52 Miles & 36 miles

Today is Monday August 4th 2025 and i rode my bike last Saturday and Sunday.

On Saturday i intended to ride around 75 miles but that was probably unrealistic given my limited ride window so i ended up doing 52 miles.

On Sunday i lucked into a decent ride window in the afternoon and decided to take the Road Bike on the Rocky Route (midtown, downtown, east bottoms, cliff drive, train tracks, broken glass... old school Rocky I Eye of the Tiger training. Yes i know Eye of the Tiger didn't appear until Rocky III. i make the rules here).

Saturday i felt pretty crappy.

Sunday i felt pretty great.

On Sunday's ride i felt like i might have leveled up in fitness. To put that in racing terms i may have advanced to an average cat 5. Sundays ride was also energizing because of the route. i prefer urban riding. Case in point, i rode by Knuckle Heads yesterday around 4 pm and there was a bad a*s blues band rocking out with a guy in the middle of a sick harmonica solo.

You don't get that when you're out at 233rd and Cleveland Ave!

One final note, i plan to make more of an effort to ride clean bicycles. Specifically the drive train. lately i've been thinking about how much harder i'm having to work because my chain and cassette are super dirty. 

Anyway...

Gravel Worlds is in less than 3 weeks!

Saturdays Ride...

Sundays Ride...

Group Ride

Today is Thursday July 31 2025 and yesterday i did a group bike ride.

I blew up 15 minutes in.

Boy howdy was it a hard. Last week i did this ride on tired legs and got dropped a little sooner than expected so this week i made the effort to show up with fresh legs. Maybe too fresh. Doing this group ride for the past 6 weeks is like a crash course it what it takes to pedal hard. The most obvious part is you need to ride your bike a lot at a hard pace so that you get good at riding your bike at a hard pace. But there's also a bit of an art to showing up to a specific ride primed and ready to go. For instance, did you ride hard the day before? Did you not ride at all the previous 3 days? Did you do a good warm up prior to the event?

Yesterday i failed all of those tests and more.  

But also i think yesterdays ride was just faster than all the others. 

10 minutes in and were going 27 mph on a longish flat road. That's fast for me. 

But... i want to be able to handle that so i'll keep working. Doing this ride has been a great reality check about my fitness and what it takes to pedal hard.

i plan to be back next week but after that it gets tricky because school starts for the little man.

55 Miles (What's the Frequency, Kenneth)

Today is Saturday July 26 2025 and today i pedaled my Cyclo Cross bike for 55 miles.

I felt just ok.

Also... should i be concerned that the bike i'll be racing Gravel Worlds on is a 'Cyclo Cross Bike' and not a 'Gravel Bike'? I'm not concerned, but should i be? i acknowledge that its probably not the fastest choice and i'm fine with that, but just how much slower will i be because I'm not on the proper bike?

Anyway... today i rode for about 4 hours and 15 minute and covered about 55 miles. Maybe 40% of it was gravel. This route, including Kenneth Road, has become enjoyable.

i wore my new hydration pack, which i just got. It's amazing. So comfortable. i'll defiantly be wearing it during Gravel Worlds.

These long Saturday morning rides are the time to mimic race day and find out what works and what doesn't. Today, for example, breakfast wasn't good so i was pretty hungry all ride. Also, after about a 45 minute warm up i forced myself to ride hard for what turned out to be the next 50 minutes. Because i assume the start of the race will be fast and if i can hang on to a good group maybe it will settle down in the middle of the race and we can really make some time.

Hopefully i can find time for 2 or 3 more big rides in before the race.

Bicycles!

Group Ride

Today is Friday July 2025 and two days ago on Wednesday i did the group bike ride.

Lots of suffering was had.

i was late which means i had to chase a bit which means i was on the back foot most of the ride which means when they hit the big hill where the pace always seems to tick up a few notches i sat up almost immediately. It felt a little like that time i did the Cat 4 Lawrence, KS road bike circuit race and Micah G hammered at the front seemingly all day. i lined up in the back of what was a pretty technical course and i was accelerating out of corners and closing small gaps all day. ultimately i got dropped. So this was kind of like that, a little. Only back then i was in much much much better shape. Honestly that race is a big what if. i was fit but lining up at the back had me working seemingly twice as hard just to keep up.

Actually, i don't think Wednesdays group ride was very similar to that Lawrence, KS circuit race. i think i just wanted to talk about it.

i make the rules here.

Glory days!

Anyway...

So i got dropped at the group ride, no worries, i still rode hard for about 38 minutes so that counts as something.

It might be time to tweak my weekly workout routine. More pedaling, more core, less weights.

Maybe next week i'll see if i can do this ride on fresher legs.

Goals!

65 Miles

Today is Monday July 21 2025 and last Saturday i rode my cyclo cross bike 65 miles.

