Shiny

I'm not really in the mood to write a post today, so I will throw up some pictures for your viewing pleasure...

First, some shots of my completed fixed gear:





The pictures do not really do the frame justice - it is much shinier in person.

Second, some pictures of my new component group, SRAM Rival...










Prodigious use of electrical tape was employed to route two under-bartape cables on a single channel bar.

I have about 70 miles on the group so far. Initial impressions are extremely positive - the shifters are incredibly comfortable and feel very natural and solid in my hand. The cables are still stretching, so every so often the shifting goes wonky, but so far I would say upshifts (to harder gears) are faster than Shimano, while downshifts are a little slower. However, I'm still re-wiring my brain on how to shift, so take those observations with a grain of salt.

The drivetrain seems a little noisier, but I'm using a KMC chain with a SRAM cassette and I did not lube the chain - all it has on it is the factory lube, which does very little to quiet things down.

Not having cables coming out of the shifters still looks very strange to my eye... Kind of like there's nothing holding the shifters in place, so they should fall "inward". I love the clean look though.

The bar tape that came with the red hoods (aftermarket items, BTW) is nice - it really damps a lot of the road noise out. It's made by 3m, so I have hopes that it will be long-lasting and stay looking clean.

Did the Paceline ride this morning. Kathleen was leading it so it was a little faster than usual - 21.6 mph on a windy day. My perceived pain is all screwed up - I hurt at about 160 bpm, where in March I could get up to about 180 bpm before I really started to feel bad. I was hanging with the group fine, though.

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.

A quick update...

Life's been pretty crazy for the last week or so. Last week I rode about 280 miles total - waaay up from what I've been averaging. I finished the week off Sunday with a solo 70 mile circumnavigation of Kerr Lake. It was a pretty flat ride, and I averaged 19.0 mph - not too bad. It was a fun route.

This week my focus has shifted a bit to pick up some more speed and interval work instead of big miles - my own inadvertent "periodization", if you will. I took Monday off, didn't get out Tuesday because of the weather, got in about 20 miles Wed that went okay... I was dog-tired so I felt really sluggish doing intervals. Today I should have ridden but didn't get out. It's okay - this weekend I will probably get a short ride Friday and longer rides Saturday and Sunday. I will be skipping my Paceline ride because I'm going back up to Kerr for the weekend.

Picked up a new saddle for my fixed-gear from Cycles de Oro and threw that on tonight. Took a pseudo-scientific stab at getting it in the same place as my road bike and I think it's pretty close.

Summertime

So summer's here, and with that comes a full time job. I'm working at General Dynamics AIS again this summer, and so far I've been having a blast. But, working 40 hours a week definitely makes it more difficult to train!

However, unlike last summer, where I didn't ride much at all, I've figured out a system that works pretty well. Multiple long rides on the weekend, and at least 2 high intensity, shorter rides during the week. My weekly mileage is down ever so slightly, but I'm still doing 100+ miles a week, which is fine. Total mileage for the year stands at 2,285.

My training plan is fairly ad hoc. For my shorter rides, I focus on 3 to 5 minute full bore intervals designed to increase my lactic threshold. In a 20 mile ride, I can normally manage 2 of these, and a shorter high power hill climb. Based on an article I read that I can't find the link to, and my personal experience, I think this type of training is the best way to increase my power.

In essence, the article I read said the only metric you need to track is 20 minute power - everything is based off of that number. Furthermore, the best way to increase your 20MP is to spend a lot of time above your lactic threshold.

So far, this seems to be working - yesterday I did a short, 15 mile loop and averaged 21.6 mph, including warmup, with wind in the 10 to 15 mph range. Since my workouts that include intervals always end up with a slower average speed, this ride is the only recent metric I have. In addition, I made a lot of improvement in those two weeks we had off during the season, where I did the CSH ride and spent a lot of time above my LT. So there you go.

I feel very good on the bike - the position feels extremely natural, and everything just feels really good. My weight is holding steady around 147 lbs. If I wanted, I could probably stand to shed 2-3 more pounds, but where I am now is a happy medium, and I'm not racing too seriously at the moment. Energy is fairly high all day, so overall I'd say I feel really great.

Tomorrow is the Saturday Paceline ride. Hopefully it will be a little less sketchy (and faster) than last week.

Well That was Poorly Timed

Tried to sneak in a ride this afternoon and failed miserably: got about 10 miles out and realized, "oh sh*t, those are thunderstorm clouds!" Spun around and put the hammer down trying to beat the rain and pretty much failed epically. So the bike is still drying out, along with everything in my saddle bag and my shoes. I have to remember to check the radar before I roll now that it's summer. I still managed to squeeze in about 22 miles and average 18.1 mph, including some slow greenway riding.

In other news my little sis got me infected with some upper respiratory bug when I went home for a couple of days. Awesome. I don't have it nearly as bad as she does, but it still sucks. Glad I got in a couple good hard days before I got sick (possible correlation - riding hard = depressed immune system?).

For April I got in 432 miles, which isn't bad. So far this year I've ridden nearly 2000 miles. Seeing as I did just over 2700 last year, that's a huge ramp-up in my volume.

