Bier en modder

Today’s horoscope:

If you become a wallflower, you will wilt.  Time to put your best foot forward.

Excellent advice for Tabor tonight.

I could easily show up, grab someones wheel and ride in the warm collective bosom of the pack for 8 hill interval laps.

Or, I could go out and have fun.  Maybe try to make a break.  Who knows.  I may pop after a couple laps.  Then again, I may not.

I’m liking Option B.  I’m also liking the fact that Belmont Station is just down the hill and happens to have a whole slew of beer on tap.  Sounds like a good way to celebrate Option B.

I’ll update tomorrow on how it went.

Plugging through the week.  It finally looks and feels like summer.  90’s this weekend and I’m sure people will all be bitching about that.

Rach is heading out of town a long weekend to Breitenbush for a weekend of naked hot tubbing, hiking, yoga, and whatever else it is you do down there.  I’m home with the kids so I’ll be busting out the trainer for some super-early morning rides to keep a little fresh.  I can’t flippin’ believe I’m getting on the trainer in June.  I think I just threw up in my mouth.

Rides are progressing along just nicely.  I’m slowly moving away from strict base work and adding some threshold work.  I’m planning on having a solid 50-60 minutes of LT work twice a week by the time late September rolls around.  I just really started getting these intervals in and I’d forgotten how mildly uncomfortable they can be.

I added strength & core work in starting this week.  I worked fairly hard over the winter to make some strength gains and I mildly regret not carrying it through the spring.  I did the first one yesterday and this morning my legs were noticeably heavy.  This will go away after a couple more.

Running starts in mid-July.  I don’t even really want to think about it right now.

I added a timer to the side for Alpenrose.  21 weeks to go.  Everything feels right on schedule.  My motivation is pretty high.  Confidence?  Well, it goes up and down.  There are times when I feel I’m on the right path to have a successful season.  Then there are other times when I feel I’m going to get my lunch money taken in the A 35+ races.

It’s about your mojo.  I think either you have it or you don’t.  There’s not that much in between.  I’m getting it.  It isn’t there yet but I feel it’s out there.

If the longest day of the year went by and it was cloudy, would anybody notice?

Rest week this week.  Some days it’s easy to go slow.  Other days it’s hard.  For rest days, I like to head out Foster to 122nd or 136th and take the Springwater back downtown.  It’s a really easy and flat ride.  However, if I won Megabucks, I’d pay to get it repaved.

Spinning in at a ridiculously slow pace is a great way to spend the morning.  Sometimes when I’m riding hard doing intervals or climbing hills, it’s tough to sit up and look around.  I’ve seldom done recovery rides in the past and I’m just beginning to appreciate these rides more and more.

I do get amused when I get my doors blown off, particularly between Oaks Bottom and downtown, by someone doing the Monday Morning Time Trial on the way into work.

Next up: PIR or Tabor next week.

Turned out to be a pretty nice day afterall.  The clouds mostly broke as I was out for a lunch ride of intervals up through the zoo.  Still, I’ve had a little chill that I haven’t been able to shake.  I’m not sure if it’s a cold or severe allergies.  Either way, I’m not feeling that hot.  Rest week next week.  Right on time.

I’m on the fence whether I should go Nuclear with Sudafed Allergy.  And it’s not that wimpy Oregon stuff either.  Pure white Washington-grade psuedoephedrine.

Heading to the coast for a long weekend with the fam.  I may try to squeeze in an easy recovery ride tomorrow morning before we go.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get a ride in Saturday from Cape Meares down to Pacific City.  Looks like temps in the 60’s and mostly sunny.

I’m obviously skipping TOE 50 this weekend.  My thumb, still not 100% from the Mudslinger crash, can’t handle 4+ hours on a MTB with SRAM trigger shifters.  Bummer.

PIR last night.  Spent a majority of the day hoping the rain would hold off, which it did.  I thought the nasty 20+ knot winds from the SSW would blow some rain in but other than a few teeny sprinkles, it stayed dry.

Got home from work and rushed around to get my stuff ready and put my rear wheel back together all while getting some dinner ready for everyone.  Weeknight races are generally a little stressful for me.  Once I hit the road for the 45 min ride up to PIR, everything felt better.

The e-mail flyer said 16 laps with 3 hot spots but with the clouds rolling in from the west, they announced at the start that they may shorten it a bit.

This was my first road race of the year so my personal expectations were low.  I wanted to get out and push it a bit but since I’ve only been doing mostly base work, I shouldn’t expect much of my legs when the pace picks up for extended periods.  Since it’s easy to drift along in the pack and not work, I wanted a little time up front.

Numbers on the left so we were heading counter-clockwise.  On the first lap, it was quickly evident that turns 8 through 4 into the wind were rough.  On nearly every lap the pack loosely splintered as no one wanted to pull through the wind.

After a lap or two, I found myself up front.  Being so tall on the bike, I might as well have ‘Follow Me’ tagged on my ass.  I put my pace just a bit below threshold and grinded away for about 10 minutes.  Felt nice.  Things were going well.

First prime came up and I took a pass.  There was a blowout to my left that I narrowly missed.  Once the pack settled down, I stuck around in the top 3rd of the pack.  I found myself in the front 3 or 4 when the second prime came up and decided to go for it.  Took 3rd there which felt very nice.

It wasn’t long after that that Steven Burger took off from the pack.  I was in the front and had been up there for a while now.  If anyone else was interested in reeling him back in, be my guest.  I knew if I picked up the pace to catch him that a) it was unlikely that anyone else would help, and b) I’d be cooked.  So I let him go.

