In a few religions Sunday is a day of rest. In the world of Roger’s cycling training Sunday is a big day of riding. While we aren’t going for crazy hard efforts like in intervals we are riding the longest and biggest ride of the week.
There are a few reasons for this: 1) Its Sunday so I don’t have anything else to do besides some chores and 2) I gotta get in my long rides sometime during the week. Kinda the same thing but I needed a list in this paragraph for SEO.
Since we have been parked in Tubac for about 5 weeks now there has been a pretty consistent use of heading south on the I-19 frontage road to start a ride off. This is because the wind is generally southerly and the road does not dead end at a US Border Patrol station.
For today’s ride I need a 30 minute warm up before I climb for 2 sets of 15 minutes. It just so happens that about 30 minutes south of Tubac there is an exit for the I-19 that has a dirt road which climbs to the west of the interstate. This is perfect for our needs.
The climb ranges from 5˚ to 12˚ grade and gets pretty scrappy at points with large loose rocks. Staying in an L2 to L3 heart rate zone is a challenge but that fits well with the slow RPM’s around 50 to 60.
I did well on both climbs and managed to keep my heart rate from getting too high. The view from the top was pretty awesome:
Once the climbs were done I returned to the Frontage road and kept riding south for another hour and 20 minutes. Then I headed home and ended up with 35 miles of riding and just over 1300 feet of climbing.
I felt better after today’s ride and attribute that to eating more while on the ride. I had 2 apples and a bag of dates with peanuts. I also added some powdered Gatorade to my second water bottle.
Next week is a recovery week so the overall time on bike will be shorter allowing my body to recover to the work the last 2 weeks have done.
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