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.