It was a good ride.

i started at 6:10 am which means i avoided the heat of the day. But it was still hot. As the 75 mile Gravel Worlds race in Lincoln Nebraska approaches i'm putting a lot of thought into how to adequately fuel for an effort like that. A big part of it will be salt. 

i tend to cramp. Probably for two main reasons. i don't train well enough so therefore my body isn't use to the big efforts required in a race and also i'm not getting enough salt during the effort. Or is it sodium i need? Are those the same thing? Anyway... what i am pretty confident about is that salt stick fast chews work very well for me.

On this most recent ride, which was very humid, i ate a ton of them and i didn't cramp. Pedaling for 65 sweaty miles and not cramping is a big win for me.

So that has me feeling good.

i do need to work on my neck and shoulders because they are getting very fatigued on these long rides. stay tuned on that issue.

Looking at the calendar i can probably get in 3 more big rides before i take it easy for a week or two pre race. This most recent ride was only about 25% gravel so that's not ideal. i would love to get in a solid 65 mile all gravel ride prior the race. 

What are my goals for this race? i'm not really sure. Gravel Worlds is really a race just to force me to get into good shape prior to the Little Sugar Mountain Bike race in Bentonvill in October. That's the race i'm most excited about. But i still want to ride well and enjoy myself over 75 miles of gravel.

i did Gravel Worlds (75 miles) once before, in 2023, and it took me 8 hours and 2 minutes but that included a long muddy walking section. Everybody was slow that year. The winner that year only averaged 16.4 mph but last year the winning mph was over 20.

Can i average 15 mph for 75 miles of gravel? Maybe. So that's a loose goal. Finish in 5 hours. i'll have to find a good group to ride with to make that happen. Getting more specific with my goals i'd like to line up towards the front. Which i don't like. i was always a back of the bus, back of the classroom type of guy and that trend continues when i line up for a race. But this time i'll try to force myself to get their early enough so i can line up in the top 50. Then i figure i should be prepared for a fast first hour and i'd like to be able to weather that storm and then keep pushing hard for the remainder of the race.

Bicycles!

Group Ride

Today is Thursday July 17 2025 and yesterday i did a group bike ride.

It's the same ride i've done twice before. This time i did last a little longer before getting dropped. But i still got dropped. Hopefully i'll see the end of this ride at some point in the near future.

Yes i got dropped but i felt much more comfortable than i did on the previous two rides. My body knows that road bike so well but its taking a while to truly get reacquainted with it after spending years and years riding other bikes. Plus that bike needs some major work. The seat post is fused in a slightly too high position. The shifting sucks. i don't like the handle bars, specifically when in the drops.

i need to get off my a*s and take it in for some work... and do a little more yoga / strength training so that i can truly feel comfortable on it... and just ride it more regularly outdoors.

Or not. 

i'm making the rules here.

Regarding strength training, it feels like that's the best opportunity for me to improve my riding quickly. i'm a string bean. No real muscle to speak of. Yes my lungs need some major work (i hit a 191 heart rate on this ride!) and that's probably my biggest limiter but it feels like i could get quicker gains by doing some strength training. The problem is that i should have done that strength training months ago because at this point the races are coming up and i'd prefer to be riding right now and not lifting. 

So its like i've failed the midterm and now i have to ace the rest of the class just to finish with a passing grade. Meaning i have to find a way to work in a little strength training while not damaging the cardio training that my lungs obviously need so that when i show up to gravel worlds i can ride competently.

Or not.

i'm making the rules here.

My number one training indicator is how much fun i'm having while riding and right now i'm having a lot of fun.

We'll see how much fun i'm having at mile 55 of the 75 mile grave race.

52 Miles

Today is Monday July 14 2025 and last Saturday i rode 52 miles.

The ride started out aimlessly. With the 75 mile Gravel Worlds race approaching i want to be doing long gravel miles but i don't have a route i love so today i just headed out to see where the wind would take me.

By 8am, about an hour into the ride,  i was at the intersection of 143rd and Kenneth road. By that point the plan was to keep heading east into Martin City before making my way to Prospect for a bigger loop out south but then i spotted a group of 5 serious looking cyclists heading South on Kenneth... so i follow them instead.

I chased for around 20 minutes but never did catch them.

But that chase ended up altering and probably extending my ride. 

52 miles later, with probably 10-15 of those miles being gravel, i ended up back home. I was pretty dead for the last hour. 

i cant decide if the ride indicates good fitness or not. 

On the one hand i did ride 52 miles on a cyclo cross bike without much prep. On the other hand i was pretty dead after riding 52 miles on a cyclo cross bike without much prep.

With Gravel Worlds fast approaching i think that if i can string together 4 weeks of really good training i'll be ok. 

This morning was supposed to be a yoga day but that didn't pan out because last night i stayed up too late watching the last half of the movie Field of Dreams.

I guess that 4 weeks of good training will have to start tomorrow.

If you build it...