Heathpack 

My husband is in possession of the <unassembled> replacement Fuji, plus $261 because the price dropped.

Assembly (and maybe even Di2 install) will happen tonight/tomorrow.

Theres a little more to the story but I'll spare y'all the details.

revchuck 

IBOHUNT

sarals 

sarals 

I shrugged! I felt so good during the warmup, and then.........argh!

Did you do the Aircenter Crit last night?

Racer Ex 

I did. Pretty happy with the ride, came in to protect my buddy's GC in the omnium, was OTF on the second lap chasing a two man break that went on lap one, eventually got caught, went OTF again and stayed there for the rest of the race with various people. 40 minutes in I dropped back and did a big one lap pull to put my buddy in group two and called in a night.

Reminded me that some folks have no class/clue. Buncha folks got lapped and some of them ended up latching on then getting in the way of the final sprint for the leaders. Hey, you got LAPPED. Drop off and let the people who are still in the race duke it out instead of knocking them off wheels so you can sprint for 8th or whatever.

valygrl

wow lame.

i had one of those training days where i felt like i was gonna die (one minute intervals) but my HR and power were crap. this happened to me last friday too and then i kicked saturday's ass, so here's hoping.

Heathpack 

Rest day, which worked out to be a massage, a pedicure & yoga. (It was a stressful week.)

Oh yeah, and a replacement TT bike. Assembled. And upgraded with Di2 and better aerobars.

Still tweaking the fit, but hoping to ride it tomorrow.

Pretty swell day. Except I did smudge the polish on one toe in yoga. That part was pretty rough.

Heathpack 

Test ride: OMG that thing now shifts like a real bike.

sarals 

Heathie, nice!!!!! How do the new aerobars feel?

You smudged a toe?? OMG, how could you?

I have, sitting in a box, a new pair of Dura-Ace bar end shifters (mechanical) for TJ. Some day they'll get put on!

sarals 

Ex, I talked to Heidi L. (in your area) about that race, that's why I asked if you'd done it. She said it's a great course, and they're (you're) lucky to have such a cool course. That would be fun to do sometime!

Today, openers. Then I get TJ (my TT bike) prepped for tomorrow. In my age group there are two of us. Me and MEA. Guess how that one is going to play out! I think all I'll do is concentrate on keeping the damage minimal, and try to be as smooth as possible. Watching the USP Challenge ITT yesterday inspired me, as well as gave me some ideas. I studied those guys carefully as they were motoring along and then going up that climb.

sarals 

I had one of those on Thursday, too. HR wouldn't come up, RPE felt like I was on a 14% grade, and I was going nowhere. Ugh....

Racer Ex 

Di2 on a TT bike is like having a dog sleeping on your feet. Just makes life a little better.

valygrl

i put di2 on my TT bike this year, totally love it!

I rode it today. Sweet spot intervals. Everyone seems to be able to do those long LT or LT+ intervals, I can barely do SST. Oh well.

shovelhd

Di2 rocks on any bike.

Heathpack 

Today I was supposed to drive out to the desert and scout one of the TT courses, the Oak Hill course, for the TT series I'm riding. I don't know what made me check the series website yesterday, but good thing I did, Oak Hill has been removed from the schedule. The promoter decided not the run his races this year. Glad I checked, that's an hour and a half drive for me to ride around on an unappealing course in the desert.

One of the other courses, Piru, is about a 20 min drive from my house, so I went there instead. This is also the locale for the only actual TT I've ridden, so kind of nice in that I could compare today's efforts to my actual race effort on the road bike. Its not hugely scenic, but a nice enough place to ride, out in some citrus groves. Piru is a flat 20k out-and-back course.

I was supposed to warm up, ride the course once to take a look, ride the course once at race pace and then do some big gear intervals.

I sort of did that, the first lap got messed up because I loaded the course into my Garmin and started the course but not the timer. So I didn't know where I was on the course and turned around too soon.

The second pass through, at 'race pace' presented a dilemma because I don't know what race pace is yet on this bike. I decided I'd try for 10ish % less power than on the road bike. Even that was too hard, I just feel it all in my quads and they can't do it. I wound up with 20% less power on the TT bike and 2:10 slower over the course than on my road bike. HOWEVER, I PRed the return leg of the course, was 6 seconds faster than my previous best even being 20% down on power. Probably just had a big tailwind, but I'm ignoring that possibility and am going to be happy with the PR.

The big gear workout was meh, I almost didn't do it because my legs were tired.

The Di2 really really rocks, it makes riding the TT bike much more enjoyable. That was a good decision for sure. I had a lot of trouble shifting the bike previously- the shifters the bike came with were crappy but also my hands a just a little small to get good leverage. Plus I'm just more used to Di2, I have it on both of my road bikes.

@sarals, the new aerobars are way better. But this is not saying much because the aerobars the Fuji came with were so flimsy that they were dangerous. So I didn't get anything fancy, just upgraded into the acceptable range. Nice feeling to be resting on your armpads and not have the feeling like they might collapse out from under you.

While we're talking equipment, I got an email that the aero wheels shipped today. I wound up getting Flo 60s, front and rear. Need to get a disc cover, haven't started that process yet. I can't find an aero helmet that fits me so far. And I went ahead and ordered a new SRM, I just was permanently scarred by my Stages experience, I just want something that works without needing tons of nurturing.

That is all. Doing a climbing thing tomorrow.

sarals 

I like standard shift. That's why I have motorcycles. Don't you people talk me into buying something else for my bikes I can't afford!

Heathie, Oak Hills was the first TT I ever did. Ex took me out there (in the middle of January), unannounced, and I rode the Look Merckx style (and I didn't have a clue). I was the only woman, so I got a medal! Woot!!

