TrojanHorse

I wonder if he's using digital EPO? Whiiiiiiiiiich has to be the stupidest thing I've ever heard of, but it's a thing.

Easy fix, you just need a more expensive bike.

DrIsotope

After three rainy days in London, I'm ready for whatever course is open on Wednesday. Even virtual rain is depressing.

I did kill Box Hill this morning, though.



And was pretty much out of gas afterward.

TrojanHorse

You can force whichever "world" you want in the preferences, you know... which is apparently a great way to land all those impossible to get KOM, sprint etc jerseys. They're also reopening the original course that was the beta.

350W for almost 6 miles... nice.

jimincalif

Hmmm, is this how you got the KOM from the cabana to breakfast on Bora Bora????

TrojanHorse

No, that was a tail wind situation, which is why I don't have the KOM going the other way too.

DrIsotope

Yeah, but you have to do that clock trickery to get it to work, which is super annoying as I'm just running it off of the iOS app, with a lightning-to-HDMI adapter. So tomorrow is pretty much the only chance I'll ever have to ride the Richmond course, as it apparently only shows up like twice a month. A couple laps of the UCI Worlds course should bring home a bucket of nearly-free PRs.

ZippyThePinhead

Someone I know is a frequent night rider around Whittier. Can't figure out when he sleeps, but he tells me he regularly (as in > 3 nights/week) is out and about on his bike, no earlier than 11:30 p.m. Apparently he does the Greenway Trail and some streets, all the police know him.

He had a heart attack a few years ago; docs told him cycling saved his life. I haven't spoken with him for a few months, but it goes to show you, there are alternatives to a trainer.

TrojanHorse

I think you have to do it on the PC version and you just update the prefs file. I'm not sure how you can accomplish it with your phone. They only do Richmond occasionally because it's boring, although there are two nice enough little hills towards the end of the lap.

Changing flats in pitch darkness... no fun. Hitting a discarded push broom in the road because you didn't see it and wrenching your shoulder out of joint... no fun. I never ride that late but I do ride plenty between 6:30 and 8:30, which is very dark from October to March. Of course, now that Daylight Savings has kicked in I can look forward to a snoot full of gnats around sundown. Extra protein! Of course that also means the sun is in driver's eyes if I'm riding west bound on a street, which I do to get to the SGRT.

The thing that would worry me most about riding as late as your friend does would be all the drunk drivers.

DrIsotope

I can see now why they don't do Richmond often-- but I liked having more sprint/timed segments, they're good motivators. And as anticipated, I got in 2 laps of the UCI course in an hour, and netted 88 PRs.

The hand is feeling much better, and aside from the horridness of wearing a cast 24/7, and the fact that said cast now has a particular... odor, I'm quite hopeful that it will indeed come off on the scheduled date, April 10. That means 17 more days of being one-handed, and perhaps 8-10 more Zwift rides. And as much as I pooh-poohed Zwift earlier, it really is helping-- sure beats sitting on the couch. I plan to do the climb to the tower on Watopia one more time (if just to pick up the 50+ PRs I left on the mountain) and maybe even the PRL short course in London (44 miles or something?) But with my short attention span, I'm really hoping the novelty holds out for another two and a half weeks.

dagray

Got the bike back from the shop as I had it converted to 11 speed, and then take the old 10 speed groupset and put it on my son's bike which was nine speed.

Out for a ride today doing "windtervals" due to headwinds. The bike is running an 11/28 rear cassette with 50/34 compact chainring on the front, and it was very nice to have the extra gear for smoother shifting.

DrIsotope

Did my first workout in Zwift this morning, following a single lap of the London Loop. Chose one of the GCN workouts, Si Richardson's Microbursts, which is three sets of twenty 15 second 395W efforts with 15 second recoveries in between. Luckily, Zwift used an auto-calculated FTP of 276W, which is considerably below my actual FTP. If they had gone by Strava, it would have been ~470W intervals, and I think I would be dead.

dagray

I have to change the skewer out and get my bike on the trainer since it is raining today.

My spare wheel was only capable of taking a 10 speed cassette, and I just upgraded my bike to 11 speed.

