AMBBR wrap-up

America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride (AMBRR) went very well yesterday.  It was a quick 36 hour up-and-down trip that included a bike ride all the way around Lake Tahoe and a quick trip through Truckee and Northstar to check out parts of the Ironman Tahoe course, and a then a couple extra miles to push it just over 100 miles. The only downside was that my Garmin 910 cut off the last 30 miles of my ride.  Apparently there's a known bug with Garmins that cause them to truncate long rides when space is running low.  The moral of the story is to make sure you clear enough memory before a ride starts.  Obviously a bug, and there's apparently no plan from Garmin to ever address it.  The good news is that I have the data from the parts of the Ironman Tahoe course that I rode.

Here's the Strava link for my ride:  http://app.strava.com/activities/57879712 I really did continue on around the lake clockwise and end up where I started - you'll just have to take my word for it.  I created a new segment in Strava just for the part of Brockway Pass that is part of Ironman Tahoe.  Currently there are 499 people that have ridden it and I can only imagine how many uploads Strava will get on September 22nd.  :-)

We're heading back up to Lake Tahoe in a couple weeks for a more structured training weekend and I'll be able to swim, bike, and run the entire course and collect a lot more data.

You can keep track of my fundraising progress on my Team In Training page and help my fight blood cancer by making a donation of any size.  http://pages.teamintraining.org/sj/irnmnltt13/bjohnsuovy

America's Most Beautiful Bike Ride

A lot has happened in the last two months!  Wildflower came and went pretty well.  I had some bad cramps from drinking too much of the lake but things went well overall.  I broke 8 hours and achieved all the goals I set for myself so I'm thrilled about that. We've been building mileage and adding hill climbing over the last month or so and I'm up to an 80 mile ride.  We've been climbing hills like King's Mountain and Tunitas Creek in order to get ready for the hills we're going to find at Ironman Tahoe.

This weekend is a big weekend for me:  The team is heading to Lake Tahoe for an around-the-lake ride called America's Best Bike Ride.   The ride goes all the way around Lake Tahoe, plus some extra mileage to make it an even century.  (100 miles)  This will be my first century, plus my first time biking up at Lake Tahoe.

Ironman is all about pacing, especially on the bike, so I'm going to use this weekend to test out a race-day pace based on my power.  "Training and Racing with a Power Meter" suggests targeting 68-78% of FTP (Functional Threshold Power) with an Intensity Factor of .70 - .76.  I'm not actually planning on running after the ride so I'm going to target the higher end of those ranges.  This will be the farthest I've ever ridden so it will be a nice milestone.   I hope to finish strong and I'll be collecting a lot of data to see how I perform at altitude.

Fundraising is going well, with over $5,500 raised to help cure blood cancers and provide for patient care.  I'm hoping to hit $8,000 and you can track my fundraising and make a donation here:  http://pages.teamintraining.org/sj/irnmnltt13/bjohnsuovy

Checked out the Ironman Tahoe course this weekend

I just got back from a scouting trip to Tahoe to check on the various parts of the course.  In reality, I went on a ski trip.  But I took the opportunity to scope out as much of the course as possible. I was able to drive most of the course, besides the closed off Martis Camp roads and the various surface streets in Truckee.  I collected GPS tracks for the legs from Northstar over Brockway Pass down to King's Beach, as well as from King's Beach through Tahoe City, past Squaw Valley, to Truckee.

I even took a minute to stand calf-deep in the water at King's Beach in an attempt to familiarize myself with the swim course.  At close to 40 degrees, I didn't stay for long.

And you could even say that by skiing for two solid days I was experimenting with my body's reaction to exercise at altitude.   But really it was just a ski trip.   But it was nice to see so much of the course and mentally get psyched about seeing it again 7 months from now.   This is going to be a big 7 months!

In terms of fundraising, things are going well.  I'm around half way to my goal.  The sushi fundraiser was incredibly successful and a few people have asked me to do another one in a couple months.   It wasn't very hard to put together so I may do that this Summer.  You can check my progress on my fundraising website.

We're now entering the "build" phase of training, so we'll be raising the mileage and the pace of our workouts.  So far we've been concentrating on the swim and the run and I'm up to 3,400 yards in the pool (race-day is 4,400 yards) and 9 miles on a training run.  (race day is 26 miles.)   The cycling mileage is still pretty light but I think/hope that's going to start building soon.  I'm loving the power meter and all the biking data that gives me.

Thanks for checking in!