Yup, I’m sore. That circuit training session last night really got me! So today my only workout was going to be a nice road ride. The day started out cloudy and wet again, but it cleared up by mid-morning. I still waited for the roads to dry. When I finally headed out, it was a crisp, blue-sky day. I set out to do some tempo, so after 15 minutes of easy spinning, I switched over to interval mode on my PowerTap and eased into a tempo effort.

My legs were feeling heavy and it felt harder than it should have. I was only targeting the upper end of Level 3, but it felt more like Level 4. I thought I’d just give it 30 minutes, then if it still felt awful, I’d stop and call it good. I rode up Hwy 16 towards Emmett. I started to feel better by the 20-minute mark, so I kept it going over the top of Freezeout Hill. Today the usual west wind was back in force, which helped me keep my wattage up on the downhill. I then continued westbound on Hwy 52, fighting the headwind all the way to Bowman Rd.

Riding that stretch reminded me of the time I dropped Heather off at the top of Freezeout and left her to ride to the start of her 2005 Idaho State Championship race. She barely made it there in time because I misjudged how long that stretch of road was. She eventually forgave me for that “experience”, but I couldn’t help but laugh while I was thinking to myself, “Man, this is a long stretch of road!”

I turned on Bowman and rode up the hill on Emmett Rd, also known as “Little Freezeout”. By this point, it was getting warmer, so I peeled off some layers. After the hill, it was starting to take more effort to keep my wattage up. I had been doing tempo for over an hour at that point and had more of a tail/crosswind. But I kept pushing it, trying to shoot for two hours of tempo.

I turned eastbound on Galloway, Edna, and then Chaparral, making my way to Hwy 16. I like pushing it up the hill on Hwy 16 by Firebird Raceway so I decided I would end my interval there. I pushed it to the top and stopped the timer at 2 hours and 3 minutes. Not bad considering the longest tempo session I’ve done so far was 45 minutes! The last half hour was tough, but I knew that I’d be taking a couple days easy so I wanted today to be hard. I racked up another 196 of TSS giving me a total of 507 in three days. In addition to all the strength work yesterday, it was a good 3-day block of training…now for some rest!