RACC from Home

We've been wanting to do the Ride Around Clark County since 2009, but the weather never cooperated to our satisfaction, until today. Our expectations for the ride were a little off, but our planning was spot on.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 101 miles   Elevation Gain: 5,370 feet   Average Moving Speed: 16.3 mph

10-Mile Time Trial: Another Lactate Threshold Test

I have neglected to post about any of our rides so far this year. I think it is mostly because they've all been training rides around our house. Same ol' stuff. We're racking up the miles, already over 1,000 for the year. And every single ride has started from home. Including today. I had to write up today, though, because it isn't your ordinary every day ride like all the rest. Today we did a (self-timed) 10-mile time trial so that we could get an approximation of our current Lactate Threshold heart rate.

10-mile Time Trial	7/2009	8/2009	6/2010	5/2012	4/2013 (today)
Time	29m 21s	29m 18s	28m 40s	28m 20s	28m 10s
Average Moving Speed	20.44 mph	20.48 mph	20.93 mph	21.18 mph	21.30 mph
Average Heart Rate (entire 10 miles)	156 bpm	158 bpm	160.9 bpm	159.7 bpm	162.8 bpm
Est. Lactate Threshold (average heart rate last 20 minutes)	n/a	n/a	165.9 bpm	162.1 bpm	164.6 bpm

Larch Mountain OB

Perfect day for a ride! The only negatives were mostly on the last quarter of the ride: headwind, traffic and red lights.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 100 miles   Elevation Gain: 5,491 feet   Average Moving Speed: 14.39 mph

Salmon Falls Century

Today was a tough ride. Not that much more total elevation gain than last weekend's Cherry of a Ride, but today all the significant climbs were steeper and they were packed into the middle 45 miles.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 103 miles   Elevation Gain: 7,238 feet   Average Moving Speed: 14.71 mph

10-Mile Time Trial: More with Less

After watching the guys in the Tour of California suffer through their Time Trials yesterday I decided it was time to do another Lactate Threshold test, which for me is a 10-mile Time Trial. Didn't take long to remember why I never got around to doing one last year: they're bloody hard!

10-mile Time Trial	7/2009	8/2009	6/2010	5/2012 (today)
Time	29m 21s	29m 18s	28m 40s	28m 20s
Average Moving Speed	20.44 mph	20.48 mph	20.93 mph	21.18 mph
Average Heart Rate (entire 10 miles)	156 bpm	158 bpm	160.9 bpm	159.7 bpm
Est. Lactate Threshold (average heart rate last 20 minutes)	n/a	n/a	165.9 bpm	162.1 bpm

Incredible May Weather

The weather couldn't have been any better.

Stat Total Ride Distance: Total Elevation Gain: Average Moving Speed:

Kelly and Grantham 61.91 miles   4,125 feet   15.67 mph

Dobler Hill 66.93 miles   3,927 feet   15.89 mph

Total 128.84 miles   8,052 feet   15.78 mph

North River Century/Tweener

Amy was fresh and did the full century strong, while my two weeks mostly off the bike caught up to me, so I did the tweener.

Quick Stats	Amy	John
Ride Distance:	100 miles	89 miles
Elevation Gain:	5,182 feet	3,726 feet
Average Moving Speed:	16.2 mph	15.6 mph

Broken Wheel Ride

Originally planned as an 86-mile loop from our house, this ride was abruptly ended at the 54-mile mark due to a broken wheel.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 54 miles   Elevation Gain: 3,567 feet   Average Moving Speed: 13.90 mph

North River Century

Decided to take an enjoyable route from last year and turn it into a full century.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 100 miles   Elevation Gain: 5,182 feet   Average Moving Speed: 15.44 mph

North River Ride w/ Sunset Falls OB

It was foggy and cold when we got up and we knew it would be sunny later in the day, so we didn't get going until almost 11 a.m. The fog was gone, but it was still pretty cool.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 88.89 miles   Elevation Gain: 4,699 feet   Average Moving Speed: 15.37 mph

Woodland Tulip Loop

Neither one of us wanted to get moving this morning. Looking out the window at the wet roads didn't help. The sun came out and the roads started to dry, so we finally got out the door and rolling at about 10:30 a.m. Once we started riding we both felt great.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 65.43 miles   Elevation Gain: 3,647 feet   Average Moving Speed: 15.47 mph

TTT + 389th/Spencer

Normally during the week we don't do longer rides. But since Amy has to work Saturday and what with the impending rainy season we decided we better ride while we can. So we did basically a metric century on a Thursday morning.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 61.88 miles   Elevation Gain: 5110 feet   Average Moving Speed: 14.6 mph

North River Ride

After getting rained out on Saturday and Sunday, when we had planned to ride out to Sauvie Island with friends on Saturday and then do most of the Monster Cookie route (unsupported) in Salem on Sunday, we were happy to get any ride in on Monday at all.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 74.06 miles   Elevation Gain: 3,500 feet   Average Moving Speed: 15.93 mph

Several Local Rides

After The Tandem Experiment we were both happy to be back on our own bicycles. Not so much because they are not tandem bicycles, per se, but really because they are dialed in for comfort. Home sweet home, in a sense.

Climbing Half a Cherry

We weren't sure how much to tackle today as we need to taper down our training before the big ride next weekend. And we also just did a substantial ride of three Larch Mountain repeats on Friday. But we both felt good so we went with a fairly solid ride, the last of such until the doozy on Sunday.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 61.42 miles   Elevation Gain: 5,508 feet   Average Moving Speed: 13.6 mph

Larch Mountain 3x

We had planned to do this ride Monday, but Monday started out wet so we ended up cutting it short. This is our last big training ride before we tackle the huge Shasta ride of 140 miles and over 16,000 feet of climbing.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 106 miles   Elevation Gain: 10,276 feet   Average Moving Speed: 13.48 mph

Old Man Pass

Big Plans vs. Reality. The original plan was an out-and-back ride starting from Carson and heading north up over Old Man Pass, a quick jaunt to the east end of the Swift Reservoir to get some water at the General Store, and then follow the Lewis River eastward on Forest Road 90 all the way to Mt. Adams, or as close as possible on a road bike anyway. It would have been almost 140 miles, just like last week's ride.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 86 miles   Elevation Gain: 6,532 feet   Average Moving Speed: 14.0 mph

Elk-Johnston-Elk-Elk Century

What an incredibly awesome day for a ride!

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 100.18 miles   Elevation Gain: 8,911 feet   Average Moving Speed: 13.8 mph

Gorge Falls and Larch Mountain

There is a lot of snow in the mountains. Just like Saturday, today's ride had to be altered due to snow.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 78.2 miles   Elevation Gain: 5,554 feet   Average Moving Speed: 13.94 mph

Cherry of a Ride

What a day! What a ride! We intended to do this ride back when they put it on in April but chickened out due to the rainy forecast. Based on how much I struggled in June I'm thinking it was probably a good thing we didn't do it in April.

Quick Stats Ride Distance: 99.42 miles   Elevation Gain: 6,154 feet   Average Moving Speed: 13.9 mph