Well, I cannot complain about living in Princeton, New jersey . . . it is beautiful riding country, the weather is nice most of the time, and I have an elevator in my dorm building and all-you-can-eat dining halls just a few hundred meters away!
I don't know if those factors had anything to do with my new five-hour-record average power on my favorite loop, from Frenchtown, NJ to Califon, NJ (the highest point in Hunterdon County). Maybe it was due to my nice rest week over Thanksgiving, and I am just now realizing the benefits of 130 hours in the saddle during the previous five weeks! Whatever it was, I had a beautiful ride today.
I woke up to sun shining into my south window, and the coffee (yes, friends, I have a Rancilio Silvia machine in my room!) was especially tasty (I only made espresso because I didn't feel like taking a leak every 30 minutes on the ride!). I read Erica Allar's new blog entry and laughed a lot, and I just knew it was going to be a great ride.
Enough gushing about roads in NJ . . . I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Classes are done for the semester in exactly two weeks, and I am really looking forward to a great time back home with the parents, my old girlfriend, and (OF COURSE) my awesome riding buddies as we tough it in conditions that cause ones balls (balls are required on rides like these) to disappear . . . a good friend of mine once coined the term "sport-mode." The Murphy (mom's side) family Christmas Eve is a great tradition of drunken debauchery and revelry, and I cannot wait to see everyone I haven't seen all year!! Then my dad and I are driving out to Colorado for 4 spectacular days of skiing at Copper, Keystone, and Breckenridge. We are meeting up with Nicole Clarke (who took me to the Charter Semi-formal) and her summer roommate and star Vanderbilt runner Amanda Scott for some skiing and dinner. We are also going to chill with Shawn and Karl Heidgen of Pactimo, two of my best friends who I just met [ironically] on the Courage Classic charity ride for Denver Children's Hospital!
My dad and I will be back just in time for a fun New Year's Eve (hopefully with some old high school friends) and then I am going to the Iowa Democratic caucus on January 3rd . . . that should be very interesting as I have not attended them before and I also do not know for sure who I am supporting!
Thanks for reading, and I hope to have some more good stories during the holidays!
3 comments:
Hello there!
Congrats on your u23TT, Very impresive 350 watts. Well I was woundering what is your vo2max,and max heart rate! well thank you and have a great day
cheers
manny
looks like you were tearing it apart that first one or two hours. were you climbing initially? what speed were on on the climbs and in what gear?
i dig your power meter readouts. for example, i can tell by looking at your profiles that you're quite suited for time trialing (the flatter middle and right hand side sections). even though i don't have a power meter, its good learning. very cool. keep them coming.
Thanks for the comments, guys. This ride is just a standard route, no climbs to speak of, I just ride at a very consistent tempo. To be honest, the mean max power curve doesn't matter very much below 20 minutes for this ride because I was not trying to do anything but tempo. The only time a mean-max curve is important is an aggregate curve, over a couple of months, with various races and power tests incorporated into the data . . . this way one can truly see what their best 15-minute power is, or 30-second, or whatever. For an individual ride it is usually unimportant.
That said, if you saw my aggregate curve, you would definitely see that my 30-minute power is close to my 10-minute power, and I don't have much of a 30-second sprint power. However, this is just confirming what I already know! The real trick is using the curve to pinpoint a weakness that I discover while racing.
Thanks again for the interest.
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