18 Miles Per Hour

TIME WILL TELL.

All races are measured with time. From minutes down to seconds and hundredths of a second. All very precise.

24 hour races are measured using a calendar.

And that’s how I’ve trained for them in the past. It’s a “look at the week ahead and ride when you can” kind of approach. Occasionally I’d chart climbs, altitude, mileage and all that, but I didn’t really get in too close with all the numbers. Until now.

See, I already did something different and unusual by signing up to do the race solo for the first time, why stop there? Time to do something different in the 12 weeks leading up to the race.

So that’s why I found myself training with P5 Racing.

Twice a week for 12 weeks as part of an off-the-shelf training program I purchased from LW Coaching. See, to make sure I didn’t chicken out, I decided to spend the money and commit. That financial commitment would guarantee I would turn up and do the intervals.

In this place I was often surrounded by triathletes. I’m no stranger to this world, as my wife is a part of this club. So I knew I was in for lots of data mining and number crunching. I was hooked up to machines, poked and prodded, pushed to get my VO2 max and the result is that group of numbers you see taped to the top tube of my road bike. Those are my numbers, period. Unbiased. Unsympathetic. They don’t lie. For 12 weeks, whenever I was in there on the turbo trainer, I lived by those numbers. From a pure training point of view, it’s been tough and different in a good way. For a guy used to just riding on a single speed, doing genuine and disciplined intervals for 1½ hours, twice a week, has changed my fitness for the greater. And Brian says my calves look bigger, so that’s…something.

Oh, and I learned that I sweat significantly more than triathletes. I often finish in a pool proportional to the amount of my effort. That pool of sweat doesn’t lie, either.

Now for the image on the right. My wristwatch.

What I’ve also learned is that, as my training has gone on, when the “real rides” out there on the trail have gotten up into the six, seven and hour length, I have become less and less interested in the numbers I used to pay attention to. It just seems irrelevant. Total feet of climbing, miles and average speed don’t seem that useful for now. What matters when I’m back outside on the trail is time in the saddle. If I start riding at 6am and the days ride should be 8hrs, then I need to ride until 2pm.

And this new, different fitness has allowed me to enjoy the time out there. Doing the kind of hard, interval training and repetitive number crunching has pumped all that fitness and data into my system so now it’s fairly unconscious. I feel fit enough that the only numbers I feel terribly concerned with are the ones on my watch.

Or so it seems, for now.

Will I still feel this way in hour 18 of the ride?

Will I remember to just “ride like I invented it?”

Who knows. Time will tell.

Rhys