Longest Ride of the Season (so far)

Today is Monday, and for me that means long ride day. Monday's I don't have to go to work in the evenings, so I use it for my long rides so that if something happens and I get stranded I won't miss work.

Granted, these days it doesn't make all that much difference since I don't go very far from home yet, but last year, long days were often 100 or more miles so getting stuff halfway would be a real problem if I had to be back for work.

The route I took today is one of my favorite loops. It is just over 16 miles, so for now it makes a good "long" ride and when I'm in shape and lighter it makes a good recovery ride. Since it is a loop, I can take it two ways. The way I took today has a long gently rising slope for most of the first half (well, after a 2 mile descent to the flats), then climbs fairly steadily for the next 5 miles, then has a half mile to a mile flat, then goes into up/down until I get home (the last 4 miles or so). There are a couple steep climbs, but they are relatively short and the long climb is pretty moderate.

If you reverse the loop, you get a different feel altogether. You start off in the hilly up/down terrain, with a 5 - 6 minute climb of about 6%. You get out of the up/down stuff after about 6 miles and then you start a fairly gradual descent or flat for the next 8 miles or so. There are a couple steeper drops in parts. Once you get to the end of the flat, you go back to a long climb of about 2 miles. It starts off going up over what we call Banzai Bridge, which has a steep section of about 12%. Luckily it is short, but it still can hurt. Then it is fairly steady climb until about a half mile from my house where you get two more steeper sections. If you are in a car, this steady part will seem flat, but you definitely know it isn't when you are pedaling it. Even when I was in shape in the early part of last year I didn't like doing this section as it always seemed hard. It wasn't until towards the end of the season that it actually seemed easy.

So this was my route today and gave me my longest ride of the season. I had actually done this route earlier in the year (3/13) when I had tried to get back on the bike, but that was on my mountain bike, which in many ways is much easier (lower gearing). Took longer too.

So a lot of things to feel positive about today:
Longest Ride of the season both in distance and time.
Fastest average speed of the season, though I think this is more because of terrain than anything else.
Highest 5 sec power ever (about 8% better than last year in fact)
And, I've lost 5.8lbs since last Monday. I generally don't follow date to date weight loss, but I'll go into that tomorrow. For today, I'm just happy that I've lost nearly 6 lbs. That is about 2.4% decrease in body weight from where I started. That's not sustainable by any means, but it is a nice start.

Regards.