Dec 27^th 2005 - 3:30 / 56 miles

Wanted to get a relatively long endurance (HR zone 2 ) ride in today. I was a little too ambitious and was a little too spirited at the beginning of the ride…this caught up with me later (go figure). I wanted a 2.5-3 hr ride. I had it in my head to hit the dirt climb up Young’s Gap Rd. which I did. I forgot that even though the weather was nice today most of that road never sees sunlight….so it was a soft muddy climb…still fun though. As I approached Merrill’s cove and the last real climb of the ride, I sped by the store stop thinking “I’ll be home in an hour, I’m fine”. Not. Just 15 minutes later on the climb I started bonking. I was reduced to stopping for a coke and a snickers bar at a store just 40 minutes from home. After that I felt fine. This tells me that my body is extremely inefficient at burning fat right now…I burned WAY more glycogen than I would have on this same ride in the spring. After all working on the ability to utilize fat is one of the goals of base training. Of course my sub-three hour ride turned into almost 3.5 hours.