Ugh

Since I got back to school I've been doing a little more riding. Maybe 100 miles a week if that. On pretty much all the rides I've done my HR has been elevated, and I've felt low on power. I'm not sure if this is lost fitness or the heat, because it's gotten ungodly hot here in the past 3 weeks - highs in the mid 90s with 85% + humidity. It sucks pretty hard.

I also have not been sleeping great for the past week. I'm not sure if it's due to lack of exercise now that I'm not burnt out, or what.

I rode a couple days in a row with the team, with the last ride being Tuesday. I didn't get back on the bike until today. The old "can't sit still twitchy as hell" feeling was out in force this morning, so despite my exhaustion (sleep deprivation) I saddled up and headed out.

I tested out a new way south of town that looked okay on paper, but is awful awful awful in real life. That combined with feeling like someone had put a 10 lb bag of sand on my bike put me in a foul mood. The traffic was bat-shit crazy as well. So, I get down to about 1010 road, make a right to head back in, and the f#$&ing sky opens up. Great - exhausted, feeling like I have heat stroke, now soaking wet, with no lights. Awesome.

So, the short story: Still feel like shit, had a crappy ride today that reminded me why Raleigh sucks. Oh, and a hurricane is rolling through so tomorrow is going to be even worse than today. I may skip the CSH group ride. On a positive note, the weather Sunday is supposed to be nicer, and there's a crit on Centennial I am planning on doing.

Burnout, Big Time

So I haven't updated since the French Broad....

I kept doing the Northside ride Tuesday and Thursday, and slowly started hurting more and more. Long story short, I decided to take a vacation from the bike after being shelled from the ride last Tuesday's ride (2 Tuesdays ago). I've been overtrained since mid-July I think.

Anyway, I'm going for a ride a little later today that will be my first time on the bike in over a week. We'll see how it goes.

Burnout

What a change from last Tuesday, when I felt on top of the world. Thursday's Northside was tough for me - I contested a lot of the sprints and did more than my share of the work. By the end of the ride I was pretty cooked, and had to take myself out of the rotation after almost taking out my own front wheel twice. I bailed on the Friday ride - I could tell I needed a couple of days off to recover.

Friday I took it easy - stayed completely off the bike. My stomach had been bothering me for reasons unknown for a couple of days. I did get over to Cycles de Oro and ordered SRAM Rival, which should be here Thursday!

Saturday I did the Red, White and Blue ride out of Hagan Stone Park. The ride started early, and I did not eat enough beforehand - rode over there, too. I met up with Will Shore and a couple of other guys and we decided to do the 70 mile route. About 25 miles in I was having trouble holding Will's wheel (well, pretty much everyone's wheel) and knew something was wrong with me. I bailed on the way back and cut it short to about 50 miles total. I bonked pretty hard coming back in. The main problem on this ride was I just could not injest and absorb enough food to dig myself out of the caloric hole I was in, in addition to feeling like absolute shit. Lesson learned: don't plan to get on the bike less than an hour after getting up - my body needs more time to get my metabolic engine fired back up.

So I plan to go very easy this week. Will probably skip the Northside ride and do just enough easy riding to keep my legs from going nuts. I have been eating insane amounts of food this weekend, so I might not have been eating enough these past couple weeks when I've been going hard. I've also felt really tired, despite getting plenty of sleep each night. My legs feel weak and "dead", so all signs are pointing to taking an easy week.

In other news, I decided a couple weeks ago to strip and repaint my fixie. Originally I planned to just repaint it black, but after stripping the frame I decided the brushed aluminum look was so pretty to leave most of the frame bare. This weekend I got all of the painting done. It looks really good. The painted parts (the headtube and a few inches of the adjacent top and down tubes, and the rear dropouts and a few inches of the stays) got 3 coats of primer, with spot sanding in between, then 3 coats of high gloss black paint. The brushed alu sections were sanded with around 400 grit paper, then cross-sanded to give it a brushed look. It came out really well. Then the whole bike was given 3 to 4 coats of clear coat, to protect the bare aluminum and the paint. After the paint fully cures later this week, I will take some 800 grit paper to it, then polish it. It's going to look very nice when I build it back up.

June Wrap-up

June was a good month: 557 miles, which is my highest-mileage month after January. My fitness is good - probably the best it's ever been. Yesterday I did the Tuesday Northside ride. We averaged 23 mph for 41 miles, and I was one of 4 or 5 guys driving the pace and contesting sprints. A couple of weeks ago this same ride, at a slightly slower pace, was kicking my ass. Granted there are a lot of variables I can't account for by just comparing the two rides, but my feeling is my fitness is better than it was a couple weeks ago.

I've been concentrating more on my intensity work. Monday I did about 1.5 hours of LT intervals. I managed 6 of them, which is twice as many as normal, and a much higher pace. Duration was from 2 to 5 minutes per interval. My feeling is I now need to do a little work on my anaerobic acceleration for sprints.

The Saturday Paceline line has turned into a nice, easy social recovery ride for me. A year ago I could not hang with this group - what a change!

