LAJ

Lee Hill, Jamestown? It looked to be a wonderful morning, and hope you had a good time!

valygrl

Yes, Jamestown/Lee Hill. It was great.

IBOHUNT

Wanted to do ~1 hour at a wattage and cadence. Missed the wattage number but made my cadence target.
Ended up a good day on the bike. Felt good to go at it hard. 1hr 40 minutes total. IF of 0.918 with a TSS of 139

sarals 

Two hard rides yesterday, both good. Coach 2.5 hours on the schedule, so at my training partner's suggestion, I (we) split it between dirt and pavement. I started off on the cross bike riding some fire roads and trails and getting in some S T E E P climbs (don't stand up on the cross bike on a steep climb, the rear wheel will start to spin - ask me how I know that). Attacked a few rollers, and laughed quite a lot. I didn't have power, but I'd estimate the TSS at 50 or so for the hour.

I got on the Look for the pavement session right after that. Perpetuem was the fuel, as well as a gel. Got a little over an hour of steady pace range riding, with attacks on the rollers and on some of the shorter climbs (none of the climbs were long). Towards the end I averaged 160 watts for almost 6 minutes on a long, shallow climb. Not bad for almost two hours in. I did a few sprint efforts on the way home. That TSS was over 60. Good day's work!

The Look, for some reason, feels like something is dragging in the driveline. The odd part is that it descends normally, so it's not wheel related. Under power it requires more than a "normal" effort to make it go, and it's not the bottom bracket. I'm wondering if the pulleys on the derailleur are causing it? Ideas?

Heathpack 

Nice ride @IBOHUNT, hard work does just feel good. (Usually.)

Sounds like you had fun-on-the-bikes, @sarals. Well deserved after a tough stretch at work. Sorry no comment on your driveline question, I know almost nothing about bikes.

Well just like I jinxed @sarals by talking about saddle issues, she jinxed me right back with her talk of work stress, which I had in spades on Tues in a very long (5 hr) difficult surgery which was not a disaster but did not go well. Then of course I got home late and didn't sleep well.

I actually got up Wed at my usual 4:30am and didn't feel like riding, extremely rare for me. But I had something new on the schedule, some bridge-type intervals and some sprints, I wanted to give it a try. I'm glad I did, it was a good ride. I had trouble with some of the high power targets but pretty much got it done. I think it was something like 1:10, IF 88, TSS 90ish.

So tired all day and then I slept like a rock. Today is rest day. Tomorrow some kind of sprinting opener thing and a follow-up visit to my fitter, totally looking forward to that. Sat is an intramural race for one of my cycling clubs, a TTT. I'm looking forward to it but its comically disorganized so is probably going to be more like a fast 17 mi group ride and an excuse to have a club picnic afterward.

sarals 

Heathie, you'll enjoy that TTT!

Sorry I channeled work stress to you No more of that, I promise!

IBOHUNT

6.6 mile of ru**i*g at dinner time (noon). That stuff is for criminals. Don't know how anyone can enjoy that stuff.
That was a total(!) plodfest. Old lady in a walker says... 'on your left sonny!'

Didn't get to ride in the evening. Same rules apply to getting on a bike as when hunting locally. If it's raining when I am set to go out I don't. Rain when I'm already out is OK.

Leave tomorrow for Myrtle beach. Will be working on my gTSS (golf TSS) using a bad shoulder and then emulating @revchuck by searching for bridge repeats (Georgetown has a couple nice ones)

sarals 

IBO, have fun!!! Full report, or you didn't do it

Heathie, the same for you!

I did about 50 minutes in the gym yesterday. No ***ing. Strength workouts! I couldn't hold the "superman" for very long at all, fail. Everything else went well, though. Today I am S O R E. And water swollen, around my hips and lower back. The older I get the more that happens. I hate my body, sometimes. Like today.

I do the "openers thingie with sprints" tomorrow, Heathie. Then a 3/4 crit on Sunday so I can get creamed. But have fun doing it!

shovelhd

Keep that power down on the openers and sprints.

sarals 

Oh, yeah... Half hearted sprints and recovery effort for the rest of the time.

IBOHUNT

34 miles of wanting to do some cadence thing. Probably looked like a monkey making love to a football with my lengthly, on a good day, 28" inseam

Avg cadence 106
IF 0.94
TSS 151

shovelhd

It's not about half hearted, it's about form. They should be way harder mentally because you are concentrating on smooth power delivery from the jump to the line. Openers are short 1 minute efforts until lactic sets in then back off. The rest is just toodling along.

revchuck 

I did the five sets of descending intervals yesterday. I was a bit concerned about being able to complete them, so I backed off the power somewhat from Monday's 133-137% to 125-130%. Again, it was no problem, and I had a good bit of gas left in the tank. I spoke with my coach yesterday afternoon and she changed my workout this coming Wednesday from six of these intervals to a minimum of six of them...basically, it's boogie till you puke.

