Today it rained on me for 5 plus hours of the ride.  Quick Stats 6:25 pedal time, 112 miles, 4100 kjs, 5,000 feet of gain, Normalized Power 202 or 3.0 w/kg and 17.4 Avg moving speed.  And this is the day after a 6 hour training ride the day before of over 100 miles.  The rest of the data is displayed below. Now let’s talk about clothing.  I knew it was going to rain today so I made sure I wore wool from head to toe! See below for my clothing choices.   Why so many hours/miles?  I have a Double Century in Death Valley on Feb 26 and wanted to see where I was in my fitness.  I will make another blog post on the Death Valley Double Century in the next couple of days.

UPDATE 02/22/11– Death Valley Double pre ride info.

Rain for the previous 24 hours

I find it amazing the disparity between ride time and total time.  I only stopped twice on today’s ride.  Both stops were to refill my water bottles at a fast food joint with soda fountains in the dining area.  I was in and out in less than two minutes.  The rest of the stopped time is traffic controls! I really thought my ride time and total time would be much closer to each other.

What are the graphs above?  Well I wanted to set the Garmin 310XT to Auto Lap every hour.  Unfortunately you can only Auto Lap by Distance or Location.  So I said well I want to do 17 mph average speed on the training ride and set it for distance but I would rather do it by time.  Yes I could always hit the lap button but why not use technology right?

In Corona looking up to the mountain range I need to pass through.

For my clothing I wore wool items from  Woolistic I wore a long sleeve thin wool base layer 100% Merino wool, Cinzano Long Sleeve Jersey 100% Merino wool, and wool cycling shorts.  From Swiftwick I wore the Merino 7″ sock.  When riding in rainy conditions PLEASE wear wool.  Your synthetics will make you even more miserable than you have to be.  While I was wet, thoroughly wet, I was never cold.  I felt the elements but I didn’t feel the constant overheating and chilling that happens when I wear synthetics in particular on climbs and descents.  Take it from someone that spends a lot of time on the road in all weather conditions get yourself some wool and ignore the naysayers that think you’re not cool because you aren’t wearing the latest and greatest technologically wonderful whizz bang new fabric that “…waterproof and breathes….” nonsense!  The Woolistic stuff is the best on the market– go get some!

And now for something completely off topic.  Can you imagine telling your friends at a dinner party who you work for?