I just finished cleaning that

Nice solid ride this morning, made tough by a combination of hills, distance and terrible weather.

The forecast for this weekend has always been for it to be wet. The optimistic amongst us sort of hoped that the rain might hold of until we had finished riding.

It didn't.

On top of the wild weather, I also rode out into the Perth hills this morning, which is something I don't do that often. Since I don't have a program at the moment, I thought I would take the opportunity to join in with the Break Your Limits Saturday morning hills ride. Whilst I don't ride big hills that often, I do enough strength work to be able to hold my own on a hill. All the same though, a ride with around 1500m of elevation gain still tends to wear you out.

Yesterday I mentioned that the ride was going to head out to the charmingly named 'Death Valley'. In the end the ride didn't go that way, but it still took in other imaginatively named roads such as 'The rollercoaster' (guess what that one does) amongst others. Tough enough for me anyway.

The last element of the ride was the distance. In the end my ride ended up being a smidge over 140km. I haven't done big miles for a few weeks, let alone big miles full of hills. So by the time I got home I was feeling the pinch a bit.

The ride started out pleasant enough. The skies looked ominous, but the weather was clear. It actually stayed that way for over an hour or so, when we got a light shower. That wasn't too bad we thought to ourselves as we kept going on.

It was about the time when we hit the first proper hill (a bit of a doozy to) when the weather came in too, and then never really left. The roads got wet, the bikes got wet and we got wet. We had a few descents where the rain felt more like a sand blaster. All tickles and giggles really.

By the time we were back down out of the hills the wind had picked up and become a bit more of a horrific head wind. It wasn't head wind the whole way back though thankfully, because I am not sure I would have made it home in that case.

Once I was home it was straight into the shower, before washing the bike. Again. Seems like just a week ago when I was cleaning the bike last. That's right it was.

Still it was a good ride to get through. I have been a bit flattened for the rest of the day, but it is the sort of exhaustion where you know you have earned it.

Despite the toughness of the ride, it hasn't suddenly made me think I should be heading out into the Perth hills like everybody here seems to do. Whilst they make for a hard day, I actually think there is more to be gained by doing more specific strength work, such as intervals and hill repeats.

Wait a second I hear you say, hill repeats, but not hills. Buh??? Well in my mind the difference is duration and controlability (is that even a word?). With a hill repeat you can make sure you are on a hill that is exactly the correct length and duration and then do it over and over. Riding in the hills is just a bit more random. Some of the hills are longer than you really want, some are shorter. You might hit one hill that takes you 10 minutes to get up, but then not hit another decent hill for another 10 minutes. In the end I have seen a lot of benefit from focused intervals, whether they are speed intervals or hill repeats. For me I think they offer more benefit from a haphazard ride in the hills. 

Tomorrow is Father's Day, and on top of that it is my last day at home before a couple of weeks of travel for work. Given that I may or may not train tomorrow, or I might just spend as much time as possible with my family. I have some plans about doing some training, but I will keep those plans fairly flexible and see how I am going tomorrow.