To be a cyclist is to be a student of pain...

….at cycling’s core lies pain, hard and bitter as the pit inside a juicy peach. It doesn’t matter if you’re sprinting for an Olympic medal, a town sign, a trailhead, or the rest stop with the homemade brownies. If you never confront pain, you’re missing the essence of the sport. Without pain, there’s no adversity. Without adversity, no challenge. Without challenge, no improvement. No improvement, no sense of accomplishment and no deep-down joy. Might as well be playing Tiddly-Winks.

–Scott Martin

I did a neighborhood ride with Denise today. The temps weren’t too bad, upper 30s to 40s, but there was some wind to contend with during parts of the ride. We headed down Manitoba to Osuna to San Pedro, then took San Pedro to Indian School. My legs felt spent by the time the Indian School climb began, and the lactic acid stayed with me the rest of the day. The pain was in the hamstrings, glutes, and knees. Guess that’s because we were climbing…a lot. We went up Indian School, crossing Tramway, and then continued the climbs in the neighborhood over to the Tram and then a cool down back to the house.

I brought the camera, but after the first pic, the batteries died! So much for finding some cool pics for my readers. Not even a pic with Denise’s toothless grin. I was really wanting to get one of those. She’s got some trick teeth now that she can pop in and out at will. All your gonna get for images this time is a shot of the Diamond Shamrock where we took the first bathroom break.

Nice ride, and we got a chance to see Bill’s new KHS XC Team bike that he’d built up that morning. He was out doing a test ride around his house when we saw him.

I didn’t have my elevation in my Garmin display today, so afterwards, I checked it out. I was sure I’d gotten in around 4500 ft or so. Turned out to be 3698. WTF?!? You gotta be kidding me. There must be something wrong with the Garmin. Right, just like I was sure I was running low in the rear tire on the climb to the Embudito Trail Head. I actually got off my bike to check, I thought the rear end of the bike was dragging…it was just my tired, sore, sorry ass (and hamstrings and quads for that matter).

Other Ride Stats

• 40.34 miles
• 4:06:35 minutes (included 2 bathroom breaks and one snack break)
• Avg HR: 146; Max HR: 178
• 1447 calories

Hypertrophy

Why am I doing this to myself? In order to:

1. Increase the size of my Type IIa muscle fibers
2. Increase my maximum power
3. Allow me to maintain my fitness for longer periods of time off the bike

Dr. Ross mentions that during Hypertrophy, I can use mitochondrial biogenesis or lipolysis workouts on the bike to keep building my mitochondria since the weighlifting won’t do this for me. He cautions that my legs may feel sore or weak when I do this. Uhhhh, I can definitely attest to that fact.

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