Great start to February

 January was pretty good. February is off to a great start. 

While the week before was a rest week and light mileage, this past week was a heavier week. I was over 113 miles for the week. My goal is 70 a week, and I actually covered that in 2 rides this weekend.

Sunday I had a 1:45 ride on the training schedule. I did ride less than time than that, but I knocked a big loop off of Zwift and called it a day. The main reason was that my legs were already pretty fatigued, but I also finished that ride at the top of volcano climb....which is lies. The loop ended at the top, but knowing I had a long descent I kept going for a few more miles. :)   Gotta get that pay off for the long climb.

Saturday was the goal breaking ride. I had a 2:15 ride on the schedule. I set up my custom workout to be 90 minutes. Knowing it was going to a long ride I picked a longer route with the hopes to knock it off. I picked the Petit Boucle which is a roughly 38 mile route.

Having done Lumberjack in 2015 I know I am in for a lot of climbing. I am not a climber. So how do you get better at climbing....you climb. This route doesn't have a ton of climbing with just over 1400'. As an example the Barry-Roubaix 36 miler has roughly 2700' of climbing. So...this route is a bit longer and has about half the climbing. The difference is this....Barry is spread out. Yeah there are some bigger climbs, but on this zwift route I was climbing for long stretches of time with no break on the legs. 

Back to the ride. When I got to 90 minutes my custom workout ended and then it showed me how far I had to finish the loop. It was quite a distance left. So I just plugged away. When i got to the 2 hour and 15 mark I knew I had a few miles to go....but they were all uphill. That Petit KOM climb was staring me right in the face. So roughly 36 miles in and a tough climb to go....I forged ahead.

As I reached the top I was just over 38 miles into a ride. Having completed that longer loop and looking at only 2 miles to 40....I just kept going. I was done....I was ready to be done....but I pushed and pushed ahead to the 40 mile mark. Yeah, it took a long time...so what. I did it. I will never be a speed demon, but this was a Major win for me.

We need to do hard things. This was a hard week. This week won't be easy by any means. But I noticed that workouts are working. The first few weeks kind of primed me up. Now I have a big pool of sweat after my rides. And yes, they are longer rides...but the pool is bigger on a shorter ride too. So I am burning fat. I was down a few pounds this past week. I know I have work to do....but I am making positive progress.

Longest trainer ride by mileage

Longest trainer ride by distance

Longest competed loop on Zwift

Longest ride of 2023