twothirds

I went up Old La Honda today and set a personal record for the year. I got up in ~22:30, which is about 2 minutes faster than my previous best time this year. Overall, the solo ride was 70 miles with 4800ft of climbing. I could not climb to save my life toward the end of the ride, but I was still pretty zippy on the flats. It will be interesting to see what results my sporadic training will net on the race course in two weeks.

This power calculator is pretty cool. During my ride to work, I average 215 watts and burn 699 calories! I think I need to eat more!

Plugging in my Old La Honda numbers (7.3% grade/3.37 miles/8.5 mph avg), I generate 305 watts and burn 416 calories during the ~24 minute climb.

I am two weekends away from my race and I have not been in “open water” yet. I could do the Santa Cruz Rough Water swim, but I am a bit of a pussy right now and don’t want to deal with cold water. Since the Vineman swim will be 75 (+-3 degrees), there is really no need to put my skinny ass through the shock of 57 degree ocean salt water.

My biggest worry about the Vineman is whether or not wetsuits will be banned due to a high water temp. Or, that I will overheat even if they are allowed.

It’s not that I need a wetsuit–in fact, a wetsuitless race should be an advantage to me since I actually know how to swim (or at lease at one time in my past, I knew how to swim!). I am most concerned about what I will be wearing on the bike. I would prefer bib shorts and a cycling jersey, which fit nice and snug under a wetsuit. However, if the race is sans-wetuit, I will either have to change (yuck!), or I will have to ride in tri shorts (yuckier!).

Don’t worry. These things do not keep me up at night.

Now that I have two bikes, I can do some playing around.

My old bike, Big Red, which is a Cannondale CAAD4 frame, came with a Thomson Set Back seatpost. Since you can turn these into a Set Forward, you can turn a road geometry into a quasi tri-geometry. With my seat slammed forward, and the Set Back forwarded, I now have a road bike with an angle of ~77 degrees. I have not done a lot of riding with this setup yet, but I am much more comfortable while in the aerobars. If all goes well, this will be my setup for the Vineman Aquabike.

I picked up the new bike a little over a week ago (Litespeed Teramo). It is nice
The bike shop guy told me to take it easy until I get used to it. He also does not want me doing anything crazy until I get it back to the shop so all the screws can be retorqued. Did I take his advice? Hell no!

Last Saturday I went on a 60 mile solo ride with 5000 feet of climbing. During the ride, I set a personal record for top speed in California*. I got up to 46mph! I am happy to report my bike does not have a death wobble
I also did my benchmark climb up Old La Honda. I got up in 24 minutes which about the same as my previous trek. Since it was very hot, and since I had been off the bike for ~1.5 weeks due to vacation, I am still happy with the time.

I am not sure I am happy with the wheels. (The stock wheels are Mavic Ksyrium Equipe.) They do not quite seem stiff enough for my 190 lbs. On my old bike, I have CXP rims with 28/32 (front/rear) spoke count. They are not the lightest wheels in the world, but they sure are stiff! I’ll have to try my old wheels on the new bike and see how it rides.

So now for the conundrum. I have the Vineman Aquabike (swim - bike - stop) in a few weeks. I would like to use the new bike, but the handlebars have a rather large girth where the aerobars snap on. So, my options are new bike with no aero bars, or old bike with aero bars. Considering I hate the things, and I am still not in great shape (just out to have fun), I may just ditch em.

*My personal best is ~50 mph going down a loooong straight descent in Colorado.

I have not posted for awhile. I went on vacation and came back lazy. Oh well. Let the laziness continue….