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Saturday, June 9, 2007
Larry's Comments on 2007 Ride
The first time I made an attempt at a double-century (We call it an "almost" because a true double-century is completed in a single day) was in early October of 2005. I recorded 95 miles going down to Utica from Elmhurst with a total riding time of 6 hours and 43 minutes - an average of 14.2 mph for the distance of the ride. It was a good ride, but I had some trouble with my seat - both on my bike and my body. I stayed at The Willow Inn in Utica, which was a nice serviceable hotel. Dinner was at the local pub where I had an enormous prime rib dinner for twenty bucks. The next day I sat on my bike and knew I was in trouble with respect to sitting on that seat for another 7 hours or so. I gave it a try and ended up going about 35 miles to Morris, but that was it. I had to call in the cavalry (in the form of my son, Chris, who will be driving the SAG van for us this year) to get a ride home from Morris. My personal goal for 2006 was to make it there and back with endurance and "rear-end endurance" to spare.
In the spring of 2007 several friends committed with me to train for and make the same ride. I realized that I had done a very poor job training. With a little bit of research I came up with an eleven week training plan slowly increasing the mileage by 10% each week to reach 75% of the total target mileage. We did the training rides back to back on Saturday and Sunday together and each rider was responsible to ride during the week. What became apparent immediately was that the first ride of the weekend was easy compared to the ride the next day. It was that second ride each week that toughened us up.
The training was fun - and though demanding - within the reach of every rider. We had two riders that had never done any distance riding at all - Matt and Lou - and none of us were what you might think of as "athletes." Yet we made tremendous progress over the 12 weeks. We started barely able to make a 30 mile ride at an average of 13 mph. By the end of the training we could turn in rides in excess of 60 miles at 15 mph or faster.
In addition, this year we will ride for a good cause, Daybreak of Elmhurst. We will take our time and stop often to enjoy the ride. This is a race everyone can win just by participating.
(law)Labels: bike ride, daybreak, double century, syscon
posted by Web Master
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