Circle Progression in Major
April and May is the time of year when you go out and suffer, laying down the miles and gaining the fitness which will serve as a base for your major summertime events in June, July, and August.
April was a good month for me. I covered 425 miles, including two 72-mile runs (down Bunola Road to Monongahela, and up Sun Mine to Saxonburg), earning both my Strava Gran Fondo (100 km) and Climbing (24,600 ft) Challenge badges. With respect to making up for five months off the bike, I’d describe my fitness level then as: not feeling strong, but not feeling weak anymore, either. But boy, Western PA sure likes to put up detours for road work in the spring… Closed roads *everywhere*!
My improvement continued this past month, when I covered 567 miles, including regular group rides and three Tag-o-Rama pickups. I finished the month out by bagging the monthly Gran Fondo and Climbing (29,000 ft) Challenges. The only noteworthy event in the entire month was the ceremonial Ride of Silence in memory of cyclists killed and injured by automobiles. By Memorial Day I’d finally caught up with last year’s pace for distance, climbing, and time in the saddle. I’d also surpassed 1,200 miles for the year and 12,000 miles on my four year old R2-Di2 steed.
One new development is that I am participating in the summer-long National Bike Challenge, which I never bothered with before. The competitive nature of the game has gotten me out for more frequent and longer rides, and logging rides is easy now that they just scrape your Strava data. After one month of point-gathering (20 points per day of riding, plus 1 point per mile), I’m 90th percentile among Pittsburgh riders, 88th percentile in PA, and 90th percentile nationally.
As a segue into June, yesterday was the Western PA Wheelmen’s annual Spring Rally, a picnic down in Washington County which included really pretty road loops of 39, 14, and 11 miles. I did all of them (and all 14 ridge climbs, accumulating 4,550 feet of ascent), and generally felt pretty good except for the sitbones.
So despite my abnormally long winter layoff, after a few months of hard riding I feel pretty much back up to an appropriate fitness level again. That’s good, because next weekend is June’s big event: the Escape to the Lake MS 150 ride. It was brutally hot and hard last year, and this year I’m going to ride both days instead of just one.
The one thing my training lacked this year was completing a full century ride before June. Last year I did the Pittsburgh Randonneurs 200k in April, but that was out of the question this year, and I just haven’t chosen to tackle a 100-mile ride recently.
Fortunately, Strava’s incredibly useful Fitness & Freshness chart confirms that I’ll start the MS ride at a higher fitness level than last year. And so long as I taper my training properly this week, I should be fresher and in better form overall. Stay tuned for the results!