Wabash Saturday... 11/7/2009

I am taking the cross bike out on the Wabash Saturday, but you can probably do it on the road bike without a problem. Pace should be pretty relaxed (175-200W with no surges over 250W) for me so I can't think anybody will get dropped. If you want to go faster I'll probably Venga, Venga, Venga but I will let you ride me off your wheel and I will not care. Strictly headed out there for base miles as its that time of the year.

Time: 9AM
Place: Council Bluffs Wabash Trailhead
Duration: 3ish hours of riding

Cold turkey

When I got into cycling, I was bombarded with a new lifestyle. My new friends quenched their thirst with liquids I said I'd never imbibe. When they wanted to get going, they'd order up a coffee. When they wanted to stop and relax, they'd down a beer (or 2, or 3..).

My first foray into drinking was after a race weekend down in Kansas City. It was Fred, his daughter, Ryan Legg, Jon Randell, and Megan Hottman. I think those were all who were in attendance. I'm not saying I blacked out or anything, that was just 4 or 5 years ago, so my memory is fuzzy. Anyway, we stopped at a steakhouse (see, I can't remember which one) to refuel and celebrate the weekend. Ryan knew that I was a lightweight, so he used his race winnings and ordered me up a huge Margarita that was REALLY strong. Getting that buzzed was a new experience for me. Everything was quieter and I felt kinda numb. So of course I had to announce this new discovery to everyone. Instead of saying something like, "Wow, the affects of alcohol have dimmed some of my senses," I blurted out, "Hey guys, look, I can't feel my face," as I pulled on my cheek and pushed on my nose. This was apparently quite hilarious to everyone.

I don't think I've gotten that buzzed since then, but I have taken to drinking beer. The main reason younger people drink beer is to get hammered. I never wanted to get past the buzzed sensation, so cheap crappy beer has never been my thing. I do, however, like the taste of a couple dark lagers. Sam Adams Black Lager and New Belgium's 1554 are a couple of my favorites. But at $7-$8 for 6 drinks, I couldn't keep that in my new aggressive debt defeating budget. I tried the $6 Michelob Porter Beer, but that was still $1 per day I was drinking it. By the way, I only drank 1 per day. Two beers just seemed crazy to me.

So I have cut out the beer. I don't really miss it, but I may drink one every now and then for special occasions.

Next up on the chopping block - coffee. I know some of you are gasping right now. "But Mike, how can you give up coffee?" Easy, stop drinking it. Today is the first day of none whatsoever. I'm not feeling it yet, but I've also sipped some Mt. Dew throughout the day. The main reason for giving up coffee is because it's too is expensive and I never really liked the taste. It was something I drank just for the caffeine. I know you can go cheap with Folgers made at home etc, but I'm the only one at home that drinks coffee. So making sure we have filters, going through the process of making it and all that for just me seems a little too much. Plus, I'm lazy and since we meet at coffee shops for our rides, I just order there. So that's at least $1.50 if not $4 as I like the foo-foo drinks. If I didn't depend on the hit of caffeine to get me going, the money and starting from a coffee shop would not be needed.

So if you've been keeping track, I had been spending anywhere from $1 to $6 A DAY on liquids. There's a water faucet down the hall from my desk and my water bill at home is taken care of by the landlord. Why am I spending money on flavored water again??

From here on, I'm cutting out the unnecessary drinks to save money. I don't need it. It's an expenditure of which cutting out will show great returns. Like I said before, I may, occasionally enjoy a brew for a celebration, or have a coffee if I go out to a big family breakfast, but the daily consumption must stop. If I ever really want to get out of debt and get on with life, I have to strip my budget of frivolous spending.

Ok, now that the declaration has been made, let's discuss the weekend. 3 day weekend!! WOO HOO!! The wife is going on a trip early Friday AM so I took that day off to take her to the airport. I'll probably finish up some bike work that needs to be done the rest of the day, then head over to Randells house to help him setup a home network. YAY New toys to play with!!

So that's pretty much Friday. Saturday is completely up in the air. I do need to come up with some sort of costume for a Halloween party I'm attending Saturday night, but other than that, I'm free if anyone would like to head out for a ride.

Sunday, I need to be home around noon so I can pick the wife up from the airport. So an early morning ride would be best. Right now, it's looking to be around 37 degrees with a below 10 mph South wind at daybreak. Daybreak being 8am. If we want to meet somewhere at 9am and get a few hours in, that would be awesome. If you have rights to post on this blog and want to suggest something, post away. My cold turkey haze induced run-on could stand to be shuffled down the list...

