Training Update: Week 8

As you may know, I’m doing the AIDS/LifeCycle this summer to raise money for AIDS treatment and research.  It’s a bike ride from San Francisco to L.A., 540 miles in 7 days.  If you’ve appreciated this blog or any of my videos, please consider donating — even $5 is helpful.  The link to my official fundraising page is here.

I haven’t kept up with my training updates, mainly because I overdid it with my ambition to run up Runyon Canyon hill.  It gave me ankle tendonitis and I had to stop training for a couple weeks.  I’ve been back for a bit, though, and I’ve ramped up the training considerably.  Here’s what I’ve done since my last update.  (I’ve decided only to include actual bike rides rather than pummel you with all my cross-training as well). 

First,  I’ve managed to lighten the load of that ass-trailer I haul around:

Weight

• Starting: 210#
• Current: 201# (yeah, baby!)
• Goal: 190#

And here are the training rides:

February 27

• Nichols Canyon:  19 miles with a 4-mile hill. 
• Average speed: 12.3 mph

March 6

• Nichols Canyon:  19 miles with a 4-mile hill. 
• Average speed: 12.4 mph

March 13 

• Nichols Canyon:  19 miles with a 4-mile hill. 
• Average speed: 13.3 mph  (Yes!  When I enter the 13s on Nichols Canyon, I start feeling like I’m getting in shape.)

March 20

• Mandeville Canyon:  41 miles with a 5-mile hill.  Yes, it’s a big, big jump.  Yes, it pert near killed me.  Yes, I’m happy I bumped up the mileage.
• Average speed:  12.9 mph (speed suffers when I increase the difficulty of the route)

March 27

• Mandeville/Sepulveda:  50 miles with a a 5-mile hill and a 4-mile hill.  I still need to increase my mileage, but that’s more hillwork than on any single day of the ride.
• Average speed:  12.8 mph

March 28

• Nichols Canyon:  19 miles with a 4-mile hill. 
• Average speed: 13.4 mph  (that’s with my legs still tender from the day before)

If you can contribute to the fundraising, I’d much appreciate it. You’ll find the donation link here.

And a shout-out to Tre for prodding me to keep going with these updates.