Single speeds and climbing....

This past Saturday our team rides goal was to work on threshold climbing which is great, because part of my workout plan includes a hard group ride on Saturdays.

The only problem is in the winter I ride a Single Speed that has an equivalent gearing of 53x19 (73 gear inches). It's the only bike I have fenders on and I like the workout I get from riding it in the winter. On any given Saturday ride I could be grinding up a climb at 40 RPM or riding in a pace line at 150+ RPM...so I get both power and high end cardio work on the bike.

However, on this ride we rode up Old Germantown Rd. which has some nice 8.5% - 9% sections, Rock Creek Rd. which wasn't too bad and then came down the west side of Logie Trail which is a fun road to come down, but has a section in the middle of it with a 14%+ grind....it's not long but it doesn't matter....it's 14%

Overall I was able to get in a good 3 hour ride and just short of 50 miles....however, the legs were still feeling it today during my interval session. The ride definitely turned out to be harder than expected. At the top of Old Germantown Rd. I was only able to hit 4.5 mph which is about 20 RPM...and the 14% section on Logie Trail I hit 4.0 mph which is about 18 RPM. I was pedaling so slowly up those sections I couldn't stand up for fear of falling over since my legs were turning over at such a slow pace. It was just a bit painful :)

However, it was a great power workout.

This ride ended up making my interval session today hard. I think I may have been a bit dehydrated since it was hard to get my HR beyond 150 RPM and my power was down a little so I'll take it a little easy over the next two days before my next interval session.

As far as my weight loss goes...I'm currently down approximately 5 pounds over the past week and a half. I'm actually a little ahead of schedule, but part of that is because I've gotten past the first few days when the hunger pains are the worst from cutting back on food intake.

With that said I've been able to maintain a -700 to -1000 calorie a day deficit. This is very attainable for me and is much easier than the -1500 a day I ran two years ago for almost 4 months :)

I do need to increase my protein intake though, so I need to incorporate a little more meat into my regular eating.....That means, more chicken :D