ROLLING HILLS

 

138 km | 5 h 00 m | avg speed 27.7 km/h | avg hr 149 bpm

Today I went with a colleague to Harderwijk to ride a hard 138 kms with rolling hills. This was the same route from the Nike team ride that I had to skip a couple of weeks ago due to a flu. It is a deceiving ride as the climbs of around 3% don’t stop coming one after the other and that sucks a lot of energy. Result of around 400 vertical meters climbed, lots of fun on a beautiful region and good hard training.

Hoje eu fui com um colega para um treino de 138 kms com constantes ladeiras em Harderwijk. Fizemos a mesma rota do treino do time que eu perdi algumas semanas atrás porque eu estava gripado. É uma volta que engana porque as ladeiras de 3% de inclinação não páram de vir uma atrás da outra e você gasta muita energia. Resultado: 400 metros verticais de subida, muita diversão em uma região muito bonita e um treino bom e duro.

The day started very cold, around 5 degrees and a nasty wind that made it feels even colder. I forgot my shoes cover and brought the wrong gloves and immediately my hands and feet turned numb. The hands got better during the day but the toes went numb for the whole ride. Not a pleasant sensation when you are trying to pedal hard.

We started with a good pace, around 32 km/h and tried to keep at that for most of the time. The only thing we didn’t really expected were the constant climbs of 3%. The funny thing is that most of the time we didn’t even realize the road was going uphill until we felt bad and the speed went down. It was a weird thing. I felt OK on those areas but the new bike setup still feels a bit strange.

The region is really beautiful and most of the time we were around nature, in curvy roads and almost nobody around us. Big trees and quiet roads with rolling hills that made the training just hard enough to be worth the extra driving there. What else could one ask?

The only thing that is worrying me now is the lack of energy I have after 120 kms riding. I can really feel the drop in energy, power and willingness to keep pedaling. I don’t know if it is general tiredness, need of longer endurance training or lack of proper eating. Next week I will participate in a event with 175 kms full of climbs, the Ronde van Nijmegen. Real climbs in the south of Holland, with 8 to 12% gradients and that will be a challenge.

FUNDRAISING – The donations for the Tour du ALS fundraising are starting to come in a good stream. We are just a little shorter than a month for the ride in May 30th. 3 times up the legendary Mont Ventoux in one day. Can’t wait for it. If you missed this and don’t know what I’m talking about, check here what it is and how to donate. It is a good cause.

THIS WEEK – The training this week was a hard one. I skipped last Sunday due to family business, but was able to ride 107kms on Monday and 75 on Tuesday. The second one was a bit of a mistake. Original idea was to ride 40 to 50 kms in a recovery ride mode (hr no more than 132 bpm). But I got lost and end up doing 75 kms of which half was under heavy rain. On Friday I started the second part of my interval session, with 4 sections of 8 minutes intervals. I will try to keep that up next week as preparation for the ride on Sunday.