I might make it north of 12 hours this week. I'll post up if I can join the cool kids

I think I'm going to race again. It's been a nice break after cramming almost 20 races between January and April. There's an Omnium coming up in a few weeks. 2 road races at altitude with a fair bit of climbing. I still feel like I'm in crit shape rather than road race shape but it will be good none the less, and my first race where I'm not chasing upgrade points. It should be a fun weekend away from home in some cooler weather!

I'm switching my focus from cycling to hiking between now and Sept. I have a couple big backpack trips that I am planning and leading in September, so I need to get my legs in walkin' shape. I did a 40min run/walk this morning to test the waters, and things are looking good. I'll still ride every week, but my volume is going to go down, esp. over the weekends.

In Sept I am going to switch back to cycling and building my base, minus the two weekends when I will be backpacking.

lol.

I sucked it up and did a recovery ride. It was so hot that I didn't wear the aero helmet. I barely missed the marginal gains.

riding in the woods was a mistake today. was literally dripping in sweat.

Woke up an hour late this morning (6:18) and didn't even bother with rushing out the door to train. Went back to sleep until 7:20 to ride to work real slow. Lazy, or need a break? Idk. But it felt good (and bad). At the point in the season where I just want to race race race without training and hope I can hold on for 10 more points. My cat 2 teammate keeps telling everyone he is trying to recruit for next year that I'll be on the cat 2 squad. So I better double down and get those points lol.

do it!

I broke into profuse sweat seeing this

https://www.strava.com/activities/356351247

I came into the season not really even thinking about upgrading, because it would have no effect on which races I do anyway (masters and 1/2/3 usually). I had a really consistent first month of the season and got points every week. I started to focus on it, and doing a 2nd race some days just for the chance at points. Everybody's different, but I found that the more I focused on the points, the less fun it was, and ironically (but predictably) the less likely I was to race well. The low point was DNF'ing 4 races out of 5 in 2 weeks.

After a really unsatisfying June, I sort of reset my priorities, decided to only race the fun fields (no more 3/4s), and really tried to have fun. Bike races are just games, after all. Ironically (and predictably), my results improved a lot, back to where they were in the spring. I may upgrade this season, or maybe early next season, but like I said it doesn't change which fields I would race anyway, it's just a number.

There are a lot of relevant cliches, race your race, race within yourself, stay loose, etc, but they are all kind of true. And the bottom line is that the point of all of this racing nonsense is to have fun.

Easy hour today.
Not sure what to do tomorrow. I'm doing my first TT ever on Friday so I am wondering if I should do my normal openers tomorrow or just do another easy ride since I'm racing Sat and Sun as well. I figure the warmup on the day of the TT would serve as the opener so a short, easy ride the day before a TT is better.

Curious what that omnium is?

It's 2 road races in Flagstaff AZ. You can do them separately or both count as points in the omnium, one of the days was supposed to be a hill climb but due to permits, it was changed to a second road race.

thanks. sounds fun, i like flag - too far away for me. :)

why is riding fixed gear so fun? part of me is kind of looking forward to the end of road season so I can spend some more time on this bike...

Is that an honest question or a rhetorical question?

rhetorical.

I'll answer even though it is rhetorical question... It is fun because it is different, and because you treat your fixed gear rides as low stress riding around, rather than structured training. A lot of my off season training is on a fixed gear bike, and around October I'm always really looking forward to riding the fixed gear and I have a ton of fun on it. By January or February I'm ready to hang it up and ride only on my geared bikes. It may have some marginal training benefits over only riding geared bikes, but mostly I think mixing up types of riding keeps it fresh for me mentally.

Yup.

yeah you're probably right. same reason i enjoy riding my cross bike in the woods. have only done easy commuting on the fixed gear but am looking forward to doing more this fall.

1hr of extremely easy noodling (like 100w) with a couple of 2-3min tt efforts with a pair of clip ons @globecanvas was nice enough to lend me, to get a good feel for the position. Raised the cockpit a couple of spacers.

Pushed it a bit yesterday for 21 miles. I even had the top time of the day for a popular 1 mile in length Strava segment; oooh, I am rocking :p
Day off today.

Made it out for a group ride this morning (5:52am), nice to be able to get a nice workout in and still be in the office at my usual time. Possibly picking up a powertap of my own today (finally, I was getting spoiled by my very generous friend letting me borrow his off and on) so I'm excited to introduce some more structure into my routine and monitor any gains

touched my road bike for the first time since saturday. openers. felt awful for the first few but rode into them a bit and felt solid by the end.

Openers, 20w/kg ftp spin ups, 19x15sec seated stomps to ~2600w, 3x3 1800w vo2. Drank a gallon of 93 octane, it seems to work better than cyto. Shaving legs for them marginal gains, writing phone number on TT helmet cuz them laydeez can't resist.

Why are you reporting #westcoastwatts ?