TT Openers today. They felt just fine, so did TJ. I effed up the last two intervals, my sleep deprived dyslexia kicked in and I inverted them. Crud. Well, I had a 12 minute cooldown that sort of made up for it.

Got TJ home and got him all cleaned up, inspected, disc cover put on, and got him back in the car. Ready to suffer tomorrow (for the second step!).

shovelhd

Di2 is more like a dual clutch transmission than an automatic. I drive a stick and prefer it myself.

Di2 road STIs are also great for people with small hands and missing fingers like me. I hope they never get rid of it.

revchuck 

Two hours yesterday, with 90 minutes of it in upper Z3 - NP was six watts short of SST, should've pushed it a hair so I could brag about that, but whatever. 45-minute recovery ride this morning at 100% humidity - water droplets formed on my arm hair and were dripping from my helmet about 15 minutes into it, not a drop of rain around.

Tomorrow's ride is supposed to be a 3-4 hour group ride, with a backup of the same length solo ride with 40-50 minutes of threshold with my choice of interval length. The only group ride tomorrow will be 30 miles at ~20 mph, so I'm going with the backup. I'll probably do 3x15. Monday will be 1:30 with 20 minutes at 101-105%; I'll probably break that into three, seven-minute intervals. Coach was insistent that I do these workouts back-to-back. She also set a TSS goal of 575-625 for this week...I'm at 460 now, good chance I'll blow through the upper limit tomorrow.

Heathpack 

Climbing ride today, 47 miles/6300 ft. It went ok at first and then I had no legs, had to actually abort 3 miles from the finish, with nothing left but <more> double-digit grades to climb. Sure I had no legs but worse yet I was being attacked by gnats. Today I learned you have to be going 10+ mph to shake a gnat.

We started with an 8 mile climb up Mt Pinos, ave 5% and one short flat section but otherwise this is just relentless up. I haven't been to Mt. Pinos since last summer, when I climbed it a lot getting ready for a century at altitude, this is the easiest altitude-ish climb for me to get to, a 45 min drive from my house. It goes from 6000 to 8200 ft, so not big altitude, but enough to give you some effect. There's no warm-up for this climb, so I kind of took it easy the first 20 minutes and then rode it TT-style, slowly ramping up the power. Felt weaker today than I have recently but still PRed the climb, happy with that. And I nabbed the QOM on the descent, even happier with that. Haha, better wheels and tires actually do make a difference.

The Magic Bike at the top of Mt Pinos:



Next up was Mt Abel, but to get there you have to descend from the base of Mt Pinos, then climb back up into the town of Pine Mountain Club and from there its a 10 mile 5% climb to the top of Abel, like Pinos, this one is pretty relentlessly up. There are a few short steep hills going in to Pine Mt Club and suddenly I found had nothing. Well not totally nothing, I guess- enough to get to town. And Abel is long but not steep, so I figured I could do that, it was just going to be a long 10 miles.

And it was indeed a long 10 miles. For whatever reason I was ok with it, maybe because it's just so pretty up there or maybe I was riding with a good friend, I had no legs but was fine with just creeping up the mountain, which total surprise I also PRed. Eventually got to the top, recovered a bit and then headed back down. Almost QOMed that descent too, but first I hit a pothole hidden in shadows to the extent that I thought I'd broken something on the bike. Slowed down to check that out and all seemed well enough. Proceeded on and then got stuck behind a camper. Next time.

Magic Bike at the top of Mt Abel:



Got back to town and I was pretty doubtful that I could do the climb back to the car, the steep stuff was going to be a deal-breaker. Toyed with not even trying, waiting in town for my friend to come back with the car. Finally decided to give it a whirl, if I didn't show up at the car in the amount of time it took for my friend to pack up, he'd come back for me. Which is exactly what happened. If not for the gnat attack, however, I think I could've done it.

It was 270 TSS and 0.7 IF at the end of a 925 TSS week. Makes sense I was tired, I'm actually not worried about it- altitude, fatigue, whatever. Still better than my worst day up there, when I had to lie on the side of the road for awhile with my head propped up on a rock. I had a really nice day, enjoyed my (miserable) ride. Felt ok to look back at some climbs I haven't done for a year and see that even a very bad day now is better than a regular day a year ago. Good enough.

sarals 

Something was going right to have you PR with no legs! Like maybe you're stronger?

Magic Bike is awesome. Gorgeous setting, too!!!

Racer Ex 

Easy to confuse sensations with actual performance, especially in training, ESPECIALLY when you're throwing in intensity. From the coaching end athletes tend to fixate on whatever just happened today, and not take a long view or look at things from an actual performance standpoint. There has to be trust in the overload + recover = stronger down the road equation, and that fatigue gets resolved.

For masters folks that's a finer balance.

Heathpack 

Undoubtedly stronger than a year ago. And also a bit different in how I see some of these climbs now so your brain is in a different place too.

The Pinos PR makes sense, it was decent enough power-wise.

Abel makes no sense, it was weak from a power perspective. I must have stopped for one reason or another on the way up on previous efforts, I've only done it three other times and can't really remember exactly what went on.

I am pretty non-plussed, however. Whatever. The luxury of having a coach is that you don't have to put any mental energy into thinking about stuff like this. Just ride your bike & see what happens next.

sarals 

Just pedal! Don't think. Love it!

I'm living proof of Ex's training philosophy. Just look at how my time trials have improved, and I'm not the body type that you'd expect to make much in the way of gains in TT's. So much for physiology.

valygrl

Heathpack, it seems misleading to use Strava PRs to evaluate your ride times since they include stopped time. Even a short stop would completely skew the metrics.

Do you have WKO or TrainingPeaks, Garmin Connect, or some other activity tracker? Or is there a way to exclude stopped time on Strava? I use TrainingPeaks & WKO, but I know there are lots of things out there.