Progress

A month+ since my last posting. There hasn't been a lot to talk about, thus the lack of posts. Come home from work, hit the trainer for an hour or two and then eat. That, and some longer rides on the weekends have been one of the constants in my life the last month. I took advantage of the warm weather a few weeks back to take my La Cruz out on a pavement ride for 4 hours or so. Ended up with 70+ miles and a beautiful ride to Ames and back. I took the HTT to Sheldahl where the trail was still covered with snow, and then jumped out on R38 and rode the bike lane on the shoulder to Ames. Sunny day, slight crosswind, and some Joe Satriani in the headphones made for a great day.

CIRREM was last weekend (Feb 23rd). We had a big dump of snow the Thursday before so I opted to strip down my Fargo and use it for the race instead of my La Cruz. I pulled the original Vulpines off of the wheels and mounted a set of Bontrager XR1's I had bought from a friend last summer. I really wanted to set them up tubeless, but I didn't want to do a tubeless conversion and test it during a race. The Bonty's do have a nice bead on them, so I know they will convert once I get the rims taped properly. CIRREM itself went pretty well. Earlier in the year I had set a fairly aggressive goal of 4 hours for the race, with a minimum of stops. With the switch to the Fargo, I considered that an extremely aggressive goal. The "neutral roll" out moved along at a 16 MPH average until we hit Adams Road. I managed to stick with the main group of riders for the first 6 miles or so. After that I needed to settle in to a pace I knew I could maintain for the rest of the race. A group of about 6 of us formed, although we were a group due to being able to see each other, rather than riding together. I was fine with that, as I really wanted to use this as a bit of a mid-prep fitness test. The big hills were slow going, but I felt like I had good power on the climbs. I never shifted down to the granny on any climb and didn't walk any hills throughout the race. I made the halfway checkpoint in just under 2 hours. I slowed down long enough to hear my number called and then kept moving as I had enough fuel on my bike to get me through the race. The second half of the race hillier than I had remembered, but it consisted of mostly long grinders with some small kicks at the end. I rode a solid pace for the second half of the course, and didn't worry about what anyone else was doing. While stopped at mile 40 to swap a bottle and stretch a bit, I was passed by Dee Mable and three other riders that made up her protective cocoon. Not soon after, Abbie Durkee came along by herself chasing Dee down. Abbie would end up catching Dee, but losing her after taking a wrong turn. Dee won the women's race by a minute. I struggled a bit more than I was expected for the last 10 - 15 miles of the race. I'd ridden hard for the last 3 hours or so and pairing that effort with sub-optimal food intake didn't make for a good experience. I ended up finishing with a time of 4 hours and 22 minutes, which was good for 40th overall. I followed that up with another 3.5 hours and about 45 miles of paved trail riding on the Fargo the next day just to let me body know that I wasn't done with it yet.

Other than that, I've been following the training plan that's being laid out for me. Longer rides are starting to become a regular occurrence. Now that the days are longer, and the weather is getting warmer, I'm looking forward to getting outside and spending less time in my basement, tied to the gopher wheel. 4 and 5 hour endurance paced rides on tap this weekend. Will try and do both of those on the La Cruz rather than the Fargo. I need to start spending more time on the race bike and getting it dialed in.

Paying my dues

Miles, hours, and quarts of sweat continue to pile up as I end the first month of my prep for TransIowa. I've been putting in between 10 and 12 hours a week on average this month, almost all of it on my Tacx trainer, other than a couple of outdoor rides when the weather was decent, as well as the Triple D Adventure race last weekend in Dubuque.

