It's the 4th Saturday session and the B3's rode 57 miles today into uncharted territory for me. This is the longest I've ever ridden a bicycle in one sitting. This time we started at Mission Bay and rode to Carlsbad and back. Here is the map.
The weather was gorgeous and everything was so green after the recent rains. You couldn't ask for better conditions. Our group mentor, Jay was off this week doing the Solvang Century ride with some of his old college buddies. Mentor Jack and two former mentors filled in and it was nice to have some more experienced riders to give pointers along the way. A few of the regulars weren't there and we had a new addition to the group. Having 4 new people and 3 missing regulars really threw off the pace lines. My personal pace line skills were pretty poor this week. I didn't have a lot of confidence in sticking close to the person in front of me with all the expanding and contracting we were doing. Consequently, I did very little drafting throughout the day. It's no surprise that with the longer mileage and not taking advantage of drafting that I was physically exhausted by the end of the ride. I was seriously close to bonking out when we finished. It didn't help that we did the toughest part of the course, the Torrey climb, after already being on the road for over 45 miles.
Check out the graph below of my heart rate in relation to the elevation. It's no surprise that my highest heart rate, 185 beats/minute, occurs at the steepest part of the elevation graph. Yup, right smack in the middle of the climb.
I took the lead at Torrey again and raced up to the top. I took a very aggressive pace and was mostly happy with my climb. At the top, I was pretty winded and looking back on it, I may have taken it too aggressively because I was pretty whipped at that point with another 12 miles to go.
The last 12 miles were tough. My shoulders and neck were very stiff. My hands were numb. I was out of food and was starting to feel the bonk coming on. I was also having trouble concentrating and found my mind wandering which resulted in me falling back in the pace line. Not good. I was happy to be done when we finished.
My fitness is good right now but I think I've reached the end of my "credit". I'm not going to be able to rely only on physical strength any more. The long and the short of it is that I need to work on riding skills if I'm going to be able to complete this 100-mile ride.
I need to:
1) DRAFT more consistently. You spend 30% less energy when you are drafting behind another rider. I could have used the gas at the end of the ride.
2) ROTATE in the pace line more frequently. This is a team sport. I'm uncomfortable riding behind some riders so I'm spending more time than I should be at the front of the line taking the brunt of the wind.
3) CONSERVE my energy and not attack the hills so aggressively. This is going to be hard because I love the challenge of the climbing. I'm taking the hills too hard and fast and spending (wasting?) a lot of energy doing so. I might be able to save some gas by taking them more slowly and steadily.
DRC...Something to work on this week.
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