215 Loop

Yesterday's ride was a good one. We had 10 riders from Columbia (one actually from Columbia...the country) and the weather was perfect, overcast and cool. Overall I didn't see the TSS numbers that I had when I did this same ride on 3/31. This was due to the large group and the mellow ascent of the Caesars Head climb at the end.

Hwy 178: This climb is long but not too steep, about 11miles of 6-8%. I felt pretty good until the end and when I looked at my data it was like doing a 42min interval right at my threshold with 5min of VO2 thrown in here and there for good measure. It took everything I had to stick with those guys in the last mile or so. Normally this would be a great workout and I could go home...instead I had a ton more climbing in 70 miles. Fun!

Even though those guys were probably just riding tempo I felt good about sticking with Karl, Jed & Jay (with Jed/Jay being Cat.1's and Karl an Austrian Mutant). I usually don't climb that well.

Hwy 215: A 6 mile 8-10% mind numbing climb. This is where I paid for the earlier effort. I started out with the same 3 but realized to survive this climb I needed to just ride a reasonable tempo. See ya. I tried to keep it at 250w but even that was hard and I just tried to just keep the pedals going around. Robert passed me about 3/4 of the way up and even though he was only going about .5 mph faster I had no desire or ability to try to stay on his wheel.

And the climbing phenomenon of the day, Phillip caught me at the top...Good going dude. Now I have to stop training with you.

The rest of the ride: The parkway descents are always a blast but following Jed and Karl was pretty wild riding. At one point there were 4 or 5 of us screaming down 278 doing a rotating paceline. It left like a break in a 6 turn crit with all the corners. The last 15 miles to Brevard is slightly downhill and brand new pavement...sweet riding. We did a paceline then Jay took over and pegged it at 29mph for a long time.

We got to Brevard, ate and as a group headed down Wilson Rd to bypass the traffic. Once on Hwy 278 and the climb to Ceasars Head Jed pulled at a easy pace for about 20min which kept the group together and set the tempo for the steeper parts. I started feeling a lot better as the day wore on but I'm glad we went easy up this climb.

I feel pretty good today and I think that with the lower TSS I'll recover much faster than in March where I didn't feel "right" for over a week. My TSB went from -3 to -33.9 My ATL is currently 113 and CTL is 79.

Photo's of the day are Here.