45 miles, 3 hours 10 minutes

Forty-five miles in 3 hours and 10 minutes -- that was my long ride for the week that I did yesterday afternoon. It included four climbs:

• Laurel Ridge, elev. 780 feet - around a 550 feet climb from the valley
• Mountain Home, 880 feet - from Laurel Ridge, goes down to a river at around 700 feet, and then back up
• Bald Peak, elev. 1600 feet - a 1420 feet climb from valley floor at 180 feet over 4.5 miles
• Back home, elev. 550 feet - a final 300 feet climb back home

So including the other little rollers, the ride probably had around 3,000 feet of climbing. I think that in order to successfully complete the LIVESTRONG ride, I'm going to need to add another 1,000 feet of climbing on my training rides.

I rode with a heart rate monitor to get an idea of what my heart rate looks like during a ride. From what I saw, my maximum HR is probably somewhere around 192-195 and my lactate threshold (LT) is somewhere in the uppper 170's. What this means to me is that my cardiovascular system is sufficiently conditioned.

My main limitation right now is that I don't yet have sufficient muscular endurance. To fix that though is going to simply require long times on the bike. My goal by the start of September is to be able to ride for five hours and 70-75 miles.

In the last hour of yesterday's ride, another solo cyclist came past me. I had been fighting headwind for over half an hour at that point. I managed to hook up onto his rear wheel, and was able to get a nice draft for the next half an hour. I felt kind of bad for not being able to take a pull in the front, but I was already at my LT and doing anything more would have pushed me into the red zone. What a difference drafting makes! I was struggling to hold 13-14 mph in the wind, but as soon as I was drafting, the same effort got me going up to 19-20 mph.

-Mark