17 days until the Ouachita Challenge. It's getting down to crunch time, with only about a week and a half left to make any real fitness gains before a few days of rest to lead up to the race. I've been trying to stay diligent with my training, getting in long rides when possible and putting some structure to my weekday rides. I've been getting about 3 rides in per week, averaging about 80 miles and 5hr 45mins total per week. This isn't much, but at least I've been consistent. Since my last post, I've had some pretty decent rides. Last Thursday I got some trail time on the Anthills. I set 3 Strava KOMs (best overall times on a segment), one for a full out and back lap direction, the other 2 for each one way direction. I felt pretty good from both a fitness and trail riding perspective on the new BMC.
Saturday it was pretty rainy, but I tried to sneak in a road ride during a break in the weather in the afternoon. My plan was to ride towards the rain, and when it started getting wet I'd turn around. Things seemed to be going according to plan, I rode out with dry roads and no rain, it started sprinkling a little and the roads started getting wet, but when I turned around I wound up riding right into rain that was with me most all the way home. I pulled up soaking wet but still got a good couple of hours in.
Sunday morning we got some huge rain, and it hung around on and off the rest of the day. I convinced Richard to do a workout, and decided we'd do some trainer/roller work in the garage to stay dry. While we were trying to get set up, his bike wasn't fitting in the trainer very well and then the drive band on the rollers broke so that ruined our plans. It wasn't raining at the time so we decided to try to get some intervals done on the road. We weren't even out of the driveway and it started sprinkling. We kept riding for a couple of minutes and it kept sprinkling. We soon realized neither of us were dressed for this and would likely get sick, so we turned around back to the garage to give that a second try. I found the trainer skewer so he was set, then I had the great idea to cut up a road tube to use to drive the rollers. It worked perfectly so we were back on. We did some intervals out of The Time Crunched Cyclist, 3 x 8min steady state intervals with 5mins rest between intervals.
Tuesday after work, we hooked the trailer up to Raine's bike, Ben jumped in and we all rode down to the Y. I left Raine and Ben there to walk on the treadmill (Raine) and play (Ben) and I went out to do some intervals. The workout for the day was similar to Sunday, except I was doing 3 x 10min steady state intervals with 6mins rest between intervals. These were hard but I felt pretty good. The second was into a stiff headwind the WHOLE time so it was good climbing simulation. If I could have worked it out I would have set them all up to be headwind intervals but I had to manage my time so they were mixed.
Tonight I'll get another interval session, then this weekend we're headed up to Solavaca Ranch for the Cat Claw Classic, round 4 of the TMBRA TX XC Mountain Bike State Championship Series. I'm hoping to see the work on the bike pay off with continued improvement in my results. I'd like to get a solid top 10 finish after finishing 10th at the last race.
Last night Raine and I got to go on a date, that was very nice to have a quiet night out and just hang out together. We grabbed some yummy mexican food at Chuy's then capped off our night with a visit to Home Depot. Fun times!
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