Overall, I have about 3,055 miles for the year. This is already several hundred over my total for last year. Riding this much feels great - being on the bike feels incredibly natural. Average weekly mileage is around 150 or slightly above. This is a slow, slight ramp-up from about 100 per week a couple of months ago.

Tomorrow, the Northside ride again. Friday, I may join a group riding to Hanging Rock and back, which depending on the route might be my first century.

"That's the First Time I've Seen You Suffer a Bit"

Did the Northside hammerfest tonight - 40 miles of all-out, give-me-all-you've-got-if-you-want-to-hold-his-wheel riding. Exquisitely painful.

As we were rolling in on a greenway I'm chatting with a guy who does the Saturday Paceline ride and he says something like, "Yeah, that's the first time I've seen you suffer a bit." I was flattered - maybe I'm stronger than I think, or maybe I am just good at hiding how much pain I'm in.

I went out too hard in the first 10 or 15 miles of the ride, so for the rest of it my attacks and bridging attempts came up short. The longest bridge was a solid mile or two of slight headwind, flat riding trying to solo bridge up to the lead group of about 6 very strong riders. I felt good for most of it, was steadily closing the huuuge gap they had, was using the terrain to my advantage,,,, then I started to get a stitch in my right side. I could feel myself fading fast, the exhaust from the farm truck trailing them wasn't helping. I gave it all I had on a slight downhill, sprinting to try and catch the last wheel. I got about 20 feet away and then they went charging up a short rise, and that was the end of me. HR peaked in the high 180s. Three minutes later when the second chase group went by I felt fine, and was able to jump on and do some more work.

The fact that my HR didn't get above 190 or so the whole ride indicates that I may be sleep deprived - I've noticed before that can really take the edge off my performance.

Later in the ride I was working in a break of 5 (inc. me). HR was in the 150s and 160s, despite the 30 mph speed we were holding. In a small group like this that was continuously rotating, most of the work came in the form of anaerobic spurts about a second long to stay on his wheel. However when the group went up a hill that was steep for the first part, then levelled out, I came unglued pretty quick after the steep section.

More Riding

Not too much is new. Been getting in an okay number of miles - could stand to be riding a little more, but it rained almost every day this week, and when it wasn't raining it was threatening to. It's been like living in a freaking rainforest for that past week.

I kinda shot myself in the foot this past week by not getting enough sleep. I intended to ride about 50 miles yesterday but got out there and just didn't have it. So I cut it short to 26 miles and only one LT interval.

Did the Paceline A ride this morning. Ray, the ride leader, was not there so I kinda knew it was gonna get stupid fast, and it did - we went out of our way to find some hills and hammered up every one of them. Yours truly was (idiotically) setting the pace up most of them. It was a fun ride, and a great workout - about 10 miles or so of 170+ bpm riding. The group was only 12 strong this week so the sketchiness was much-reduced.

Ordered some new wheels from Neuvation that should be here Tuesday. I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on them, because my current wheels are stupid-heavy (especially the rear - 1+ kg!). Some people have had bad luck with Neuvation wheels, so I will see how these do. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Last Tuesday I hooked up with the Northside ride, which had been described to me as a hammerfest. I was not disappointed, even though our ride was cut short by storms and rain. I managed to stick with two of the strongest riders in Greensboro up a long climb, which was nice. I am definitely getting stronger!

Back..... Back in the Saddle Again

After being off the bike for most of the week following my crash, I got in some very good miles this weekend.

Saturday:
CSH groupride - 63 miles, 20.9 mph, 3 hours. Got my ass kicked rather than doing the ass kicking for once.

Sunday:
CSH social ride - 34 miles, 19.3 mph, 1 hour 45 minutes.

Monday:
Home for a couple days, did the Hagan Stone route - 51.5 miles, 20.0 mph, 2 hours 45 minutes.
This is by far the best solo ride I've ever had - amazing weather, and not a single idiot on the roads. I was really surprised to see my average speed so high.

For all three of these rides the weather was amazing - high 80s to low 90s for temps, and light wind except for Monday's ride.

CSH II

The rain held off nicely for this ride. Again a pretty big group.

59.1 miles, 20.3 mph, 2 hours 55 minutes. I wore my HR monitor and spent roughly 15 miles of the ride around 180 bpm, which is essentially AT. I was one of about 4 riders who were driving the pace for the first 30 miles. I definitely feel a lot stronger than I did a month ago. I'm anxious to go race this weekend at VaTech and see how I do.

CSH Saturday Groupride

Today I finally hooked up with the Cycling Spoken Here Saturday groupride. I attempted to do this ride a couple of months ago, but missed the start by about 2 minutes because I got incredibly lost in Cary/Apex (don't laugh - my navigation skills are pretty pathetic) on the way there. Today, I got there in plenty of time to enjoy my traditional pre-ride Bojangles chicken biscuit.

By the numbers:

• Dist: 65.9 miles
• Avg. Spd: 19.8 mph
• Duration: 3 hrs 20 minutes.

Clothing:

• NCSU bibs and jersey
• base layer
• leg warmers
• NCSU arm warmers
• short finger gloves

Food: Bojangles biscuit ~30 minutes before, one clif bar between hours 2 and 3. Minimal hunger after ride.

