March Into the Future

[ornoth_cycling]

It’s been seven weeks since my February post, which related my having ridden six days out of seven. After that, March was pretty much a write-off from a cycling standpoint, but April is coming together nicely.

I guess I can’t complain too loudly about being unable to ride in March. It was still winter, after all, and the weather was cold and rainy. I’ve aged out of the desire to ride in weather below 40 or 50 degrees. But even on the passable days, I found it hard to self-motivate. Trying to recover lost fitness each spring is always painful, but I’ve been more discouraged than usual this year, since I spent so many months completely off the bike.

Once you do motivate yourself to ride, there’s a certain amount of “training stress” that is necessary for building fitness, and that training stress is really good… until it isn’t. Working too hard too soon, without proper recovery time, leaves one with heavy legs, dreading heading out, intimidated by the traffic and so many hills to climb. There’s no real good way to tell when you’ve crossed that line from good stress to bad, but with repeated experience one learns to carefully monitor one’s desire to ride.

That was pretty much how March went for me. Although the Pittsburgh Randonneurs held a 100k and 200k in March and another 200k in early April, I skipped them all. They were earlier in the year than usual, which ensured that I was nowhere near trained up enough to succeed, and the early date also meant that the weather was near freezing. Not the kind of ride I’d enjoy.

Three good things did happen last month, tho. First, I got to play around with my new Garmin Edge 820 bike computer and get it all settled, including the frustratingly finicky Shimano Di2 integration; a full review of the unit will come after a little more road testing. I also picked up a Tag-o-Rama tag down in Turtle Creek, and set my new one in Garfield.

Finally, I learned of another alternate route up to Squirrel Hill (home) from the Eliza Furnace trailhead. Unlike the other two routes, which are kinda hilly, the new one is *obscenely* hilly, taking a couple switchbacks up a steep hill from Greenfield to Bigelow Street, which itself is a very long, steep uphill drag (involving both bricks and Belgian block) to the top of Hazelwood. It’s a nice workout, if I am capable of taking it on after whatever ride leaves me at the end of the EFT.

Although April began with a late-season snowfall, winter couldn’t hang on forever, and the past week provided great riding weather. Since last Sunday’s always-inspiring Paris-Roubaix, I’ve matched my February achievement of riding six days out of the past seven, but logged 236 miles rather than February’s mere 166.

On the 9th, I undertook a 33-mile ride east to visit the sites of two of Allegheny County’s seven active underground coal mine fires, some of which have been burning for more than fifty or sixty years!

The 10th I followed the route of a local club ride north for my first 50-mile ride in seven and a half months. The wind made it extra difficult, and my lack of training (and lack of acclimatization to the sun) produced a mild sunburn on my arms. It hasn’t taken long for my “distinctive markings” to return!

The 11th was a flat 30-mile recovery ride down the GAP bike path.

The 12th I went short (20 miles), but packed several really steep climbs to (further) stress the legs.

That was followed by my one rest day on the 13th.

With beautiful weather scheduled for Friday the 14th, I opted for a long 100k ride down Bunola Road to Monongahela, which wound up being 72 miles when bridge repairs necessitated a surprisingly pleasant and scenic detour up Raccoon Run and down Church Hollow. That capped my first 200-mile week in—believe it or not—nearly two years (since June 2015)!

Then on Saturday I got 30 more recovery-ish miles in my first group ride of the year with the Performance Bike crew. Hopefully I’ll get out one of these Tuesday nights for a spirited ride with the Team Decaf group.

But before I do that, I could use a day or two of recovery to consolidate my fitness gains and take the fatigue out of my legs. I figure it’d be nice to give the bike a rest too, since today is R2-Di2’s fourth birthday!

But the bottom line is that after a fallow March, the first half of April has featured a lot more miles in the saddle, with more expected. But happily, I can afford to take my time building up to peak fitness; with the Pittsburgh Randonneurs’ 200k rides already past, I don’t have any other significant events planned until mid-June.