Testing the Engine

Last Saturday I did my inaugural "testing the engine" race simulation ride. After months of slow endurance training I am now in the transition phase of my training and I am always apprehensive when it comes to the first hard ride of the season. I really look forward to pushing myself as hard as I can, but I really don't want to ride with other people because then they will see how bad I SUCK!!!!

I decided to leave my ego at home and go out with the group from North River Racing because they always ride hard and I knew I would probably be hanging on for dear life most of the ride. Luckily the weather was decent and I was able to take the race bike out, it felt great. We rode down to Estacada from The 'Couve so the route was unfamiliar (i.e. I was probably going to blow on the hills because I didn't know how long they were) so that made it a very interesting ride and it was beautiful. I have to say that the ride went better than I expected. For some reason, I didn't get dropped on the hills. I would watch my heart rate soar to places I had not seen it go for 6 months. At one point I hit 190 bpm and past experience tells me that when that happens on a hill, it's all over for me. To my astonishment I was able to recover from that and still climb up other hills after that. What is going on? Could it possibly be that I might actually be able to climb? What a novel idea!!! I don't want to get my hopes up after one ride, but I will see how this weekend goes. I don't ever care if I am the best climber in the group, I just want to be able to hang with the main group in all the races I do (especially Cascade, Elkhorn, etc.).

I was also able to do some flat speed work. At one point, Steve Long and I were pacing off of each other on a section with a nice tail wind and we were hovering at about the 28-30 mph mark. It was amazing. My legs were toast, but it was worth it.

I ended up with about 75 miles when I got home. I figure for the first hard ride of the season that was a reasonable distance. I am excited to see how this weekend goes, hopefully as well as last weekend.