Recovering My Strength

Today's ride was the third since coming back of an eight day family holiday, and I'm happy to say the the legs are starting to feel a little stronger.

I'm still amazed at how much power I lost in my legs over nine days on not getting on the bike.  This was eccentuated as I was looking at my activity history for the past four months on Strava.  I've averaged four or five rides a week varying from 1hour Hills workout rides to climbs up Mt Wellington to 100km rides.  In terms of power in my legs, all that work was brought undone by nine days of rest.

Yesterday's 70km ride was intentionally an easy ride, the really wasn't any thought of power, speed, heart rate, cadence or anything else.  After spending a fair bit of time on Wednesday evening continue to work out some pretty severe cramps from my quads, all I wanted to do was turn the legs over nice and easy for a few hours.

Today was more about finding out just where I am at right now.

I like riding in a group, but I'm equally happy getting out their on my own.  On these sort of days, the only pressure comes me and while I can start off thinking 'just take it easy', more often than not, I tend to want to test myself quite often.  I was under no illusion that today would be a top ride, but it was a test to see the extent of the damage those nine days did.

Mt Nelson Signal Station - beautiful day in Hobart!

Warming up, things felt pretty good. As I turned up the 'Seven Bends' towards Mt Nelson, I wasn't at my best, but things were certainly better than they were midweek. Perhaps the day helped - it was beautiful out there today!  While things were going okay, I spent most of ride up and down Mt Nelson thinking of an alternative route over to Cascade that didn't involve riding up Lynton Avenue - in the end the 'test' demanded I give it go and it felt tough!

Cycling past Cascade and up Strickland Avenue felt better and the three or four other cyclists I passed on the way up didn't do my morale any harm.  Again though, towards the top the questions about my route home started to come; did I really want to ride up Molle St and then Summerhill Road at Mt Stuart?  The descent was good, and the 'test' needed to be satisfied, so off I went.

The last part of today's 44km through West Hobart were hard work - harder then normal? I couldn't tell, it was simply hard! As I rode up the hill to home, I really wasn't sure how I'd gone. As I often do when out for a workout, I'd turned off the time, speed and distance display on my Garmin and was simply using my average heart rate, cadence, and elevation.

I'm really pleased with today's effort.  44km in under 2hours (not bad given the hills) and most surprisingly of all some good PB's on segments through West Hobart when I felt I was doing it toughest of all.  If you're interested, you can check out the ride here.

How am I set for the Red Shield Ride? Maybe not quite as good as I hoped I'd be feeling, but I'm 27-28kg lighter then I was eleven months ago when we rode the first Red Shield Ride and so all thing considered, things are looking good for the ride?