Sunday, November 4, 2007

Slowly I Turn….

Holy Cow! It’s November and we’re riding outside with minimal discomfort. Correction –we’re riding outside and it’s beautiful. Cold in the valleys, but warm in the sun, the ground is clear and heck, the leaf piles don’t even push too far out into the road.

It was a nice weekend’s worth of training – 60 minutes of Friday night roller fun (TheQueenOfAllThatSheSurveys was out at a school ‘fundraiser’ with the other moms) and I was able to catch some West Wing, followed by 30 minutes on Saturday evening in prep for the Sunday Morning Ride.

With the clock switch on Saturday, the sun was just peaking over the horizon at 6:30 when I met Schmalz, Katie, Walter and Patrick at Bagelicious. A quick shot of coffee and off we went. The plan was a nice slow, easy paced off season ride to keep the legs flowing and get the heart rate up just a bit.

We headed west into Wyckoff and rode up into Ramsey before turning east into Montvale (the ride was slightly interrupted by the three galloping deer that ran alongside us for about 200 feet or so) and Park Ridge. We headed through perhaps the prettiest spot in all of Bergen County – the reservoir that straddles Old Tappan and Montvale – the sun was shining bright to the east and it lit up the treeline across the water. The leaves were just that perfect fall color and the air was just crisp enough to fire your lungs up but not make you shiver. From there we headed down to Harrington Park and nice ride home through Westwood and Washington Township.

It was good company during the ride and I enjoyed Schmalz’s reaction when I shared with him that in theory I could (in case they happen to fall on the same day) come next July race the NYC Tri at 6:00 AM and then race up to Park Ridge to do the Cycling Classic that afternoon. Yet, I don’t think they’ll fall on the same day, but it’ll be an interesting day if they do.

Based on this Pez article – http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=5392 and the perils of living in ‘zone 3’ I’ve made a conscious decision to slow down my riding in the belief that always hammering, hammering, hammering will be counterproductive in the long run. The nice thing about this philosophy is that I use it to justify extra deserts also (but hey what’s life without a few good justifications?) so the pace was decidedly slow and I did my best just to focus on form and enjoying the sites. It was a good ride.

The Powertap is in my possession (thank you, Lewis Almonte) and will soon be mounted on the bike by DvB. Powerdata will soon be flowing freely and Velocitynation fans will soon have my data to chew over (I know at least one person reads this blog – thanks, Mom!) also.

Good luck to all at the Turkey Race this weekend. Hopefully the weather will hold.

Enjoy the riding everyone.