140 Miles

On Saturday, Dave and I completed our 140 mile training ride. This is the ride that I set as a prerequisite for the "24 Hours of Intercity" ride that is coming Memorial Day weekend.

The ride was a success. It went quite well, not perfectly, but well.

We rolled out at 6:30am, heading north toward the GWB. The weather was beautiful, a little on the brisk side, and cloudy, but pleasant. We rode the standard ride to Nyack, stopping at the Runcible Spoon. From there, we rode to Bear Mountain State Park, did a lap of what will be the Bear Mountain race course, and went home. As usual, the Brooklyn Bridge was a horrible experience on the way home. We were just shy of the 140mi mark, so we did a "victory lap" of Prospect Park.

By the numbers: 141.31 miles in 9h 12m 45s, averaging 15.3 MPH. My heart rate was in the 120 bpm range most of the time.

I tried Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuem energy drink on this ride. It looks and tastes like watered down soy milk. A bottle of this per hour, along with a Clif bar per hour and the occasional muffin, provided excellent fuel on the ride. I've never felt so good after such a long ride!

In Prospect Park, Dave saw Judith Tucker, a friend of his from school and - boy will his face turn red when he reads this - a girl he once really liked. He saw her walking along, said he recognized her, slammed the brakes, and reversed direction like a pro. After chatting with her, he was quite full of energy, and sprinted up the Prospect Park hill at 23 MPH - faster than race pace, and this is after 140 miles! If only she knew.

Training for Intercity

I've decided that the height of my spring this year will be the one-day Intercity ride. I've made the attempt to ride from Boston, MA to New York, NY several times before, but have always either opted to make it a two-day trip, or to stop in New Haven and take the train the rest of the way.

This year, I'm going to make a serious attempt to ride from New York, NY to Boston, MA in one day (24 hours). This is certainly the more difficult direction, as this puts the worse hills in the second 100 miles of the ride. However, there is a better chance of a tailwind in the northbound direction.

Since the last attempts, I've learned a few things. Compared to the last run, here are some of the new improvements that I hope will help me actually do this:

* Better training. Since November of 2007, I've logged at least 100 hours of riding, including at least 50 hours on PowerCranks. This base training will help me with the real training work coming in March and April: the slow transition to longer and longer rides, ending with a couple of 140-mile rides in May.

* Better equipment. My bike has properly fitting aero bars, which offer a radical new body position and allow me to ride faster, more efficiently, and more comfortably. I've made some changes to my fit, raising the saddle and shortening my stem, to address the fact that I have long legs. I have more places to store stuff on the bike, and more water bottles than before.

* Better fueling. I've learned volumes about proper nutrition and recovery from a number of sources, including a coworker who rode PBP this past summer. I know that, on average, I can expect to burn 35 calories per mile. This means that, every hour, in addition to consuming a liter of water, I will need to eat about 600-650 calories. I also need to eat and drink before I feel hungry or thirsty, or I just won't have the energy to continue. This requires liquid fuel; I'm experimenting with a few options at the moment.

* Better trained partners. Hopefully, when I do this ride again, I'll be riding with at least one other person who is driven to do this and has put in the requisite training hours.

* Better technology. A PowerTap will help me monitor how many calories I've burned, and a new GPS with longer battery life will help me avoid getting lost.

This May, we will learn whether or not I can, in fact, ride 230 hilly miles without stopping.