159.6 miles--longest ride of my life (so far)

Continuing the long rides in preparation for the 508.  last thursday's was the longest of my life.  Unfortunately the power meter didn't talk to my Garmin so no power data--too bad, because i felt pretty strong and averaged 16.4 mph for the ride....

7/16 Long ride

Continuing to build my long rides for the 508.  I went 138 miles last Thursday--which I believe is my longest ever training ride (I've raced longer):

It was a pleasant ride and I averaged 16 mph/138 watts, which seems to be my sweet zone for the 508.  I had a pretty strong (15-20 mph NNE wind throughout and I generally rode NE on the way out):

Not surprisingly, my speed trended up given the wind:

 My power was steady and with a variability index of 1.06 quite smooth--definitely grooving it for the 508--at least at this short of a distance...

Today's ride--starting to get serious!

Today's ride was 7:15 in duration and a bit over 120 miles.  My avg power was 139 watts and NP was 150 watts, which increasingly I feel will be reasonable targets for the 508.  We'll see how my power holds up when I start riding 200+ miles....

Todays' ride took me down first to Cape  May and then North and West (hard to go the other way) up into cumberland county:

My power output was very comfortable and if anything increased slightly as the ride progressed

 I left above 5:25 am and the temp was in thigh 60s.  by the finish it was fitting with 90.  Humid as well but i did a pretty good job of hydrating so felt good and strong the whole way!

Next week I will push up over 8 hours and start pushing 140 miles or try to back-to-back rides of around 6 hours (100 miles) on consecutive days.

Racing the 508 will obviously cause me to have to be able to ride around 36 hours over a 48 hour period so I'm thinking mixing in ever longer single shot rides with some slightly shorter back-to-back efforts may be beneficial....