A two day ride, from Dad’s back to Devon and then back to Dad’s to collect my car. Roughly 145km and 1600m of climbing each way, so a total of 290km and 3200m. The climbing is concentrated in the half of the ride closest to home, where the route crosses several river valleys, and the hills are steep and quite long. Pic below is from Day One, riding east to west.
Tried to ride to a moderate heart rate on Day One – Zone 2/3, or between 120-130. That would, in theory, keep me to a slightly slower pace which would help on longer rides. In practice I found it very, very hard to keep my HR down. Ended up with an average for the ride of 138bpm and a max of 163. I can ride like that without trouble, it’s normal for me, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted as a training exercise.
Day Two was the same, but in reverse and with a headwind (tailwind on Day One) so I started with the hilly section. Discovered that my HR was apparently stuck at 130ish, rather than jumping to 150+ at the sight of a slope. Pace-wise I was doing fine, but it was odd to see a decent cruising speed with a HR 10-15bpm lower than before. Average 123bpm and max 143. Asking around on YACF (and general Googling) suggests this is normal, but there could be several causes. Fatigue (likely, I’m still not fully fit) body switching to fat-burning mode (possibly) or over training (basically fatigue++). Either way, on Day Two I found the hills slightly easier and my overall pace (allowing for a headwind plus it being the second day) was very similar, so I’m not complaining.
Being handed such mysteries is perhaps the downside to playing with Pandora’s HRM.
Charging and navigation
I still have no idea about the relationship between my nav phone, powerbank and dynamo. Started with them all on 100%, using passthrough charging from the INUI. Stopped when I saw the phone was down to 77%, with no charging occurring. Swapped cables, unplugged powerbank from dynamo and generally fiddled about. It wasn’t a big problem, but on a long ride (or LEL) I’d rather not have to think about such things, I need to have a setup that I can have faith in. I’ve done enough long rides with this arrangement that I know it works, but even so, it’s a cause for (minor) concern.
Kit
Headset is slightly loose. Fix that before Friday.
Back tyre has a bald spot! New tyres ordered, should be here by Friday.
Tried running the HRM on Polar Beat and RWGPS from the nav phone. It worked, until it didn’t and I had to swear a lot and abandon Polar Beat to get the thing going again. In future I’ll run it on RWGPS alone, and only for training rides. It’s one more bit of tech to go wrong, and even though it’s hardly critical I can’t spare the spoons to faff about with a Thing That Is Wrong mid-ride.
Check the chain and rings. There was a hint of skipping.
Food etc
Torq Grapefruit energy drink is great, but I need a good supply of the sachets. Not sure about the rules for LEL drop-bags, but I hope I can include a stash of these.
Fed fairly well on both days, stopped for something roughly every hour. That meant more time stopped, but there wasn’t a clock ticking. I could have been more efficient if necessary.
Had a few Torq energy bars to try. They’re ok, but quite chewy. Not sure if I’d bother for future rides.
Torq gels are nice (black cherry yoghurt) but still very sweet and harsh on the stomach. Use them as ‘pudding’ after something solid.
Other notes
I can use the tri-bars effectively now for extended periods. Yay for less belly!
Decided to try an audiobook, rather than tunes. Picked LOTR, read by Andy Serkis. Really enjoyed it and it definitely helped the miles go by. FotR is 22hrs long, so the whole trilogy should last me to the beginning of LEL!
My hill chug has come back! It’s a slow trundle (usually about 10kmh) at a low cadence and sustainable on long hills up to about 10%. It isn’t fast or pretty, but it’s much less painful than twiddling in the Ancestor. It’s what I should have been doing up Corfe last month.
Well Chuffed Cycling 