60 miles on Silver Comet trail this past weekend. One of my staple routes
You’re welcome. 
Easy solo ride, 1hr. Stopped at a duck pond. No phone, no pics.
Freezing cold, bored. Took twenty minutes to dress up for it and get out the door.
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I had Bald-1 in my calendar today. I took outside on my usual Conington Airfield loop. I don’t have power on my winter bike so it was a Proxy on RPE. It was a right blustery day with would see a HR near or over 70% for 11-14 mph in one direction and under 60% for 20mph in the other direction! I strayed into Z2 a couple of times when I had drivers sitting behind patiently and not overtaking, where I felt obliged to up the effort.
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I have read “Conington Airfield” so many times from you that i had to google it to finally see the place. Wow what a lovely greenish area to ride your bike. looks calm, roads are in good condition… sometimes i got jealous.
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The road round by the airfield is completely broken up in places but its virtually traffic free 
The old A1 is not bad though and the road to the north border of airfield, although there is more traffic on them.
Englandshire is starting to suffer with the problem Scotland has had for years, the constant freeze/thaw which breaks up the road. The roads were like carpets when I moved down here for work 15 years ago.
After -2degC the other week, today’s is +16 deg C and dry, so I got the good bike out for the first time this year. I only had an hour between meetings but given the 
I was pretty keen to get out. In my calendar today was the Z1/2 Endurance ride Bess. I had to overshoot my estate access to get the main bit of the workout done but I only did 2 mins of the cool down to get back in time for my next meeting.
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Well it was “outside” but on the trainer controlled by garmin.
Had to swap the battery twice and missed two intervals but still seem to have got all the benefit.
Predicted FTP unchanged.
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Oo, outdoor paincave!
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Down to Conington Airfield again for today’s Endurance ride (Mount Albert -1). I ran out of road and skipped the cool down.
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Almost a case of de ja vu today except it was 10deg C warmer and sunny as I headed down to Conington Airfield for the Endurance workout Mount Albert-1 again.
It was a lovely morning but I waited until it had warmed up to go out.
And the important stats
Edit, I guess it was windy looking at the pancake flat Holme Road segments.
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Yesterday did a crit race on training peaks virtual against 39 bots. One of the coolest features of TPV IMO, just setting up your own event and racing against bots with a wide range of abilities
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How did you do?
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I beat all the humans. 
I was 3rd. I am definitely not a crit racer but thought it would be fun. It was part of tpvcareermode series. I haven’t ridden much on TPV so the bots weren’t that strong. For a crit I really didn’t push that hard. But i think over time if i race more and it sees stronger numbers for me it should put stronger bots in the races.
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Reco ride today. Was thinking some easy track laps then realised the prescribed workout (Standing) was short enough to do on my favorite hill, & meant I wouldn’t have to run the gauntlet past a festival that’s on this weekend.
Ended up at a pretty easy 600m/hr climb rate, & the end of the work period at 1h20’ just so happened to place me at the bus turnaround at The Chalet landmark at 1000m altitude. My usual low gearing kept the ascent sufficiently spinny. 
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Down to Connington again for my Endurance workout (Gora). Quite blustery out but it was the right way down the only hill on route. Behind me to get me motoring then as the road snakes it was nicely supporting, so I equalled my best time down it. I was going to try a different route but I had to drop of my other bike at the lbs this morning so I thought I’d better stick with what I knew.
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Lovely scenic ride today on the road to Dobarsko village / southern Bulgaria/. Love the view to the 3 mountains surrounding it. Spring is slowly coming. Ridden during the winter too, But prefer early spring or autumn.
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Double-header this weekend.
I’d been thinking about how 300km brevets & shorter are typically ridden straight through, stopping only at controls, & that 600s & above almost always include night stopovers. 400s are in that awkward space in between: too short for a sleep break, & long enough that sleep & other schedules before & after are compromised. So classical opinion seems to be just ride it like a 300, but expect to be out past midnight & to screw up the next day too. Well… every time I’ve tried to do a brevet or other ride over 300km nominal it’s ended in pain, misery, anxiety, neural fatigue, gut distress, or a combination thereof, or simply the body refusing to be a functional human the next day, let alone get excited for being on the bike.