I wasn't really too concerned with Triple D this year for some reason. Not sure if it was due to the weather, or just more confidence in my fitness levels. The one thing that I was not prepared for was all of the ice that covered the course due to the unseasonably warm temps the day before the race. I felt really good physically coming into Dyersville, but I was absolutely petrified by the thought of having an accident on the ice somewhere on the course. I already had a couple of close calls on the way out, one of which almost took out my friend Guitar Ted. Plenty of other riders were able to break through their fear and just turn loose, some on cross bikes, but I was among their ranks. The chance of not showing up in Grinnell in April due to a broken wrist or collarbone wasn't worth the risk to me this year. I still ended up with a good hard 30 mile training ride across a bunch of new terrain, and I got to spend some time with friends during the weekend, so it was far from a loss. Standing around drinking water and the occasional soda while everyone else was drinking beer was an interesting twist to the weekend. My self imposed alcohol fast lasted until this weekend, when I allowed myself one beer during a friend's birthday outing. I have to admit it tasted quite good, and I'll be happy to have a few more once TI is done. 

From a fitness standpoint, I think things are sitting good right now. I'm started to get in some longer rides this weekend, albeit on the trainer. Saturday was a bit rough, maybe due to the Tacx course I chose. Today was a lot better, again maybe due to the course I chose, but I really felt like I was riding outside of my body today. I had no issues with generating power, unlike yesterday. *Shrug* The human body is a weird thing sometimes.

I'm still thinking over light setups for TI. I have been giving serious thought to moving my Schmidt hub over the the La Cruz and going with a dyno light instead of using my Dinotte battery powered lights, figuring that not having worry about battery charge or carrying the batteries would be nice. A couple of people that I trust seemed to think that might backfire on me, figuring that I would pay more than I expected for the extra watts of resistance. I'm still not sure, and I'm happy to take any suggestions or opinions into account. 

Mileage for this month is going to be well into the 800's. *shaking head*

Trainer time

Two hours of tempo was on tap today. With the temps dropping steadily throughout the day, I decided to use this evening's workout to test out the Real Video portion of my Tacx Bushido trainer. In a nutshell, you load up a course, tell the trainer to use that, and it displays a filmed video of the course and adjusts the trainers resistance based on the course topography. I loaded the The Dordogne course, which is an easy 75km course through the French countryside and set out to pedal for a while. While the overall course profile was rolling, there were plenty of sections of 4 - 7% for short periods that made me get out of the saddle and change gears. I was amazed at how quickly the two hours went. Watching the video (on a big LCD TV), keeping an eye on my wattage, and adjusting to the terrain really made it seem like I was riding (or as close as I was going to get in my basement) It's hard to say this, but if I'm not actually looking forward to using the trainer a bit more this winter, I'm at least not fearing a couple of hours on it if weather dictates. Summary - 2:04:13 at an average power output of 202 watts.

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.

Cold streak

Planned on getting up and out on the road at 7:30 this AM. Despite the wine and beer yesterday, I was up well before 7:30. About then, I looked at the temp and noticed it was hovering around -2F, with wind chills around -14F. I didn't see the sense in going out for a training ride when it was that cold, so I spent the morning with coffee in front of the fire and tending to some small nerd things. 

Ended up leaving home around 1:30 or so and riding the Mukluk 40 miles to Woodward and back, passing through Granger on the way there and back. It was cold (14F) but sunny, so the ride was relatively pleasant.  I took a bit of a break at the Casey's in Woodward and had a slice of pizza, cup of coffee, and a bottle of Hydrive so I had some calories for the ride back. The ride back felt a little bit quicker, even if it actually was about the same speed. 

I put the snow goggles on and tossed my Patagonia micropuff on as an additional layer for the ride back. The snow goggles kept my face warm, but my puff, along with the rest of the layers on my core, was soaked when I got home. I had an Icebreaker merino T on, followed by a 260 weight Icebreaker LS half-zipp merino baselayer, then a medium weight Specialized coat on top. I didn't feel overdressed, as it took me quite a few miles to get warmed up once I left the house. More work is needed on riding in extreme cold and not having dumb things happen to my clothing. The puff, as was expected, shouldn't be worn at all when riding. 

Why am I doing this again?

