Turnin' the cranks

Gave up on the idea of completing the Festive 500. Too damn cold and just too many thing scheduled at the wrong times to get the miles in. More crushing of the legs has ensued through New Years Day via the Salsa Mukluk.

I rode from my house down to Rasmussen's on the 27th and then met up with some folks for a forward and back through Denmans, plus some trail packing in Squirrels nest and a climb up to the top of Hillside. I rode back to the shop to warm up before limping down to Mullets for dinner with my lovely wife. The week had caught up to me by that point, so I sent the bike home and arranged for a ride back from El Bait shop where we were saying good-bye to Sean Noonan before he shipped off for basic training. 24 miles for the day.

I took Friday off for some family stuff and then met some people over at Sycamore for some more fatbiking. Good times, some hard riding, and introduced my friend Lacey to riding fatbikes in the snow. She was a trooper the whole day, despite us taking her on a trailbusting expedition on Sycamore's south side. She was wiped by the time we got back to the north end, and I'm happy she decided to not run me over with her truck as payback on the way out of the parking lot. 14.5 miles for the day.

Sunday the 30th was warm, but I had scheduled a movie watching day, so no riding. Our small group of 4 watched Truth in 24 and Senna, both excellent documentaries. I made a couple of pots of chicken noodle soup, and others brought stromboli and some prosciutto wrapped pears for food.

New Year's Day meant skipping the Nth Degree ride and meeting up with mates at 9 AM for another lap of Sycamore. I think the temp was somewhere around -1 or 0 when we started out and it had barely climbed into the + range by the time we were done at 11:00 or so. As soon as I got on the bike I could tell it was going to be a bad day. No snap to the legs, bike felt weird and I just could not push the pace very hard, despite the well packed trail. I opted to just sit in and enjoy the day, even if it meant riding by myself for a good part of the time. We had a couple of guys that suffered some tire issues, but nothing major. A LOT of guys out on fatbikes that morning. We had 6 or 7 in our group and we ran into four others at various points on the trail. Another 14.5 in the books, despite the frigid temps.

Tonight, I settled back into training mode for TIV9. An hour and ten minutes on the trainer riding tempo, along with some one legged pedaling drills and some cadence ladders to break things up a bit. Legs are feeling a little tired, but that feeling will pass as the hours start adding up over the weeks. I upgraded from a standard magnetic trainer to a Tacx Bushido this summer, so I have power to train with as well as heart rate. It will be interesting to see how that works out as the sessions progress this winter. Tomrrow's workout is supposed to be two hours of tempo, so I might take the opportunity to try out some of the VR or video features of the software.