Sunday Ride

Sunday, I decided to ride the Gitchie Gammi Trail from Gooseberry Falls on north. It was not what I was expecting. Scenic, yes, a good training trail, well, no. A lot of people have told me what a great ride this is, but none were true cyclists. I guess if you're just trundling along and wathcing the scenery, it would be fine, but if you want to ride hard, no so. Very rolling with no rhythm to it, the pavement is super slow ( I thought I had flatted a couple of times ) and bumpy. The kind of bumps that you don't really see, but makes you feel like your tires have an egg on them. Not to my liking, but it does have a couple of climbs to test your self on. Several people were walking their bikes up them, so I didn't feel so bad in my 34 X 28 gears and heart rate into zone 5.

Speaking of heart rate, I've started a program from Polar's web site designed to increase my climbing abilities, based on heart rate and cadence. This a 2 week training camp style program that gets you used to riding different terrains at different heart rates and cadences, all tailored to your current fitness, age, and weight. After reading up on how H/R training works, it makes sense to me and is worth a try. Staying in the prescribed zones and cadences is was tough the first 2 sessions, but after the 3rd, it's getting easier. Even though I wasn't in the "groove " yesterday, the one longish climb seemed easier than usual. We'll see how it goes. Today's ride calls for a half hour zone 2 warm up, a 1 hour zone 3 mix of high the low cadences, then a half hour zone 2 to cool down. Fun training that hopefully with help with the weight loss, too.