Any Sunday ride plans?

I know Mr. Miles is out of town, but if anyone else wants to get something together, let me know where and when.

Sprint finish on every training ride?

A new article from The New York Times suggests that cooling down has absolutely no benefit for moderate athletes. Now us higher trained cyclists could risk getting dizzy from blood pooling in our legs if we just come to a complete stop after a our last sprint of a workout. But otherwise, there's no physiological benefit of the 5-10 minutes cool down process.

In fact, the lactic acid produced from hard exercise, which used to be considered bad for muscles, is actually a fuel that converts to glycogen for muscle's use. So doing a sprint or short interval could possibly provide your muscles with some fuel naturally instead of the need to immediately find food after a workout. I think another study should follow this up. That would be very interesting to find out that all those recovery mixes could be replaced with a simple sprint finish on every ride.

Holy soreness.

The ride: Shabbos +1. The attendees: Mr. Miles, Bryan, and Big Puma (aka Mr. Fenster). I new Bryan was going to be feeling his oats since he was running a Trek Madone finally after putzing along on a heavy steel Bianchi for a couple months. Mr. Miles always is a power rider, and then Big Puma shows up who I've heard has been putting everyone in the hurt lockers recently.

Well crap. I hadn't done a long ride in a couple weeks and my whopping 6 mile round trip commute sure isn't much to get fast from. However, I also had a secret weapon. I had been riding a heavy commuter for about 3 weeks and I showed up on my pared down racy Lemond Bike. Ha ha!!

We left the coffee shop and headed straight into the wind. Of course the speed gradually ramped up but we were civilized to each other and traded pulls. However, the ramping up was just too much after a while. Bryan was having fit/saddle issues and I sure wasn't comfortable holding 18 mph into a 15-ish mph headwind. But luckily we were near our Southernmost destiny. So we headed East to do some climbing in Bellevue. Of course the eventual serious climbing wasn't planned, but it's difficult to venture into Bellevue and not think, "I wonder how much that one crazy hill will hurt?" The first climb was a steady grinder to reach Bellevue Blvd. This thing is deceptive since it doesn't seem steep for the first couple of blocks, but then it curves to the left and goes UP. At the top of the climb, Bryan read my mind and said, "Hey, should we go climb some crazy hills?" Why yes sir, I do concur.

So we hit up Fontanelle Hills neighborhood and did a double decker climb on which Randall and I used to do competitive hill attacks. Basically, you hit the bottom of the climb, one guy leads out at a fairly fast clip, then about a third of the way from the top, the 2nd guy comes around and attacks. Whoever get's to the top first is better, er, wins that round. We would do 6 repeats of these. I think I died a little each round. But it was fun!

So our group got to the top of the double decker and promptly fell over. Well not really. Big Puma had a slow leaking flat that was needing a change, so we waited around for that. At this point, we were pretty much out of time so we headed back toward home. Of course the only way to do so was still really hilly, but we made it ok. Mr. Miles let me know in a text later that we "normalized" out to 265 watts for the ride. My guess is that means averaged 265, which seems high, but I don't train with power, so I'm probably way off. It was painful though. Even after an easy spin this morning, my legs are still all toight and sore.

More coffee please!

Weekend Plans

Now that I can breathe again after Munson's response to the cliffhanger.... I'm going to post up a weekend plan request since nobody else has. Anybody thinking about riding? We'll have 50's and sun...

To answer the Cliffhanger..

If you were at all wondering what the outcome of the car verdict was; $200 later and it's good for a while. The right tie rod was possibly the culprit of a noise that's been concerning us. We'll see if the noise comes back, but I believe it's gone. There are other issues with the car that are of concern, but that's a few thousand miles down the road.

Our car setup works for our budget at the moment. It's old, rusty, has old parts that need replacing about once a year, but still starts every time and get's us around. It's paid off, and doesn't cost much to insure or license. We live at about 60th and Center and I ride my bike a whopping 3 miles to work at 42nd and Leavenworth (UNMC), and the wife drives a whopping 2 miles to work at 84th and Center. Other than that, we go out occasionally and buy groceries. It's been 7 months since my last oil change with less than 3000 miles during that time. I know you're supposed to change every 3 months just to keep the oil fresh, but I'm cheap and lazy, otherwise I'd do it myself more consistently. Plus I like taking my car into Honda Exclusive. They are about 4 blocks from my work and are a great shop. Todd, the owner and person you usually deal with, gives you the things to worry about in order of safety. At one point a few years ago, I was looking at $900 worth of upkeep to make the car safe. He worked with me on a plan to stretch that out over a year so my wallet didn't take such a hit all at once. If you have a Honda, I highly recommend their shop.

