As I mentioned in my last post, this past week I was travelling for work, so workouts were limited. So running, so cycling - just a couple sessions of leg & core workouts for some sort of maintenance.
Today's weather was perfect for a bike ride, so I put the road tire on and did the Wachusett loop again. Last time I did this loop was a few weeks ago - I had a heavier outer layer on, and brought only 48 oz of water and 2 GU's with me. I also had a flat at mile 7 that I had to stop to ultimately swap tubes, then I stopped at mile 17 to repair the original tube, then had to stop at about mile 38 or so to get gatorade because I was bonking a bit. This time, I didn't need the outer layer, brought a sufficient supply of my newly made chocolate flavor homemade gu, Nuun tabs for electrolytes, and 48 oz of water. It went much better.
First of all, I tried to be smarter about riding the bike - trying to maintain more even power throughout the ride by trying to keep the HR from spiking too high in certain circumstances, like up hills. While the HR graph doesn't necessarily show it being effective (the avg HR for this ride was 146, whereas a few weeks ago it was 142), it's hard to say for sure, because the other ride included more stop-and-go. The other reason is that while the average HR may have been higher today, I do feel as though I let up on the hills a bit more than I would normally, and in return was able to get going again at the crest more easily.
Another thing was that I was much better about energy management, simply because I had more available. In retrospect, I probably should have brought more, because I ran out towards the end (I actually had more, but the fuel belt gel flask is terrible, so I couldn't get at it). I was also better about electrolyte replenishment with the Nuun tab.
The end result of all this was an average speed of 16.8 mph today vs 15.6 mph a few weeks ago - a nice improvement.
I also found that I think I'm pretty close to a really good mixture of fueling that works well for me for long rides - a combination of gel for primary fuel, plain old water to be taken with the gel, and the nuun tabs in something like every other water bottle for electrolyte replenishment. The gel is a nice, dense energy medium, the plain water can be had most anywhere (I even bring iodine with me if I need to get it from a stream or other water source), and getting electrolytes from the tabs is nice and easy. Sure, sports drinks kinda combine all those roles into one product, but then I am drinking the same thing for hours on end - not to mention the disastrous effects on teeth with constantly exposing them to sugar and the resulting acidic environment that eats away at enamel and creates plaque-galore.
After the ride, I set off on a relatively short run. The primary thing I was wondering was how the ankle would hold up after a week off, and feeling good enough that I actually have had to try to make it feel sore. Results are mixed - the good news is that I barely felt anything after 4.8 miles. The bad news is that the word 'barely' is not 'nothing'. So, immediately after I got home, I soaked my foot in a bucket of cold water for a good 15 minutes, and as of a few hours later, it feels no different than it did prior to going for the run. Tomorrow I'll look to do another 5-6ish mile run and see what happens. If history is any guide, this is one of those things that'll linger for longer than it should in a minor capacity, but a major enough one to prevent me from trying anything like a 15 miler (which I'm itching to do, but I know better than to try one right now).
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