Hard Labor on Labor Day

A few months ago, jandy badonkadonk had a nice blog post about how he punished himself with a huge climbing day for his crime of DNF'ing a race. That made a lot of sense to me. First, you don't want to make a habit of DNF'ing, so there should be some deterrent. Second, doing an epic training ride as punishment should help you avoid DNF'ing in the future. Quite logical really.

Therefore, since I quit the University RR last weekend, I figured it was time to suffer. The sentence: ten times up and down Old San Marcos. In a row. In the heat. with minimal rest between repeats, as in, just enough time to grab new bottles when needed. (Of course, nothing wrong with keeping those bottles cool in an ice chest...)

Each trip up the hill is a tad over 1,200 feet vertical in 2.9 miles. Based on absolutely nothing, I had a goal of averaging 20:00 per climb for an ascending rate of 60 ft. per minute. I figure that should be a decently competitive climbing rate at the Everest Challenge.









#; OSM time; avg. HR (bpm)
1. 20:04 137
2. 19:28 137
3. 19:44 134
4. 20:05 132
5. 19:48 134
6. 19:20 138
7. 18:53 139
8. 19:49 138
9. 21:10 135
10. 18:57 143

Average OSM time: 19:45
Average heart rate during climbs: 137 (78% of max)
Total ascending: 12,300 feet

Some notes:

* Garmin says each round-trip up and down the hill required about 400 calories. My total riding time was ~4.5 hours. Given that a person can only digest ~300 calories per hour, I was clearly running an energy deficit.

* Fueling/hydration: I consumed ~1,600 calories in two bars and 11 bottles (~240 oz.) and still lost a couple pounds. Toward the latter repeats, it felt like the food wasn't really digesting very well. Makes me wonder... can you exhaust your digestive juices by pounding so much Cytomax in such a short time? Maybe that's a physiological aspect that needs to be trained for long, hot races.

* On the third climb, I came upon a large mouse in the road who had either been injured or was on a bad drug trip. The thing was flipping all around, front-to-back back-to-front, over and over. It was sad. I debated about running over him to end his misery, but then decided against it because I didn't want mouse guts squirting up on my legs and bike. Last week I saw a huge Bobcat run across the road in this same place. He was probably one of the many large animals displaced by the Zaca fire. I hoped he was still around and was able to find and eat the mouse.

* We are really lucky to live in a place with so many active people. Every single trip up the hill, I either had company from somebody else doing the climb or at least exchanged hearty greetings with another person doing a workout. OSM, the place to see and be seen!

* Nice to see a return to the bike by Matt McAllister. He was in a group that climbed up OSM, Painted Cave, and Stagecoach with Blinger and Chicken Ranch. Yet another former bike racer who can't kick the addiction, despite a multi-year dormancy!

* Huge thanks to Eric Forte for keeping me company for three of the repeats. This despite a major effort to win Pier to Peak yesterday.