a different kind of roulette.

Another ride w/ dramatics. yaaay (MP Holy Grail sounding). Just ready to get out the door when I discovered that the casing on my rear Vredestein tire was not cooperating. Meaning it was starting to bulge! It had a very obvious change in tread as it expanded sideways as well as making a bump. I wanted to start riding, so I didn't change the tire. I did however put a spare Challenge folding tire in my rear jersey pocket as well as the usual suspects (tube, pump, patch kit, inflater, Co2, levers, etc.) and headed out.

For most of the ride you couldn't distinguish the roots in the trail from the bump in the tire, but sometimes you could. I tend to focus on the thing that are going wrong; wanting to correct them at all costs (speed sensor...), but this time I continued on .

Blah, blah, blah, long story short, I got in 2 hours of a great upper zone ride when the tire finally blew. It was funny because I was expecting it but it still sucked to have to stop the ride.

The ride itself was great because I'm showing what I think is called, "form". I'm not sure, but something feels good when I pedal and I'm starting to recover from hard efforts during the ride. It may not sound like much, but when I say hard effort, I mean anaerobic. If you're unfamiliar you can look it up here, but it means going beyond your body's ability to provide oxygen and energy for your muscles so you're relying on muscle metabolism alone. I could do hard efforts but I'd pay for it in the end. Today I was feeling good at the end of my ride after several efforts like those above on some hills. I was also working pushing the big ring for a while. I haven't seen the need to do so as much of my training hasn't been at or for a high speed. It's based on HR and cadence. They're starting to go the opposite directions now. HR is going down w/ the same cadence at a higher average speed. Now I'm able to put it up there and maintain a normal HR at a decent cadence. I've been pushing a slightly bigger gear as I've had some achilles troubles lately, and a high cadence sometimes feels a little out of control. I can balance the lower cadence better allowing me to focus on not ankling through the stroke and stretching the tendon. These things are a BITCH to heal. You kind of use it all the time.

Image courtesy of my old ass phone.