T -202 - Cycle - Saturday 9th August

The alarm went off at 0600 and I was out of bed like a flash ready to go. 2 seconds later after I'd turned the alarm off I was having second thoughts. And then I was putting on my gear. I found Maya in her cot and deposited her in bed with Senay - waking both up - whoops and headed out.

The ride time this morning was 1:15:00 so I decided to do the samer route - LDP - E54 to Sungai Buloh - Leburaya Guthrie south to Kota Damansara and home. Heading out I swear that the gears were massively heavy again (I did stay on the big chain ring the whole ride apart from coming back up into Damansara Perdana) and I was regretting it for the first 5 minutes. By the time I'd climbed to the Tol on the LDP I'd got to thinking and remembered a gem from a book that the guys from Bicying Managazine in the states had put together. He made the point that if you push down hill you don't make significant gains on a percentage basis - an extra 5k and hour on top of 50k is only 10% speed imporvement. On a hill pushing from 20km/h to 25km/h is a 25% imporvement. So you should push on hills and relax on the way down.

So I had a relaxing ride down from the Tol through Sungai Buloh. It was nasty in the dark and I felt a lot more vulnerable than usual and lonely as the back light on the gps only stays on for 10s or so :(

By the time I got onto the Guthrie I was getting worried. I'd done the route in 01:15 last week and I'd only got 30 minutes left to equal that time (which Idid with little sleep and lots of jetlag) and I figured I'd got at least 40 minutes riding to do. Had I been that relaxed and slow on the E54?

So I pushed quite hard until the back of my right knee started to ache a bit as I came back through Kota Damansara where I got caught with every single traffic light it seemed possible to get :(. As I cam up to the Curve I suddenly realised that it had been 01:30:00 last week and at 01:20:00 I still had an excellent chance. I dropped onto the small chain ring to get up the hill to Citibank and then switched back to blast down the hill into DP - going airborne over the speed bumps at 50km/h

I sprinted the hill into AT, almost not making the gatehouse corner and almsot died on the last slope which is a 100m 10% effort. Result I finished in 1:27:45.

50.84km in 1:27:45 is an average of 34.8km/h with an average heartrate of 136bpm. Pleased with that. http://connect.garmin.com/activity/520911