Well, on Saturday I did an organized ride of 69 miles with 3445 feet. This included about 4-5 short climbs of higher grades that sent my HR into the red.

This ride turned out to be harder for me than I had hoped. It was definitely harder than last week's long ride, which was 40 miles with 5100 feet of steady mountain climbing. I seem to be weaker on the longer distances with relatively less climbing, but with higher % spikes in climbing.

I notice that as my weekend rides have gotten harder (and I have added a hard spinning class on Tuesdays), I am doing fewer aerobic workouts during the week, and more recovery.

I wonder if my aerobic endurance is eroding, or wasn't that great to begin with? I am considering doing a 10 day endurance overload block to boost it. Chris Carmichael did his Bicycling column about this a month or two ago. I would do a regeneration 6 days, then a 10 day block of longer, back to back, aerobic endurance rides, then a few days of recovery again.

I have about 10 weeks before my goal event. I am thinking this would be a 3 week endurance block, and then I could get back to a couple more blocks of climbing & intervals?

Or, should I just stick with the alternating long rides that we have been discussing here?

I feel like a babe in the woods with these training plan ideas. I am grateful for any thoughts (haha...these days, my thoughts are so few and far between! LOL )