ARNHEM TEAM RIDE

92.7 kms | 3 h 37 m | 25.5 avg kms/h | 2.046 kcal | 136 bpm

 

We had today the second team ride with the team from Nike. Very nice ride in Arnhem with good weather, good speed and good legs on the climbs. I’m satisfied with the results on the Posbank and Emmapiramide.

Hoje foi dia do segundo treino com o pessoal da Nike. Uma volta na região de Arnhem com bom tempo, boa velocidade e boas pernas nas subidas. Satisfeito com o resultado no Posbank e Emmapiramide.

Ride with Nike team. I did 10 kms by myself before starting with the group.
 

As every year we started the ride from Papendallaan. We were around 45 riders and it was great to see the big team riding along and doing the turns at speed. We went first thru the flat pieces but different from previous years we didn’t go crazy on speed. Average speed was 30 kms/h and it was a good moment to catch up with other riders, talk and relax.

The bad think was that my Garmin wasn’t working really well and it was missing the connection with the speed sensor all the time. Because of that, it didn’t recognize the movement and it switched off several times. So, I can’t really check how my performance was in specific moments of the ride.
From the flat areas we went thru the woods and there we picked up speed. The rolling little hills and the turns just invites you to race. I managed to stay with the front group and keep my heart rate under control. The new bike is really quick and stable. Today I tried for the first time the latex inner tubes and they feel great. Very smooth. Maybe more something psychological than real difference vs. normal inner tubes but they felt really smooth and confortable.

From there we went to Posbank, the biggest climb of the day. I started the climb looking for someone to use as a pace maker. I wanted someone that could be strong enough to keep me in the “red” zone but not the max. Not too good to make me blow up. I found my “victim” half way thru the climb and stayed with him for most of the climb. In the last 50 meters I was still feeling good with a  heart rate of 178 bpm and decided to give it all. I took over with a heart rate of 185 bpm but ahead. Great feeling!

In the Emmapiramide, I climbed both sides twice and treated as interval training. I kept my heart rate at 175 bpm and just pushed thru. Great training effort. Once again I was with my pace maker which I finished ahead once and he dropped me the other 3 times. Fair enough as he is actually way stronger than me. But good measure as an inspiring target.
Back to Papendallaan was a simple uneventful ride with a good push but no sprint. Good day in the saddle. Only if my Garmin was working…




TRAINING LOAD



I started looking again to the training load. I still need to understand more about Acute and Chronic Training load to figure out if the fitness is going in the right direction and when I’m accumulating fatigue and need to slow down. For now I’m looking at the red line going up as indicator that my training is going in the right direction.

The red line after the ride should be actually above the red line from the interval training from Thursday. I’m hoping that the reason for that is the data not being complete. Tomorrow it will be a easy ride to work and back as recovery training and Tuesday/Thursday interval training, going up to 4  times 5 minutes intervals. Let’s see how the red line will look like.