Originally Posted by datlas (Post 18399920)

We give our employees a raise every year, only like 3% but it's better than nothing.

My income has gone down about 5% each year the past few years. Even though I am working more. Sigh.

Originally Posted by Heathpack (Post 18399570)

Triple tasking. How do you think I fit everything in?

Just looked it up. I'm at 6900 miles for the year. Last year I was around 7000. The year before that (which was a partial year, started in March, which is when I took up cycling.) was 3500 I think. I feel like I've ridden so much less this year but I forget that I was doing all that huge endurance volume earlier in the year.

Speaking of milestones, today is the exact one year anniversary of the day I started with my coach. Its been a really incredibly satisfying year for me on the bike, I 100% am happy with everything. Very lucky to have struck a perfect chord with this coach.

I posted this in the racing forum- its weird to me that when you enter a race they ask you the name of your team but there's no place to put in the name of your coach. But for me, my coach is so instrumental in any success I have that it just seems completely wrong to me that he's not officially given some credit somewhere. Honestly, its a partnership all the way, there's two of us out there on game day.

Speaking of game days, my year was good and not really summarized well by the mileage milestone. I started the year wanting to get a women's top 10 placement in this series of events: Planet Ultra | Cycling Events and Tours » King of the Mountains Century Challenge I came in 9th and to date, the Mulholland Challenge is the freakin hardest ride I've ever done. Learned tons about endurance stuff and climbing and nutrition and hydration and altitude and riding at intensity for many hours continuously and just plain finding a way to get it done. That KOM stuff was over six weeks in April-May and I spent the entire first part of the year prepping for it.

Then in June I rode my first 20k TT on my road bike. I was immediately hooked. TTs are simple but very technical too, right up my alley. I went out right away and bought an el cheapo TT bike which I've since transformed completely into a really nice TT bike. I've ridden a total of 7 TTs- three wins, three 2nd places and one 4th place. Mostly good results because my competition is thin. But I have a nemesis who I am chasing down and I finally got within a minute of her time in our last race a few weeks ago. We're halfway through a series of 10 races, she's in first place for the series and I'm in second. Completely happy to just not be embarrassing myself out there. Making a decent showing is just icing on the cake. My coach is pretty knowledgeable about TT stuff and its crazy because we rarely see each other, he lives up in Reno. But he can give me three sentences of just exactly the instruction I need for a race, nothing more. Then he lets me figure out the rest of it on my own. The whole thing is just pretty awesome.

Anyway, love the whole process totally. I get my a$$ kicked regularly with some of these workouts and OMG when I look at my schedule for next week I can't imagine how I can possibly get Tuesday's workout done. Who cares though, it will be interesting to try and see if I can do it. Just totally enjoyable to me to have the constant challenge of "what can I do on a bike?" :) :) :) Its been a very good year.

Originally Posted by Doug28450 (Post 18399879)

I have not stalked you in a while. Did you Strava any of your CX races?

Originally Posted by Bunyanderman (Post 18400248)

Is the 3% to help with the rate of inflation?

My dad told me that when Bush was in office, the civil service workers and other national defense branches got the same 3% raise. Nothing in the last 7 years or so with Obama :/

Originally Posted by Bunyanderman (Post 18400243)

Did you ever get into usacycling? @Heathpack

Originally Posted by rjones28 (Post 18400230)

Originally Posted by Heathpack (Post 18400624)

Nope. The plan was to buy a racing license in 2016, but most of the TTs I'm doing are run outside of USA Cycling. One of them is a USA Cycling event, for the first one in Nov I just bought a 1 day license. There is talk of the next one, in April, being cancelled because of the costs related with putting it on. There's a chance that promoter might drop the USA Cycling stamp-of-approval in order to save $, you really can run a perfectly good TT without the USA Cycling superstructure. So right now, I have no reason to buy into USA Cycling, I have a full race schedule until mid-April and so far nothing that I need a license for.

Once we get to Feb though, I will be finishing my current training block and coach and I will start thinking 'what's next?' Depending on what that is, I might wind up buying a license I guess.

Originally Posted by Bunyanderman (Post 18400998)

That's still really exciting :)

I had some interest in the TT stuff, but to me if you don't have a lot of the aero tech, you are at a huge disadvantage. I'm not strong enough to race at a disadvantage and still be competitive. If I had the money to go for it, I totally would. Even something simple as clamp on aero bars wouldn't be that cheap unless I got something used since you need to change out the carbon bars.

Also amazed at your near 7K miles, I just ticked over 3k!

Originally Posted by Doug28450 (Post 18401164)

It appears that the pissing contest in the Annual Mileage thread is beginning. However, the contest appears to be about climbing and not mileage.

Originally Posted by Doug28450 (Post 18401164)

It appears that the pissing contest in the Annual Mileage thread is beginning. However, the contest appears to be about climbing and not mileage.

Originally Posted by Doug28450 (Post 18401164)

It appears that the pissing contest in the Annual Mileage thread is beginning. However, the contest appears to be about climbing and not mileage.

Originally Posted by Bunyanderman (Post 18400998)

That's still really exciting :)

I had some interest in the TT stuff, but to me if you don't have a lot of the aero tech, you are at a huge disadvantage. I'm not strong enough to race at a disadvantage and still be competitive. If I had the money to go for it, I totally would. Even something simple as clamp on aero bars wouldn't be that cheap unless I got something used since you need to change out the carbon bars.

Also amazed at your near 7K miles, I just ticked over 3k!

Originally Posted by FLvector (Post 18401188)

Funny how some are so reluctant to post current miles.

Originally Posted by FLvector (Post 18401188)

Go figure. A single focus for a thread and it goes off topic. Something else to brag about. Funny how some are so reluctant to post current miles.

Originally Posted by datlas (Post 18401209)

Your comment in there made me laugh out loud. Thanks for the yucks.

Originally Posted by FLvector (Post 18401188)

Go figure. A single focus for a thread and it goes off topic. Something else to brag about.

Originally Posted by Heathpack (Post 18401048)

There are Merckx categories in almost all of these TTs, so you can race with a regular road bike and not be at a disadvantage.

The TT bikes don't have to cost that much either. Tri people seem to be more affluent and when they decide to get out of the sport, they often seem to sell their bikes for a song. But even a new TT bike doesn't have to be expensive. Mine brand new was $1600 and you wouldn't have to swap out that much to go racing on it- saddle, aerobars, and add some aero wheels (which you probably already have) and a rear wheel cover and you're good to go. Plus an aero helmet. Say $2000 all-in, if you already have the wheels. Most new TT bikes are more expensive than mine, but the Fuji Norcom Straight (which is what I have) is just a super-clean well-designed aerodynamic bargain.

I think @LAJ got his TT bike new for a very reasonable price too.

So there's really no excuse for not starting out in Merckx, seeing if you like the TT style effort and then saving up your pennies to get a good TT bike if you like it. The barrier to entry does not have to be high. Go for it. :)