First Double Long Ride Weekend

The Catalinas and Pusch Ridge from near the end of the ride today. Tucson is a spectacular place to train in the winter.

An unheated pool becomes the ice bath in winter... water temperature is about 58 deg.

This weekend was the first of what I hope will become the new normal training weekend through the winter--back to back 100+ mile rides.  I'll be posting an overview of my training plan in the next month or so, but the first phase is to make the double long ride, and 8-10 h ride the "new normal" before the traditional road racing season starts in AZ.  The road season is in full swing here by February and March. I plan to use the racing, and mixing it up on the group rides as the quality as I think trying to focus on both structure intervals and ultra-long rides is too much.  The Tour of the Gila in early May, will be the centerpiece of the early road racing season, before transitioning to the final preparation for RAW.  I raced in the very first Tour of the Gila in 1987, its always been a special race to me. 

Saturday was a most excellent team ride with my Tucson Masters Cycling buddies on the Picture Rocks loop, which contains some fun short climbs.  Doing my 5-6 h rides with the team ride embedded in the middle was a key part of my Hoodoo-300 training, giving me some quality, and break from the solo monotony.

The dietary lessons continue.  I have found I average only about 80-85 g of protein a day.  I should be up closer to 100-120 g a day, so I have a ways to go.  Then today--lessons learned and learned again.  With the fun and excitement of the group ride, I only ate 1400 calories (and a 250 calorie breakfast) for a 3400 calorie ride.   I paid for that over the last 20 minutes or so.  While I am trying to drop 2-3 lbs before the regular road racing season, crash dieting on the weekend long rides is not the way to go about it.  I finished up the ride with a 58 degree ice bath in our pool, refreshing the legs, and icing a slightly achy knee.

Sunday's ride was an awesome finish to the first really long weekend of training.  It started at 6:10 am, and ended mid afternoon, 7 hours and 211 km (131 miles).  One of the challenges with a ride like this is where to put all the warm clothing (it was 35 deg along the river in the morning, but 72 by the end of the ride).  The on-bike nutrition worked much better today.  I ingested 2600 calories on the bike, everything in that picture, and a small bag of salted macadamia nuts.  After a bit of an energy crisis about 2 h in, the rest of the ride felt really strong.   That is still a 1500 calorie deficit, which in RAW will accumulate to 4500 calories a day.  I still have to learn to eat even more.  Having the group along for part of the ride, and Andy sharing pulls into the headwinds out the Old Sonoita Highway and back really helped too.

2600 calories for the ride. Quite a pocket full. Plus a bag of 20 salted macadamia nuts (real food). That is a total of 342 g of carbohydrates, 120 g of fat, 39 g of protein. 52% calories by carbs, 41% by fat.

Standing up the organization and logistics for RAW 2019 is continuing.  Its a really big component of a successful attempt, and I hope to get the organizational components in place early so that I can focus on training, and the crew can focus on planning.  I expect to have at least one, and perhaps two sponsor announcements in the coming weeks.  I'm really excited about both of them.  More to come...

Day 15, 197 d 19 h, 21 m to RAW 2019.