Sicko

It seems that each week of camp brings a new challenge. Of course we all know about "Ass Week" and "Knee Week". I guess the theme for week three would be "Sick Week". Although I have not written about it, I've been sick all week with a cold and cough. For the most part, it has not bothered me while I am on the bike, but today was pretty rough with all of the coughing. I'll probably skip the 90 mile ride back to Tucson tomorrow so I can get two solid rest days in before next week's multi-town tour. Better to recover now, since next week we stay in a town and a different hotel every night. That makes it very difficult to take rest days.

Our planned route through Bisbee and over Mule Pass was canceled today due to a road closure. A tanker with 10,000 pounds of propane overturned, and the area was evacuated. Apparently, the locals are pretty cautious about these sorts of things now, because the same thing happened about 30 years ago and the tanker exploded. The fireball took out two acres and killed 12 people. At the site of the current accident, the hazmat guys are burning the gas off in a controlled manner. That will take about 24 hours, so we can't get near the area.

Since I was planning on taking the extra rest day for my cold, I hammered pretty hard on the second half of the today's ride. Leaving lunch in Tombstone, I joined a 4 bike paceline, led by Lon Haldeman who was on a tandem. The three of us on single bikes had to sprint for a few minutes to catch Lon's wheel. That was pretty interesting, given that we had just stopped for apple pie with ice cream and just finished eating grilled cheese for lunch. And, becuase the pace was so fast, we never really got to recover even after we got into the draft. By the time we got back, we single bikes were a little fried. Even Lon's stoker (the rear position on the tandem) admitted that he wasn't sure if he was going to keep his lunch down. I averaged 200 watts for the hour, but because I was in a paceline, the actual power while pedaling was a lot higher than that.

It was a lot of fun, though. Especially when we passed a 'fast group' paceline that was moving at about 20-25mph. We were well over 30 mph. Yeehaw!! The headwinds were too strong for anyone to bridge the gap to our line. Gidyup lil' doggies.

Ride Summary

The heart rate monitor on my PowerTap stopped working, so I guess I will not have any heart rate data for the remainder of camp.

Route: Alternate Tombstone Loop from Sierra Vista
Distance: 52 miles
Speed (avg/max): 17.1 mph / 37.1 mph
Riding Time: 3 hours 2 minutes
Total Time: 4 hours 37 minutes
Power (avg/max) 152 watts / 736 watts
Calories Measured at Wheel: 1,672
Heart Rate (min/max/avg): ??? bpm / ??? bpm / ??? bpm

Miles this Year: 1452