Whoever said it never rains in California has never spent the month of December in the San Joaquin Valley. Whole days go by with not a ray of sunshine to be found. This kind of weather brings out the big LAZY in me.
Having said that, I was looking for the proper name of a gym exercise the other night in Arnold Schwarzenegger's excellent Encyclopedia Of Modern Bodybuilding and spent an hour looking at my notes in the margin, and bookmarks left inside. I bought the book about 20 yrs ago, and would like to get it autographed, but looking through it I was amazed at how huge Arnold was. It really got me missing my gym workouts, and the mentally quiet, Zen workouts I used to do. I'm hungry for that again, so time to find a good gym and bash some iron!
This was me at 21, before spending 20 yrs in the gym. Wish I looked like this now. No issues with climbing mountains at 145 lbs. I'd be very happy to just drop 15 lbs and get some of this muscle definition showing at this point. Trying to schedule rides around the weather is tedious, so a great time to gym it up!
Good news on the Mavic wheel. I took the wheel to a LBS - one recommended by a bunch of friends - to see if it was even safe to ride. They took one look at the wheel and offered to call Mavic and try to get them to pay to have the wheel rebuilt - AGAIN. (They will be offering a wheel-building class in Jan I want to take)
I just got off the phone with Eddy an hour ago, and based on some pics he sent to Mavic, and some micrometer measurements they asked for, they agreed to have the wheel rebuilt. I don't want to say too much and jinx it, but I am cautiously euphoric. :D Eddy also agreed to rebuild the wheel using 14/15 butted spokes on the drive side, and 14/17 on the other side, so with a little luck, in a week I will have my dream wheel - finally, at long last! >B
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Tons of stuff to report on, like two short but excellent rides this week, but for me the really great news was from Colorado Cyclist. I just got off the phone with Andrea, who reported that Mavic agreed with me that the rim was faulty, and they are rebuilding the wheel with new rim and spokes! Man, I just LOVE great customer service.
I did a short, fast ride last night and had a guy on a fixie ask me to stay off his back wheel - not that 3-8 ft back it was any help behind his very slippery TT bike with deep dish wheels. (Dude, if you want to cripple your ride by tossing your gears, fine, but then no whining!) He claimed to be concerned that he couldn't stop as fast as me, so don't follow so close. Figure that one out.
Just to make a point I dropped back and followed him for 5.5 miles from Sunrise to WBP. Can you tell where he pissed me off from the HR trace? HR was +10 LT for 16 minutes - Garmin alarming for HR the whole way. A nice 21 mph average. It's all good, and great motivation. Always respect someone's wishes regarding tail-gunning. In this case it was the way it was done that raised my ire.
Off to the periodontist to get the last 2 stitches removed, but wanted to mention this wacky little ride my bike club is putting on. One after my own heart. There is this crazy steep hill about 15 miles from here called Beatty Drive, and on New Year's Day we are going to do hill-repeats for 2 hours to establish the pecking order and get some bragging rights.
I'm guessing I'll get 10 laps in before the 120 minute cut-off at the bottom start line brings the competition to a halt. I will be doing hills again seriously for the first time in a year to get ready. Cold, thick air is the BEST for climbing. Ten laps will work out to ~ 3,800 ft of climbing in 8 miles - or 16 if you include the rocket ride down hill. (on averaged, this is a completely flat course ;)
Oh, my PI Convertible Barrier Jacket arrived this morning too. Fresh from Competitive Cyclist. The cycling hub of Arkansas. Uh, yeah, right. OK, maybe not so much, but got a great price on the SIDI shoes and then a 20% discount coupon for apparel, so liking my shopping experience there.
PS: Back from the mouth butcher. All is well. Big sigh....
It was 5:00 and 75 degrees yesterday. Yes, this is August in California. I checked my calendar twice just to be sure! So why wait for late when there is so much yummy cool air out there?
Taking up this theme I headed out the door ~ 5:30 and decided to have me an unstructured ride. OK, if you know anything about me by now, it's that I don't really do unstructured, but this came pretty close to it. I didn't air up the tires. I didn't eat first, and my route was made up of turns that called out to me as I approached them.
I ended up down at Guy West Bridge, mostly curious about the progress on the construction, and I was encountering a pretty stiff headwind of cool air and runners. I'm talking about in the hundreds. I guess Fleet Feet was putting on a practice run for an upcoming event. Anyway, it was pretty interesting, and somewhat entertaining to see all the peeps out running along both sides of the trail.
