Just got back from my Mtn ride. I was undecided as to which Mtn ride to do, but ended up driving up to Georgetown and then riding and out ‘n back to the top of Loveland Pass. I toyed with the idea of starting in Idaho Springs but wasn’t sure I wanted to do quite that much as I’ll be trying to do another longer ride on Saturday and it was my first ride at true elevation. I went by myself and hardly saw any other bikes out there.

Turns out it was a good decision — but not for those reasons. My (left) lower back/ glute and calf all decided to be ‘problem children’ today. I started off as gently as I could, which is a bit tough because you do start climbing right from the start on this ride. A longer ride might have been a bit of a problem today. I do see Dr. Steve tomorrow and I’ll be asking him to overhaul my left side — and will see if he has any comment on training & keeping the wheels on the wagon for the BTC. Of course, I’ll pass anything I learn along to you so we can better plan the next two weeks.

I didn’t push it and I relaxed into my riding as much as possible. It never really got better, but I was able to ride through it. On the climb up to Loveland Pass, I stopped briefly twice and put my leg up on my bike and STTTTTRETCHED over in an attempt to get my glute to ‘thaw’. It did seem to help.

Most of the ride I was in upper Z2 and since I couldn’t recruit my big butt muscles, my HR didn’t get into Z3 much or Z4 at all. But, I can’t say that my lack of Z3/Z4 was all because of my muscle issues. When I do a long climbing ride, I strive to go at a pace that I can sustain all day. For me, historically that means riding at a HR between 115 and 135. I uploaded everything to Strava.

Today, I felt like I was going miserably slow. I looked thru my old ride logs and the only time I could find on it was a 2008 ride where I had a ride time of 3:14:21. I know I’ve done it faster than that since then. Today’s was 2:55:22. So, even though I felt like I was wading in molasses, I must’ve at least been moving forward most of the time. I’m sure the fact that I felt like I was at odds with my body the entire time has a lot to do with my perception of the ride.