Ok, enough car talk. Man, the difference between my commuter and my fast bike is crazy. It'd be interesting to put a powermeter on both and see how much more energy I'm expending just to get up hills with an extra 10 pounds worth of bike. 10 pounds doesn't sound like much, but man it sure feels like it. Either that or I'm really losing my strength. Or my position on the 2 bikes is different enough that my muscles don't like the change. Or maybe it's all in my head???

I suppose I should post something

This last Sunday's ride was a great time. It was kinda short being it was pretty cold and Mr. Miles' bike was giving him Italian problems. Long story...

I think it's too early to be this cold, but hopefully it's a sign that the winter will be very mild. That would be awesome.

I'm on call this Saturday morning, but Sunday looks to be a nice day to ride. Last report said that it's supposed to get up to 60 degrees. That will feel awesome. Or make me sick. Drastic changes in temps generally make me feel lousy for a few days after the swing.

In non bike related news, I took my 94 Honda Civic in for an oil change and to find the cause of a bad noise it's making. If the news is real bad - as in money bad, I may just find someplace to trade it in for a newer car. I really don't want the hassle of finding a new car, and all the costs that go along with it, but I'm worried my Civic is going to nickel and dime me to death. But then again, no car payment, cheap insurance and licensing is pretty nice.

Sunday ride? Possibly indoors?

The forecast for Sunday is mid 30s and cloudy. I don't know if I'm ready to ride in that kind of weather yet. I'll have to dig out all my wintery clothes if we do head out.

Or we could all meet at someone's house and break out the race dvds? I'm up for whatever. I'd like to take a poll and see what everyone thinks. Indoor/outdoor and timeline also.

RESPOND!!!

Awesome bike race.

You must watch this video. The one thing that does bother me about it, is who won the event. Must be nice to retire from pro bike racing after being caught doping, then go on to win such an event.

Oh running, why do I ever give you up?

After a long day on Saturday officiating the Manawa Mountain bike Mayhem race, I got up early to visit the parents house and have a big family breakfast since my little brother was in town. Apparently though, no one was up and ready yet. My dad was, I guess. He went to the store to pick up food stuffs, and my mom was just waking up with coffee and the paper. Apparently, my little bro stayed up way late and drank joyously with his high school reunion attendees. But, the plan was to get up and go running around Standing Bear lake at 10am. So Clark, my little brother, got up by 9am and we both loaded up on some delicious breakfast, compliments of our great dad.

After not completely finishing our blueberry pancakes and sausage, we jetted out to Standing Bear. Clark, himself a frequent runner, had 3 other friends coming, only 1 of which ran with any consistency compared to the rest of us. So he and his running friend took off while the other 2 and I ran/walked and talked. Which was awesome! I'd forgotten about the "runner's high" that comes with pounding the pavement with your feet. I felt pretty good throughout the whole 3-4 miles (not sure about the new trail distance), but the occasional walking helped that issue I'm sure. Now I'm reinvigorated with the option of running!

I think, at first, I'll designate Mondays and Fridays as running after work days. That way I can start and end the week with some great exercise. It's fall now, and the weather's just going to get colder from here on out. Some people like to run since it's way easier to spend a half hour to an hour outside keeping warm while running compared to a few hours freezing your toes/fingers off while riding a bike. So the Shabbos (+1) rides might turn into runs eventually. Some of you might know my abhorrence of indoor training, so that will be reserved for when I get convinced (conned?) into joining a few people to do that while watching race dvds.

Going back to the Manawa Race, I really want to thank Rusty (forgot his last name) from the Velo Veloce team. He made the race run smooth for results and such. While I was busy taking down numbers and times, he would fill in the many sheets of the different races with the times I wrote down. So by the end of the race, he'd get the last few timings, plop them in the right slots, and we could post the results right away. My last mtb race, I didn't have someone doing that, so after each race was over, I'd have to fill in the blanks myself, while still keeping tabs on the Marathoners and answering questions, and starting the next races, and so on and so forth. I felt so bad holding things up at that race, but didn't even think of this method that Rusty had created. He was a real trooper even though he was going cross eyed toward the end with all the numbers he had to sort through. I also want to thank all the other people with Psycowpath and Velo Veloce for hosting a great event. I'm glad we could work together well to put on a timely, accurate event for the riders in attendance. It was a great day!

