Darcy, IndySteel, LPH, Knotted, Zen, and Oakleaf,

Thank you, all of you, for your encouragement and comments. I have also been discussing this with my personal trainer who is a mountain biker (also does road riding) and we are going to tweak my workouts to help support this work. I am summarizing your comments to him at his request so he can help me with this.

Darcy - right now my average speed is a little low, it ranges between 10.9 to 11.5 depending on the day. I am unsure what my average cadence is, every time I think to look at it it seems to be between 80-95 unless I am going up-hill. My uphill speeds have been improving, anywhere from 8.5-11.5 but there are not many real hills in Central Indiana to practice on.

I am already working on alternative places that I can drive to in southern Indiana where this is not a problem. My speed on flats/rollers seems to be between 12-15 at this point - but I have been focusing more on skills rather than speed. Now I have a bike that doesn't hurt me to ride it, that will help. My touring bike isn't a speed demon, but the LHT isn't shabby either.

I just learned how to ride last year, and am very pleased to report that riding 28-29 miles does not leave me overly tired. Really not tired at all, so my next target "long ride" will be 35 after I do a 30. After that I hope to go up in 6-7 mile increments - we will see what my body happens to think about that

Right now I have one "long ride" a week, and as many shorter rides as I can fit in. Last week I managed to ride close to 100 miles over 4 rides which is something of a personal record of mine

As I progress I would LIKE to have two long rides a week, time and body permitting, and a couple of shorter rides. 4 days a week has been what I am targeting for, though am trying to listen to my body, and sometimes my schedule or the weather (like today) just doesn't allow it.

IndySteel - thanks for the gentle reminder that our bodies do not often know how to improve in a linear fashion - I will certainly keep your experience in mind. It really is helpful to me to read/hear of the personal experience of others for sure.