MT Alpha Cycling: Clocking in from Cali

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

A few states separated from the center of the universe, I lie on my living room rug eating Nutella from the jar while The Black Keys rumble away in the background. Probably should add a Corona to the mix for a little Mexi celebration. It is my last day of freedom before starting my third semester of PA school. Tomorrow I've gotta get my head back in the game.

Today though, I think I'll continue to bask vacation glory. I just returned from 7 days of backpacking with my papa in Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

I successfully dropped my dad at the Oakland Airport after a wrong turn which led us into the heart of downtown Oakland at 4:30 this morning.....Sometimes I feel like adventuring through the streets of Oakland is like sleeping in Glacier with raw beef as your pillow. As long as my car doesn't break down. After exchanging sleepy goodbyes with my dad I headed an hour north of San Fran to Annandale State Park outside of Santa Rosa for a long mountain bike ride. Here the point of this blog post begins:

For those of you who don't know me, I ducked out of Missoula last August in hope of pursuing an education which would hopefully lead me to a career which would be engaging, fulfilling, support my habits, and leave me with time to play. I began a Master of Physician Assistant program at Samuel Merritt University in September. So far, I have enjoyed the program and am happy with my decision. The Bay Area is a rad place to spend some time.

Road near my house

School keeps me busy but I've also made an effort to explore and have begun to slowly uncover a friendly relationship with road biking. While I am forced to get in my car if I plan to ride legal singletrack, I can exit the door of my apartment for pretty unbelievable road biking. I would rather pedal around in the woods but with the endless hills (and roads in good conditions) near my house to ride on my skinny tires, I can at least get my fill of going up and down hills. Apart from school and the friends I've made in the program, my social life is pretty minimal leaving me plenty of time to ride a bike. Because of this, I decided to help keep me motivated during my summer semester of school, I'd also train for a 100 mile mountain bike race. I picked out the Tahoe-Sierra 100 at the end of August as I am obsessed with the Sierra Nevada mountains and it is over the break between my 3rd and 4th semesters of school. The course should be fun as it follows much of the Western States 100 endurance running race route. That said, I'll need to be held responsible for this absurd trend I've hopped onto, so in effort to do so, I plan to occasionally blog about my training throughout the summer. As many of us Alpha's have taken it upon ourselves to stretch the limits of our bike endurance in the coming months (watch out Butte, MT) perhaps my updates will be of interest by being either helpful for some training ideas or just as mutual suffer camaraderie.

At this point in time (and with a little discussion with my dad over training ideas as he is well educated in this speciality), Here is a rough weekly plan which will vary based on easy, medium, and hard weeks/how busy I am with school:

1 long ride per week 5.5-10hr either mountain or road (depending on how much time I have to drive somewhere to mtb bike): milage and elevation will increase with time and I plan to incorporate some hard efforts into some of these long rides. I also will work on nutrition during these long rides as that plays a huge role in the success of endurance racing
1 semi-long road ride ~3-4 hr with the first 1-2hours ridden at a hard effort. No food during these rides. I plan to come close to bonking in order to train my body to become efficient with using the fuel I've got in storage
Intervals: 15min+ hill repeats (although on occasion I'll do some shorter ones for improving efficiency, VO2max, and because I like the pain of short intervals). There is a great hill near me which is similar to riding Pattee Canyon. I like to do 4 (one day I hope to do 6) repeats up it maintaing or increasing my speed throughout. It takes me about 15min to climb up. In total, w/4 repeats this workout takes me 2.5hr and is over 4,200ft of climbing and 40 some road miles.
1 easy spin/day off
2 days of ploys/weights/core exercises, I'll probably also do easy runs on these days as I can't stand riding everyday
Easy run or ride on the final day
I also get in about 45 miles of easy commuting on my bike each week. I count it toward training hours...hey I'm carrying a heavy backpack!

My ride in Annandale was super fun today. The trails were in perfect condition. Not wet or dusty. It was overcast and cool out. I like Annandale because there are about 40miles of trail ranging from supper buff and flowy to rocky and technical. It is not as straight up and down as the Missoula trails are. Rather, from the lowest points to the highest involve about 40min climbs but there is a lot of up and down throughout. Today I rode from a little over 5.5 hours. I thought the duo loop would take me 6hrs but I was feeling better then I thought and as I said before, the conditions were perf. I think I rode 60 some miles and 7000ft+ in elevation although I really don't have any idea. I met three biker boys and tagged along with them for a bit as we were headed in the same direction. It was rad to be riding with people again, especially locals who rip the trail and I can just follow their lines. It made me miss all the amazing people I have to ride with in Missoula (like all ya'll). Anyway, we exchanged contact info so I hope to meet up with them again. I felt good after riding so I probably should have ridden farther (as my race covers over 17,000ft in elevation) however I had stuff to catch up on at home (this post for instance:)). Ah well.

Anyway, you probably got bored by this point by my long post and won't even have read this sentence as you stopped a few paragraphs ago. Oh well.

Catch ya on the flipside,

Heidi G