dreadedmonkeygod . net

I wanted to PR on the climb from Encinal Cyn to Etz Meloy, but first and foremost was just to put the pedal down for as long as I could hold it. Four easy rides last week followed by Sunday's ill-fated outing left me with lots of bottled-up energy. I needed to crawl up into the Pain Cave and stay there for a while.

Funny, the things we come to need.

I think the weight training is doing me good. I posted a time of 17:10 on the Mulholland-Etz section, besting my previous ride by 57 sec. Not bad.

And I climbed from Encinal to Etz in 24:08, crushing my previous best by nearly nine minutes.

That's all good stuff. But the big picture is: I've only taken 2:28 off my time from Mulholland to Etz since last August. And last night I was absolutely teetering on the edge of imploding the whole time, my heart rate hovering between 174 and 177 bpm. Last year was at an endurance pace, with my average HR at just 160.

And my average speed was just 8.1 mph. Not fast enough. And I was pretty cooked afterward. No way I could do that for 3 hours, let alone 12.

So.

Mark Rippetoe wrote an article on the difference between exerciseing and training, and it resonated with me.

I've been exercising. While that's been good for me mentally, and I'm certainly seeing performance gains, it's nowhere near as effective as a focused training program would be.

Enough lollygaggin'. Time to get to it.

Encinal to Etz from Mulholland Trailhead