Sunday, July 24, 2011

Bike SPEED!

Today I got my bike out of the garage. How excited it must have been! She's just sat there with air slowly leaking out of her tires for almost 2 months. Shame on me! But...I'm back into training mode!!! I have faithfully worked out 6 days/week for the past 1.5 weeks!  And, with races scheduled through January 15th, I have a lot of training to do!

I find riding my bike by myself kind of boring. On the other hand, I find running by myself to be a wonderful 'me time!' I think part of it is because I don't let myself listen to music while riding. And, often, I get one song 'stuck' in my head. It keeps me steady, but it's kind of aggravating, too!

Today I only planned on riding about 30 minutes as I have a treadmill test tomorrow with my new running coach. (I'm excited!) I actually almost didn't go out. I just didn't 'feel like it' and I wasn't sure how this might affect tomorrow's performance. But, I am trying to train 6 days per week and I REALLY want to get back into cycling! So, I got up and went out there and aired up my poor, almost empty, tires.

I warmed up for about a mile or so...then I decided to try some SPEED WORK! This is something I've been incorporating a LOT in my running the past few months, but haven't really tried on my bike. I kind of just made it up as I rode, but here's what I did...I rode 1.5 miles "FAST" (meaning 15-16 mph) and then 0.5 miles "slow" (meaning 12-13 mph). I did this basically 3 times.

I ended up riding a total of 7 miles in 30:28 for an average pace of 13.79 mph. That's pretty good for me. I'm trying to build up to where my average pace is 15-16 mph! It'll come, right?!

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