Sunday, October 19, 2008

4AM1 : SLB2

That was the score for this weeks training sessions. Tuesday and Friday the alarm had woken me with a start at 4am and had been up at ‘em before you could say "WTF is the time"! It had also been a week of swaps, Tuesdays 14 mile ride was swapped with Thursday 12 and was then carried over till Friday morning and ended up being 16 miles, then Friday afternoon I ran 10 miles at an average pace of 8:14, so the likelihood that I was going leap out of bed Saturday morning at 4am was slim to none and none won! And so at 6:20am, nearly two hours later then planned, I was finally on the road.

The sun was up and the clouds were all pinks and oranges. This was to be the last long ride and I was aiming for 90 miles, it was actually scheduled for next weekend but I have a race so it was another swap. After last week’s mountain ride this week I had planned, using GMaps Pedometer, what seemed a flatter route half of which was all new, a change being as good as a rest afterall, so with some mental juggling I decided to ride he new route, originally as a loop, backwards, see how far I could get in 2:30 hours (I had a total of 5:40 hours to play with instead of my original 7:00 and had to be home by noon) and turn around or if over halfway push through for the loop.

The route took me North through Thousand Oaks and into the Conejo Valley of which the flat central plain is a major farming area; I rode by miles of lemon and orange groves and other unidentifiable growing things! Well it wasn’t quite as flat as I thought and 2:30 later I had 38 miles done, average just over 15mph. So I about faced and headed home, strangely it took roughly to same time to come home even though it seemed to be more uphill and so I tooled around for another 40 minutes to push up the mileage arriving home just gone midday.

To be honest I was feeling it at this point and while I could have probably slogged out the last fifteen miles had I had the time my legs were tired and I was starting to feel a niggle in my calf that had appeared in the previous nights run so I was happy to call it then.

So the final stats 75.82 miles, 5:12 moving time and 5:41 total time, (this makes total sense as coming back through Thousand Oaks I hit nearly every red light I could find, I gave up counting at 23 in the space of five miles!) and just over 7000’ of elevation; so much for a flat route.

Blogger is loading my photos sideways but you can see them here. and the MotionBased data is here:

10 comments:

  1. I think this is very close to insane. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. 5 hrs of moving time?!? That is just insane to me LOL

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, that's awesome! You had a tonne of elevation on that route - yikes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow, your dedication always amazes me.

    ReplyDelete
  5. i can't wait for the day that i can go out for a ride like that... your 75 mile ride puts my 24k ride yesterday to shame.... good luck on next weekend's race!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nice ride! Wooo! Super jealous----work kept me from a long ride this weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  7. i have a calf niggle too :( heal up my friend!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I have NEVER set my alarm for a 4am start except for a race. You are insane.

    Great report and wicked miles.

    BTW - maybe... just maybe you have a treat coming your way. Be on the lookout.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I can't believe you do these things... because you want to... Especially at 4am! You are truly amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Very nice ride...repetitive stoplights can be quite brutal - I hear ya.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reading this post and leaving a comment, if you are entering a contest, please ensure you put some sort of unique name down so I can get back to you. E-mail addresses are ONLY displayed to me, and never shared, sold, pilfered, or anything else unhappy.