September 13 Training Ride at the Veloway
We did a training ride at the Austin Veloway today. Spencer kicked butt and took names. He absolutely rocked. The Veloway is a 3.1 mile cycling and inline skating loop. It’s got minimal ups and downs and one steep, but very short, hill. Thanks to Hurricane Ike, we had stiff winds from the north-northwest (by my estimate based on where we seemed to face the stiffest headwinds and easiest riding). On the first lap, a man probably mid-30s tried to pass Spencer, but had to abandon him and draft for a while. Way to go 8 year old boy!
We did 5 laps for a total of 15.5 miles. Each lap after the first, we stopped for 20-40 seconds for water (Spencer isn’t comfortable enough yet to drink while riding) at the start of the loop. Lap splits and average speeds:
- 14:04.0, 13.2 MPH
- 14:55.2, 12.5 MPH
- 17:02.4, 10.9 MPH (we stopped an extra time for water mid-lap
- 15:56.4, 11.7 MPH (we had an off-clock stop for a 4 minutes to talk to some other riders about the LIVESTRONG Challenge)
- 16:16.3, 11.4 MPH
Wow! Overall average speed 11.9 MPH. Our target average speed for past training rides (more reports on that later) has been 10 MPH. With all the stopping and restarting for intersections on neighborhood streets, we have been pretty tight on that goal. I may need to revise our goals upward. I am beginning to think that I will (quite happily) lose this year’s bet with Spencer about ride distance and time.
Spencer handled the steep hill without difficulty. The first lap I warned him when it was coming and told him some people have to walk it. He told me the legs with the headwinds were much harder than the hill. With today’s winds, I agree.
Spencer finished tired, but reenergized quickly. On the way home we stopped at Spin City Cycling and picked up Spencer’s new handlebar stem which is a little shorter and seems to already make him more comfortable reaching for the hoods or riding sitting up straight. In the parking lot, he started riding laps for speed. Clearly he’s got the stamina to do more.
From here on, our weekend rides longer than an hour will be somewhere other than our neighborhood. We’ll either do the veloway or Parmer Lane out by Brushy Creek Lake Park
This is my first training report. Later, I will come back and summarize our plan (from the LIVESTRONG Challenge web site) and recent training (since we started following a plan). You can look at just our training rides by looking at entries with the “training” tag.