Updates

Well it's been a little while since I've posted. As it turns out I took the next five days off after my last post - I was feeling extremely low energy and overtrained. Then, just as I was feeling better, the weather went nuts and socked us with a nearly week-long deep freeze. Here in NC, this is the coldest weather we've had in 4 or 5 years.

Wednesday, the NCSU cycling team had its first meeting of the year, and our new team clothing was distributed! I got bibs, a jersey, short finger gloves, and arm warmers. I'm really impressed by the quality and the fit of the clothing, which was made by Giordana (shameless plug!).

The new rack for my commuter is working flawlessly; it sure is nice to have the bike carrying 30-odd pounds instead of my back! While on the subject, I got a new set of tires for this bike to replace the -28C specialized Armaddillos that I was using. The 28s never fit right - they were always rubbing on something, and never did seat right on the wheels. So I replaced them with a set of Michelin somethings.

So, Thursday, I got out for about an hour to see how the new team kit felt on the bike. Thursday's high was above freezing, but not by much.

Yesterday, (Friday), I was getting kinda desparate and twitchy, so I set up the trainer for the first time this winter and did about a half hour, which amounted to warm up, two 5 minute z4 intervals with 5 min rest in between, and then a cool down. I was kinda surprised how tolerable that was, as far as not boring me out of my skull.

Today, since it was just barely supposed to clear freezing, it was another trainer day. I did an hour, broken up like this: warm-up, 5 minute z2, 10 minute z3, 2.5 minute full power, 10 minute z3, cool down, with 5 minutes of rest between the intervals. This made the hour go by really fast!

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain (urgh), so I'll probably end up on the trainer again. It is striking how precisely you can prescribe intervals, if you can tolerate riding the stupid thing.

GEARING UP FOR THE SEASON

The collegiate season starts in just a few short weeks, so I'm starting to mentally sort through what needs to be done to my bike. So far...

• New bar tape
• New brake pads
• Possibly lower bars or invert stem
• Get a 12-27 cassette

The cassette is the last piece I need to completely overhaul my drivetrain when I either blow up the chain or it starts missing shifts / skipping. The chain is very worn, so the cassette definitely needs to be replaced, unfortunately. But I want to get all the mileage I can out of it, so I'll ride it until it destroys one race for me :-)

Alright, I think that's it.