There was an abundance of Sweet Bacon.

The Bacon ride was definitely worth getting up at 5:30am for. It was a little chilly and very dark at that time, but the pace was easy, there was no traffic, and the friends were....um....friendly. Of course there were many pictures taken by Scott and Sean just to confirm the ride did happen through eventual blog postings. Keep an eye on their reports. Total count for the ride were 5 peeps, including me. Rafal; the ride leader (and route adjuster), Scott; the taker of many pictures, Sean; the bestower of knowledge and a few pictures, Chris; the trouble maker, and me; the one with the duct tape.

We took a fairly tame route even with gravel out to Platte river state park and inhaled some delectable morning nourishment. From the Lincoln side of things, Corey and Wes(?) joined us after most of our bacon had been devoured. We left a couple scraps for them.

After a relaxing feast, we slowly pedaled on mostly flat surface toward home. That is, until we got to Pflug Rd. Does anyone know exactly how to pronounce this, by the way? We were keeping a good tempo along the gravel road next to the interstate, than BAM, we head uphill. Rafal, of course on his single speed, had to hoof it up at a decent clip as not doing so means you either murder your knees, or walk. The annoying part about Pflug is that you have the first monster climb, then another 3 butt-kickers, one right after the other. After the road mellowed out (as much as a gravel road can mellow out), Chris decided he wanted to give the group a prolonged rest break in the form of a very frustrating flat. Oh, and just so everyone knows, the proper way to use one of the little green boxed patch kits is: sand paper the area around the hole in the tube, spread on a little bit of glue around the hole, let it dry, then stick one of the appropriate sized patches over it and hold for a couple seconds. I won't mention any names, but this procedure was not followed correctly resulting in a lot of fruitless pumping action. WAFFLE!!

So anyway, after I used some of my invaluable duct tape to cover the offending protruding spoke, we got Chris's flat fixed and all was right with the world again. He repaid us quite handsomely with a round of libations and finger food at Blue Planet Natural Grill when the ride was done. Overall, it was a great day of food and riding with good buddies. Too bad next weekend, being the last one where the bacon dispensing place is open at Platte River SP, is pretty busy with a few other cycling events. There's the Omaha Alley Cat race mid-day, then in the afternoon, the ride to the movies to watch A Sunday in Hell. I'm not sure what plans I have for that day as my little bro will be in town. I may do and early couple hour ride though, possibly both days. Let me know if anyone's interesting in joining in!

Could it be??

I replied to Bryan's coffee review a week ago Thursday that I discovered an afternoon cup of joe is doubly amazing as the first one of the day. This feeling was re-emphasized on this last Wednesday night's jaunt to the bike shop to build more bikes. I guzzled a coffee down at about 2pm and was flying down the trail and up the hills of Ralston to get to the bike shop. I felt no leg soreness and it seemed as if the time it took to breath hard took longer. As in, I could redline it, but not have to gasp for air right away like I have done this whole year. This was great, but I could see down a long bleak road that didn't look promising. Pretty soon, I'd be drinking 2 16 oz "cups" of coffee every day until I went on vacation or something and had to go without any caffeine. I could seriously see myself dying. Like caput. Done.

So I tried an experiment yesterday evening. I went without the afternoon shot, just to see how I'd ride and feel heading to the bike shop, wrenching on bikes for 3-ish hours then riding home. Riding there, my cruise speed was just like the coffee days, a monster hill I climb was done at the same speed, I wasn't quite as strong lifting bikes and such, but my arms are weak anyway, and then my ride home was just as fast as any other I've had with or without coffee. What I discovered is that, instead of the coffee making me faster, I may just be getting......

IN SHAPE!!!

The beginning of this summer was pretty tame as I didn't really do many weekend rides and didn't seem to ride during the week at all (minus commuting). Then I had a couple family vacations and a 2 week honeymoon. This led to a gain of a few pounds and a serious lack of fitness. When I would go on group rides, I was always falling off the back, even at medium tempo, and hard efforts had me panting right away. So now, I can maintain 18-19 mph pretty easily, I can go hard and recover fairly quickly, and my weight is finally starting to come down. All great stuff. However, I do think I'm starting to feel my age. The coffee blocked any achy signals, which is why I felt so good with afternoon shots. But last night, without the caffeine, I was pretty torqued by the time I crawled into bed.

So now that I'm getting stronger and faster, the days are getting shorter and my part time job (which gives me weekday rides) is going away. Next month I'll also start working a 9am-6pm shift so that'll give me even less time to ride during the week. sigh...

