Daily Summary

The Ride

Today was mellow and short (it does seem funny to call 57 miles short!). The highlight of the day was dinner (more on that later). The temperatures were great. I actually took off my base layer and knee warmers for the first time mid-morning as it got well into the 70’s. Of course, I am a cold wimp, and some folks were starting the day in the 50’s with just one layer…

We started in dry Hermiston, went through a long stretch of what I’ll call a canyon, and then came out on the other side and got into farmland. In the pictures, you can see the progression of looking back where we had come from, then a couple of pictures of the canyon area approaching, and finally a picture looking back at the canyon from the other side. Of course, “canyon” is a bit of an exaggeration, but I can’t think of a better word. If you zoom in on the pictures it is pretty impressive.

I tossed in a picture of the Welcome To Washington and Walla Walla County signs as we left Oregon. Near there, the odd rock formation in the next picture caught my eye. The last scenic photo is from the more typical farmland and rolling hills we ended up in as we approached Walla Walla.

I felt my leg the least yet today, which was great. Tomorrow is a really tough day, so I am glad it is feeling ok. Tomorrow’s ride could be the hardest yet, as well as the longest. 

The Road

We had a good chunk of road on what’s called “chip seal”. This is a cheaper paving method that basically throws down gravel and adds some sealant to mostly hold it down. It can be pretty rough. As our guide said, “the bigger the budget, the smaller the gravel”. I think the budget was only moderate in this area!

We made good time on the first 35 or so miles, and then slowed down a lot due to the chip seal we were riding on combined with the slight uphill bias you can see on the chart.

Chip seal also causes a lot of vibration to occur. So, it jolts your arms and legs a lot and causes your seat to bounce against you. Just what we needed with our sore behinds… I plan to lower my tire pressure some tomorrow to help absorb more of the roughness.

Garmin’s Faulty Algorithm

I have noticed for a while now that the Garmin app doesn’t handle rides of more than 2 hours well when summarizing and assessing your fitness. I have found over time that I don’t really get any extra credit once I go beyond two hours. This trip has proven it.

We haven’t really been pushing hard because we need to pace ourselves for this 8 week marathon. Today, I had almost an even split of zone 1 and zone 2 heart rate. I hit zone 3 for less than 10 minutes when I went hard up the few hills we had just to get the blood flowing. So, I wouldn’t expect crazy credit from Garmin, but I got about what I’d get from a 15 – 20 minute brisk walk for the whole 57 mile effort. I am thinking it is accounting for only the ratio of low heart rate effort without accounting for the actual duration.

What brings home the weakness of the algorithm is the screen shot you see from the app. It says I am just maintaining my fitness doing all this, which of course can’t be true.

If I want to improve I should “try increasing your training load by working out longer or more often” (you may have to click on the image to see the whole thing). Well, riding for at least 4 – 5 hours every day is about as often and long as you can do! I think we’ll be riding for 7 – 8 hours tomorrow, so I will be curious to see how little credit I get for that ride.

In case you are wondering … yes, I am fully aware that none of this matters! But those who know me well understand that being an analytics person, I can’t resist trying to figure out the algorithm. I’m sure I enjoyed writing this section far more than most anyone else has enjoyed reading it!

The Highlight – Dinner!

We had a typical hotel buffet for breakfast and usual sandwiches, etc for lunch. I wasn’t sure what to expect for dinner, but we had heard that Walla Walla is a bit of a food scene. We ended up at a local winery-affiliated restaurant, and it was amazing.

You can see the menu. As I first read the menu, I was worried this was going to be a frou-frou place that uses fancy sounding language for not-so-great food. I was totally wrong.

The “savory brie panna cotta” starter was one of the best things I’ve had in quite a while. It tasted great and had awesome texture. On top was some fruit and it had honey drizzled all over the plate. I’d give that item an A+. The curried spring salad was also solid and the dressing was great. You can see these two items in the picture.

The entree was a tuna dish with chorizo and spices. It was a healthy serving and also really tasty. There is a picture of that too. Dessert was just some chocolate-cherry ice cream. A great way to end the day.