Today was something old that was new again, White Ranch Park in Golden. I don’t think I’ve ridden there since the mid 90s. It’s still fun, and hard. Some parts were familiar, some were new, but it was definitely worth the trip. All 18 miles, 4+ hours and 4100′ of climbing. The watch shows less time, and slightly less mileage, because I forgot to re-start it after I stopped to put my rain jacket on.

On the fun side, yeah, there was a good bit of variety on the trails I rode. Some smooth, flowy singlegrack, some rocky obstacles, both up and down hill, some mellow gravel, and a decently long climb, which is exactly what I was there for. I think I have a solid training plan for the next time I hit White Ranch, and I should be able to get in more climbing in fewer miles and less time. Not as much as I can on Green Mountain, but the climbing is definitely more sustained. Today was a mix of train & explore.

My feet started going numb on me, so I pulled out the insoles for my shoes, and immediately felt better. I don’t know what it is about insoles, but they mess me up. I need a relatively smooth, hard, base for my riding shoes. Speaking of, I still need to trim the inside heel lugs on the sole, as they like to hit my crank arm & chainstays, and that’s just annoying/distracting.

I stopped to get a few good pictures today. I almost missed the huge panoramic view. I rode past that spot 3 times before I noticed it. Part of the point of doing cool stuff is to appreciate where you’re doing it, and I totally blew right by an awesome view. Makes me wonder how many other cool things I’ve missed, not paying attention.

I saw the leprechaun down in the valley, and his pot of gold, but I was beat. Also of note, kids and animals will turn just about anything into a toy.

Do hard stuff.

Knocked out another ride at the Refuge today. It’s really nice having some decent trails to ride close by without having to worry about traffic or driving to get there.

This one was relatively easy, but my focus was on keeping my pedal cadence up. After the last ride day, I started thinking about the climbing days and how it was hard to get my heart rate up. Probably because of how steep that fire road is. I think I’m going to keep mixing it up so I get a lot of elevation gain in a short period there, and visit other trails where the climbing is more sustained, but not as steep.

The Silver Rush has about 7500′ of climbing, but that’s over the full 50 miles. And the first 10 is pretty much all climbing according to the course info. That’s a different problem to solve than steep, comparatively short, intervals of roughly a mile and a half.

Overall, this week was a little lighter on training across the board, but I got about 40 more minutes of riding in this week compared to last. No running, and only one lifting workout this week, which was the DEADLIFT day right before big climbing day. Judge as you will on the decision making around that pairing of back to back days, but…

Do hard things.

I took two days off after the big climbing day this week. First one was intentional, second was because I was lazy. Usually, if I just start getting changed, get my heart rate monitor on, my shoes, helmet, etc I can build that momentum and get going. Not Thursday. I gave in.

Friday was a decent ride. I’m starting to figure out that pedal cadence has much greater impact on my heart rate than the difficulty of the pedal strokes. Basically, I am not a high RPM Yamaha R6 engine. More like a diesel truck. So that’s an adaptation I need to work on. Not surprising, though, with the emphasis over the last several years on lifting heavy (for me) things.

I also felt a calf cramp coming on a few times, which is weird because I’ve never dealt with cramping in exercise before. I had started to work on increasing my pedal cadence, so maybe that had something to do with it. I will get a calf cramp if I’m stretching in bed first thing in the morning and point my toes down (plantar flexion for my nerd friends). I am taking a relatively high dose of Methyl Folate, which can cause cramping, so maybe I need to cut down on that some.

This was my fastest average speed this year at a little over 15mph. I took a little detour though, and ended up on pavement for a couple miles, which felt markedly faster than the gravel road around the Arsenal Wildlife Refuge.

Still experimenting with eating on the bike. So far, nothing has really messed up my stomach or caused a poor performance as far as I can tell. I’m starting to mix it up a bit with things that don’t have the word “bar” on the package. Found some tasty little crushed fruit strips at Costco. They’re just fruit (apple and mango, apple and blueberry, etc) and they’re not so incredibly sweet. I tried some of the energy chews over the last couple years and I just can’t deal with the hyper-sweetness, or the stickiness of them. I don’t know how people chew on those things and breathe at the same time.

Do hard things.

Not the longest ride of the year, but definitely the most vert. The 7 laps were all within a few minutes of each other, but the last one felt especially tough. I’d be surprised if I could’ve done an 8th without walking the two steepest sections. On that last lap I had to stand up to get through them. I’m thinking I’ll be in pretty good shape if I can work up to about 8000′ of climbing, so about 11 laps, or about 28 miles.

All in all, I’m happy with the day, considering I got about 5 hours of sleep last night and had to do a few hours of work this morning before I could get out. Didn’t plan too well though. I remembered the big stuff, like the bike, water, shoes, but I forgot some mid-ride chow and socks. I grabbed a good pair of socks from work and stopped by a gas station to grab a couple Clif bars. I should’ve made it 3 or 4 bars though.

Not the best post ride meal, but 4 double cheeseburgers and a Coke should’ve loaded me up with plenty of protein and carbs to build and re-fuel the legs. Definitely could’ve planned that better too.