I've been through eight radiation treatments so far, no impact that I can tell...unless maybe I'm becoming nuclear powered.

shovelhd

That's great news.

sarals 

Yes, okay - that's how I've been doing an openers ride. "Attacking type efforts until lactic", and then back off, three, but not in a row. Sprints are about form, and are half to 2/3 power, and shorter jumps than a full on sprint would be. Three of those. They are harder because I am concentrating on shifting, pedal stroke, and delivering power to the pedals. The whole ride is 60 minutes. That's about right, isn't it?

sarals 

Chuck, maybe that's why your power is so good! Hey, good news!!!

Heathpack 

shovelhd

I go a little harder on the sprints, around 80%, but the focus is the same. I do not watch my power meter, it's all via RPE. I also focus on body position over the bike. I will jump opened up but get into an aero position out of the saddle as I wind up.

Heathpack 

I did my opener ride today and then went to my post-purchase fit with my fitter.

I rode solo, but met some cycling friends for coffee & breakfast afterward. Then home & grab the TT bike and head down to Carson for the fitting. Which happened to take place in the Velodrome where the elite track cycling nationals were taking place, so it was an interesting day. Totally distracting for my fitter too because he fits a lot of those athletes. So he'd be working with me and hear a name announced and he'd freeze and perk his ears up, just the way a dog does when you open a box of dog biscuits. He'd say "This guys gonna be fast" and then perk his ears up again trying to ear the guy's finish time.

The fit as set-up by the shop was totally off, we kind of knew that but couldn't adjust bars because the cables had been cut too short. Fitter dropped the bars something like 3.5 cm and moved them forward 4 cm. Thr shift cables had to be disconnected to do that so I didn't get a totally representative test ride. But it felt pretty good to me and he was very very happy with it to the extent that he wanted to take a pic for his FB page. Um, no, my hair was kind of messed up from my morning ride.

I have a Cobb saddle sent me by @IBOHUNT for an extended test ride, Thank you very much. Much better than the saddle the bike came with. It was the saddle we did the pre-purchase fit with and I didn't much like it then. For some reason it seemed much better today but I dont think I'll be able to know until I can really ride the bike which will need to wait until it can be re-cabled. Some bar issues too, but nothing insurmountable.

Both Stages power meters came home today. Basically Stages couldn't figure out what was wrong with them (although they too could not get them to send data) except that it wasn't the hardware. So they replaced all the internal electronics and the battery housing & doors for good measure. All of this has already been done on one of the units, back in October, so I'm not too optimistic, the thing worked for a few weeks and then it was same old, same old.

sarals 

Shovel, that is almost exactly what I do, the difference is I don't go quite as hard. 65 - 70% is more what I do, and that's also RPE, I only look at power after the ride. I do go a little longer on the form sprints than a real sprint so I can absorb the feel, and how I adapt to it. As an observation, I don't tend to rock the bike around very much in a sprint (or at all) until my cadence gets to the higher ranges. Then, if I'm "in sync" and doing it right/well, it becomes almost a dance, and I am in a rhythm with the bike.

Heathie - exciting!! I can't wait to hear how Grasshoppa feels now that you're fit to it. I'm also anxious to hear how you like the Cobb saddle. It and the Adamo are very, very similar.

Oh - saddle. I had a dermatologist visit yesterday. I was told "irritation, use more chamois creme". He described it as being identical to kind of chaffing he sees in long distance runners. It's not from pressure points, but from clothing. I'm always learning something!

sarals 

@Shovel - here's the openers ride I did today:

https://www.strava.com/activities/364387894

Here's how it went, and this is fairly typical for what I do for a flat crit. 25 minutes at warmup, keeping the cadence high (above 90 RPM), then three attacking efforts with 2 minutes or so of cool down between. The idea was to get the HR below 100. I kept the efforts below 280 watts, and they each lasted a minute, just long enough for lactic to start and my legs to really feel warm. I launched them from a low speed, OTS, but more a roll on than a true attack. After that was the form sprints. I started each sprint above 20MPH, and they were not explosive kicks, more like roll ons. I held them for 10 - 15 seconds to shift up, build the cadence, and concentrate on form. After those was 15 minutes of cool down, varying cadence, but high cadence for the last couple of minutes.

shovelhd

Perfect!!!! Good luck tomorrow.

sarals 

Thanks!!

