So we stayed up till 2:30am drinking home made wine and slept through the 11am group ride start ;-) We're on Djuna time here.
We decided to head up to tennessee to see some friends...gonna do the Johnson City group ride in the am. In prison you go upto the biggest, meanest dude and punch him in the face...we'll see how tomorrow goes.
Kiddo is still in Ky so Jules and I got to do another rare ride together...did a loop in the fort, 1:30. Jules felt good and hates to ride slow so I just put it on autopilot at 220w and cruised with her on my wheel. We both got a good workout.
We're headed back to Cola today. I'm semi-recovered from yesterdays outing...I was pretty fried last night. I drank some wine and hit the hot tub then the lights went out at around 10:30.
Sometimes it's good having a workout nazi as a wife...sometimes it's bad. This morning we roll out of bed and it's 26 degrees and she goes "when we riding?" I gotta admit I most probably definitely absolutely would not have ridden today...but we ended up with 2:30 in temps hovering around 35 degrees with a stout 15mph wind. Ouch.
So nutty went and bought a sweet bike...that SUCKS. Why? because last year it was easy to follow him around on that POS tank of a steel bianchi he rode. Now his bike is gonna be 5 lbs
lighter. The skinny little bastard is gonna be fast next year. I really got to lay off the chips and beer now...Anyway, I don't know of anyone riding one of these in cola except the little bastard. Here it is:
Not much new around here...just some velodyne rides to keep the weight down. We're headed to Louisville, KY for Xmas so we're taking bikes. We'll see how the weather holds up there...Last year I kicked off my 4-5 hr rides up there. Here's a shot of Jed at Cross Nats, he got 7th in masters and 50th in elite's...crazy fucker:
No photo's of the wheels yet but they are pretty friggin sweet. Very fast and stiff. I put on an old pair of Michelin Pro Race's on them and just ran 100psi to soften the ride and they were about perfect. I'm happy. I'm still trying to figure out if the new PT hub reads about the same as the old one...will take a few more rides to see if the PE's about the same. Seemed pretty close today.
For the group ride today my goal was to ride on the front, and ride hard. That about summed it up. It was a nice ride in the fact that in the morning it was 50 degrees and never got any warmer so there was no need to pull cloths off. It was about perfect temps the whole day. Got about 3 hours in.
Later E's 5th birthday went off...I even had to send Nutty for a beer run ;-) At one point there were about 12 five year olds in my kitchen and a drunken Crusty yells "here's a new game...who here can scream the loudest" Nice going. It was actually pretty funny but some of the soccer moms didn't think so. I got it all on video by chance so I'll have to put it on youtube.
The new wheels are cleaned, re-decaled, re-tired, re-tubed, re-mounted. They are s-i-c-k. My total bike weight is 16.9lbs with 46mm clincher wheels and PowerTap. Nice. Photo's tomorrow after the ride. If you were to go to the store and pay retail for this setup it would cost ya $3534. Meet my everyday wheels ;-)
Since my "LSD is Dead" post a week ago I've been getting a lot of hits from google searches for LSD, the drug. Trippin' dude. Up on cripple creek...
My Reynolds wheel is done...gonna pick it up in a few minutes.
I got out of work a bit early today and wanted to get in 3 hrs...The legs were a little tweaked from yesterday's threshold workout but once I warmed up a bit they were fine. I basically just tried to keep the wattage at around 85% of my FTP (230w) and just cruised listening to tunes. I got a solid 90min at this intensity--your garden variety "sweet spot" workout. It was pretty easy to stay on target and I would punch it up the hills. Overall a great workout, I'm pretty trashed right now.
My weight is down to 152...that bodes very well for next year. I usually pack it on pretty good in the winter. If I can get down to around 146 this year things could get interesting. We'll see how the holiday desserts pan out.
The weather has been freaky...Went out at 3:30pm today and wanted to do some threshold work. Ended up riding close to 2 hours with 1x35' at 272w thrown in. Generally the wattage came easy but near the end the downhills were a killer. I was going to do 40' but pulled the plug early cuz I was suffering.
Last weekend I bought a 1984 Honda Elite 125 scooter for cheap. I've been using it to commute to work and it kicks ass...will easily do 50mph (and gets 80+mpg). It's gonna see some major motorpacing action later this winter.
Tonight I jumped on the velodyne with the idea of just getting some exercise. Since my PE has been pretty high on the velodyne I started out at a 2% grade and just found a gear that was "comfortable" but at a good intensity. I warmed up for 10 min then settled in at about 230w which felt a lot like an outdoor 275w (threshold). I did 15 min then decided to do some 5 minute intervals at 275w...I just went from 2 to 3% grade and these were hard and I had to really concentrate to complete them. I ended up doing 3 of these 5 min and in between kept the wattage at 230w to keep the TSS up. It was a great one hour workout.
I'm getting my "pain distraction" set up dialed...got a powerbook on the velodyne showing cyclocross (and internet connected) and an iPod with my good intensity mix. My fan is sooooo kick ass that I had to start out today wearing armwarmers (fan was in front of an open door and 55 degrees outside).
Remember when we used to ride slow in winter...those days are over. Get used to it.
This morning was freakin cold, 38 degrees...but warmed up fast and everyone started shedding clothes. I started with a full jacket and am-fib tights but ended up with a longsleeve jersey and just bibs. Incredible day today.
Did a couple huge efforts with the longest most sustained being from the G-mart all the way to the sprint. Karl took off (fueled by the 18% alcohol content) then LL and I bridged and then it was just pull as hard as you could and hang on. I was getting fried and was on the front coming up to the little climb...should I lead over it to ride at my own tempo or just sit on Karl?. I made a very poor choice--I sat on and paid a dear price. He killed it and I suffered like a dog. Coming up to the sprint I knew I had nothing so I led it out and LL (who was wheel sucking all day) took the sprint. Just kidding....LL was
drilling it every chance he got.
Karl...our intrepd Austrian wanted some "fruit juice" at the G-mart so this is what he ended up with. Classic.
There's an issue with Google...clicked photos won't span a new page. They're working on it...update: I think I found a workaround, it should work now.
