Weekend Bike Ride, plan B... plan C... Plan D...

I've been a little behind with my bike training, so this weekend I wanted to do a long ride. There was a group doing GMR, aka Glendora Mountain Road, aka the Matterhorn; it would have been tough, but a great way to jump-start my training. Then I heard about another group ride, 3-4 hours flat with intervals. I like intervals; if you get tired during an interval, you can slow down. If you get tired during a hill, you can't stop climbing. So I decided I would skip GMR and do the flats. But then Friday night I went to see Hot Tub Time Machine and had a couple beers and a vodka shot and basically wasn't all too keen on getting up Saturday morning.

I figured I would do a solo ride Sunday morning. Get up at 7, hit the streets by 8, finish around 11. I woke up reluctantly at 7, and remember something Gerald told me: "it's going to be hot when we do Hawaii 70.3, so we have to do some rides later in the day when it's warmer." I convinced myself that it would be BETTER for my training to go back to bed for an hour and start at 9:00 instead. I always knew I liked Gerald.

So around 10:00 I finally got out the door. I did the Glendale-Burbank-La Tuna Canyon-La Canada-Rose Bowl-La Canada-Glendale route. It's about 40 miles, not as far as I should have gone but there are some decent climbs in there so I don't feel too guilty. I felt pretty good on the hills, but it was a little bit frustrating dealing with all the traffic lights getting in and out of Glendale.

I did learn a valuable nutrition lesson during the ride. I bought a new tub of CarboPro, the magic elixir I used for Ironman Wisconsin. I made it the usual strength, the level I used for a 6-7 hour bike ride. Of course, since I was only out there for three hours I probably shouldn't have paced myself to finish the entire bottle. I didn't drink it all; I stopped drinking because it was just too thick and heavy. I'll scale it back a bit next time. (But keep the Kool Aid flavoring in for good measure.)