Since I'm feeling a little down on energy and I need to study for finals I will probably skip the CSH ride tomorrow. A sub 3 hour metric century leaves me useless the rest of the day, and I can't really afford to be useless.

So It's Been a While...

So it's been a while since I've posted. The wolfpack revenge went well - a solo breakaway on lap two gathered some horsepower and stayed away for the finish, and I managed 7th place.

Annapolis and the Naval Academy race was f*cking miserable - blowing 20-25, 35 degrees and overcast. Due to not sleeping well, not eating right, and riding on someone else's rear wheel with a worn cassette, (oh yeah, mine went flat 5 minutes before the start), I got OTB fairly quickly and stayed there. The TT, which I had been looking forward to, was canceled because of snow and ice. FREAKING SNOW AND ICE!

Spring Break felt more like winter break, what with all the snow on the ground. Didn't get enough riding in because of this, and by this point in the year I was completely and utterly sick of riding in the cold, and I resolved not to do it any more, regardless of what it did to my training. If I'm not having fun, what's the point?

William and Mary was a blast. The weather was simply amazing - near 70 degrees and very light wind, and our accomodations at the KOA were superb. The TT on Saturday went really well - I was in a good position mentally and physically, and put down a time that I know is very close to my best - 23.3 mph for 12.5 miles. Last year, I managed 20.5 mph for the same TT. That's a big improvement in power over one year.

The next day for the RR I was feeling really good, despite working hard the day before and putting nearly 45 miles in before the day was out. The plan was for Walker and Brian to try and get a break set up, and I would babysit the pack. For the first lap I felt like I was really on top of things - my positioning in the pack was good, I was riding cleanly and keeping an eye on the pack. Then we hit the big KOA climb, and I made the mistake of trying to shift to the small chainring on the first upswinging section. The chain dropped off completely when I was in the middle of the pack, and then jammed up. I managed to unclip without sending anyone down, which was good. Not so good was what the jam had done to my chain. It took me a solid 5 minutes to unjam it and get it back on the chainring. I got back on the bike and started to prepare to TT back to the main group, when I discovered one of the links was twisted about 45 degrees. This meant my race was over, for the second year in the row.

This race had a lot of casualities - another one of our riders got caught up in a crash that totalled his rear wheel and banged him up pretty good. There were 4 or 5 other riders who can in all bloodied up as well. Definitely not a clean race.

The latest happening is I finally bit the bullet and shaved my legs. Yeah, there goes my last pretense at being normal.

The next couple weeks I'll have off, as far as racing is concerned - a couple races got cancelled, and West Virginia is a 8 hour drive for a measly sub-30 mile race and a crit. No thanks.

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.

Updates

Happy (belated) New Year!

Cycling-wise, I got the year off to a good start with Nic Reeves' training camp in the mountains above Mt. Airy. We had five days full of epic miles, good company, and copious amounts of food consumption. I won't bore you with the details, but I definitely saw results of base training: I was easily keeping up with our stronger (A and B) riders on all of the rolling sections, and not being killed too badly on the hills. I got several compliments that I looked really strong. This told me that a) before I had been discounted as a "lightweight" - not really a serious rider with potential to go far, and b) that my teammates were re-evaluating me as a good rider and a potentially valuable addition to the team. This was really good for my ego :-)

So far this year I've done just over 300 miles, which works out to roughly 200 miles a week. If I were to keep this volume of training up, I would do something like 11,000 miles this year! Of course, this isn't really feasbile. 200 miles a week is probably a little high, since I'm feeling pretty trashed after just 25 miles today in windy conditions.

Our coach is starting to ramp our intensity up in our training plans - we saw our first set of gentle intervals this week - which I haven't done yet, in addition to some TT practice and hill repeats. The season starts in just a few short weeks. Here's the schedule:

Feb 14-15 North Carolina State University
Feb 21-22 Pfeiffer University
Feb 28-Mar 1 United States Naval Academy
Mar 7-8 College of William & Mary
Mar 14-15 University of Maryland/John Hopkins University
Mar 21-22 West Virginia University
Mar 28-29 James Madison University/University of Virginia
Apr 4-5 Virginia Tech
Apr 11-12 (Easter) Appalachian State University
Apr 18-19 AC Conference Champs-Wake Forest University

Hopefully this year I won't break my collarbone again - fingers crossed!

In other news, Matt Howe is in my mountain biking class as well as a guy who broke a collarbone, three ribs, and a vertebrae at the same spot I broke my collarbone! It looks like a good mix of students, if a little light on "beginning" mountain bikers.

So it begins...

Finally, done with exams and into Christmas Break.

I am way behind on how much riding I should be doing, so the goal for the break is to crank out the miles.

I brought my road bike, commuter bike, and fixed gear home, the latter two because they need a little work. After I got back today I spent several hours stripping, cleaning, waxing, and reassembling my commuter bike. It's not quite done yet - I need a new shifter cable, and I think some new tires - the current ones I have, Specialized Armadillos, rub the arches of the brake calipers >:-( I have not been impressed with these tires: they feel slow, have no "road feel", don't corner particularly well, and have never seated properly. On top of that, I don't think they're much more flat resistant than my Conti GP 4000s - I almost never get flats anyway (knock on wood!). In general I am not a fan of Specialized tires, but I can't articulate exactly why.

