Heather and I rode did another mini-group ride with some of the same folks as last week. Today we headed out at 7:30 AM with Mark, Brent, Chris, Kurt and Michelle. We headed out on Floating Feather then Foothill then took a turn up Lansing to Galloway. Then we headed over Little Freezeout and then took South Slope to Emmett. We stopped in Emmett for a water and bathroom break then the rest of the group headed up Old Freezeout while Heather and I went on to Horseshoe Bend.

Heather and I pushed through Black Canyon, taking 1-minute pulls each. Each time I pulled I push it to around 320–340 watts. With only 1 minute of rest, this made for a great “over-under” LT interval. We ended up doing this for the entire 38 minutes it took us to reach Horseshoe Bend. It was a nice, hard interval with a normalized power of 277 watts. Then after a quick stop at the gas station, we headed up Old Horseshoe Bend Hill Road. We both did an interval up it as usual, and while I didn’t feel that bad, my power wasn’t as good as it was last week. I managed a norm power of only 305 watts for a time of 25:45. On the way down into Eagle, we continued to trade pulls. After giving it all on Horseshoe Bend Hill, any time I went hard, it really hurt, but I had to try to equal Heather’s pulls as she kept driving it home.

So even though the first part of the ride was pretty mellow, I made up for it in the end with a norm power of 264 for the last 1 hour and 50 minutes.