Two Wheel Blogs

I made something of a decision yesterday. I took a slight change in direction with my cycling. I realized that up until now I'd been really focused in on building up my ability to ride a fast tempo for a longer and longer time.

I'd gotten pretty good at it too. My typical ride, when I had time for it, would be 2+ hours in length. If I happened to have done that ride on the road, and therefore had power data, I'd accumulate TSS in the 200 range.

Now, if you're training up to do something like the Ouachita Challenge, piling lots of tempo and threshold into your weekly plan is a good idea. I had to ask myself, if I'm not working up to another Ouachita Challenge then why am I training that way?

So then, what am I training for?

Ah yeah, we got one awesome Monday here today. I can't say enough how nice it was out there. Middle 70's at ride time I would guess. Recovery / Tempo today. In all I rode about 1½ hours. That's 1½ hours' ride time. It doesn't count the stops to help a family out of a jam.

You see, it's mushroom hunting season around here. Morels are aplenty. Just about everywhere there are woods you might see one or more vehicles pulled off to the side, the driver nowhere to be found. They're off in the woods hunting 'shrooms.

We have a arrived. The first big event of the season - the Ouachita Challenge - is only a week away. I'm as fit as I'll ever be for it. If the weather had cooperated more I might be even a little fitter, but you gotta play the hand that's dealt, don't you know.

Performance manager's telling me I need to ramp it down a little this week if I'm going to have endurance enough to take on 60 miles in the mountains of Arkansas. CTL is around 110 or so and TSB is way down below. I'll come up for a big gulp of freshness this week and I'll be as ready as I'll ever be.

This won't be a taper by any means. I'll just be letting up some. I won't be adding intensity this week. I'll just do the same kinds of things I've been doing, only with a little less intensity and for shorter duration.

Take my latest workout for instance. Just a couple of hours' ride time on the road. I went out to the local park and rode laps on the rolling part. No big climbs and no sustained efforts. Six 11km laps at tempo speed. And with fairly decent repeatability too:

I was really enjoying the weather we were having yesterday, so I left work early to do some training. I had to ride indoors of course due to the 40+ MPH winds, and rapidly dropping temperatures (I guess I am a wimp).

I really have nothing much to say, other than to post up and brag about a trainer ride that was actually good for a change. I did not really enjoy it much, other than the enjoyment one gets from doing well and not absolutely hating every second as it slowly clicks off the timer and brings you incrementally closer to getting off the infernal pain machine.

As I approached the trainer (with great disdain), my wife said, "have fun". My terse response, "nothing about *this* is fun". I hopped on and started spinning while my kids enjoyed the room around me...one sleeping on the couch, one practicing his piano (yes, I had headphones), the other kicking and screaming as mama tried to soothe him for the next 2 hours.

Last night, mid-ride, I decided to remove the dual bar set up. I put a wrench next to the trainer just in case I would want to do this. After about 30 minutes of tempo, I wanted to drop down and stretch my back, so off came the bars (only 2 bolts to do so...so I never stopped pedaling).

The wrist seems to be healing up well. No pain, no problems. I can put pressure on my hands and don't even notice that there is an injury...must be the 9 grams of C I took yesterday.

Speaking of Vitamin C. I thought that it would cause me to need to defecate profusely to triple my normal daily intake...so far no changes. Don't fear the Vit. C folks! I slept well last night and other than a slight increase in gas there is nothing bad to report about the major upswing in Vitamin C intake.

Check out this new position and TT bike set up! In short order this design will be sweeping the nation. Pros everywhere will adopt the Dual Bar set up. It will create quite a stir and UCI will ultimately outlaw it stating that this is not "traditional" configuration and therefore can not be allowed. I can not really take credit for this, it is a small change from the Danny Noonan signature position first debuted in 1980.

This is what I had to do today to take some pressure off my wrists, so that I could train. It worked like a dream in that it allowed me MANY additional hand positions, but the more upright position clashes with the nose-down saddle configuration...ho-hum...hopefully this is temporary.

All told, I was able to put in 105 minutes of tempo effort. The elevated heart rate will hopefully aid in my recovery from my stupid little injury. I figure the more blood that flushes past the site, the faster the bruise will dissipate.