Heathpack 

Well, my intramural club TTT was today and I'm not even going to consider it a race because as predicted it was so disorganized that it was more like a fast group ride. We had a 17 mile course, a couple of little climbs and then mostly rollers. A pretty flat course for our neck of the woods, it was only 750 ft climbing.

I'm a member of a big Filippino cycling club, I joined because they have a huge endurance component. Lots of newby endurance people but some pretty bad-ass endurance racing types, tons of valuable experience to tap. Culturally, everything Filippino is about smiling and being relaxed and being easy-going, the positive side of which is that everything is always fun and pleasant. The negative being that things tend to be a bit disorganized at times. You just have to roll with it, overall it's a great club. Every summer there is a series of intramural races between chapters (there are 500ish members and multiple chapters, mostly throughout SoCal) and today's race was the third/last in the series, I missed the other two races.

There was a bit of confusion at the beginning re:start times, I was told "10 more minutes" and continued warming up for another 8.5 minutes only to find everybody waiting on me as I returned to the start, then they were off before I was even there. We started with 10 people, a few people I know well and a few people I know of and two guys I never met before. I was the only woman.

I had to punch it a bit at the beginning to catch my team, but not too much. This guy I didn't know, must be a new member because he didn't have a club jersey, was hanging a bit off the back by the time I caught up. I was trying to pull him to the group when we got to the first little climb and he suddenly seemed to be going backwards. The climb wasn't too long, maybe 1/2 mile, so I hung with the guy thinking I could help him get back on when the climb was over. No dice, this guy could not climb, we got to the top and I could see our team had slowed down for us.

I waved them on, thinking once we crested the hill the guy would surely pick up speed and maybe even pass me, he was bigger than me. Never saw him again. Looking at Strava FlyBy, I can see he actually stopped at the top of the hill.

I was way off the back at this point and it was maybe 10-15 minutes of hard work on my own to catch the team. Once I got there, it was a bad pace line. Gaps and no rational rotation and sometimes people riding two abreast & chatting. Oy. I decided to just not worry about it, there was no point in trying to organize it on the fly.

Maybe 10-12 miles left at that point, and it was pretty fun just riding as fast as I could and trying to ride rationally relative to other people. We dropped one more guy, then one guys saddle fell off (!). He did not crash and actually finished the race without a saddle, but we lost two guys to that, picking up the saddle and it's nuts and bolts. So six of us left, three riding well including me. We three crossed the finish line together with our last two guys maybe 15-20 seconds behind us. We came in last place, we were slower but in the ballpark of other teams, just had a bunch of time penalties for dropping people.

Whatever, it was fun and a great ride for me. 49 min with an IF of 1.03, TSS 86. I was pretty maxed out, just wish I hadn't slowed down for that one guy at the beginning, it took me too long to figure out that we were going to drop him anyway. We rode back to the start, so by the time we were done it was 43 miles, 2000 ft climbing, TSS around 180 for the day.

Heathpack 

Sunday I did a 2hr JRA with two 10-min 105% FTP intervals. Very pleasant ride with a good friend, just a beautiful morning & coffee afterward. I was pretty tired from the "race" the day prior, wasn't sure I'd be able to get the intervals done but it was no problem.

Monday was just a recovery ride, my first ride in the new & improved position on the TT bike, which is 3.5 cm lower with a 4 cm longer reach. Surprised that it went pretty well, my neck muscles get tired from holding my head up but the rest of it, including my @IBOHUNT saddle aka the Cobb all seemed pretty viable.

Yesterday was rest and today was my first actual interval workout on the TT bike, some more 105% FTP intervals plus some over/unders. I really want to do as many of these workouts as possible on the road because I'm not super confident handling this bike. Unfortunately I picked two stretches of road for my intervals that turned out to be too short, so I ran out of road before I could get all the work done. Maybe for the best, because I am down on power and couldn't hit any of the high targets anyway. On the bright side, I was feeling way more confident with handling the bike just by the end of the two hour ride. And I feel like the position is perfectly do-able from a flexibility stand-point, I'm comfortable on it. Even my neck didn't seem as sore today. And I didn't even think about the saddle for more than 2 min total during the ride. So maybe today's ride was a little disappointing, I hate to miss interval targets or cut anything short or not do them all. But all-in-all, there were some promising things on today's ride for sure. And then coffee & chatting afterwards, two of my favorite things.