Cranking up the training

It's been two weeks since I posted anything.  Last weekend I didn't ride at all.  Instead, my brothers and I flew to Indianapolis to throw a surprise birthday party for my Mom's 80th birthday.  We had 29 family members including her children, grandchildren, sister, nieces and nephews.  We caught her completely by surprise.  Congratulations, Mom! 

With only 5 weeks remaining until our ride starts it's time to crank up the distance and difficulty of my training.  I got in a short ride yesterday and then rode a 50-miler today.  I started at 7:00am this morning - that's more like the schedule I expect we'll be on during the ride.  Temperature was a brisk 40F when I started, but warmed up and turned into a very nice, warm day.

To raise the degree of difficulty, I decided to do some real climbs.  When I want real climbs I head to South Mountain, south of Emmaus, PA.  There are three routes out of Emmaus over the mountain, 10th St., 5th St. and 2nd St.  None of them are very long, only about 1 mile, but they're a quite respectable grade.

I rode up 10th St., which is the hardest, first.  Then down 5th St. back into town - I hit 39.4mph coasting down the smooth straight descent.  Then over 2nd St. including the side route over Oak Hill Rd. near the top.  Down the south side then back up Chestnut Hill Rd. north into Emmaus, Finally, out of Emmaus on 5th St. over the mountain.  These little loops were a nice challenge and left me feeling pretty good about my climbing ability.  The biggest concern I have about the TransAm route is that many of the climbs are significantly longer than anything I can do around here.

So after all that climbing I figured I couldn't possibly encounter anything worse than what I'd done and I'd just log some miles in the area southwest of Emmaus.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  The route I chose included a little stretch of road named "Salem Bible Church Rd."  I'd never done this before and it looked like a nice road to take from the Zionsville, PA area over to Bear Creek Resort.  Boy was I in for a surprise.  It turns out that stretch of road is at least as bad as the 10th St. climb out of Emmaus.  I managed to make it up with only one several minute long rest stop, but it left me completely gassed and lacking in confidence.  I'm hoping the TransAm climbs will be slightly lower grade and more manageable.  I'm also hoping several more weekends of longer rides will build my strength and get me better prepared.  I'll let you know after I've finished the TransAm.  :-)

Whenever I ride locally, I map my route using the website www.mapmyride.com.  I especially like how easy it is to draw out my routes with its "Follow Roads" feature and I also like the elevation data it shows.  It's valuable enough to me that I pay for an annual subscription - which eliminates pop-up ads on the maps and makes it much nicer to use.

So I mapped a portion of today's ride to see how it looks:

The color coded elevation data shows the climb, descent, climb loops over South Mountain.  Then near the end is the little "kicker" that is Salem Bible Church Rd.  I should have mapped this and checked the elevation profile BEFORE I set out on this ride.

The portion of my route mapped above stops after the nice descent down from Bear Creek Mountain Resort.  Here's a view of the Allentown area from near the top of that descent:

A view towards Allentown, PA.  The large building to the right on the horizon is the PP&L (Pennsylvania Power & Light) building - Allentown's tallest building and an area landmark.

The goal over the next few weekends is to do 50-60 miles every Saturday and Sunday.  It will be interesting to see how well I recover overnight and whether I feel up to doing another long ride tomorrow.  Certainly by the time my TransAm ride starts I'd better be ready for that.