Been trying to find a time to do longer rides in the winter, but not take away from family squad time. I always say that I have all the gear to ride in the winter, I really need to make use of it. I also have lights, so…
Even though the temperature was near freezing, I wanted to do 4 hours because Sunday is a complete washout. As always, consult with @stb222 on clothing and off I went, an hour before sunrise. I also planned to do this without stopping as I just found a loop I made and went with it, I also thought having a pack would keep my water from freezing. OH THE FORESHADOWING
Sun was on fire this time around.
I’ve been enjoying these open ended sweetspot workouts. I decided to wait until the sun came up to start, and once it did I let it rip. 1 hour at 252w and I’m just finishing up my bottles. I go to drink out of my pack and woops, I forgot to blow the water back into the pack, rut roh. I blow some more but I’m not making any headway. I hear some crunching in the nozzle part but man, I’m not getting anything. I see that I’m coming up to a gas station, roll in and go checkout the bathroom in hopes that it has a hand dryer, instead of asking if I can put my pack on the roller dog machine. I do and scoop a rice crispy treat as a thank you.
Now my body adjusted from the 5 minutes in the store and my hands are wet, not good. Takes a while to get them back to the right temp. I take a swig from my now unfrozen pack and the rubber nipple is cracked, squirting valuable carbs all over my gear and my gloves. Would have been gross on a warm day, but just a huge suck fest on a cold one. I realize I will have to stop and twist the nipple (lol) and drink, then close it to keep on going.
Then I notice my garmin saying “memory is full”. Not sure what that means, but it’s still showing me things, so I keep on keepin on. I don’t think I have too much crap on it, but I’m not stopping to figure it out now
Needless to say I’m running a little lean on my fuel and keep going, but still smash another 250w for an hour. It’s just starting to warm up as I get closer to home and I can unzip the jacket and “warm” down.
All before 10am. Whats for lunch?
Bike Check 3
Do you need 3 drop bar bikes? Absolutely not. I kept seeing this bike come up on an add somewhere and realized I had to have it. I had a full on gravel bike, full on race bike, but what about the bike that can do both if need be? The Blackheart All Road is just that. Reading the “about” of the company and the bike really drove it home. The creator of the bike wanted a CAAD10 that could ride dirt roads… sounds a lot like me. It’s also the first new (read “not new to me”) bike I have bought in quiet some time.
This thing fits 38s (40s if you are careful enough) and still has somewhat roadie geometry. More of a roadies gravel bike. I guess that’s an endurance bike? I’m not sure what it is, but its comfortable and still fast enough to join group rides with. I do most of my riding on this bike because of that. Of course the China carbon wheels I got used from some guy local. I risk my life with the Enve knockoff carbon bar, almost makes me want to buy a real one… ALMOST. I pieced together the AXS kit. 46 tooth chainring with the 10-44 in the back is more than enough gearing to go fast and still climb stuff if need be.
Saturdays call for OTS rides. The goal is to do between zone 2 and sweet spot as long as you can. Last time I did just under 2 hours and felt good. Today was asking for a tad more with 150 TSS. I blocked out 3 hours and gave it a wing.
Another thing since we last left each other, I really started to hit the sunrise/hour before sunrise weekend rides. It’s perfect since the kids sleep in on the weekends, usually while having a sleepover, and mandi is happy to sleep in on a Saturday morning. In the summer it’s almost necessary because it can be 100% humidity and 80 degrees before the sun comes up. In the winter it kind of sucks, but it’s nothing like a NJ winter.
So I set off at first light, got to the good roads on 15 minutes and smashed the lap button. I decided to put on some old school VeloBeats and just zone out, trying to smash between 200-260w for as long as I could.
Another thing I’ve learned was how important fueling is. I’ve finally dived into trying to hit 60-90g carbs on a training ride per hour and man, what a difference. It’s like race fuel. I can’t believe I didn’t do this sooner. In the past I had trouble with certain drinks flavors after X amount of hours, the cost of gels, etc. I ended up getting targeted ads for a drink mix called Formula369 and it seems to be the best cost per gram of carb I could find.
Pretty happy with that effort and I’m really hoping this is going to setup a good foundation going forward.
Bike check 2
This is now my oldest bike in the stable, with nearly 5,200 miles on it. I bought the CAAD4 frame for $350. The China carbon wheels have been bomb proof. The 11 speed still has its place. I don’t ride this too often, and really only ride it when I’m racing the Tuesday night crit/road race or think I’m going to crash in a sketchy group ride. Every time I jump on it, I forget how fast real road bikes are. I tell myself I should ride it more, but it being so harsh on a regular training ride makes no sense.
