Bier en modder

The week hasn’t started all that well.   I spent a little time Monday and Tuesday trying to coax the powertap back to life. Turns out it wasn’t the battery – although I replaced it anyway.  So I replaced the hub and chest strap batteries since it didn’t seem to be able to pick up a signal.  Nope.  Nada.

Called Saris and spoke with tech support;

“You do this?”
“Yep.”
“How about this…?”
“Yep”
“Well, did you see this on the screen”
“Yep”
“Hmmm, you have another powertap handy that you can check the signal against”
Yes, of course, I have them coming out of my ass, “Um, No, I don’t”
“Well, that doesn’t sound good.  We’ll need to look at both the hub and the head unit. Go ahead and send it back to us”

So that’s where we’re at.  It’s not the end of the world.  My bike is good.  I’m healthy.  Everyone’s doing well.  It’s all good.  I was, however, really enjoying using it and was thinking about covering up the unit’s power readout with black tape to avoid getting analysis paralysis during rides.  Ultimately, it comes down to how you feel when you’re riding.  I’ve been riding long enough to know that I’m pushing as hard as I can on a 20 minute interval.  I don’t need to know how much power I’m putting out to feel that.  So it’s on it’s way back to Wisconsin.

What else.

Called Merrill Lynch to get an old rollover IRA transfered to my regular one.  30 minutes and 4 transfers later, I was told that I couldn’t.  Apparently the address change I submitted 2 years ago never got entered.  So they were getting statements bounced back from my old address and subsequently put my account on hold.  It now needs to be reactivated before they can do anything.  I hate Merrill Lynch.

I’m on a roll now.

You know, I’ve been slowly coming to an uncomfortable conclusion that I really, really, really dislike other bike commuters.  It’s been building for some time now and I think this summer it’s coming to a head.  We hear commonly that drivers feel that most cyclists ignore the rules of the road.  In my opinion, I think that’s a pretty fair statement.  The shit that I see people do on bikes – day in and day out – sometimes defies logic and explanation.

I think the Portland area drivers have been becoming adjusted to bikes on the road for some time now.  We belong.  And while it’s not the same everywhere, I see and hear less of cyclists getting swerved at or honked at & told to get off the road.  Again, this is not a universal statement but it’s just what I see when and where I ride (east side, west hills, Clackamas Co).  Your mileage, especially in the ‘burbs or up in Vancooter, may vary.

But…I do see and hear far more anger and tension from drivers from people on bikes doing dumb shit.  Blowing lights & stop signs.  Swerving in and out of traffic.  Crap like that.  And while I try not to let it bother me, sometimes it does.  The drivers that I rely on to give me a little extra space or consideration is starting to feel they no longer want to anymore.  In some cases, it’s getting hostile.

I’m probably in the minority where I follow all the rules of the road.  Really.  I don’t clip out & foot down but I do stop & track stand for a split second before moving on even when no one’s around.  I’m even more anal when I have my team kit on.  Doesn’t cost any time but I do know that more often than not, it gets me waved through by any other cars in the area.  I guess I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to just…stop.

I’m not really sure where I’m headed with this although I could write about it for hours.  I certainly don’t have a solution.  I wish I did.  Education?  Stricter enforcement with steeper fines?  I don’t really know.

Whew.  Moving on to the little stuff…

It’s hot.  And being the delicate flower that I am, it’s a little rough on me.  Enough of this 90’s shit.  Gimmie 60’s and 70’s and I’ll be happy.  I don’t like hot.

All of my taps at home are dry.  I need to put a call in to Belmont Station to see what they have.  Aside from the “Pssssst” of a flat tire, there are fewer depressing sounds I know of than a sputtering blown keg.

Lastly, I’m out of coffee here at work.  Great.  I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday.  I gotta go.

Had a decent weekend.  Spent Saturday out on Sauvies Island.  Not riding but berry picking and hanging out on Rachel’s dad’s boat.  Pretty nice, low-key sort of day.

Sunday was OUCH.  Got myself and the bike ready and headed out to Corbett.  I must have done may math all wrong because I figured out a little too late that I was running behind.
As a side note, tt’s a small goal of mine to make sure that I get a decent warm-up in before races this year.  I had a nice 40′ set all ready to go:

• 15′ easy spin
• 10′ gradual build from tempo to TT pace
• 3′ easy spin
• 5′ at TT pace
• 3′ easy spin
• 1′ hard, high cadence
• 2′ easy spin.

My start time was at 33:00.  I found myself sitting in the porta-potties when the first rider went off.  Crap (literally).  I need to get moving.

Jog back to the car.  Do some quick math to cut the warm up short a bit and start spinning.  This doesn’t feel good.  It was a little chilly but after the first 10 minutes, the sweat was starting to run and things were improving.  I stopped the warm-up at 26 minutes in, figuring I had a 2 or 3 minutes to get over there.

Mmmmm, nope.  I got over there at 36:30.  So they just sent me off.

I don’t do many time trials but from my understanding a big part of doing them well is avoiding the temptation to go out too hard, too fast.  I had a decent idea of where I’d set my power at for the full hour or so.  So I got in that range and just set to work.

There’s not really all that much that’s exciting about time trials.  You ride hard until you cross the line.  And for OUCH, you go up.  And up.  And up.

About 2/3 of the way through, the batteries on the head unit went out.  By then I was about 40 minutes into the race so I knew what level of effort it would take to finish out.  Plus, I thought, it’s never a bad idea to just unplug once in a while.

Since I started 4 minutes late, I was out of the range of the 4/5 group and solidly in the middle of the 3’s and the 1/2’s.  I passed a couple 3’s pretty early on and got passed by a 1/2 shortly after that.  The rest of the race was fairly quiet.

Finished up at the top and kind of spun around.  I felt decent.  Exhausted but not totally spent.  Checked the time: around 1:11, which I’m assuming included the 4′ dipshit penalty I assessed myself.  so realistically I finished the climb around 1:07. Pretty good.

As a side, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why more ‘crossers aren’t in this race.  It’s an hour long at just at or over your threshold.  It’s uphill so there’s a little more muscular strength involved as opposed to just tucking in and spinning.  If nothing else, it helped set my 60 minute threshold power in a race environment.

Not much else to say about the race.  I downloaded what was left of my data and have adjusted my workout ranges for the next few weeks.  I’d like to get 1 or 2 PIRs in before they shut down for the year.  This week is a little busy but hopefully next Mon. or Tues.  We’ll see.