Hard is too hard, easy is too easy

On the bike, that is. I did some more intervals on the bike today - 5 minutes at about 140 bpm alternating with 5 minutes at above 150 bpm.

Here was my usual route for the 26.2-mile loop:

I discovered that during the "easy" segments that even though 140 bpm felt like an easy, sustainable pace, it was very simple to let my heart rate drift way down under that when I wasn't paying attention. I think I've been taking the "easy" parts of my rides way too easy.

Likewise, during the harder 150 bpm segments, it's still much, much easier than my shorter intervals at higher intensity. I've probably been doing my shorter intervals a bit too hard. I'm guessing that I could maintain 150 bpm on the bike for an hour time trial, but not much longer than that.



I had encounters with two imbeciles on the bike today.

One was a group of about ten teenagers riding together on the highway shoulder, probably some sort of club or church group. They rode along with cars whizzing past at 60 mph directly adjacent to them, and all of them had their helmets slung from the handlebars. The only one wearing a helmet was the "adult" chaperone riding along in the rear.

The second was when I was going through town and turning left down a side street around a truck that had pulled too far into the intersection, blocking my sight down the road. As soon as I turned I nearly slammed head-on into a gap-toothed crackhead pedaling an old beach cruiser along on the wrong side of the road that had veered around the truck directly into my path. I exclaimed, "You nearly made me crash! You're on the wrong side of the road!" and naturally instead of an apology, that was simply met with a long string of derisive epithets from the strung-out moron. Whatever.