Thursday, April 17, 2008

Blue sky madness

For the past few weeks I've had an idea for a "hard" ride rattling around in my head. As I've said before, my training focus for the next 6 or so weeks is going to shift from the normal endurance focus to more of a XC focus to boost my power and race pace. So, my plan was to time trial the Blue Sky Trail that runs from west of Fort Collins, South to Loveland. The idea was to simulate a XC race situation and end fairly spent. First off was to ride to the trailhead, then re-set the HR monitor and pound away. The trail itself is crazy fast and super smooth. Railing turns and cranking in the big ring and 11 in the back are just part of the fun!

Clicky clicky to make it big if you want to drool over some crazy fast flowing singletrack!

Blue Sky is perfect for a TT effort, with the exception of a 10 minute section in the middle. It's so rocky that all your concentration is on holding your line instead of riding hard. I've ridden it on a FS and it's a difficult bit. However, today on a HT I was forced to slow down considerably to avoid possible rim damage.

Once to the Loveland Trailhead I devoured a power bar and turned around. The ride back North to Fort Collins requires more climbing and I had a slight headwind, but I felt strong, and with such a great day I probably had a smile plastered from ear to ear.

Got back to the North trailhead completely spent, not only the legs, but the arms as well. Just like an XC race....perfect. My time on the trail was 1 hr and 40 min flat. My ave HR for the effort was 167. Including the ride to and fro, I had 3.5 hrs of saddle time....another great day in the front range!

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