An epic ride and a PR

Saturday I went for a nice long bike ride. From our house up the west side ("Bacchus") highway to Magna, then out to Saltair, then along the I-80 frontage road along a very flat, very straight stretch of about 9 miles to the International Center, then south along 5600 West. Yeah, that's about 11 miles of uphill (only about a 4% grade, but after that many miles... ugh.) It was a total of 38.5 miles. If the uphill hadn't killed me, I'd have had a respectable pace as well, but I ended up with a 14 mph pace, finishing in 2 hours 45 minutes or so, and freaking out my wife, who I told I would be back in only 2 hours... yeah, well. It was still a GREAT ride.

In other news...

Last week I set myself a PR in my 4 mile City Creek Canyon loop that I like to run at lunch time. The time was 40:40, for a 10:05 pace. Now I've been getting faster at pretty much everything lately, and although I'm not sure why, I got the bug in my head that this could apply to the City Creek loop as well. I was thinking that a sub-40:00 four mile loop was in order. I've been doing some sub-10:00 paces on the treadmill, but this ain't no treadmill run...

Now I don't know if I've posted the elevation profile for this run before. So here it is...
Yes, that's over 400 feet of elevation gain/loss in 4 miles. And yesterday I did it in 39:30! That, my friends, is a 9:52 pace. Yes, I am tickled.

Slow updater

I guess I'm waiting until something really big happens to update my running blog. And something did, last Monday. So I guess I'm out of excuses. Anyway...

Last Monday I ran 5 miles in a 9:38 pace. That's the furthest I've ever gone at sub-10:00 miles. It gives me hope that I'll break that 5 hour marathon barrier at Ogden in the Spring. Here's hopin', anyways.

Then I got sick. Ugh. So no working out the rest of last week.

Yesterday I got on the spin bike and payed special attention to my power output (watts). I tried to keep my ride going for 11 miles at a sustained 250 watts or more. It was pretty fun to keep an eye on it that way. It required keeping my cadence up around 85-95 and my speed up around 22 mph. I heard somewhere that the pros like Lance Armstrong can consistently crank out 500 watts sustained, on a daily basis, over a 3-week stage race a la the Tour de France. Well... I wanted to see what 500 watts felt like, so I cranked up the resistance, stood up on the pedals, and mashed out 625 watts at one point. I didn't sustain it for more than a few seconds, but it was fun to see what it felt like. I have to do this on the trainer, and not on a "real" bike, because 1) it's cold outside and 2) I'm not cranking out big bucks for a power meter anytime soon. Those things are $$$!

Today should be a City Creek Canyon run again, if the weather gets above 45 or so by lunch time. I brought a long-sleeved shirt, but just shorts to wear. Part of me is looking forward to running in the winter cold, but more of me isn't. Can't we just skip ahead to April?