I was freezing my a$$ off for the first 20 minutes or so - it wasn't much above 40 degrees when we rolled out. However, the temps warmed up to around 50 pretty quickly.

The group starting out was around 30+ riders - freaking huge for an un-marshaled groupride. About half of these people split off to do a shorter and slower ride roughly 30 minutes in. Riding in a group this big gave me a better understanding of why motorists hate cyclists in large packs - it really does get un-manageable and we become a nearly insurmountable road block for them. While cyclists have every right to the road, traffic law requires that vehicles that obstruct traffic for an unreasonable amount of time pull off the road and let traffic clear. But without a clear and assertive ride leader, this won't happen.

The short version is I played a very active role in setting the pace and "doing work" in general. I spend a lot of time at the front, and some time off the front. I felt really strong for the whole ride. It's a little early to say, but I'm probably one of the 5 strongest riders in the group.

The pace was hard for the first 30 or so miles. Hard as in 25-28 mph hard. You know you're putting the hurt on guys when you come off the front of a rotating paceline and no one's there to pull through on your wheel. :-) This was the most fun part of the ride: a no-holds barred, all-out hammerfest of pain.

At mile 35 we pulled into a gas station for a pee break. After this, the pace became very civilized and mellow, almost sociable for a while. Then slowly, the pace started to come up again as we headed back into Cary. It never returned to its previous level of thrashing, but we were averaging in the low 20s, and by this point in the ride, on rolling hills, this was plenty painful.

All-in-all a very fun, fast ride right at the skill level I need. There are some sketch parts, like 5 miles on the shoulder of Rt. 64, and some slight nuances in group behavior that put me off a little bit, but overall a ride I will definitely be doing again soon.

Sunday Ride

Contrary to what I said in yesterday's post, I hooked up with John Crowe, Nick Reeves, Kai, and Walker for a 10 am ride. This is a regularly scheduled team ride that is supposed to be a 3-4 hour social pace (which depending on the mix of riders, is anywhere from 15 to 19 mph).

I kept watching the projected high for today slowwwwly dropping every day, much to my dismay. At 10 am when we rolled, it was near the freezing point - a long way from the original projected high of low 50s. It never did get very warm - this was the first ride I've been able to keep my windbreaker on comfortably for the whole thing.

Anyway, the stats:
Distance: 51.8 mi.
Avg Spd: 15.9 mph
Duration: 3.5 hrs

Despite the fact that it was cold enough to make testicle popsicles, it was a fun ride. We kept the pace pretty sane for the most part, and practiced a rotating paceline for a couple of miles. That is freaking hard to pull off gracefully, and the difficulty of keeping it smooth increases as the effort level increases - it becomes harder to compensate with little accelerations.

The route was... interesting, to say the least. We spent a good part of the outbound leg on greenways that I never knew existed, and ended up passing through Apex twice - once on the way out, and once on the way back. Our rough turnaround point was near the Harris Lake Reactor.

It's amazing how quickly it becomes "normal" for me to be able to keep up with our A riders without problem, both in distance and in pace. I felt fine at the end of the ride.

This week I've done roughly 190 miles and change. This is a little over the range I want, so I am taking tomorrow and possibly Tuesday off to give my butt a chance to adjust to riding that much again. Of course the weather is conspiring to prevent this - Tuesday on has 50/50 chance of rain, so we'll see. I may do something small tomorrow.

Amazingly, it's already been 150 miles since I put on the new bar tape and new cables. I'm starting to become amazed at the number of miles the old chain is surviving... It's waaay stretched now (the ".1" side of the park tools stretch indicator drops in easily), but it still keeps chugging along.

Saturday Group Ride!..... Or not

Today I was planning on doing the Cycling Spoken Here Cary group ride. However, due to some terrible directions, general getting lost, and driving right by the shop, I missed the start by a couple minutes. Now normally this just means you chase really hard for a while until you catch them, but I had never done the route before and there were no cue sheets, so chasing wasn't really an option. Bummer. But, on Sundays they have a social ride, so I will do that tomorrow now that I know where the shop is.

So I came back home and did a ride later in the afternoon, after it was done raining.
Distance: 37.5 mi.
Avg Spd: 19.1 mph
Duration: 2 hrs

The weather was much the same as yesterday: gusty with partially cloudy skies, temperatures in the low 50s.

The average speed numbers definitely point to some serious increases in power and stamina. The lower bar position is also noticeably more aero. I can't conceivably go any lower with the current cranks I have: my legs hit my chest at the top of the stroke when I am in a "deep" tuck. I want to put shorter cranks on the bike eventually, because I have reason to believe that my current cranks are too long by at least 5 mm. My lower back and neck are a little stiffer than they normally are after a ride, but my body isn't giving me any warning signs that the position isn't sustainable long term, which is good.

It also feels really good to be back on the bike outdoors and logging serious miles. My goal right now is 100 to 150 miles per week. I can do more, but I can't keep that kind of volume up for many weeks in a row.