John Simons

Riding, April 8 — Ocala to Gainesville

Today was a day to pay the piper for going too hard on Thursday night.

The kids were in Gainesville, and we were going up to pick them up. Once again, I was riding up, with my wife meeting me at her mom’s house with a change of clothes.

I changed up the route some. On the south end, I used a few more back roads. As I approached Gainesville, I made a detour to the east to add some miles. When I left home, I was hoping to put in 60 miles today. Once I got riding, there was no way that it was going to happen. The entire ride has headwinds and crosswinds. The winds were so bad that my wife pulled over when she caught me, just over halfway to Gainesville. She could feel the wind pulling at the car and wanted to make sure that I was doing okay.

With the winds and the extra work, I had already drained three water bottles. A couple weeks earlier, I had comfortably rode the whole ride on only two bottles. I stopped in Micanopy and bought enough Gatorade to refill all the bottles. After the long wait to check out, I was feeling fresh again, so decided to head off to the east to add the extra miles at the end. It didn’t take long for the exertion of the day and Thursday to catch up to me. I was prety wiped out by the time I reached the house.

Here is the map and profile:

None of the hills are truly huge on this route, but they are some of the better hills in this area. The uphill through Gainesville makes for a nice long uphill slog when your logs are approaching failure.

Here are the stats:
Computer:
4:09:05
56.49 miles
13.5 mph Avg.
27.2 mph Max.

GPS:
4:10:00 moving
19:08 stopped
56.1 miles
13.4 moving average
27.2 max spd.
12.5 overall avg.

HRM:
4:28:57
147 avg. HR
185 max. HR
In Zone: 3:05:25 (Aerobic to Sublactate threshold)
Above Zone: 42:10
Below Zone: 1:18:21

It was a good ride, but I was wiped out at the end. It felt really good to get off the bike and into the shower.

Tags: training, bicycle, cycling, bike, Gainesville, Ocala, hills, BRAG, GPS

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