Eighty-Four Miles, No Heroics

The ride

Friday morning. 84.49 miles. Six hours and seven minutes total time, just over six hours in the saddle moving. 2,118 feet of climbing. Average power was 95 watts, average heart rate 126.

None of those numbers are impressive on their own. That's also not why I'm posting them.

What 95 watts actually means

My FTP right now is 216 watts. FTP is the highest average power you can hold for roughly an hour, and it's the standard benchmark for cycling fitness. So 95 watts is about 44% of FTP. That's a recovery pace. A conversation pace. The kind of effort where you can look around, eat a bar, think about something other than your breathing.

For a ride that long, that's intentional. August 29th is fifteen days away. The fitness work is done. What I'm doing now is staying loose, keeping the legs moving, not digging a hole I can't climb out of before the actual event.

The elapsed time was 527 minutes versus 365 minutes moving. That gap, almost three hours, was stops. Food, a long break somewhere in the middle, probably a few minutes just standing over the bike looking at something. Long rides have that rhythm. They're supposed to.

Two weeks out

This is the part of training that's hardest to explain to people who haven't done it. You've put in the work. The big weeks are behind you. Now you back off and trust it. The temptation is to cram, to add one more hard effort, to convince yourself you're not ready. Mostly you're just nervous.

I've ridden 135 miles around the Bay enough times now to know that the fitness showing up on ride day isn't built in the final two weeks. It was built in April. In May. In all those ordinary weekday rides that nobody posts about because there's nothing to say except "I went, it was fine, I came home."

Friday was one of those rides, just longer.

The honest version

The suffer score on this was 161, which sounds like a lot for an easy effort. It's mostly just duration. Six hours at any intensity accumulates. My legs felt okay at the end, not fresh, not wrecked. That's the target. I'll take it.

I've got two weeks to stay healthy, keep the legs moving, and not do anything stupid. The 135-mile loop around the Bay on August 29th will take care of itself.

Come do it with me

If you've been reading these posts and thinking that 135 miles sounds like something other people do, consider that Friday was an 84-mile day at a casual pace with a long lunch break in the middle. That's what building toward this looks like. Not fast. Not glamorous. Just consistent, for months.

TheBayRide is August 29th. There's also a 35-mile option from SF to Oakland if you want to start there. Registration is open at TheBayRide.com.

Ride on Strava ↗