/cadence numbers off the picture below because I've received some feedback about them in one of my previous posts. Smoothing in the picture is 30".


So this 60' of threshold/SST per outdoor session will be the meat and potatoes of my training for next 8-10 weeks. Local races will help me with non-structured VO2 training starting mid-April and I'll start my structured VO2 training at the beginning of May. Then it's pretty simple. Bikes on Broadway 4 weeks before nationals and hopefully few races at America's Dairy Land a week before nationals. I wasn't really thinking about training too hard once the season gets going. Just do the local MTB races for training and then Tuesday night crit' and two other rides during the week.

MTB enduros are pretty good training though. I need to pin it at high SST just to keep up with the more agile MTB guys. Being overweight = good training on MTB when trying to follow those more cyclist looking guys on the trails. And MTB enduro stands for MTB marathon locally here in Manitoba. Don't confuse it with MTB enduro familiar to Finnish guys.

Most important goal for me is to get rid of few more kilos. 75kg by the end of May would be OK and I can get there pretty easily. 73kg would be better, but that takes some more commitment. 70kg would be great, but that is little too much. I guess 500g/week is good pace without killing yourself so 11 weeks x 500g = 5500g. Doesn't look that bad...

OK...enough of this rambling and off to a training ride.

p.s. After the winter and parking spots covered with snow, some of the fellow 'peggers have as hard time parking their beloved trucks as they have allowing cyclists onto THEIR roads. Good for him only blocking two spots. My wife didn't let me take another picture later on that would have explained this inability to maneuver a vehicle.