Lately, Saturdays have been for long bike rides so tomorrow will be no different. During the week, I need to plan out where I will go and how I will ride out the miles that I need to accomplish to help me reach my goals. I am following a 70.3 Triathlon training plan which has a 3 hour bike ride for Saturday. Assuming I ride 15-20 miles per hour, that’s about a 45-60 mile bike ride, so I settled on a 54.1 mile route.
To pick the route, I use Strava‘s Map Tool in the app. Here’s a confusing bit of information: Strava’s app and Strava’s website have different functions. If you have a destination in mind or want to make your own route, you should use the website which gives you a bunch of cool tools. If you just want to ride a set number of miles and want a few route options to choose, use the app. It will give you a few options for the miles you want to ride based on the Strava heat maps, which are routes that others have been riding. Yesterday, I rode a route that the Strava app picked for me and I enjoyed it very much! Fingers crossed I get the same results tomorrow.
Here’s the route that I picked for tomorrow’s ride.
Once I finish riding, I’ll grab my running shoes and do a 1.5 hour run off the bike. Although I have had more than a few of these ride/runs scheduled, this will be my first time accomplishing it.
Now’s the fun part: picking out rest stops and planning snacks. At around the 11 mile mark, I’ll start riding some country roads that won’t have any services until mile 27. Since 11 is a little too soon to stop, I’ll make sure I have two bottles of water filled up with electrolytes and plan on making it to mile 30 before I stop. There I’ll find a Shell and Valero with gas station food and cold drinks (I’ll bring my own snacks, haha!). That one stop should get me covered for the last 24 miles. I need to remember that the end of the ride is not the finish line — I still have a 90 minute run waiting for me, so I’ll need to fuel accordingly so that I can finish strong.