Sunday, March 8, 2015
Daylight Savings Time begins!
I still teach until well past dark most evenings, so it won’t help much with more riding time, but on weekends it’s nice to have just a bit more light to play with- to not have to hurry quite so much to get into the barn before dark. So we’ll take it.
I am still loving the saddle pad, and the heart rate monitor is working 100% now giving me great data on how hard she has to work, and hopefully I’ll start being able to better judge it instinctively. We mostly work in the light work zone with small bouts of hard that is usually when we’re climbing the mountain. We had a solid day- nothing too exciting- but we finally got some miles:
11mile loop, moving average was 4.1, overall average 3.4
I had hoped to get at least 12 miles, maybe if all went well even 15, but the snow took its toll. It just kept us at a slower pace and I felt her working harder to move through it- even if it’s not deep, it’s kind of like sand training.
We are still hoping to be ready for a 30 mile ride for our first AERC event at the end of April. I feel good about our goal, we need to start increasing our mileage significantly, but she’s doing well with our current rides and comes in strong to continue. We are not at our limit for sure- with the right conditions, my time (it’s not easy to find an entire day off lately!) I am sure she’d be good for 20. If we can do a strong 25 by early April, she will absolutely be able to do 30.
So as for the snow! Yes, I still think it’s pretty, but it’s time for it to go because our foot gear comes unvelcroed in it, and it slows us down. Bright side? It’s a great workout for her muscles. When the snow is gone- we SHOULD start gaining some speed!
Fingers crossed (Faygo’s are too- she is tired of all this work!) I can get back to riding Khaleesi at least one day a week soon!
green to 100 