LONG

170 kms | 6 h 10 h | 27.7 kmh | 136 avg hr | 2.944 kcal

Gloomy day on Saturday with light rain, no sun and no wind. I tried to go thru almost the same route of last week adding a couple of new turns to make sure I had a actual long ride. Unfortunately I got lost and the constant stop and go brought the average speed down. But the overall result was good:  a very constant ride of 170 kilometers with speeds around 30 to 33 kmh all the way.

Dia nublado neste sábado com uma chuva leve, sem sol e sem vento. Eu tentei seguir a mesma rota da semana passada colocando alguns quilômetros extras para garantir uma bota distancia. Infelizment eu me perdi várias vezes e isso baixou bastante a velocidade média. Mas estou contente com o resultado: um treino constante de 170 kms com velocidades entre 30 e 33 kmh.

I left home very early because I had to be in a sport club at 14:30 for the swimming test of my daughter but also wanted to do a ride longer than 150 kms. Balancing the professional, family and sports life. I also wanted a ride that I could continue with the same effort from the beginning to the end. With no deep in energy and effort.

Trying once again to use the Garmin as a gps navigator and not only a fancy bike computer,  I have created the course to go from home towards the lake region and the markermeer. It is a very scenic route along lots of farms, canals and twisting roads. Also avoiding cities and villages to avoid any risk of accidents.

On the way towards the west I got quite some rain but the advantage of that is I didn’t get any allergy as the rain clears the pollen. What made the ride much more comfortable. I got a bit lost around Nieuwkoop as one road as closed and the Garmin was trying to send me back all the time after that. And I started just ignoring it as I know most of the way. There is something rewarding in not obbeying the machine. But it got quite annoying after some time. I give up on the Garmin as a navigator device. It is really bad and almost cost me missing the ceremony of my daughter.

The nicest part of the day was in the Markermeer, a strecht of 15 kilometers alongside the water. There was almost nobody there and I pushed a constant 155 heart rate with a speed around 33 to 35 kmsh. Great riding and feeling of controlled performance without the fear of blowing up.

On the way back to Utrecht, I started getting nervous as the clock was getting very close to the appointment time. I started pushing harder and harder and finally got there with good long sprints in the last 5 kms. Really happy with the result as now I can see that I have the endurance checked out.

THE WEEK – This week was a good one in training. I managed to squeeze two interval sessions of 5, 8 and 2 x 10 minutes and one day commuting. I believe this is the resulting in better condition. With a little less than a month to go, I need to keep finding the time for it.