I finished my first ever road bike even this weekend. I have raced MTB before (not well) and I race triathlon regularly. This was a training weekend for me and I got well schooled.

Here's what the weekend brought:

Saturday:
Stage 1 - 25 miles with about 2200 feet of climbing, rolling hills loop. 9 AM
My time: 1:28:57, 3/4 in my AG.

Stage 2 - 8 miles steady climb, one way only, climbs 1880 feet. 3 PM
My time: 48:28, 3/4 - by far this was my worst event relative to the crowd.

Sunday:
Stage 3 - 48 miles out and back 1st half is pretty steady uphill so down hill almost the whole way home, total climbing is about 3800 feet. 9 AM
My time: 2:56:23, 3/4

I'm treated this as a training weekend and was planning on sitting right at my anaerobic threshold for both events on Saturday and about 5 to 10 BPM for the Sunday stage. What really happened was that I stayed at my LT for the first 10 miles of stage 1 then I didn't have enough in my legs to stay there on the flatter parts of the course. No problem with that on Stage 2 since it was a pretty steep uphill.

Stage 3 was a steep uphill for the first 4 miles then a lesser grade for about 17 miles then another steep bit at the end before the turn around. I was right at my target HR for the first 5 miles then I had trouble keeping it up on the lesser grades, it kept going lower and lower even though I felt like I was working. Then I got a second wind before the turn around for the last steep part and held that on the downhill which gained me a lot of time because a lot of the other riders that had gained on me on the uphill were losing it on the down, especially in the flatter parts where there was a mild headwind.

So in the end, it was a good weekend. I learned a lot. Mostly that my legs need a lot more power to catch up to my aerobic system. Yuck, more intervals.

Of 67 riders only 10 were women and I placed 8/10.

Raven - this was a really fun weekend, I would encourage you to try to start something similar in your area.