Sunday, May 17, 2015

Work in Progress--today's surprising ride!

I'm now turning my attention to dedicating the next 110 days to getting my bike fitness in enough shape to be competent when I tackle the Silver State 508 in September.  today was the 5th Wilmington Grand Fondo--a metric century, which is quite hilly--relentlessly so.  I rode with the 450 or so other riders and really enjoyed all those feelings that come when one pushes out towards the limits on a bike.

My numbers came in quite strong--I was very surprised, given how little I've ridden, compared to my normal program.  The total ride was 62.32 miles and it took me 4:06:08--just 15.2 mph.  However, I averaged 204 watts with a normalized power of 221 watts--those are the type of numbers I'd expect to through down in reasonably good Half-Ironman bike!  If you had asked me before hand i would have guessed i could do somewhere between 160-180 watts--these extra 40 watts or so tell me that I have a very good base to start layering in the bike mileage I'll need to tackle the 508--yeah!!!!

I still have in my Garmin that my FTP is 265 watts and if that is still true (I need to test it) then my intensity factor was .834--right in the .80-.85 sweet spot for a half-Ironman ride.  My TSS was 227.4 (so you can imagine I feel a little worked over tonight--a good IM ride would have a TSS around 280 or so).  I burned 2404 calories and hit a top speed of 38 mph.

Here is map of the ride (and yes it was confusing):


Below are also charts of my power, the elevation and my speed over time:




Tough ride for sure, but very encouraging.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't publish some pics from the boy's fishing trip this week as well:








The trip was a real blast.  Great company, good food at the end of the day and a good test of my surgically repaired left elbow.

Onward and upward!



1 comment:

ray brown said...

Randy email me if you would like some recon info on the 508. I did it last year. Hopefully this year will be warmer with the date change. Our day started with highs in the 80s and over night dropped to the 20's! I caught pneumonia overnight but still finished. Ugh it was brutal. I am training for RAAM solo in 2016 Awesome 24 hour tt in Washington NC at the end of August Mid Atlantic! Great race put on by some wonderful
people. Not that far from you.Raybrown@mindspring.com