The Road to 2012

Here’s an example of the bike rides that we’ve been doing during the long weeks of base training here in Princeton. I knocked this 52-miler out today,starting out with a 20′ warm-up and transitioning into one hour at tempo/threshold pace on my Triathlon bike. The aero position cuts down the frontal area I present to the wind, and the aerodynamic cross sections of the bike tubes essentially make it far more invisible to the wind than circular tubes would (think drag on a baseball versus drag on a wing). I averaged around 24 mph for this hour, finishing somewhere along that top section in the map below, and pulled my tired self around Princeton for another couple of hours. Unfortunately the sun had set by the time I reached familiar territory, five miles out from home. I won’t go into details of the stupidity of this little venture, but I WILL say that it’s terrifying bombing a hill at 35 mph as shadows loom ahead of you, projected by oncoming cars bearing down from behind.