Century Training Series: Day 7

Today marks the end of my first week of training for my first century and I’m glad tomorrow is a rest day. I’ve ridden more miles this week than I have in over 15 years (I’ll post my week 1 mileage tomorrow). Today was a 1.5 hour endurance pace ride and I waited until this evening to do it because tomorrow is a rest day. I arrived at White Rock Lake at about 6 PM but ended up having to fix a...

A few random cycling questions & thoughts

Resting heart rate. I’m familiar with resting heart rate and how it’s related to your fitness (the lower it is generally the more fit you are; some say a better gage is heart rate recovery). Today I decided to check mine and it was 56 bpm. That is a huge improvement for me since the last time I can remember having my heart rate taken I was well above 70 bpm. This is great news for me since there...

Century Training Series: Day 1

Well, today kicked off my Century Training Series in which I’ll be blogging daily during my 12-week training plan as I get ready to ride my first century in September. I’m following the basic plan in the June 2009 issue of Bicycling magazine for those interested in following along. Since it’s Day 1 it means it’s Monday which is sort of anti-climactic since it’s a scheduled rest day. ...

Had a good hard ride last night

I’ve still been riding just about everyday as I near the twelve weeks to go point until my first century (July 4th is the 12-week point). Once I hit that twelve week point I’ll be following a training plan but until them I’m just trying to build base mileage, work on the hills and get acclimatized to the heat here in Texas. Tuesday was a day off the bike so I had planned on riding hard...

Obliterated after 15 miles

Yesterday, instead of going to the group handling training I normally do, I opted for a longer ride because I need the mileage. In hindsight I probably should have just did the handling training because my ride sucked. I started off OK and wanted to ride something a little bit faster than my planned century pace of 15 mph. I targeted an average of 16 mph for the ride. Once I got down off the trail and on the...