Tired legs...

Today capped off an intense week on the bike. I was right up there for most miles/time in a week on the bike with 17.5 hours and 323 miles ridden...but it was the intensity that's hurting right now. My TSS Score (Total Stress Score) for the week was 1001...a hard week is usually in the mid 800's.

Since I've started doing PIR on Tuesday nights my intensity has gone up, but on top of that I've been putting in long and hard rides on Wednesdays to back up the races on Tuesday night. This is giving me back to back hard days...which is good preparation for the upcoming Cascade Classic at the end of July....and is much needed right now.

I think yesterday hurt the most riding with some teammates at the normal PV group ride. The club ride had a few good climbs and was approximately 46 miles in length going up Rock Creek and Mason Hill.

Well, we wanted more distance and climbing so we also added in Skyline down to Rocky Point, down to HWY 30 then up Logie Trail. We were going to add Pumpkin Ridge as well, but after topping Mason Hill, we decided to add extra miles by riding the flats instead and heading out to Roy before turning back toward Hillsboro. I had never been down Rocky Point or up Logie Trail...but the descent down Rocky Point is a lot of fun....Logie Trail however...well, lets just say...it's not one of my favorite climbs :)

The pace was high during this ride starting out with 9 of us, dropping to 7 by the first real climb, then down to 3 by the time we hit Mason Hill. Overall, this ride hurt a lot because I rarely ever have fresh legs on our Saturday training rides...which is good because I push my self into some serious pain levels sometimes...but bad, because on the really steep climbs I get dropped not having the reserves to stay with others...that and my power to weight ratio sucks on the super steep stuff as I'm sitting right around 200 pounds right now.... :P

In the end we put in around 62 miles in just under 3 hours and 20 minutes with 4000+ feet of climbing.

All in all though, a good week on the bike. I have a bit of maintenance to do to my bike tomorrow, but other than that it's a day off the bike...then back to PIR on Tuesday.

For the number geeks out there...Another notable number from my training...My CTL has now topped out at 115.3 and continues to climb with all the riding I've been doing. My hope is to get in 3 more really hard weeks, then the week of Cascade Classic have just one hard day, that being PIR so I can go into that race with fresh legs.