Strangest weekday ride I’ve had

My research is starting to consist of running programs that I’ve written for hours on end so I’ve found myself with a bit of downtime.  Today while I was waiting for a task to complete, I started looking up local rides that I could go to.  One thing led to another and next thing you know, I’m at the Randonneurs USA website. I spent a good hour or so just looking at all the different rides offered across the country.  If I have the time, I would love to try a brevet series next year.

Anyways, all that looking at cycling stuff on the internet got me quite motivated today.  So once I was done at work, I headed home, geared up and headed out on my bike.  I have this one route that I normally do with a couple variations and today I did it backwards since I’m thinking that this may be my new ‘long way to work’ route.

After talking with a couple of people and reflecting on my previous rides, I decided to try to put in very little effort at the beginning of this ride since usually I peg my heart rate at the beginning and drain all my energy.  I was going to try something different today.  I tried my best to ride as light as possible and keep my heart rate a good deal below my anaerobic threshold.  That worked for the most part, but I had to go a bit over a couple times on some hills.  However, that’s to be expected.

When I take this route the normal direction, there is about a mile stretch of road that has a gradient of anywhere from 3% to 7%.  This time I was going the other direction, so that meant that I had a great descent coming up.  This is when the first strange part of the ride happened.  Instead of lightly pedaling at the top of the hill then just coasting while tucked in the aerobars like I normally do, I decided to push the entire way down the hill.  I didn’t go all out or anything, just a moderate effort on my largest gear ratio (50/11).  Well, at the bottom of the hill, I hit a speed of 43.49mph.  This is the second fastest I’ve gone since I’ve had my Garmin.  My top speed is 44.96 on a different hill, but in the same area.  When I went 44.96, I was absolutely terrified.  I thought I was going to crash.  In fact, I tried to go into the aerobars, but just couldn’t because I didnt want to be away from the brakes.  This time, I went ~1.5mph slower, but I was pushing the whole time and also in the aerobars the whole time too.  I also wasn’t scared at all.  In fact, I wished that I was on my TT bike so I had a bigger gear to turn!  It was quite the strange feeling going that fast (for me) and still wanting more.

Well, after the big downhill, I’m sure you can guess what came next.  That’s right: a nice big uphill.  This wasn’t nearly as steep.  But it was nearly 4 miles long.  This is the type of hill that I normally dislike.  It starts of rather shallow and then gets steeper and steeper as it goes on.  By the end, the gradient was just north of 5%.  This is when the second strange part of my ride occured.  To be honest, I was getting quite tired of this hill, and I just wanted it to be over.  So I did what anyone else would do with the same thought process;  I upshifted and got out of the saddle.  Now, normally I can’t be out of the saddle for very long on an uphill because my heart rate shoots through the roof and I’m very quickly drained of energy.  This time, I got out of the saddle a little earlier than I normally would, but I was quite determined to make it over the top.  And make it over the top without sitting I did.  The strange part wasn’t that.  The strange part was that my heart rate at the top of the hill was 197.  Now, this probably means nothing to you at all, but let me put it in some perspective.  The highest I’ve ever seen my heart rate (with any cycling computer I’ve had) is 190.  To see it at 190 is quite rare in fact.  What I normally consider to be my ‘max’ HR is 185.  Once my HR hits 185, it’s quitting time for that push.  Hopefully now it’s clear how ludicrous 197 is.  The strangest part about it was that I wasn’t completely drained of energy.  I was tired of course, but usually once my HR hits 185, I have to just about stop pedaling.  I had to decrease my output, as is expected, but I could still pedal at a somewhat normal pace.

At this point, my route took me back through town and was rather uneventful.  The whole time I was thinking about my heart rate though.  As I got within about a mile of my apartment the third, and final, strange part of the ride occured.  Since I had spent the last 5 or so miles thinking about my new super max HR, I was a bit motivated it seems.  There are some small rolling hills on the approach to my apartment complex that I normally drop down and slowly pedal over.  For some reason, I was possessed and decided to upshift once again and get out of the saddle.  My heart rate never went quite as high since these hills where shorter and less intense; although, it did hit 190 on one of the hills.  It was still quite abnormal for me to push myself so much, especially at the end of a ride.  It was also quite abnormal in that I once again wasn’t completely drained like I normally am whenever I get my heart rate up like that.

So I guess there are a couple reasons such strange things happened on today’s ride.  It might simply have been that I was feeling extra motivated and really on top of my game today and pushed myself harder than I ever had before.

I don’t think that’s what happened though.  Now, this is going to sound silly.  I think that today was the first day in a little over a year of riding that I realized that full benefit of warming up before a ride.  Like I said before, normally I push from the start and find myself quickly drained and then just put in the minimum amount of effort to complete the ride.

If this in fact was me seeing the benefits of warming up, it’ll be quite the great thing.  It seems that I had reached some sort of plateau in my training.  My mileage wasn’t going up a ton, and neither was my speed.  Here’s hoping that I just started my next great leap forward in my cycling.