Uhl in Eagle, ID – I felt fatigued yesterday even though Saturday's ride wasn't that long nor hard. But today after waking up a little groggy, I started to feel better and better as the day progressed. It got downright chilly last night so I waited until later in the afternoon to ride. At first I was going to do a long flat ride, but I figured with all the Memorial Day traffic, I'd better stay off the main highways. So I opted to ride Bogus again.
I did some sprints on the way in since I haven't done them in a while. When I got to Bogus Basin Road, I decided I'd just ride threshold to the Forest Service sign, as I had done on Saturday. I started conservatively then eased into a good threshold pace. I was seeing 300-310 on the PowerTap but I wasn't really focusing on it. As I approached the sign, my legs still felt reasonably good. So I decided to take a peak at my average wattage thus far, then make the decision on whether to continue on for the 1-hour test. It was 310 watts up to that point...much better than the 300 watts I saw on Saturday, so I decided to go for it! Besides, it would only entail 24 minutes more of suffering, how bad could that be!?
Well, I continued on and it was fairly easy to keep my wattage around 310. But once I made it into the trees, it was getting tough! At that point you're approaching 6,000 feet and the road slightly levels off in places, making it more difficult to keep your wattage up. I had delusions of grandeur of really hammering the last 10 minutes but that didn't pan out. I was suffering too much by then! Then I thought that I'd at least hammer the last 5 minutes. But that didn't happen either. So with one minute to go, switched over to see my average power and it was 308 watts! I lost two watts...bummer! So I really had to pick it up the last minute. I got it to 309 fairly quickly, but the clock was running out. So I really started pushing. Finally, I got out of the saddle for the last ten seconds and during that "sprint", I finally saw it click over to 310...phew! I put sprint in quotes because by then my legs were so wasted it wasn't much of one!
I immediately turned around to head downhill. I pedalled as much as I could to keep my legs moving and had fun railing all the turns. I was getting cocky towards the bottom of the descent and really wanted to hammer the final switchback after the cattle guard. It's actually the tightest of the bunch and I always have a hard time keeping to the right of the double-yellow line (I always make sure there are no cars coming when pushing this turn). So today I had a clear shot so I swing wide to the left-side of the road, then cut to the inside just as the turn starts. I went into it with good speed and was doing great but as I was in the turn I went by a couple riders going the other way. I kind of took a quick look, then all of a sudden, my rear wheel sideslips out! Servers me right for not staying 100% focused!? So my rear wheel skips about 1 foot sideways, and lands hard, but regains traction and I was able to ride out the corner. But I now hear a "psss...psss..." every wheel rotation. Somehow my maneuver popped my tube!
So I quickly stop and start changing the tire, but I realize that both of my spares have short valve stems and my new PowerTap wheel, with it's 31mm rim, needs a long valve!? The ironic thing is: I have about 20 long-stem presta valve tubes sitting in my garage?! I just didn't' think to check what's in my saddle bag when I got this new wheel. So I try various things to get it pumped...there was almost enough valve to get a pump around it, but it was about 3mm too short. I also tried filling the tube up as much as I could before installing the final bead of the tire. That got me enough pressure to not kill my rim if I rode smoothly, but it wouldn't get me far. So finally, I accept the help of a couple riders passing by and I swapped one of them a short-stem tube for his long-stem tube. We chatted for a bit and I admitted to being goof. I've been riding/racing my whole life and there I was stuck with a flat, despite having two spare tubes I couldn't use, and a whole case of ones I needed, sitting at home!? I thanked him, then finished fixing my flat.
I stopped at the Chevron for some ice water, then headed home on Hill Rd. I still felt good so I continued to push the pace and basically rode high tempo for another 25 minutes. It felt hard, but in a good way. Then I rode easy for the last ten minutes to my house. So today was a very productive workout, with sprints, a record 1-hour test and extra tempo for good measure. Looking at the stats, it's actually one of the most intense training rides I've done in a while, so hopefully this bodes well for the future. I just need to be careful and make sure I get enough recovery between these types of effort.