DrIsotope

I only use the bottom three cogs on the cassette while on the trainer. I'm cobbling parts together to make a trainer-only cassette, basically just 11-12-13-14-15 cogs and then spacers the rest of the way. You could easily do the same, just use old 10-speed cogs (if you have them) with 11-speed spacers. Shifting performance isn't paramount on the trainer, after all. In my 90 minute session this morning, I think I shifted four times-- having a mag trainer instead of fluid, I can do almost all my resistance change from the lever, so the microbursts were all done in 42/12. For me, that gearing is very comfortable for my "normal" trainer cadence, 95-110rpm.

Black wallnut 

@IBOHUNT had another #poundsignepic ride on Saturday. https://www.strava.com/activities/914426266


Not too shabby for early season.

IBOHUNT

That is PoundSignEpic. I lived out there I'd be wearing that hill out. That thing is awesome!
PoundSignKudos

DrIsotope

Relearned a forgotten lesson: when a trainer is involved, under no circumstances attempt threshold efforts on back-to-back days. After the microbursts yesterday (followed by a few hours of extremely ill-advised yardwork) I still felt pretty good this morning, so I did a Z2 half hour of warmup, then thought, "Hey, I could try an FTP test."

Everything went fine, and I was right around halfway into the 20-minute test portion, when, to paraphrase Tracy Jordan, I blew up like a balloon with a grenade in it. Absolutely tanked. Like... I had to get off the bike and sit in a chair for a few minutes. I started another session and put in ~40 minutes of Z1/Z2, but just felt like the elevator didn't reach the upper floors anymore. I'm still run down, about 6 hours later.

This busted hand is still really unmanageable. I can find no comfortable way to place it on the bars, shifting is a tedious affair, and the swelling takes about 90 minutes to go down after getting off the bike. Not being able to stand (both due to the restrictions of the trainer and mostly the hand issue) limits sessions to 90 minutes at the most.

I can barely remember riding in the outdoors.

jsigone

it's still pretty out side and there is couple hours after work to bang out some xtra credit miles


trainer sucks, but keep it up, could have been worse like a trying to support a broken shoulder

Black wallnut 

Dang it sure sucks to be you!

jimincalif

Two things I've learned about you: 1. You generally have to learn things the hard way, and 2. You are a pretty good sport about confessing your trials and tribulations here.

I hope you hand heals quickly. FYI our club is planning an Onyx Challenge ride on June 10. Maybe you can join us? I'd be glad to shake your hand. Oh wait, NOT THAT HAND! 😀

IBOHUNT

PoundSignEpicFail eh?

Black wallnut 

Yup trying to give 100% two days in a row while you are not at 100% is fraught with peril.

DrIsotope

Finished "The Pretzel" on Watopia this morning, 47 miles with 4,500ft of "climbing." My wrists are absolutely killing me, because the one in the cast is impossible to place comfortably on the bars, so the poor left hand ends up taking the brunt of it... at least for the first 2 hours, at which point both wrists/hands go on strike, and I'm shifting my weight around in such a way as to unintentionally cause my ass to go numb.

I had just read a thing about a woman setting the Zwift record, riding something like 2,200 miles in 128 straight hours, and I just don't know how that's even possible. The not being able to stand up, coast, or take a break at a stop light is just killing me. Today I forced myself to coast "down hills" so I only pedaled for 96% of the 2 hours and 45 minutes. I genuinely feel more worn out than if I had actually gone out and ridden it outside. I'm sure the hand has at least a bit to do with that.

Which brings me around to Zwift cheaters, something that I simply cannot wrap my mind around. Like... why? For what purpose? This ride came up in my FlyBys today: Zwift - Watopia 03/29/2017 and my favorite stat has to be "Infinity W/kg." So did he just set his weight to zero? But then he went at 90rpm cadence, unwavering, for 21 hours. Power output also varies little. Is this just to unlock something in the game? I like unlocking in-game crap as much as the next guy-- it's a big part of the mechanic of most games. But to cheat out an Everest Challenge... I don't understand.

dagray

****.

New thread started for April

PhotoJoe 

Sorry I'm late locking this down.