Sunday April 19 rides

[alpinerabbit]

Today, I went out riding with a couple clubmates for the first time. There were 3 others, one about my level and two seasoned ironmen/women in training for this year's.
The guy pullled us all the way to the base of our mountain of the day, about 40k at least.

This is my favorite love/hate mountain, I call it the b!tch, and consists of about 200m elevation gain in the first 5K and then about 500 in the second 5-6k. I'd never done it so early in the season, the pastures up on the mtn still had snow.
I made it - maybe in the light red zone - of course my heart rate was probably about 30 beats higher than those iron people at roughly the same speed. How. do. they. do it??!

This was followed by a nice ride home because these guys knew exactly where to go so the ride home was almost all downhill. I'm a scaredycat but I had a blast.
We went so fast - once there was a deep dip followed by a really rather steep uphill of maybe 100m and we almost just rolled over it. There's such an advantage to speed :-)

came home and did the complete recovery program - protein, bath, hydrate, self-massage, stretching. phew. Now I think I get a nap.