Productive Day

Not a bad day I guess as I got in 45 minutes of snowshoeing with Melissa this morning as we were in a little bit of a time crunch so we couldn't go quite as long as I had hoped. It was still a good 45 minute workout and my average HR was 142 due to quite a few hills on the trails that we took that are only about a mile from our house. After the snowshoeing we grabbed some grub and I came home and rested up for a few minutes and then changed into all my winter gear so that I could hit the roads and trails with my SS mountain bike. I layered up quite a bit as it was snowing when I decided to head out and it wasn't really all that warm at 26 degrees, but definitely better then we've had of late. I rode down Sunnyslope to the New Berlin Rec trail and then took that to Waukesha where I spent some time going through the city and then I came out the west end near the Fox River. I took the Fox River Parkway trails and was cruising along when I hit a few snake turns that were slick with a little bit of snowcover and I took my first spill of the year. It was a slow spill at only about 15mph but the snow made it seem like a high speed crash as I slid for about 25 feet before I finally came to a stop. I checked over myself and my bike and after determining that I had nothing more than a minor knee scrape and a sore hand I was off and riding towards Big Bend. I went through Big Bend and then back to New Berlin for a total of 2.5 hours of riding. I was going to do 3.5 today but I figured that I did 45 minutes of fairly strenuous snowshoeing and was a little sore from my wipe out so I decided to just relax tonight and watch a movie with the family. My ride was pretty tough anyways as I pushed it for almost the entire 2.5 hours and at the end my average heart rate was 168 with a max of 190bpm. I spent an hour and 15 minutes split almost equally with my HR between 80-89% of max and 90-100% of max so it was almost like a TT the whole way. I can definitely feel it now as I had to push the one gear up the hills and I spun it out on the flats and descents as well so I used every muscle to the max. My legs are pretty darn sore now but I'm going to do it again tomorrow and then will take Monday to do an easy recovery ride to clean out the legs a bit. Tomorrow is supposed to be mostly cloudy I guess but no snow and about 4 degrees warmer so that's a bonus. I plan on doing about the same routine, but this time I'll go out snowshoeing myself in the morning for about 1.5 hours and then hit the bike for another 2.5 hours, but this time I'll avoid the trails so that I don't have another wipeout. I can't afford to break a collarbone or something slipping out on the snow again, better to play it safe this early in the year. Well, off to bed to get some much needed rest, until next time.......