And the training is paying off...
Published: 2005-11-01
Category: Life and stuff
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Language: [English]
page views: 272

Last Sunday I got my route from Pio Nono to the virgin Marry (A 5Km ride uphill the end being 300m higher then the start) down to 31minutes, 45seconds :-D.

That was one amazing ride. Everything fell into place and I just powered up that hill in one go.. Only stop was at the water hole near the swimming pool (I'm still not carrying water). I got to the top, not on my last legs but instead feeling nicely warmed up. Infact after having the traditional "mote con huesillo" I biked to the top of the other hill and around the parque metropolinano with no problem at all.

By coincidence I started out as part of a pack of 4 riders. Most of them looking rather pro. Special cloths, aliuminium bikes, the works... But I left them all behind me. one even congratulated me, when we met at the halfway swiming pool stop. I'm not competing with anybody besides my own times, but it's nice to know im not the slowest on the course.

Having a common challange makes people band together. There were a father and son riding up the hill, and bikers passing them were giving encouraging comments.

I've been thinking since then what it was that made it so much easier. It's not the bike, since I didn't change the configuration since my 38minute times. Only thing that i can think of, is that I'm now biking to work (15minutes to there, 10 back). So my fisical should be improving.

I'm finally getting the hang of riding hill terrain. Shifting those gears is easy (praise syncronic shifters!) but knowing when to, is not. Shifting gears too soon or late can really break the rithim of the ride.

Today I did the Virgin again. Silly me forgot to start the stop-watch passing the start mark. Anyway, the time would have been similar to the 32Minutes of the other day. Again no need to make in between stops. So the 32Min ride was not a "freak accedent". Wonder how long it will take me to get under 30 minutes. Maybe by the end of the year..

Anyway, it's really nice to see my condition improving... No visible signs of it (yet), but I sure notice the difference going up that hill. It's a nice ride, and a nice workout I can do in 2 hours, so I can do other stuff that day as well, making it easy to do often.

But I would like to find a longer ride as well, ideally something i can do in 6-8 hours, and no car needed to get there. So i can leave the house a sunday at say 10:00 and be back around 18:00, that would be ideal. I think I might have found that challange in a national park in Santiago. But I need some stuff, like water supply bottles before I can do that. Biking in the sun with 30 degrees makes you loose sweat like creazy (which is part of the idea).

Good reading material about bikes and riding them is at the "Del Rei" website. Sure they are trying to sell their stuff on the site, but it has some real world knowledge of biking that's not easily found: http://www.rei.com/online/store/LearnShareArticlesList?categoryId=Cycling