Two weeks until the Raleigh Region 200 brevet,
It seemed a good idea to do some "serious" training.
I left my abode, not sure what I wanted to ride: to Oxford, a modified Denny's Store route, or Bahama Beach.
My Excel log indicates that I started my ride via:
- Honeycutt Rd to
- Durant Rd (to Six Forks Rd) to
- Mt Vernon Church Rd.
I had decided by the time I got 2.1-miles into the "start" that I had decided upon Bahama Beach.
The standard Bahama Beach route (previously a 103-km Perm-pop) has the most climbing per mile.
The Raleigh Region 200 is rather hilly -- or maybe I should type "filled with rollers", but
Some of those rollers can take a toll.
So ... the Bahama route was probably my "back of the mind" choice even before I made my first pedal stroke.
Since the route was not yet re-submitted, and I was therefore not riding the route for RUSA credit,
It was not incumbent upon me to start and finish at the START / FINISH.
I decided to use the corner of MVC and Norwood Rd as my start & finish for the day.
I noted the time-in-motion and the time of day when I got to the aforementioned corner.
But I did not record those times anywhere, and esp. not in my Excel log.
[Sometimes I do record intermediate times and distances in the Excel log.]
Once on the BB route, riding in the standard clockwise direction,
All I did was pedal,
Trying to keep a decent cadence,
But perhaps I was careful to not overdo it on the climbs (?).
Not sure when I made the second decision on the day,
But I decided to ride the standard route rather than one of the many variants.
I'm not sure what the driver(s) behind that decision was.
[I'm typing this late on Sep-20-2021, five-and-a-half months after the ride.]
I recall that the riding was not-too-hard, but not-too-easy, either.
I paused somewhere en route to take a pee.
And when I got back to the MVC / Norwood Rd corner,
I checked the total in-motion time and also checked the actual time of day.
Result?
4h35 elapsed with 4:34 in-motion.
[The in-motion time equates to an average 14.1-mph while in-motion.]
My conclusion(s) at the time:
- I was pleased with the ride, and
- Doing another training ride, perhaps the 138-km Denny's Store route, the next weekend would be sufficient to be ready to produce a decent 200 brevet ride.
Happy days ahead? OR
Happy days ahead !
I successfully rode the Bahama Beach perm-pop 74 times for RUSA credit.
ReplyDeleteOne time, riding for RUSA credit, I had to DNF.
I've also ridden the route pre-rando and also while the route was an approved perm-pop I rode the route two or three or four times with a sub-set of the "Irregulars" (and those rides were NOT counted for RUSA credit).
Anyway, checking my history, my average elapsed time for the 74 successful RUSA credit rides was 5h03. Looking thru the history, it seemed that my faster times were usually when riding solo (and some of the "group" rides took as long as 6 hours!). Checking that history, I found only 12 completed RUSA credit rides that were faster than the 4h35 accomplished on this ride.
I have not compiled a distribution of the successful times, but I did notice quite a few times in the 4h25 to 4h40 range -- that may have been my typical solo ride experience.
My fastest elapsed BB time, you likely are not asking -- 4h00 and 3h55.
My slowest BB elapsed time -- slightly in excess of 6h00.