Weights Thursday, It’s amazing how doing the same weight that I did on Monday, on Thursday, it felt lighter. I guess your body makes them adaptations quick. I’ve been doing good holding off on buying Zwift or anything like that, but Sunday looks to be a wash out and I’m not sure I can mustard up 2 hours. I guess I can check my Netflix list and see if I have anything good.
The Stigmata is 20mm taller than the Exploro was in stack. I was extremely comfortable on that bike. In efforts to get the front end even lower, I thankfully found my old slamthatstem.com bearing cover:
Where did we start? Backtrack; August 18th I did my best ever power test (317w for 20 minutes/ 301w @156lbs ) and was feeling really good. I was attempting to be super fit for a gravel race out in mountains called Pisgah Monster Cross, but my body just knew I was crushing it and decided to get some stomach bug at the end of August. I took a solid 2 weeks off from doing anything really productive on the bike, mostly because I was peeing out of my butt for a week straight. Eventually I did some trail rides with Finn, couple hour lunch spins to enjoy the break from the humidity.
I dove into the Off-season plan plenty fresh. I started September 25th. It starts with 3 weeks of “foundation”, which kind of gets your body used to some of the stuff you’re going to do, but not overdoing it. Then 10 weeks of weights. I chose the at home gym plan as I had a squat rack and some kettle bells, I did my best without buying that ViPR thing they were looking to do. So tons of squats, I added some dead lifts. Plus going to the gym is another monthly fee, driving to and from, etc. They also want you to ride 30 minutes before and after. It’s much easier to do that at home. Depending on the weather and how I feel, I lift, then do a chill MTB ride, or if I’m lazy I’ll just sit on the trainer and watch Stephen A Smith argue. My max 1 rep max squat was 235 at the first “test”. I failed 245. At the end of the strength phase, I was able to rep 235 4-5 times. Pretty cool to see massive gains being a newbie lifter. Long gone are the days of suddenly gaining 20-30w on our FTP, but big jumps in anything measured is cool. I feel like I could do more, but apparently the heavy lifting part is over.
Catching up to today, we have more focus on being explosive/fast with your lifts. Jump squats instead of heavy squats. FasCat has you lift one day, then do some sprints the next day. I must say that I’ve never done anything remotely close to “sprints” this early into the year. It seems that the trend is to touch that energy system a little bit in the off season though.
I will say that these felt really, really good. Sprinting from a standstill and cranking those RPMs up. My legs felt super fresh and could handle the jumps with ease. Couple weeks of this until we start the Sweet Spot base plan, that’s when Santa leaves back for the North Pole.
Bike Check 1 I guess to keep things interesting as I’ve been gone for a long time, we can recap what kind of rides we got in the stable.
I was originally on a cracked 3T Exploro that was repaired (not my first time) and may have accidentally bid on this because I wanted it. Ended up swapping all my crap over and bam, new bike. I think my seat position was a little off on the first ride making it feel strange. It certainly is a different beast from the Exploro, a little more upright, little more gnar ready, fits wider tires. The Exploro was awesome because it did really well as an endurance/racey road bike with 32s on it. I was very close to trying to find another one, but was really hung up on the 42mm measured tire max width. I have GXP on all my drop bar bikes, so I stick with some vintage cranksets to swap my powermeter over on all of them. I spent way too much time on the Sheldon Brown gear calculator to make sure 46 10/51 is going to be the perfect amount of gearing for me. The China carbon wheels are from 2018, same specs as the OG Stans Valors and have been absolutely bomb proof.
I only have one real ride on it, but I think it will be what I’m looking for in a gravel rig. Excited to see what fat tires we can fit in this pig.
2020 has not gone the way anyone has thought it would. When I made the last post in the end of February, the world was still kind of normal. Lots of things have happened, but I haven’t written about them.
Couple of buds did the Morrow Gravel look. I took my 28mm road bike and loved it.
BWR was still scheduled for May, so I was still getting after it, trying to be fit AF for that thing. Did a lot of adventures on some different paths to get ready for that.
Dat early morning sunrise was awesome all winter/early spring.Was spending more and more time on my Gravel/CX bike with 32mm slicks.I convinced David to ride his bike with 32mm slicks on mountain bike trails, more than once.Made for some weird looking loops, but he was up for an adventure.Some early AM Uwharrie trips were on tap, even the famous Jeep climb was on the menu.
I started doing a TrainerRoad plan in April and fell in love with the structure and the peace of mind of knowing every pedal stroke counts for fitness gains. The jury is still out if I am a good ramp tester or FTP test person in general, but I have felt sharper. I always tried to do the workouts outdoors if I could, as it’s way better outside.
DZ even wanted to check out the Love Valley Roubaix loop, sine that was cancelled. He got this awesome photo of me.
At some point, BWR got cancelled and I was confused on what to do next. Part of a training plan means you plan around certain events. With them disappearing and rescheduling, I was losing motivation and desire to even ride. I like to ride my bike so I can be faster at racing my bike. Especially since most of my riding during the week is solo.