As the 3rd prime came up, Steven had a solid 30 sec lead.  At turn 7, another overlapped wheel sent someone down just to my right this time.  Ryan Smith from Ironclad was on my wheel and he and I went for the 2/3 spots.  He took it by a bit but I was still very happy with another 3rd place.

With about 4 laps to go, I’m a bit tired.  I’d been pulling a decent amount and went for 2 primes.  Steven had a good 45 sec lead which apparently no one was interested in doing anything about.  Looked like we were all racing for 2nd.

I tried conserving energy, hoping to put myself about 4 or 6 spots back heading into the final turn.  As expected, everyone freaked out as we hit the wind and I found myself up front again…exactly where I didn’t want to be.

The pace picked up hard after the last turn and I tried matching it.  A few wankers who’d been sitting in the entire race showed up in the final sprint.  I dropped a bunch of spots but managed to cross at 10th.  By then I just couldn’t turn the cranks fast enough.

For the first road race of the year, I couldn’t be more pleased.  2-3rd place primes, a solid amount of work done up front, and 10th overall.  More importantly, I felt pretty strong throughout.  This was a great start.

Next up may be Tabor next week or the week after.  I wouldn’t mind getting a race in every couple weeks or so to keep fresh.

Nice 6 am ride yesterday down to Lake O and West Linn. No rain, thanks to me. For you D & D nerds out there keeping score at home, I had my +2 Booties of Dryness in my back pocket. Seemed to keep the rain off until today.

PIR tonight.

Going through the process of ordering a replacement freehub body for the powertap. I &^$% hate aluminum freehub bodies. Powertap has them. So does Chris King. After a bit of research apparently American Classic has these cassette clips that help minimize the cassette cogs digging into the freehub splines. I’m going to call them later today and order a couple sets. That have a few questions in their FAQ about the issue. I’ll do a separate post about the issue, and potential fix, later.

The Rose Festival is this week so it’s gotta be raining, right?  I got a reprieve this morning on the way in - probably because I went out and got a new set of booties (on sale at B.G.) and a backpack cover.  I was determined not to have to go through the ‘No, I didn’t piss my pants’ routine at work.  Once is enough.  More than that and I’m likely to see a pair of Depends anonymously deposited on my desk.

Still plugging along.  Hours and miles are racking up but I still feel pretty solid.  Motivation and energy are good.  I’m liking how this is going so far.  I got a pass for PIR next Monday.  It’s all good.

There was an amusing game we’d play in school, the hour of power, where we’d take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. On the surface it seems pretty easy. Hey, it’s just a teeny sip of beer.

You’d typically start off pretty strong but most everyone bonked around 20-30 minutes. Those who made it past halfway were a pathetic mess. I can’t remember if anyone ever succesfully finshed. It adds up to 5 beers in a hour - pretty staggering by any measurement and a textbook case of binge-drinking at it’s ugliest.

This sprint workout I’ve been doing feels a little like that. It’s an hour of 10 sec. sprints every 3 minutes. In between sprints, you’re supposed to keep a fairly brisk tempo. Doesn’t sound that bad. I mean, come on…it’s 10 seconds.

Like the hour of power, I start of strong; high wattage, tons of snap and a solid effort all the way through. I’m feeling good. The first 30 minutes usually fly by. The second half…not so much. With about 6 or 8 to go, it takes noticeably more effort to keep a tempo pace and I usually start doing the math to count how many I have left. I also start thinking how overrated speed and power is. With a couple left, I’m a mess and the f-bombs are flying.

But when it’s all over it’s strangely euphoric. It’s hard work, at least for me, and I’m hoping it pays off in the long run. While most of my miles are relatively slow right now, I do try to sneak one of these rides in each week.

If you’d like a weather forecast and are interested in knowing when it’ll rain again - check my workout schedule.  I can’t remember the last really dry ride I had.  I feel like Charlie Brown.

I didn’t put my backpack cover on this morning and the rain/backspackle got in my pack a bit, conveniently on may pants and, more specifically, in the crotch area.  Yes, I looked like I pissed my pants for a half hour or so.

Rest day yesterday.  10 min. intervals this morning on the way into work today.  Some sort of short-sprint work tomorrow.  I am such a shitty sprinter.

Tentative plans for PIR on Monday.  It’ll be like a fact-finding race for me.  I’m curious to see at exactly which lap I vomit in my mouth.  I’ll set the over/under at 11.

Doesn’t it feel like the 80’s and 90’s produced a disproportionate number of one-hit wonders?

Before we start, there’s a quick quiz…

Which of these objects is the appropriate tool to enhance the effects of training?

If you selected a AND b, you win!  I’m only serving low-gravity beers in the nitro tap, significantly cutting calories and alcohol while perserving the beer taste we can’t live without.  It’s almost like I’m hydrating and having a beer at the same time.  I can’t lose with this set-up!

After a hectic May, I feel like I’m getting motivation back.  I’m in my second solid week of riding.  With the exception of some craptacular weather, it’s nice.  It rained just enough to get the roads wet but not enough to wash the grime off the road shoulders.

Oh yeah, love the powertap.

I never got a decent chance to build a base last year.  It showed in the races that lasted over 90 minutes last year.  Anything under an hour was easy.  Over that felt like torture.

Probably head down to the Canby Ferry tomorrow.  3-4 hours at a brisk pace.