Adventures of the Northwest

Second outdoor ride with Milly in 2006!

I met up with John, Jill, Allison and Hyun on Sunday morning at the Marymoor Velodrome parking lot. We left the parking lot going around Lake Sammamish, counter-clockwise, at a pretty good clip. I was trying to watch my heart rate as my coach wanted me to have an average of 160 or lower. So I was trying to slowly go up the hills and not push as hard even though some of the group was at least 1/2 mile ahead.

At some point we were all riding together when there was a lot of debris in the road. The seam area where the 'white line' is painted was bad. Pot holes, bad seam that makes crossing out of the shoulder (into traffic lane with no cars coming) very tricky! However, there was a huge branch in the middle of the shoulder. It basically took up the whole shoulder. It was about 1/2 - 1 inch thick and about 6 to 8 feet long. Hyun just went over it and narrowly missed a crash - fish tailing slightly. I was only about 2 bike lengths behind him and was praying since I didn't have enough time to brake appropriately - especially on a fixed gear.

I hit that branch and it took me right down and hard! :( I feel like I tried to tackle a line backer. :( My whole right side is sore and tight. My right thigh is bruised a beautiful pink/purple color. I got road rash about 3 or so inches long above my right elbow on the forearm. Then my left side knee and inner calf, right below the knee, is bruised. My left palm is bruised as well.

Well at least the ride this week was good and I had a 163 ahr so it was slightly down from the week before (166)! :)

It's been a few days and I am feeling quite a bit better. I didn't do my easy spin workout on Monday but went to bed around 9 instead. Last night I did the same thing: relaxed and went to bed around 9. I am tired but my body is slowly healing. It doesn't hurt to have pants on my thigh; however, moving my arm to open/close a door, etc. hurts a bit. Not too bad but sore like I overtrained it with an upper body workout. My right shoulder/neck area is very stiff and may need to get a good massage in a couple weeks to get beyond the stiffness and make sure I heal properly. My forearm hurts when I lay down in a particular manner on anything (desk, arm rest, etc.) but I know that will just take time. It is nicely bruised with a good case of road rash going on. :)

Oh well.... this week is all about an easy workout/training anyway. Saturday I am supposed to do an easy ride and Sunday nothing at all. Sunday evening I am to go to Izette's (my coach) work place to do a oxygen VO2 test such as:


Active Metabolic Rate (AMR) - Learn your body's physiological response to, and requirements for exercise, including:

Aerobic and Anaerobic VO2 thresholds
Custom training zones based on thresholds, using heart rate or power
Amount of calories and fat burned in each training zone
Profile of aerobic base and level of fitness
Suggested training plan to improve performance or weight management

This should greatly increase my training results and racing results for this year. I am excited and nervous as hell, all at the same time, to find out where I am at, where I need to go, what I need to do to be able to better lose weight, use more muscle, more fat, more oxygen to my advantage for kicking ass on the track! We will see what comes about with Sunday's results! :)

posted by Seattlebiker @ 7:00 AM