I ended up moving on from my Hellafaster when the opportunity came to by Tim Willis Motivus Maximus. Since the geometry was exactly the same, it was as simple as moving my parts over and measuring my seat height. Win/Win.I saw an ad for the Ride Shotgun seat on some social media site and I decided to grab it.
Ride Shotgun; Jack LOVES it. I’ve ripped some tame singletrack with him and his stoke level is always 100. It became a normal evening for us to head out after dinner and shred as a family of 4.
The first gravel/long race I did was in July, the Tryon Gravel Gallop. I went into this completely blind and based on the elevation profile, it seemed like it had some climbing but nothing crazy. I got dropped from the main group of 15 about 11 miles in and pretty much yo-yo’d from solo racers the rest of the day. The gravel climb up to Dupont was no joke and 32mm slicks was not the right tool for the job. One of the road descends was extremely steep and twist and made me glad to have disc brakes. I think I dialed in my nutrition well for this race, but 10-15 minutes off where I wanted to be. Thankfully my power numbers showed that I was actually working. Racing gravel is hard.
Weekend morning rides always had this great sunrise shot.
The Uwharrie Gravel Grinder was a race I skipped last year because of the course, but this year, it was still happening and I figured I had to support the local scene. I only knew a handful of names, but knew 90% of the course. I ended up putting some 38mm Specialized Pathfinder Pros on the week before and was excited to see what this extra volume was about. I kept trying to push the pace and keep it high for the first 30 minutes or so, but everyone was together.
On one slight up hill, I find myself at the front putting in an effort up this steady climb and realize I have created a gap. I decide to just keep pressing on at the power level I know I can hold for 10-15 minutes. Eventually, with how windy and twisty the roads are, I’m out of sight. I’m sure this wont last forever, but I dial it back slightly and just stay on the gas. Up the jeep climb and I push slightly more here, but end up walking the jeep section. No way I’m running. pass the aid stations and they were surprised to see me so soon. I guess this is good? I’m still by myself…
Which seems likes forever. I roll through the S/F and can see a group of 3 of them, maybe 3-4 minutes back. The pros/cons of out and back loops. I stay in my zone, keep hydrating and eating, all is well. The second lap is going as planned, until I suddenly feel this weird sensation stopping my rear wheel the second time up the jeep climb.
My tube somehow fell out of my strap under my seat and is now WRAPPED AROUND my cassette and chain. 41 miles into a 50 mile race, 30 of them solo, and I’m dealing with a mechanical with exhausted legs and arms. I spend 2-3 minutes ripping this out and finally get in my way. Afraid that someone will sneak up on my here. The rest was nice but now my body isn’t interested in pedaling anymore. I’m almost out of water now too.
Thankfully some of the people at the turn around spots have a bottle of water and I stop, squeeze it into my bottle and head off. I do see another gentleman solo coming up on my as we pass each other, I still have 4 minutes or so on him. I ask if he’s 40+ and he says yes, so that is a slight relief.
Rod ends up closing the gap on me with about 10 minutes left of the course. We chat for a tad and he decides to attack me, and I’m totally cooked from my steady state effort and have absolutely nothing to give. I end up rolling in 30 seconds after him, and I will win the Open 50 mile version. The venue is based at a camp ground and has easy access to the lake. Sadly it was pretty warm, but a nice way to clean up and wipe the gravel/grime off yourself.
A win is a win.
I was feeling good about myself and was excited to see what else I can do to challenge myself. I see Trans-Sylvania puts in a race in Holly Shelter, about 30 minutes from Wilmington, where my parents live. So I planned a vacation around doing that race. Had some time to kill so:
Decided to jump into another Rock Hill Crit. always interesting.
Crit legs haven’t really showed up, or I’ve just been unlucky.
At some point this year, I decided to convert the Motivus to disc. I was slowly acquiring parts. One of the reasons I got this frame, a quick for swap and boom, you have disc bike. Amazing. I started looking at my road bike fleet and soon realized that the Mr. Pink was going to be the odd man out. The Aloominator fits 40mm tires, the Motivus cleared 30mm tires with rim brakes… Pinky just did too many things that the other bikes did. I decided to sell the frameset. I needed another road bike though, still. Ive grown accustom to two road bikes. Having one down for some reason, it’s always nice to have a road bike to pedal fast on.
Not it’s last ride, but Mr. Pink at one of my favorite spots in Oakboro.
Especially if I was going to take the Motivus off the road, I needed another bike to pedal. I always loved my CAAD10 frame and figured that would be a good replacement. I don’t need the tire clearance anymore, just the a bike that would go fast. I ended up pulling the trigger on a frame that is over 16 years old. The end product looked like this:
2004 CAAD4. Instant love.
How can something from 2004 still ride so well? Threaded bottom bracket, not one creak or noise. In, love.
