Thirty Days Out, Seventy Miles In

Thursday, July 30

Thirty days from now I'll be somewhere on the Bay loop, deep into the back half of 135 miles. Today I rode 71 miles with 4,473 feet of climbing to make sure that doesn't catch me off guard.

The numbers were modest. Average power came in at 130 watts. Average speed, 14 mph. Heart rate sat at 137 for most of it, with a max of 171 on the climbs. The suffer score landed at 276, which sounds dramatic until you realize it's just five hours of moving time adding up slowly.

That's really the whole story of a day like this. It wasn't an interval session. It wasn't a PR attempt. It was a long Thursday morning in the saddle, grinding through elevation, keeping the effort honest, and getting home tired but not broken.

Why rides like this matter

People ask me all the time how you ride 135 miles. The honest answer is that you don't get there by doing one heroic thing. You get there by stacking rides like today's, week after week, until the distance stops feeling like a number you have to survive and starts feeling like something your body knows.

At 130 watts average, I'm not winning anything. My FTP is 216 watts right now, which means I spent most of today well below threshold. That's intentional. Aerobic base work, the kind that makes long days manageable, happens at effort levels that feel almost too easy in the moment. The fact that I covered 4,473 feet at that pace and still felt like a functional human being afterward is the point.

Five hours and six minutes of moving time. That's what the ride cost me today.

Where I am in the build

Four weeks out is an interesting place to be. There's enough time to make a real dent in fitness if the next few weeks go well, and not quite enough time to panic if a few sessions go sideways. I'm not where I was at peak fitness in 2022, when my FTP was 295 watts, but I'm not starting from zero either. I'm somewhere in the middle, doing the work, one long Thursday at a time.

The plan for the next few weeks is more volume, a structured FTP test to see where I actually am, and at least one long ride in the 80-to-90-mile range before taper. Nothing fancy.

The honest version

I want to be clear about what today looked like in practice. It was a morning ride. It was slow by a lot of people's standards. The elevation was real and it took time. I wasn't out there suffering dramatically. I was just riding, consistently, for a long time.

That's the whole method. It's available to more people than they think.

If you've been on the fence about signing up for TheBayRide, August 29th is one month away. The 135-mile full loop is what most riders do, and there's a 35-mile option from San Francisco to Oakland if you're earlier in your build. Either way, today is a good day to stop thinking about it. TheBayRide.com

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