RAGBRAI

This is mainly a training blog, so I won't bore with a lot of RAGBRAI stories, but it was a unique week and I'm sure Google will give you all the stories and photos you want. There is no way you can get 15,000 cyclists across 500 miles of corn fields without some great stories.

Betty Jean and I rode our tandem. Most riders were recreational riders and many drank LOTS of beer every night. I drank beer and had fun, but also enjoyed riding hard. Betty Jean is a strong stoker. That meant that we probably passed about 70,000 riders during our 7 days of riding. We didn't intentionally count, but we were probably passed by fewer than 20 riders throughout the 7 days of riding, and kept an average speed between 19-22 mph.

Many riders made a game of jumping from one paceline to another. We made a game of blowing up pacelines. Whenever we saw a paceline in front of us, we'd gain speed and blow by them to see if we could get by without picking up any passengers. Most times we could, other times we'd see how long it took us to drop the riders who jumped on our wheel.

The end result is that I rode pretty hard for 70 miles a day for seven days. I feel good, but look forward to seeing how that type of effort affects my performance over the next few weeks. My guess is that I'll be stale for a week or two, then see some benefit. I'll post my performance manager chart soon. My CTL jumped from a steady 84 over the past few weeks to about 104. If I see a big benefit from the long 'training' block, I'll start throwing in a block like that every couple of months during the season if possible.