bike update...brazing has begun

Woohoo!!! I got some good training this week. Long sub-threshold intervals, micro-bursts, and 30s & 1min intervals. Yesterday I did a season best one minute and then backed it up on the River Ride today with an additional 5 watts and a season best 2 minutes. Crazy Baby!

bike update...gettin' jiggy

Oooooh la la. My bike is in the jig!!! Guess I best be picking some paint!

Hello Moto!

I went out on the tt-bike once the weather broke and did a little threshold test. I cranked off a five minute VO2 blowout at 357 watts and then headed conservatively into 2x20 minutes at 40K/hill climb pace. I was hoping for a jump of 20 watts, up to 300 from 280, so I settled in at 300 and was suprised at how easy it was, and how fast the time flew by. So for the second interval I started conservatively again, but this time turned up the heat in the second half. Much to my suprise I averaged 314 watts for the final ten minutes. That's an increase of 11% during a base training phase. Pretty exciting. What I'm going for is a well established estimate of my new threshold, so I will follow up with an actual 40K time trial and a one hour hill climb. Then the hard work of long intervals will begin.

Savage!

I haven't written about training lately. The bread and butter has been the River Ride, and a long ride, surrounded by easy commuting. But, I'm done with my winter base program thanks to the intervention of Mother Nature. It seems as good a place as any to rest up and start turning strength into speed. Last Monday I did a 135 mile slog from Vacaville to Pope Valley and back to Sac through Winters and Davis. On bike nutrition is going great and I only stopped for a total of 40 minutes AND I managed to finish the ride at the same weight as when I started meaning I was rehydrated at the end of the day. Now I'm heading into some structured threshold work in the form of long 20 minute intervals and some hard short climbs, in addition to building to a 250-300 mile ride in early April. And there is that pesky core strength program that's gone in fits and starts. Hopefully I've hired some one that will hold me accountable. We'll see. It sure would help.

My new bike? Thanks for asking :-)

It has been brought to my attention that I'm not the only one excited about my new bike, soooo here's your update...We've got nine bikes in the que, one of them is mine...Dig them buckets full of dreams!!!

I got the bike fever woohoo!!!

And the only known cure is a new bike! True Temper S3 tubes, Alpha Q fork, Ritchey WCS stem and seat post, Deda Italian bend bars, DuraAce 10 speed, R700 compact crankset and bottom bracket, Chris King headset, Fizik Poggio saddle, 32 spoke Open Pro PowerTap/DuraAce wheel set yeeeeeehooooooeeeey!!!!!!! Metallic Royal Blue with Metallic Sky Blue panels with white tape. Oooooooh yeah, this bike is gonna rock. Steve was working on the seat stays and dropouts last Friday!!!!!!!!

Bike-Fit-Whac-A-Mole

So I'm just riding along when I start to notice way too much float on my right pedal. Turns out the cleat was totally worn down to a nub and starting to crack. Time to dig around the garage for a fresh pair. Might as well get around to addressing the nagging discomfort in my right hip and head into the season with a good fit. This has been an on going project since The Steve made some major adjustments back in October. I had been procrastinating the final drop of the saddle for fear of opening this can of worms I call Bike-Fit-Whac-A-Mole. Anyway, I got the cleat angle I wanted but then started getting pain on the IT band just below the knee. I checked the seat angle and set back and made minor adjustments on the fly. No luck. Dug around my cycling library and concluded that the new IT pain was possibly caused by too high saddle. I lowered the saddle a half cent past the goal and got pain on the front of the left knee. 99% chance this is a saddle too low pain. So I put the saddle back up to the goal, which, by the way, is a full 2 centimeters lower than it was last season. The right leg just below the knee IT pain returned. The problem went round and round my head. Seat too high, IT pain, seat too low, other knee front pain. Back and forth, to and fro, a vicious circle. Oh yeah, The Steve mentioned I might have a leg length discrepancy. On the way to work the light came on. It had to be the the Q-factor. I moved my right cleat a few millimeters out moving my right foot a few millimeters in and voila! Problem solved. Of course we won't know for sure until my 150 mile ride on Monday.