Sub 40˚

I did the usual 2x15' but it was pretty cold.  Had a hard time warming up and never really felt comfortable. I did 272w and 276w.  Felt a lot better on the second interval but was glad it was over.  It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow and I'm gonna try to get out for a longer ride.

Tweet

Recently my  opinion of Twitter went from "a complete waste of time" to "freakin kewl" and that was thanks to LA.  Who really wants or needs to know what I had for lunch...but following Lance as he trains/parties/etc is pretty entertaining.  

Twitter is probably the best medium for pro cyclists cuz they have a hell of a lot of free time, they love new gadgets (blackberries/iPhones), they're too lazy to maintain a blog,  and they're usually so narcissistic that they want the world to know what they're doing every minute of the day....enter Twitter.  A few seconds on a Blackberry and everyone knows you just shaved your head.  

So go sign up for twitter and check out who I "follow".  My favorites are LA, his photographer Liz Kreutz, Zabriski, Taylor Phinney, George H, Johan, Basso...you get the picture.  

The Wattage Channel presents: Threshold Week

Looking at the weather for today through the weekend didn't look that great so I switched gears and decided to get 4 threshold workouts done instead of the longer rides.

I went back to the Crit course and did a repeat of tuesday's workout. 2x15' with a couple minute break. My pacing was pretty good: 283w and 282w. Again I felt extremely good on the bike and this workout wasn't that hard to complete.

Just as I finished A.T. showed up and started his intervals so I tagged along on his wheel for a while to rack up some "free" TSS. Looking at my file you can see the benefits of training with a power meter (he didn't have one)...he was going a bit too easy on the backside (downhill) and too hard on the finish side (uphill).

This was a pretty good workout and put me over 100TSS for the day. I'm planning on doing pretty much the same workout Sat/Sun then doing some insanely long rides next week.

Mas suffer

Yesterday I had planned on riding some but 5 minutes after getting home I was...OUT. I slept for 2 hours. I guess I was really tired from this weekend. It felt pretty good.

Today I was itching to do more threshold work...I headed to the Crit course and did 2x15' at 100% FTP with about a couple minute break. The weather was perfect and I felt great--the wattage came easily. My first effort was 278w and the second 281w. There's no way my FTP is 280w right now but I'm using that as a target and will lengthen the intervals as I get fitter. The legs were very good tonight and I was really looking forward to this workout all day. Sometimes it works out that way.

sunday

I headed out today with the nut and jules to the fort then I headed off alone and did part of the thursday loop and then back to the fort.

Felt surprisingly good and basically just cruised but did do 40' of SST along the way.  I also chased some huge guy down in the fort who was hammering.  A good weekend of riding.

Longish

Went out with a few people to the fort then I carried on solo on one of my favorite loops...the screaming eagle, 601, Leesburg, Congress etc.  I kept it steady and tried to keep pressure on the pedals but went fast in the fast sections.  A real good iPod mix helped me out a lot.  It was a nice and warm day.

Day 1

Today was my first FTP workout of the season.  The weather was crap so I did 3x10' intervals on the Velodyne with 4' rests.  I wanted to ease into these workouts and  I tried to keep it around 280w.  I can't say it felt good  ;-)

Pow

13" of new snow Friday night so I hooked up with some local friends on saturday who are some pretty hardcore/expert tele skiers. They worked me...It was an incredible "Alta" day.

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Fyi

If you're on Time Warner Cable you're not going to be getting Comedy Central (daily show, colbert) or nickelodeon (plus other channels) as of midnight tonight. Glad I'm on Directv.

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/12-30-2008/0004947904&EDATE=

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Rat

The avalanch danger here is pretty extreme so that's kept us out of the backcountry. Just cruising with the kids through the trees and terrain park.

In an effort at getting a workout in I headed to Gold's and did 1:15 on a bike with 40' at a HR of 174. That was probably close to my threshold. A little stairmaster and some running made for a nice workout.

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Newsflash

In a desparate attempt to get in touch with his sensitive side, crusty is gonna do some directing with the top womens team, Tibco. 

There will be some other crusty news prior to the ToC.

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F'd up

Seattle to Salt lake flight diverted to Boise...6 hrs later we arrive at 3am. Tonight it's 3 bottles of wine. Tomorrow it's skiing at sundance. Fun.

Time to dope

It's time for my visit to the Dr....That's Dr. Alta for some RBC infusion, hard workouts and daily doses of very dry fluffy white powder.  I'll be iPhone bloggin' while I'm gone.  Be back Jan. 5th.

We'll see off and on snow throughout the day. Temps will be 5-10 degrees F. The next blockbuster arrives tomorrow into Christmas Day. Up to and over 2' of snow is expected, followed by another storm on the 28th.

Mega Ultra Plus Plus

Awesome ride today that was just shy of epic with weather and mechanicals.  We did a "reverse" Wateree route but hugged the coast.  The general route we did is HERE. Great roads with no traffic out there.

When the 5 of us left at 9:30 the weather was clearing but

 the wind was picking up.  We had a massive tailwind all the way down Perceival to 601 and pretty much had cross-tail or tailwind most of the ride...except for the last 15 miles back down Perceival--wow that was brutal.  We got really lucky with the wind today.

Casey snapped her RD cable at mile 50 and after trying to get the limit screws set to get her in a manageable gear I finally just jammed a stick in the RD which kept her in the 15 and gave her two workable gears.  That worked great for the rest of the ride (she may have a different opinion).  Rob later somehow managed to get his RD cable stuck INSIDE of a link in his chain...never seen that one before.  After fixing it he had access to only his 12,13,14 for the rest of the ride.  Crazy.

I spent a lot of the day sitting on the front with new-guy-Cleve who's a Cat. 1 type and races for Myogenesis.  This weekend I racked up 457 TSS...I'm gonna be worthless tomorrow at work!  My CTL now (37) is above where it was last year.

Uh oh

We're 50 miles out on a 90 mile ride and casey snapped a cable. What
you see is the stick trick.