Convinced some new friends to come on some adventures too.Took a day off in Tuesday and took this awesome photo.
So now you’re all caught up. BWR is in May. Two more Rock Hill Crits are on the calendar. Theres two gravel events left on the calendar, Kings Gravel in October, which looks like a faster/tamer version of the URE Gravel race I did this year, and Saluda Roubaix, which I did last year and had a blast on. They have a new course too. I think I’ve also convinced DZ to do both of them.
If 2020 has shown anything, it’s that nothing will go to plan.
Lets backtrack, November 3rd, 2019, after my last scheduled cross race, I was completely burnt out. To be expected, obviously. Racing ST in January and keeping any sort of fitness that long is going to take its toll. I’ve gone down this road, but this time it was just different. I really was sick of it. I can honestly say I could give two shits about riding bikes. That lasted a month, I went a whole month not touching a bicycle. I sold my SSCX and ended up buying a motorcycle, which was fun to tinker with and learn with. That kind of took over a lot of my free time when I was solo. I enjoyed wrenching. I really thought, I wasn’t going to give a crap about cycling anymore. I would just be a gear head again. I didn’t get fat or anything, which was interesting.
First day home and the latest photo I have of it:
As always, projects are never done. I learned a lot and still have some learning to do, but taking a non running bike for the price I sold my SSCX into this, with just some elbow grease and some cheap parts, it’s been a blast.
December came and the weather started turning around. I was getting the itch to do something, but still, nothing was sparking excitement. I rode maybe once a week, if that. Then one warm sunny weekend, I jumped into our local “zones” ride. It’s pretty much an endurance ride with 3 sectors that have “race” sections. I knew I would have no business racing any of them, but I could sit in the slacker group and have a good ride, right? Wrong. I got dropped in 2 of the 3 and completely rode by myself, assessing my situation and the WTF am I doing.
It really was the rock bottom of my fitness. I was hoping it would spark me into starting to ride again, and it did.
Short track was two weeks away,
and I was totally against it. With some nudging from some friends, I decided to jump into the first one. The course is the same, so you can really compare apples to apples with lap times. I do the 45 minute open race (compare to Cat1?) instead of the expert 60 minute race. Last year in this category, I went OTF and completely crushed it. This year? 18th out of 27. A good 30 seconds slower on each lap. Eye opener, and it mostly just added fuel to the fire.
I did some workouts during the weeks that I did last year to get in shape, and I got faster. I felt better. I was being competitive. Not where I was, but more of the middle pack I was expecting.
I ended up crashing out of the 3rd race after just hanging off the back of the lead group. I pulled the plug, realizing this was a waste of time and only wanted a result I got what I wanted out of short track.
I had some sort of “fitness” to work with. What was I going to do? What was going to keep me motivated for 2020?
Mandi and I watched the BWR documentary or whatever it was, and it looked awesome. I always said, that was the kind of events I liked. Gear selection and WTF am I doing in the same thing. I would love to do that event, but it doesn’t exist over here, and I’m not rich enough to take a flight for a bike race.
AND THEN… something happened.
[USER=1585]@jShort[/USER] posts about the BWR race coming to the east coast, only to find out its in Asheville. Interests perked up. I floated it by the boss and decided, with my fitness the lowest it has been in a while, I’m going to dive into this head first. I signed up at 12:01 and I’m fully committed. I decide to crack open the Time Crunched Cyclist book again and figure out if I can squeeze some magic out of it. I followed the endurance plan last year and was juts off the podium on same local events. Granted they weren’t 140 miles long and I may have not done all of the hours on the weekends, but it offered some promise.
So here we are, on a Thursday, 2020. All caught up. 2 weeks into the CTS TCS plan.
I wanted to recap this year because I feel that a lot of people could be inspired by it. I know I will always have some residual fitness, and not really “couch to marathon” material, but it’s close enough. The target race is an event that people know about could relate to.
Here is my strava fitness/freshness recap from the last two years. It is the lowest it has ever been, since I used HR/Power.
I have no idea what this will turn into. I’d like to recap every “ride/workout” I do, but it would be more training related. Not sure if that is cool anymore. Which I think people would enjoy, seeing the 4-5 hours of riding a week and what can come from it. Maybe I will always post a photo every day or something? I like adding the pressure of keeping a blog to the mix.
The burnout is over, I feel motivated and back to the business. Short stint of short track races that didn’t go so well, but the races and small flash of fitness got me back in the groove.
I sold my SSCX, the thrill is gone for this year. With the money from the SSCX, I bought a motorcycle that wasn’t 100% running. Totally diving head first into figuring this thing out.
jamespearl 