Got up at 5:30 to try and get out of the house by 6 for a ride. I wanted to try and get 40 miles or so in towards the Rapha Festive 500 Challenge. The idea is to ride 500 km, outside, between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

I remembered that I needed to get the poultry we're having for Christmas dinner into the brine, so I spent 15 minutes wrangling a large goose and brining solution into a large bag while dressed in winter riding gear. Got out of the house sometime after 6. Halfway down the block, I realize I didn't have a helmet on. Turned around, got the helmet on and left. In about the same spot, my light quits working. Ugh, can't be having that at 6 in the morning. Turned around and swapped out batteries. Turned out of my neighborhood and noticed that my left foot isn't staying clipped in. Stop to adjust the pedal tension and check the cleat for crap. Ride another mile and stop to check the pedal tension again and raise the seat a scoshe. I'm now probably 20 minutes into my ride and I've gone all of 1.5 miles. I decide to not take this as a sign to turn around and press on westward towards Dallas Center.

Now I'm noticing the wind, the blowing snow, and the fact that my eyeballs are starting to feel more like ice cubes in their sockets. I pressed ahead in the dark for another mile and a half before I stopped and pulled my snow goggles out of my seat bag. Much better. Get to the point where I normally turn north towards Granger and head onto Woodward and decide that 40 miles is not in the books today with the temp (around 11F) and the wind (NW at 15MPH). Opt to press west to Dallas Center where I can snag some food and then enjoy the tailwind for the return leg. No more delays on the ride, other than biffing it when I hit a ice covered slope right at a stop sign. Coffee and donuts ensued at Casey's along with a side of people shaking their head at the guy on the bike. If I had parked a snowmobile out front, I bet they wouldn't have even given me a second thought.

Return leg was much more enjoyable with the tailwind and the ability to run big-ish gears. Got home just a bit before 9 AM, with 23 miles in the books. 1:41 to get to Dallas Center (7.1 MPH average), and 0:48 to get home (13.7 MPH average. Average temp for the ride was somewhere around 11F, not counting the windchill.

Not the miles I wanted, but better than nothing, and riding the fatbike sure builds leg strength. :)

Gettin' some miles

Got some miles and a bit of pain in this week. Bagged another 21 miles or so on the Singlecross on Tuesday between the work commute and a trip to Rasmussen's to pick up some parts that I had ordered in. I wanted to get one more ride in on somewhat skinny tires before the predicted snow storm arrived on Wednesday. 

The storm arrived Wednesday and threw plans into a bit of a spin. I wanted to bust the Mukluk out and ride in the first snow of the year, but I needed to be well rested for my scheduled VO2 test. Well, the snow came and we ended up with a little over 13" on the ground. VO2 test was rescheduled as the roads were really too poor to do any driving on. 

Thursday afternoon was the test. Overall I think I'm in better shape than I was in February, despite not riding extremely regularly these last few months. My threshold power is the same as last year, but I'm making it at 5 fewer beats per minute. My VO2Max is a bit lower than it was in February. A bit curious, but since I haven't been putting in a lot of intensity, I'm not terribly surprised. On the good news front, this for this round of testing, I made it through a minute at 380 watts and died during the sprint in the 400 watt range. Last year I made it through a minute at 340 watts and died at 360. I'm not a coach, but I think this means I've gained, and kept, a lot of overall base these last few months. I'm pretty happy with the testing results and they've gotten me stoked to hit the training hard the next 4 months. 

Saturday I finally got out on the Mukluk to get a taste of the snow, and to play with tire pressures. With temps in the low to mid teens, I was going to just ride 3 or 4 miles to snag some coffee and breakfast. I ended up in a groove and stopped for food at Zanzibar's around mile 12. The bike trails conditions ranged from unplowed to cleared to the concrete, with plenty of steps in between. I got home with 22 or so miles in my legs, all with the tires at around 7 or 8 PSI. 

I'm looking forward to getting out and snagging some more miles over the holiday break. I've signed up for the Rapha Festive 500 on Strava, which is 500km between Christmas eve and New Year's eve, so that gives me a goal to shoot for over the holidays. More base miles for TransIowa and TripleD. I think it's doable since I don't have a lot of other demands on my time this week.