The fixed gear came home because the chainline needs correcting, and I want to wax the frame to give it a little bit of protection against the elements. Part of me thinks I should flip the wheel around and run (or rock) the 22 tooth to make it useful for training, but the other part of me is lazy and thinks it won't work anyway because the dropouts are vertical, and I got really lucky with the 14 tooth working out, so there.

Alright, off to bed to try and break my habit of getting up at 10 am. Ugh.

Blarg

I've been riding irregularly the past few weeks, doing about 60-80 miles a week.  Compared to my mileage this time last year, it's up 20 or 30 percent, but it's still not where I want it to be: I really am shooting for about 100 miles a week.  Unfortunately the weather and schoolwork are conspiring against me.  And it doesn't help that it gets dark at 6:00 now (freaking time change...).

Anyway, last weekend I got down to Charlotte for the annual Bike Stampede bike swap.  This was my first time going to one of these events, and it was an eye-opening experience.  I spent the first half hour wandering around with a goofy smile on my face at the sheer profusion of clothing, accessories, parts, and full bikes being offered at ridiculously low prices.  I filled in the gap in my winter clothing wardrobe quite quickly, snagged another jersey and some stuff for my dad, and discovered I had quite a bit of my budgeted cash left over.  Sooo......

I proceeded to buy parts for another fixed gear.  Frame for $15 (I think it's a late 1990s Cannondale R600), fork and stem for $40, headset for $15, cranks for $20... the list goes on.  Of course, the headset was missing the fork race, and the fork steerer tube was too short, so I'm currently hunting around for another fork and a headset race.  But from what of the bike I've got together so far, it looks really good.  I think it's going to weigh about 14 or 15 lbs, which is ridiculously light.  Definitely looking forward to riding it!

Back to training... The next couple of weeks don't look too encouraging, since we're into the home stretch and finals are in sight.  I just need to get enough riding in to not go stir crazy.  Over Thanksgiving I will be able to get in a 60 miler, the "Burn the Turkey" ride around Greensboro.  Very much looking forward to that, too.  Group rides beat the snot out of riding alone, especially in the winter.

Over Christmas I will probably be working some, but hopefully I will be able to step up the amount of training I'm doing.  The one concern is our 4 day trip up to Maryland and how to fit my bike in the car to get up there...  I'll have to think about that.  

I think that's about it, hopefully I will have some pictures of my new fixed up once I get it all cobbled together.

This Damn Sport....

... is like a drug.  I didn't get much mileage in this past week due to schoolwork.  I got in a ride last Saturday that was about 40, and was off the bike (except for going to class.... hardly counts) completely until Thursday night, when I managed to squeeze in 22 miles as the sun set.  Needles to say, by the time Thursday night rolled around I was kind of a mess: couldn't sleep, wasn't eating right, couldn't sit still, couldn't concentrate...  Like a junky without his fix.  Today, since I got 35 miles in, (screw the !@*%& rain, I'm riding!), I feel nice and mellow :-)

Hanging around cyclists, I've noticed it's easy to tell who's ridden that day and who hasn't: the guys who are relaxed, not saying much with a goofy contented smile on their face got a ride in that day.... The ones who are animated, can't sit still, those guys didn't get to ride.  Naturally you have to take into account their natural pre-dispositions, but the different is striking.  It's like all cyclists have split personalities, depending on their daily mileage.  

I forget where I heard this saying, but it goes something like "the human body is an incredible machine: it thrives on hard work".  And it is so true - the more work you train your body to do, the less it likes to sit still.  Where I am now, vegetating for 2 or 3 days straight becomes nearly physically painful... cabin fever-esque.

Anyway, today, as I said earlier, I got about 35 miles in.  Average speed of 18.1, and I was mostly taking it easy, shooting for zone 2.  I had a nasty 10+ mph headwind for most of the ride, but it bothers me less when I'm taking it easy.  Probably because I don't feel like I'l throwing watts away beating my head against a brick wall trying to go just a little faster.

This weekend I've been poking around the net looking at faired recumbents.  Now before you laugh, remember that the fastest a human has ever gone under his own power is on one of these machines: 82.33 mph was the new record set this summer by Sam Whittingham (I think I spelled that correctly).  Whichever way you cut it, that is fucking FAST.

An old friend of my dad's, John Tetz, has been messing around with these machines for a number of years now.  There's a lot of innovation going on in garages and workshops all over the world on these things.  If I had an extra $2000 or so and a lot of extra time, I think it would be cool to build a faired 'bent and put something like a 200W electric assist in it.  Done right, you could easily keep up with urban traffic, with the electric assist helping you get up to speed quickly and giving you an extra boost up hills.  You could even take a page from the hybrid's book and recover energy while braking, but I'm still mentally tossing around how you'd make that work and not impair normal braking.  Just something to think about.  With the economic downturn (have we moved to using "recession" yet?), this might be just what we all need to start driving.