FInal Long Training Ride

This summer, my main goal has been to get ready for a 137 mile ride across the state of Vermont and back in a single day. To that end, I've been trying to increase the time and distance of my long rides to get somewhere near the 8 hours I have set as a goal for the rolling time of this ride.

My long rides really got going back at the end of June when I completed a 93 miler and continued on throughout July when I completed rides of 101, 107 and 108 miles. The last two were in back to back weeks where my mileage hit new highs both times (275 miles in one week and 279 miles in the next).

This has given me a whole new level of respect for pro riders who recover from 100 mile rides overnight it seems. By the time I got to the end of the 108 mile ride (which was actually supposed to be about 10 miles longer but I just couldn't do it), I was pretty well cooked. I don't think I bonked really, just that the accumulated fatigue of the two weeks of hard training caught up with me. A good illustration of this is my TSB chart. At the right side of the graph you'll see an arrow pointing to the spot on the chart the corresponds to my latest (and longest) long ride. Note that the TSB is very negative leading up to this ride, having been -20 or less the previous 5 days. This indicates, at least to me, that I was putting in training rides that were generally quite a bit above my established base, hence leading to increasing fatigue.

Compare this to the previous long ride of 107 miles. For that ride, my TSB had been generally positive for the week leading up to it, except for a small negative blip two days prior. On that ride, while my speed was slightly slower than the most recent ride (probably due to terrain differences), I felt strong through the entire ride, no bonking or extreme feelings of soreness or fatigue. This gives me good hope for my goal ride, assuming I can manage to peak correctly and go into the ride with a bunch of green on my TSB chart.