A perfect day for a ride

I'm so lucky that today is Wednesday! It's GORGEOUS outside - absolutely my favorite kind of day. Crisp and cool, sunny and bright, lots of fall colors (even though nothing will compare to growing up in Massachusetts, Washington isn't too bad in the autumn). And on Wednesday, I go on my club ride with the boys!

Apparently last week when I had my massive tube blowout and couldn't fix it in time to meet the group, they did the same (HARD) route as the week before. So this week, a largely downhill route was on tap.

However, downhill doesn't mean easy - especially when you're going 43 miles per hour. Plus, when you do a loop, you have to eventually regain the elevation you lost.

For the first 40 minutes, I was able to hang with the group. At times, my heart rate was high and breathing was heavy, but I felt good.

But then we hit the steepest hill of the day. I dropped gears to keep my cadence above 90, but hanging with the front of the pack got progressively harder. Thank goodness for streetlights! The group never had to wait for me, but I did fall off the paceline a few times.

At the very end of the ride, we did the 520 hill. The 520 hill isn't really steep, but it is fairly long - more than a mile. I know a lot of people who ride way out of their way to avoid it, and frankly, I wasn't psyched to ride it today either.

I approached it in completely the wrong gear - it's a right turn after a very steep downhill followed by a less steep slope with no bike lane, and two huge trucks trying to turn right and share my lane too, so I was moving very fast - so I was in my hardest gear and knew I needed to drop to nearly the easiest to get up the hill.

Happily I didn't drop my chain with the serious shifting I had to do. I started spinning. The group moved away from me, but I didn't try to catch them - there's a light at the top and I figured they'd need to stop and wait anyway.

About 50 yards into the hill is the steepest part. Usually I start to feel it in my legs right then. Today, I didn't at all. It was as if the road had flattened out. I had no more water in my aero bottle, so I poured more in from my other water bottle, pushed up my long sleeves (what was I thinking! It was HOT!), and just kept spinning.

I realized that despite the fact that the group was going faster than I was, my speed was still decent. I switched my computer over to speed instead of cadence and saw...10 mph? 11 mph? WOW!

Usually I'm more like 8 or 9 on that part of the hill, and feeling worse. So what if the big guys with their huge quads are ahead of me? I'm still fast!

So I finished very, very happy. It's a good day.

Today's data:
Food:
Breakfast: Yogurt, granola, fruit, hard-boiled eggs, milk in coffee: 490 cals
Snack: Starbucks iced coffee light, 35 calories
Lunch: Turkey sandwich on ciabatta, 600 calories
Snack: Banana with peanut butter: 130 cals
Another snack: Cheese and crackers, 150 cals
Dinner: 5 oz salmon and green beans, 300 cals
UGH: Pineapple-orange cake, 500 cals
total so far: 2205 cals <--boo hoo! I don't know what happened with the cake.

Exercise:
Riding hard for 1 hour, 7 minutes: 600 calories burned (seems high, but that's what the HRM said)