Killing Me

The weather is nice and I've been outside lots.

Great for me. Great for biking. Hard on the blogging.

Oh well, if I have to keep one of the two. I just like journalling progress and between busy days at work and busy time "off" I just haven't had the chance to update.

The low morale after the skipped Baraboo race turned into one hell of a good weekend with my closest friends and I even got a chance to put the new Tarmac through the paces on a hard hills ride with my man Jon Cook. I like riding with Cook.

On an absolute scale, we're comparably strong. He's got a little on me, but not so much that it makes it no fun to ride with him.

But where my weakness is hill climbing, JC (at ~40 lbs lighter than me) is a monster. So it was a good ride for a couple of reasons. Mostly, because I never get to ride with other people at all so it was nice to have some company. But also because his strength is my weakness and it forced me to take it up a notch.

It was okay though. He bought me a coffee afterwards.

After the ride, I'm going to go ahead and give two thumbs up to a couple of things.

1.) Full Carbon Frames. This was the first time I took one out for a lengthy ride. Awesome ride quality. Again, I didn't notice a mind bending increase in performance. But I did notice how much less harsh the ride.

Carbon: Buy it for comfort.

2.) SRAM components. Despite an initial mental resistance to the way they work, I have to say I'm impressed.

Spring, I think I'm willing to say at this point, has finally and definitively arrived in the upper midwest. I'm stoked.

Training Stuff

Saturday: Pyramid Intervals

1 x 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1 @ Fully Anaerobic output. Goal was 340 Watts for each interval, which I managed decently save the second sets at 4' and 3'. Power dropped to about 310.

For the final 2' and 1', I shot for 375 and 450. I got ~350-370 for 2' and I, as JB would put it, shit the bed on the 1' @ 450.

Then I spun around the neighborhood and ran into every local bike enthusiast I know. Ran into Jeff from Revolution Cycles who happened to have a backpack full of beer. One thing led to another and we ended up sitting on my porch for an hour. Quality.

Sunday: Aforementioned ride with JC. Got about 4 hours of saddle time with some high quality force work on some tough hills west of town. Only my second training ride in the hills this year. Hopefully they keep getting better.

Cook put me in the locker pretty good, but that's kind of what I had in mind. I mentioned that force delivery is a bit of a weak spot for me and I tend to spin higher cadence in an easier gear to achieve a desired speed. Sometimes, it becomes advantages to push a harder gear a little slower. I find it stresses the muscles more, the CV system less. End effect is that you get higher power without having your body work so damned hard. Problem is that it's hard on your joints and muscles so you have to be ready for it. Handy for time trialing and all sorts of things! Got a chance to improve it on Sunday.

Monday: I took off pretty much completely. I rode the newly reborn SDB3k in all of its under geared cruiser glory into and back from work for about 60 minutes of easy pace in my sweater.

Still, despite the sweater and cruiser bars, people race me. I swear, it's like revving your Vette's enginer at the stoplight when immediately to your right is a minivan. Egos are funny and very visible on bicycles.

This afternoon (weather permitting) I'm going to go out to a race course in town that I've ridden before for a training criterium. I haven't raced any since the crash at regionals. Hopefully this will be a good way to ease back into it. There's an A race and a B race. I may do both and see how hard I have to flog myself to stay with the big boys.