A first attempt at commuting - pansy assed training report

Kudos to Solo for doing an intense weekend. I'm currently living my racing life vicariously through him and guys like Duano (sorry, no hyperlink there, Duano is conspicuously non-net savvy).

So I rode in today. It was a pretty easy ride from an intensity perspective, and even took a slight detour to take out the one appreciable hill. The point of course, being to not stress the achilles tendon any more than I have to. I averaged 18.7, mostly because I sat and spun up what little hills I had. Average HR of 162 - just over 80% max, trip time of 33 minutes.

Of course, today being the first commute, I was bound to forget something.

shoes.

I'm pretty good at improv though. So I cut a couple of insoles out of antistatic foam, stuffed them in my booties, and voila! I have tre chic cycling casual footwear.

I kept my air cast on all weekend, I figured I should err on the side of caution after the way my heel felt after thursdays' light workout. It may have worked, I'm not in any discomfort right now,

This is really frustrating. I had planned to have well over 1000 miles by now, been commuting for the past month, and working in the Tuesday Night Fights (BOB ride), races, and long hilly rides on the weekends. As of right now I can't get an hour in without having to rehab. One of my early season goals was to run the Wild Rover series of running races. I had planned on riding to the races, running them, then riding home. As it turned out I preregd. and didn't run any of them, and was in the cast for the entire series.

Just to keep myself goal oriented, I'm coming up with a new metric: speed over heart rate. The larger the number, the more fit I am. I don't have a power meter, and I'm not getting one anytime soon. I figure, since I'm probably not going to be able to do much of anything besides my stupid little commutes any time soon, a solid number that directly relates to my level of fitness might be a good point. Since the route will remain the same, the only factor will be wind. So the bigger the number, the better the performance.

This morning: 18.7/162 = .115

Compare that with a few typical morning rides from late last season. On october 4 '06 I did 20.2/154 = .131, on sept 26 '06 I did 20.9/159 = 131.

My goal will be a .125, or 20/160. I'll throw out days that I catch a truck draft.