Ouch

On Thursday night around 7:30 I drove about 25 miles to try out the hardest hills of the Trans Iowa Training Ride coming up next weekend. It was a blast, but I can tell I haven't been riding hardly at all over the last three weeks. I did 6 of the 10% or so grade hills and cleaned them all on the 32 X 17 gearing I had set, but the last one I honestly had to stop for 10-15 seconds as I was demoralized.

Riding these hills at night has it's positives and negatives. It is great that you can't look up and see just how much further you have to go up these beasts, but that is also part of the agony. The one hill that I stopped on had two false summits. Ugh. What was crazy was that my legs were really doing ok climbing up those hills, it was my upper body that is weak. I really have to pull on those handle bars and man.... I am just a wimp. I hope to get some more riding in tomorrow if the roads clear up at all cuz I am going to need at least a little bit more riding before riding 100 cold miles!

I was surprised that the hills really weren't as bad as I thought they would be on the single speed. For the few of you that have ridden those hills with me you know how I have no shame in dropping it down to the granny gear and spinning like crazy at 3 mph to get up those hills, but I am finding that standing and cranking away with a fully rigid bike climbs a lot better, and faster.

I guess we will see how this week goes. Hopefully I will get some riding in!

Happy training.

EDIT: Check out this ride! It looks like a great time!