So I had an inspiration: I took a pair of 200km Permanents starting somewhere near home, estimated how long each should take to compete (~9h for these), added an extra hour to each as a safety margin, & placed them at the start & end of the 27h window that a 400km BRM must be completed in in order to finish. That left me with 7h overnight. I decided I wanted to be back before 10pm Saturday & that it was reasonable to start the next ride at 5am Sunday (yesterday), so the first ride would be started at noon, & the second, for the purpose of fulfilling this test run, needed to be finished by 3pm. It’s a bit strange to think of starting such a long ride at noon, but I was trying something a bit out of the box.
So at noon on Saturday I set off on an out-&-home called Triabunna Loop
Headed out of the city & past some bush & rural properties:
Over some hills to Triabunna, stocked up on water, turned around, past this bay again (wide angle photo so it’s a bit hard to see that there’s water in the distance)
Back over the hills again, watched the sunset when I was somewhere near the left arrow depicted NNW of Richmond on the map
I was relieved to get back into Brighton with some light & color still in the sky.
For most of the day I’d been sitting on about 170w, but the last 20km covered SW of the river were very flat, mostly on cycleways & uninterrupted roads, so to relax myself I backed it right off to about 120w.
Those last 20km took about an hour, but I figured I didn’t mind the slower passage delaying my arrival at home by 10 minutes if it meant I’d fall asleep an hour sooner because I wasn’t so wound up. And I think it worked. I fluffed around a bit in the evening at home, being that this was new to me so I don’t really have a routine, but when I lay my head down I was out. I had about 4½ hours of pretty good sleep & awoke feeling “sufficiently*” refreshed so I didn’t have coffee. (I decided it would probably upset my RPE ↔ power calibration anyway.)
Headed out again, & started the next ride 19 minutes late. 
… I accepted that & just got on with it, but did spent an inordinate amount of time revisiting the maths relating to required average speeds to get back by 15:00 & also 14:30. “Not Really Flat II”. This route was an attempt by the RO to create a reasonably flat 200. But this is Tasmania so good luck with that! 
(Having said that, I can think of some roads to substitute that are either less climbing, or easier climbing than some of the lumps I traversed yesterday.)
Basically a clockwise loop with two out-&-home segments. But definitely flatter than Saturday’s route by about 500m over the full distance.
Power was down noticeably over Saturday. I allowed it, after all I was fatiged.
I was feeling… at least not horrible.
Sunrise on the way back from Plenty, the westernmost control (unmanned)
Second control at Brighton. Stopped in at a bakery to get the card signed & a couple of vege rolls because I was craving savory, after all the sugar I’d ingested in the last 18 hours.
Back over to the Tasman highway the same way as yesterday but then turned south towards Midway Point. This, on the causeway just to the west of the town:
That on top of the headland on the left is a golf course.
Behind the airport, around some back roads, then down to South Arm & Opossum Bay, affectionately known as “The Hook”
I’d had a brief look at the map, but not in-depth & was erroneously expecting to travel all the way into Opossum Bay, but the control is just somebody’s driveway. I didn’t mind. The topography on the hook’s barb is pretty lumpy.
By now I was really doing the maths. Get back by about 14:40 to be safe. I had 2h to cover 40km. Doable, but could be difficult considering my fatigue, terrain, & the potential wind changes. I was reevaluating after climbing every hill. I contemplated that working my brain was the real reason I needed to consume sugar on the bike.
It was a bit tight, but I got back within the limit I’d set.
My watch hates me.
(Actually I’m surprised my RHR didn’t break 50.)
And TR is going tsk tsk.
So there’s 400km of randonneuring completed within the 27h time limit for a 400km BRM. I certainly wasn’t as wrecked as the day I did 400km in 20h, I don’t feel like a zombie, it’s just been two great days out on the bike. Doesn’t count as a 400, nor as a BRM, but I feel it was a good test, should I choose to attempt a 400 that returns to the starting point midway. Also I’ve been toying with organising a ride here & there, & it might be interesting to see if anyone else tries the format. Could be a way in for those who are comfortable on 200s, & iffy on 300s. But of course it’s rather tight. May work alright for most as a BA rather than a BRM.
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