Sunday morning: short but fast

After playing bridge all day yesterday at the local tournament (my partner & I winning our section), several of us went out to dinner last night in the French Quarter to celebrate. So by this morning I was good and ready to get on the bike, give my brain a rest, and put my body to work. With a houseguest waiting at home, the ride would have to be shorter than usual, though.

Fortunately, Jan was waiting at the front of the park at 7:00 with three other guys, so I knew I was in for a fast one. I had my GPS with me today, so here's a map and some graphs of the ride. I'm still amazed at all the data that comes off that GPS. What I find particularly interesting is the graph of my heartrate on the return trip from the turnaround, where just the two of us were taking alternating pulls of 2-3 minutes. You can really read the whole story in the heartrate graph.

I also took a long video of the ride back, covering about 8 miles or so starting out in Harahan and ending at the Corps building after coming off the levee. It gives you an idea of what the levee bikepath is like, the amount of other bike & foot traffic, etc. Near the end, we encountered one of the MS150 training groups heading in the opposite direction - several groups of 6-10 then a massive group of maybe 50 or more, all strung out along the levee. As usual, we sprinted on the last stretch approaching the Army Corps of Engineers building, hitting 26-27 mph on that part. That's about the most I can handle without a big tailwind. Once again, the heartrate graph tells all.

I really hope this hard riding helps me get up Mt. Ventoux in two weeks, because there are no mountains and no altitude in this part of the world.