I chowed down on a PowerBar at the picnic table under the bridge, smiling and waving as runners of all skill levels trudged, floated, or something in-between, passed me, pushed along by the breeze. When I tried to clip in and shove off though I found both sides of the trail clogged with runners. Hummm, what to do. How about get out in the middle and clip in right quick?
Seemed like a reasonable decision, at least until one of the 'runners' gliding through the double S turn happened to be on a bicycle. :-O I tried to get real skinney, right there in the middle on the road-kill line, but knew I'd be screwed in a few seconds as there was traffic coming in both directions that couldn't see me for the S turn.
Luckily, the woman on the bike behind slowed way down and used mental telepathy to indicate to me I should clip in, and right quick, before she fell over from doing .000001mph. Well, the seas parted, nobody crashed, and happy to report, no runners were harmed in the making of this post!
I caught up with the angel who spared me from road-kill-dom in a few hundred yards, and hung back just enough so I didn't suck on her wheel too much. We had a pretty good tailwind, but we were still only riding at 17-19mph. At some point she got down in her aerobars (the view from behind improved dramatically at that point :) and picked up the pace a little, so I cooled my jets and hung back.
Finally I could tell she was tiring, so I pulled abreast of her and we chatted for a minute before I told her it had to be my turn to pull by now. She said she didn't think she could keep up with me, but I assured her I was trying to take it easy and put in some longer miles, so I'd go slow enough. I did, for about a mile, but when I got to Watt Ave she was nowhere in sight.
It was such a nice day to ride, and I had plenty of time, fuel and water, so I rode right past WBP and on towards Sunrise. Didn't want to stop at Sunrise either. Although it was close to sunset by then, (there's a song in all this "Sunrise, Sunset" somewhere) I made the right turn for Hazel, and kept going.
At Hazel I turned right onto Gold Country for a block or so before turning into the long series of parking lots and connecting roads that comprised the recent detour used while the new retaining walls were being built last month. Less wind, less traffic, nice surface, what's not to like? Oh, and the new front brake pads are wearing in perfectly! A nice buttery feel with a great progressive pull.
Shortly after rejoining the ARPT, dropping into the aerobars (gear up, flaps up, full throttle), and hitting the power, who should I spot on the other side of the trail than my new friend on her beautiful white LiteSpeed. I made sure she wasn't in need of AAA or anything, and pushed off. It was getting late. I wish now I had gotten her contact info because we're close enough we could ride together, and she at least would really benefit from riding with a faster rider. Oh, well. Maybe another day.
I peeled off for Bannister Park and returned home with daylight to spare. Nice ride. A little over 30 miles, but a collection of waypoints I haven't gathered into a ride before. I just love that with the ARPT there just seem to be an endless number of permutations that make for interesting rides, and interesting people.
PS: More friends with broken back wheels. This time Forte, which is Performacebikespeek for 'Crap' to be sure, but still more evidence that most factory-built wheels will last 1-3 years for 170+lb riders. The replacement choice was Mavic Aksium. We'll see how long those last, if that was the right choice, and if I made the right decision going with custom OPs.
I've been struggling with fatigue. The side-effects of Amoxicillin, which, as my dentist failed to explain, is known for tearing up your GI tract, and causing colitis up to six months after you stop taking it. About 3 days into the 10-day course I was symptomatic enough to look it up on the web.
Sometimes getting the blood pumping, and doing a little sweating is the perfect remedy though, so I signed up for a moderately paced, 25mi ride on Thursday, and headed out the door for Guy West Bridge - the starting point.
I took it easy as it was 5:00 and the heat was still near the peak of the day, and its been bothering me during this little bout of malaise. I got there a few minutes late, but we were waiting for a no-show for another 10 minutes anyway, so a chance to chat and catch up a bit. Happily Perry and Kathy (for some reason I always want to call her Susan. I hate it when that happens! She must remind me of a Susan in my past somehow) were there, so we ended up with a very nice group of 4.
One of our club riders broke a drive-side spoke on his Ksyrium SL wheels on the Death Ride, so that and my friend Marsh doing all 5 DR passes on his quest to do "50 Great Things for 50" this year to mark his 50th Birthday were topics for conversation. I embedded Marsh's slide show of the DR below.
Fred, or Phred as we call him, shares my love of wrenching, and is very knowledgeable, so we were trading insights on wheels, and his single-speed conversion. Every time I look at the petite freehub body on a SS hub, I want to try slipping just the large, spidered gears from a cassette stack on it, and build much stronger and stiffer dishless wheel for my mtb.