I think I need to take up running. Maybe weight lifting too.

Since it's on every other blog..

This Sunday will be one of the last Bacon Rides of this year. I plan on attending since it starts so close to my house and I've never done one. If you want to join us along the route, one of the earlier posts about the ride contains a cue sheet within a bullet point. Let us know where you plan on joining us so we can call if we get to the rendezvous point early or whatever.

Hopefully we'll see you guys on the gravel!

Uh, Late post much?

In the honor of Fred's latest blog post, I had to pick an appropriate title.

So anyway, I figure we should probably do a Shabbos +1 ride. Any takers as to starting place/time? I could suggest 120th and Blondo's Scooters so we can all get somewhat of a ride in before our real ride. Or we could do Scooters on 180th and Q, or even Crane coffee on 78th and Cass. I'm up for whatever and don't really have time limits.

Post your response for your choice.

Many miles weekend.

After a failed (in more ways than one) trip to Lake Manawa on Saturday, Mr. Miles, Randell, Brady, Scott, and first time Shabbos +1 attendee Jim Maaske went on our Loess Hills adventure. The first part of the ride was fine although a little fast. Jim was our ambassador to the Council Bluffs side since he lives there. He told us about a couple climbs that were going to hurt pretty bad. One right on Badger road and another heading home on Monument road. I know Monument road has some doozies as we rode up it to get to Lewis and Clark trail on our mountain bikes during the Metro Single Track tour. However, we didn't even get there. We, instead were done in by the Badger road climb. Holy Moly this thing was a killer. It had to have been in the teens percent wise of elevation and about 2 to 3 blocks long. Now, it wouldn't have been so bad had we had this happen to us(stolen from the Good Problem blog):



Good stuff. Anyway, after that climb and some subsequent large rock gravel sketchy descents, we packed it in and took Old Lincoln Highway straight back into town and rolled across the pan flat-ness of Council Bluffs. So we got in 80 of the real 90 mile route. That ride may not be happening on road bikes again.

Then on Shabbos +2, Miles, Randell, Bob and I met for an easy ride and to play our "Most Expensive House" game. This is a fun thing to do for recovery rides or just to put some miles in. You and some friends ride to a subdivision where the houses are new and/or huge. Preferably on flatter terrain so you don't have to climb as much. You ride along the streets and look for "House For Sale" signs with brochures available. Once you get to that block, you do a seated high cadence sprint to the house and whoever get's within the vicinity first gets to pick up the flyer. The person who picks out the highest priced house wins. This, of course, creates some strategies as you can choose not to sprint for certain houses if you think their price is not high enough. But don't wait out too long otherwise you may not find a house at all. That makes you the biggest loser. And no one wants to be the biggest loser. We're still figuring out all the little rules, but that's the basic premise of the game. Fun times and good for just tooling around on bikes.

After all the miles though (for me), my legs are pretty dead. I'm ready for some time off or some real easy spins. I will be working next weekend in the AM on Saturday, so that day may be out. But I'll be sure to post some more Shabbos +1 goodness.

3 day weekend!

And we have plans for 2 of those days.

Shabbos(Saturday): 8am mtb ride at Lake Manawa. (earlier if needed??)

Shabbos +1(Sunday): Loess hills extravaganza
meeting place: the new Scooters at 63rd and Center (unless we want to meet downtown somewhere??)
meeting time: (EDIT) 1:30pm
Distance: 90 miles
Pace: probably all over the place. Slow at times, fast at others.
Bikes: It'll be 60% road, 40% gravel; bring what you want. A few of us are rolling the skinnies on road bikes, but run what ya brung.

Shabbos +2: Now taking suggestions, plus any other input on the other 2 rides.

I'll just mention in passing..

My blog about my wedding is finally up.

See it at: http://mnmswedding.blogspot.com

I had too tough of a time figuring out how to post backwards or on different days to get the order of this right, so our honey moon and reception pics will probably be hosted on picture hosting sites. I'll have those linked at the right.

Shabbos Field Trip?

So the state road race is coming up here in 2 weeks time and we've got a long weekend coming up as well. I think we should journey out to the course and do some laps and since its 50 miles each way from my house I think driving out there would be the order of the day. Any takers? Open to date and/or time Saturday, Sunday, or Monday.

Edit: I could be convinced to ride out there...

Costume idea for the Halloween Pub Crawl?

The Halloween Pub Crawl is always a good time.

Here's music to play and a costume to wear: