Training Ride: 3 Weeks till the Tour and it is time to start the Taper!

 

Broke out the Trash Panda Socks

Training Ride: 3 Weeks till the Tour and it is time to start the Taper!

 

Ahhhhhhhhhhh…. It is starting to be my favorite time in any training schedule!  The Taper.  But Billy b you are riding 60 miles on Saturday, how can you say you are starting to taper?  Well… two weeks prior to the tour doing a big ride still gives me plenty of time to rest up and get ready for race day.  The 60 was supposed to be this last weekend, but we are nothing if not flexible.  However, everything else is coming into taper mode other than the 60 this weekend.  Today my two hours rides were reduced to 90-minute rides, then they will go down to hours long rides.  I can’t believe I have ridden through this crazy bike schedule I created.  I have pretty much met all my goals on it, except I had to substitute swimming with weightlifting and rest days, but that is ok, the bike has been very good to me, and I am loving it.  So, picking up an extra bike day and maintenance day not bad. 

 

Yesterday was a good 90-minute ride.  The GreenBill loop was solid as always.  It is never really easy, always work to get up it.  However, I was prepared for that and the heat.  So, I started adding electrolytes early in ride.  I normally wait till the hour mark but didn’t want to mess around with the heat.  I was really excited when I noticed I was almost at the top of GreenBill 4, which is coming back over the top of GreenBill 1 just in the reverse order and realized, I was still cranking away in my middle ring.  That felt good.  Makes me think I am stronger.

 

After the climbs I just head back towards the house and road a couple of loops until I hit my 90-minute mark.  17.5 miles in all in 92 minutes, not to shabby if you ask me.   I climbed over 500 feet.  Got a good heart workout with average beat per minute of 130, while averaging 11.3 MPH on the ride.  All in all I think that is a pretty good day on the bike.

 

Unusual for me I am taking my rest day today.  Things got a little shitty around here last night. I mean the literally.  I was awaken last night around 4:40 or 4:45 with Shiner running laps back and forth in my room.  I knew what that meant that she had to go and had to go really bad.  I am so lucky she didn’t just go and woke me up.  So, I got up and let her out and hoped that I would be back in bed sleeping really soon.  Well… she ended up being outside for about 10 minutes and I know that it was bad.  Then she proceeded to come in and had to go back out by the time we got back to the bedroom.  After two of these, I just let Kona out as well and let the girls do as they needed.  I am not sure how Shiner felt having such bad GI issues and Kona just sat out back and watched her.  Finally, around 5:40 or so we were able to shut the back door.  I thought I would just lie down on the couch for a minute then get my day started but I actually fell asleep on the couch till 6:45. I have not slept on the couch in, jeez I don’t know how long.  I am not counting the time I was sick in early 2020 either where I couldn’t keep my eyes open and literally slept everywhere.  No shit, I couldn’t even drive myself to the doctor.   I fell asleep while the doctor was looking at me.  Oh, darn it off tangent.  Anyway, slept for another hour on couch, but I am tired. 

 

The bad sleep from last night due to Doggy GI issues and the heat being 104 today made me think today was a good day to rest.  Let other deal with the heat.  Really any time it is 10:30 and 88 outside already is probably a day you don’t want to be outside.  So, rest day today.  The plan is 90-minutes tomorrow with some hill training.  My favorite ride ya know Patterson to Cross… yeee… what do we do on hill day we have to ride hills so that is what we got going on, and it is going to be hot again tomorrow.  98… oof… what is up with the heat.  It was so nice last week.  Anyway, we will go out and do what we can. 

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