With friends like these...

...I need slower friends. My last road ride was 12 days ago and since I've been mired in a funk of blah trainer rides. Schedule has not permitted much time to hit the roads lately and it showed. For a 50 mile ride, it felt like a good 38 of it was in a head wind. How does that work? I threw my best effort forward to share the workload (as I am not keen on wheelsucking freeloaders on a group ride) but I still felt like I didn't hold up my end of the ride.

At the very least, today's ride did save me some money. I know for fact that I'm not in shape enough for Son of Godzulla next week, so I'll save the drive and $40 entry fee.

Statistics - because you know you love them.
50.38 miles
2:31 (20.1 mph average and like I said it was head windy)
1867 kJ (which I promptly replaced via burrito)
207 watts, 241 normalized
Still not wearing my HRM.

In closing it was nice to actually be out there riding! I miss the road.

If money were no object.

I want to try all different kinds of bike racing. Track, cross, MTB. Unfortunately, time and money prohibit this. Track looks the coolest, but the closest place to ride is 100 miles away and they are only open for a few months per year due to the weather. And of course, at the time of the year the track is open, I am busy with racing my other bikes and I don't own a track bike. Someday, I would love to take my TT bike and ride it around a track for an hour. Cross sounds like fun, in a brutal, hard sort of way. That being said, I don't have a cross bike so I would have to buy one. Then shoes. Then a scrub brush and soap to get clean before the drive home. I do have a mountain bike, if you can call it that. It's a 100 pound steel POS with lower than low end components that I bought to ride in the snow when I lived on the farm.

For the time being, I'll just keep throwing all available bike cash toward the time trial bike.

Blog posts get real boring when you spend too much time on the trainer. It's not like I'm going to detail the horrendously boring 90 minute ride I did today. I did wear my new shoes, so there's some excitement and used the new trainer yesterday and the day before. Maybe tomorrow I'll have something to write about.

New shoes!

Excuse the picture quality - it's from my freakin' phone.

And yes, I wear my team cycling socks as everyday wear.

Tis the season

where a young man's thoughts turn to how much money he is going to spend on gear for 2009 and what the return will be...poo

The shoes I wanted FINALLY went on closeout, so I scooped those up last night from Excel.

It's time for a new "portable" trainer to take to time trials and for days when I want to ride in front of the TV. My Real Axiom is too heavy and not a great trainer unless it's plugged into my laptop. Bikesport Michigan has their secret Slowtwitch deal and I may pull the trigger on that today.


EDIT - yes I did buy the trainer. Now you know.

Soon it will be time for the annual Kit order. Champion Systems provides our gear and they came out with a new, dimpled (or roughened) skin suit. That's first on the list. On top of that, I'll be adding new shoe covers, gloves, extra jerseys and bibs and probably the long sleeve cyclocross skinsuit for the chilly days.

Then there is the front wheel issue with the time trial bike. I'll be addressing helmet concerns next spring as well as aero bar issues.

Time to get back to work to pay for all this crap.

More time trial testing

Minutiae . Leads to faster speeds?

I did two more time trial tests on Monday and Tuesday afternoons. The course was the same as last week's test where I averaged 26.6mph for the 5.6 mile course. Due to the weather being "roughly" the same, it made for a good testing experience. I posted that my speed was 26.8 earlier, but looking at it again, it turned out to be 26.6 at 272 watts.

After changing my position, I lowered my bars as blogged about previously. It closes me in a bit, but does (at least subjectively at the moment) make me more aerodynamic. The 26.6 mph test was done with this setup. Since, I have rotated my aerobars in toward each other to close the gap between my hands so they are touching. My theory is that the air can go around my hands as opposed to in between them. My subjectivity again. Monday's test had me at 26.9 at 279 watts. A little more watts and a little more speed.

Tuesday, I decided late in the afternoon to hit it one more time as I didn't have time for a long enough road bike ride to make it count. The weather was close to Monday's in regards to wind speed, direction and temperature. I shortened up my warm up to about 10 miles to make it to my starting point (Jackson & Dog Leg rd.), then hit it. In training, it's been difficult to push it as hard as in a race, as time trialling (for me) takes so much focus and effort. When training on open roads, I at least TRY to keep one eye on the traffic and that hurts my focus.

The end result was my first effort over 27mph with a speed of 27.6 for the 5.7 mile course with a wattage of 298. 298 is a real race wattage for me and surprising that I was able to get that in training.

I've kept no heart rate data in October due to some rash from my strap. I still need to wash the thing in alcohol before I wear it again.

Test 1 26.6 average 272 watts
Test 2 26.9 average 279 watts
Test 3 27.6 average 299 watts

Addendum to the training TT's.

1. No time trial clothing was used, except test 1 where I wore my long sleeve skinsuit with a normal jersey over top (to hold my cell phone in the pocket).
2. Bell Sweep helmet used for all tests
3. Rotated bars for tests 2 and 3

40,000

I started keeping track of mileage on July 29th, 2002 via a spreadsheet on my computer. With today's ride I went over the 40,000 mile mark since then. Also in the next ride or two, I will surpass 2007's mileage as I'm about 60 short. Last year I had 6,550.17 and year to date, I have 6,492.63. This year has been a good, injury (and vacation) free year, except the week in Peru. Nothing on the horizon should be keeping me from beating my 2005 mileage of 8,266.76. The only thing that could keep me from that would be the emphasis on better quality workouts over pure mileage, especially when it's dark and cold and I'm resigned to 15 minute intervals on the trainer. We'll see what happens.

Today was a nice 40 miler just cruising around my usual roads. I have to get my rides in on these roads as I won't be spending much time up here after this year. Well, that is, unless our house doesn't sell by next year. I'm going to miss these roads.

Practice runs

Friday was practice run day on the TT bike. This was the first real road test since I modified my position. I modified it even more after seeing the pictures by lowering my bars about 6mm (two spacers worth).

I went and did my usual TT practice route; North Dog Leg, East Old Springfield, North Peters, East Evanston. There wasn't wind to speak of but the effort felt pretty easy. I didn't want to push too hard, just hard enough to make it count. Ended up with a 13 minute effort at 272 watts. But the cool thing was that my average was 26.8 mph. I went and checked the weather to make sure there wasn't some sort of wind coming from the south and west. Weather.com showed a slight wind out of the south at less than 5 mph. Well, my west to east average was at the same speed as the south to north. Note: I wore no aero gear. Std Bell Sweep helmet, std jersey over top of my skinsuit and no shoe covers. I did use my race wheels.

What does that all prove? Nothing for now since there are no time trials until next March! Really it means that I felt comfortable (more comfortable than my old FIST position) in a more aerodynamic position, and could push enough watts in the new position. I have a few more weeks of decent weather to dial in as best as possible this new setup before shutting down the time trial work for the year. Then it's off to North Carolina and the wind tunnel early in 2009.

If I can start next year in the high 26's to low 27's for average, that should be enough to win several age group tt's around here. Hopefully, I can work that up to high 27's to low 28's by June. Not sure what speeds will come out of the wind tunnel...? To be continued...

Position pictures

Changed to be within UCI legality 5cm nose to BB, 72.5cm to screw on shifter
Just pedalling around 250 watts
Stopped pedaling to take a picture with leg up
Stopped pedaling to take a picture with leg down
Pedaling at 250 +/- watts with LG Rocket