HUGGBEES

After 4 continuous days of riding, I thought it prudent to stay off the bike today. While it took some effort to not go riding, a bit of a cold that I am picking up and the itchy pain in my legs assisted with the decision. At the moment, I am grateful I didn’t ride. Especially after yesterday’s ordeal.I went for a short recovery ride yesterday. The idea was to do a 30km ride at a very easy pace. As I climbed Christian Centre hill, I toyed with the idea of riding to Gonubie and back (50km, with circuit). However, when I got to the traffic circle at which to make the decision of route, I saw a guy and 1 girl seemingly waiting for someone; looking ready to go up the Stutt route. Competitive spirit kicked in (on a recover ride!) and I decided to go the Stutt road, keep a steady tempo and see how I feel when they pass me. I was even singing along to the new John Mayer and taking it easy; was passed by some old man (very old), and I tried to catch him uphill. When my heart rate started hitting 170/191, I decided he was stronger and let him go.

After another half an hour, one of the guys from the group I saw rode up to my side and greeted. He kinda stopped, not the usual greet and pass thing. So I put my ipod on pause, and we started chatting. I asked him how far he was going, and he said “probably 30km out, and back”. I told myself I wasn’t going to join him for that long, so pushed to keep up with him. Because we were chatting, it wasn’t as painful as it could have been doing the pace alone. Especially considering we were riding into a headwind the whole way. We dropped his friends, and didn’t even notice.

At my 25km mark, I told this dude (Richard). He said he should go back and fetch his friends and find out what they wanted to do. We went back, and the one dude was keen to ride back; the girl wanted to ride on “for say another half an hour”. I figured my legs COULD probably keep going for that long. We hit the smooth tar, and started bolting. During the ride, Richard would use his aero bars and just fly away. I tried to sit on his wheel, and managed to for the most part. At Macleantown we turned around. At this point my legs were not cramping but were VERY painful.

They both went on their aero bars for the ride back, and I completely cooked myself keeping up. At about 40km, I was on the brink of bonking completely. Because I was only doing a 30km ride, I took nothing to eat. So for the entire ride home, I cooked myself more by sitting on Richard’s wheel. The rationale was that at least I was using less energy by drafting. If I lost them, I would be left in the middle of nowhere, without any energy. This happened all the way back into town.

The weird part about the ride is that my heart rate was sitting mostly between 112 and 140bpm. So I’d look down at my heart rate monitor, and think I’ve recovered. Then I stand up to pump it, and my legs just seize. I eventually figured out that I was completely tired; rather than my heart was fine but legs not strong enough. I just needed some rest.

We took Old Transkei Road back up (which is a hill I have learned to hate, since most of my rides end with climbing it with heavy legs). Throughout the ride, I was climbing better than Richard when we rode side by side; I just seemed to get into a better rhythm uphill than he did. He announced he was cooked before we climbed Old Transkei, so I rode up ahead of him to try and pull him. However, to ride at his pace, I would have fallen off. So I rode up slowly enough to give the impression that I too couldn’t ride faster since it’d kinda be a slap in the face since he’d basically towed me for the best part of 30km.

When halfway up, I was passed by a dude going up at quite a pace (I initially thought it was Richard). Then two other guys, who are Team Felt here. They didn’t greet, just turned back and gave me that “slow ass” look. I got annoyed, picked up speed, caught up to them. I went next to the guy at the back, gave him the same look (the ass!), and then backed off and waited for Richard.

My recovery ride was therefore a HARD 73.9km in the end. The weekly total (as confirmed on my hrm now) is: 30.2km + 51.3km + 65km + 73.9km = 220.4km.

Not bad!