7-speeds and no dish with 9-speed gearing
It turns out there is quite a lot of interest in this idea, and several wheel builders are now building custom wheels on Chris King and Hope hubs just for this purpose. IMHO it's the perfect compromise between 27-30 gears and one. Even with V-brakes in back, using Velocity's O/C (off-center) rims I think a dishless wheel could be built, making for an incredibly strong XC wheel.
Oregon's Wild Beauty
By the time we got to the turn-around point at Sunrise we were on to their mtb trip to Oregon a few weeks ago. This is the 2nd yr Fred has done this group outing, and in fact, organized the trip this year. Perry and Kathy also went, and Kathy had fun regaling me with all of the little side-bars that happen on such outings.
Just as we were about to start heading back, I happened to notice Fred had two different kinds of wheels on his bike, and the front one was the same as mine - except for the straight 14ga spokes. With Mavic OpenPro rims and Ultegra hubs, those are the perfect bomb-proof commuter wheels. A good match for the single-speed setup.
We waited up for Kathy after returning to William Pond Park. Realizing that Perry had sprinted ahead of us, we wanted to let Kathy catch up after 15 minutes. We hydrated briefly and had just pushed off when Perry showed up, riding towards us. It turns out, Perry had broken a drive-side spoke, just like Javier did on the Death Ride!
Mavic makes great products, and the Ksyrium have a great reputation, so I'm not sure what to make of this, but I did start looking around on the web for other reports, and it turns out there are some builders who were predicting these failures. I think the cause is the aluminum spokes and radial drive-side lacing. Unlike iron, or any alloys, like steel, which contain iron, anything made of aluminum will eventually fatigue to zero strength. IE: you never really own anything aluminum - you just rent it.
Fred and I waited up for Perry and Kathy (I just found out it's not by chance they always show up for rides together. A very cute couple!) just before the Guy West Bridge to discuss how they had parked to get around the construction going on there. We said our good-byes, they went on, and Fred and I headed back for Watt Ave and home. I'd spent almost the whole ride in Zones 3-4 to that point, so I hammered a bit on California coming home, but generally it was a nice relaxing pace.
I got home feeling great, ate well and uploaded my Garmin data. I was surprised the little 25 miler had turned into 45 miles, but then remembered I had ridden to and from Guy West. I was really tired yesterday, and still a little weak today, and that is getting frustrating, but nothing time won't heal.
Fred, enjoying his Mountain Bike Oregon ride
I have to say, I always enjoy riding with Fred, and for the first time I think I know why. Yes, we share an interest in wrenching, and neither of us likes large crowds much, but mostly I think we share the same philosophy. I like to win on occasion when I want to challenge myself, but that winning is about me doing well, not crushing or humiliating other riders.
My hope is always that when challenged or challenging, we both benefit. The only thing I hate about winning, is that everyone else has to lose (pickup racing offers everyone a chance to win, and save face if need be). In short, I like riding with Fred because I enjoy the riding. Not the win (or loss), or the group experience, or even the competition necessarily. I just enjoy the riding.
Gloriously, the sun finally reappeared today, so I saddled up and rode up to Beal's Pt at Folsom Lake. After eating a PowerBar I started sluggish. Not sure why this carbo-loading kicker slows me down like this, but it does. I made up for it on the return leg.
Highlights were:
Beautiful sunny day and deep blue water in the lakes and river
Sun isn't setting till after 5:00 again
Met a couple of friends up there
Averaged 18.2 mph for the 12 miles from Beal's Pt back to Sunrise
Got in about 2,300 ft of climbing using a slightly flatter return from Bannister Pk
I could feel the lower density of the warm air today, but just pushed hard and wracked up 21 minutes in Zone 5
My calf wasn't hurting today, perhaps because of a snowboarding sock with lots of thickness over the calf
I "starved" myself again, eating nothing during the ride except 1 bottle of Gatorade. Working on getting my body to burn more fat to stave off liver glycogen exhaustion
Friends chained to their desks were crazy jealous that I got to go ride in the middle of a warm, sunny day
I found myself looking through Colorado Cyclist's wheel building site again last night. Thinking of going with a Mavic CXP-33 aero rim instead of the Open Pro. The Ultegra 6700 hub is only available in 32 spokes up front, and since that is more than I need for strength and durability, I am thinking of taking on 65 grams of weight to get a more slippery wheel up front where the airflow is ahead of the frame, and therefore, still clean. I love the strength of the Open Pro's double eyelets in back, but not needed up front. Whew. What a great ride!
