Let the bike commuting begin

The weather is good enough. Just light enough still before 7pm for me to ride in without my lights. Plus this wknd daylight saving time starts so it will be light enough in the am ride home to go without lights. With the new job its only 14 miles round trip. Unlike the 52 round trip I was riding to work 2 years ago. Last year I slacked & didn't commute once. This year hopefully I can ride in on my 4 days on till oct. That should save me some gas money. Especially since I read in the paper today gas is supposed to go over $3/gal again.

Ended up blowing off training today. Got a massage & just didn't feel like fighting the wind. Plus I got called into work so had to fit in a nap with getting a bike ready to commute on & dog proofing the fence to keep the neighbors dogs out of my yard. I cheated on the bike & threw a set of road tires on my cx bike till I can build up a full fledged commuter out of my sscx bike.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Who says Monday's suck?

Slept in. Drank some coffee. Watched Paris-Nice on the Web. Ate a couple of cinnamon rolls. Drank more coffee. Caught up on Facebook, Twitter, & Google Reader. Now listening to Blip.FM drinking more coffee & blogging. Then off to Lowe's & an afternoon recovery ride.

Good weekend of riding. Sucks its my last weekend off for a month now that the spring races have started. Guess that means more training time.

Saturday after a nap got out for an impromptu FTP test in shorts & a short sleeve jersey! F Yeah! Surprised myself with a 15 watt increase. Guess all the training & weight loss is working.

Sunday met THE Espenkotter on the Highroad for some TT training. 45 miles of hills & TT bike time & my legs were SHOT! I pulled the plug on the planned 4th lap. It would have gotten ugly in a hurry. Still a great day of training.

If anyone is planning on doing the OCC Highroad TT I recommend using a TT bike with Deep dish wheels & a min of 11-25 cassette. I think the winning time will be low 38. I work the night before so its pretty doubtful I'll go. Though it is close & a good course for me.....hmmm

The sum of all the small things

This past winter listening to several podcasts, live chats, & reading some PRO interviews a common theme emerged. They all talked about racing on the road is hard because all the small things aren't there to make things smooth. Got me to thinking & doing some more reading & asking some dumb questions & some not so dumb questions about the small things.

If you think about it a lot of small things become a big thing. For me I have the big picture stuff but like last season my consistency went to hell. I made myself a basic outline of what I consider the small things. Using this outline i've been making changes to my daily routine and race day prep. I'm sure most of it is nonsense but psychologically it can't hurt.

Here's my outline. I'll expand on some later as I work out more of the trial & error. This is a work in progress for sure & I'll add to or remove from as I go. Some of this I had to implement because of my new work schedule(4on/4off) some because it just makes sense; others because I have a feeling its going to work.

THE SMALL STUFF OUTLINE:

RECOVERY: in the past I considered this to be a day off or several days off. Its bigger than that and like an onion has many layers. This is a huge one & I'll touch on it more in the future. For now besides the days off & "recovery rides".
Compression tights & or socks. I was
a late adopter of this but it seems
to be working.
Ice baths after really hard workouts.
The research is out there.
Massage. This is a no brainer since
my wife is a massage therapist.
Recovery drinks mixes & good old
chocolate milk

DIET: plain & simple my diet in the past has sucked. I've cut out meat & started to really pay attention to what I eat. Its paying off since I feel good & my race weight is getting lower.

SLEEP: this is a biggie for me. Being a nightshift worker sleep is a precious commodity on the 4 days I work. That said some simple routine changes have gained me on average 2hrs a day extra sleep. I know this because I've started tracking my sleep. Small things.

TRAINING METHODOLOGY: this one is hard to explain without getting into a long winded debate with myself. Basically I have become more consistent. I've obviously changed other stuff mostly how I approach a 4 day week. Which for me actually works out well since I can break it down into blocks. Also a new one is train more & race less. This one is forced on me since I only have wknds off every other month.

RACE DAY PREP: this is one I've been playing with for years & probably for years to come. First things that come to mind.
Warm up on the trainer.
Better more consistent warm up.
A place to race prep. I'm getting my
own pop up tent.
Race day hydration. This really
should be its own heading since I
need to work on it on a daily basis.

NOTE TAKING: I've started making more detailed notes in my training log so I can track what is working & what isn't.

I know there is more but I'm starting small to make the sum larger. Already 3 months into the year & I'm noticing changes for the better.

Things I need to address are: core strength & flexibility.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Update

I've said it before & ill say it again; since I've got on Twitter don't really have much use for the my old blogs outside of race updates. With no racing for me right now(or boating either) don't see much need to update. Though sometimes I have more going on than 140 characters can communicate.

First poor kid has pneumonia. She's hacking away like mad. What's bad is I'm on shift so Amber is doing the brunt(read all) the nursing/mommying. I have to give it to her she is weathering the storm well. I helped out by picking up coloring books & a dry erase board that has outlines of the alphabet & numbers so she can work on her writing skills. She cam count pretty well & say her alphabet & is wanting to start writing. Anyway she liked it a lot. So hopefully it took her mind off being sick for awhile.

I just hope for Ambers sake she doesn't get sick. I got up & around tonight so Amber could go for a run. Her asthma can't handle cold weather so this is her first run in a few weeks. She took dog #1 with her, which was good for him. Not so good for dog#2, who has codependancy issues & freaked out the whole time he was gone.

Took today off since I slept like crap due to barking dogs & just being overly tired. That ended a pretty good 10 days of training. With descent temps in the forecast I should be able to get some good training in. Especially with a TT day scheduled for Sunday. More training with the Espenkotter & his damn P4 on the Highroad. Going to do some comparisons of road bike to TT bike on the course. Plus fool my legs into some hard efforts. There is even been dome text messaging about a 100% effort to see how bad I can break his legs. Though not sure I have a 100% effort in my legs just yet. Probably should try since I might not race before Hermann.

During the last 10 day block I put up she really good 5min #'s in an 8x5min interval session outside. Seems weird doing intervals outside now that I have become used to doing them on the trainer. But as everyone says you can put bigger #'s up outside.

Let's see what else? Amber & I talked about an East coast VERGE trip in Nov. Looking at two wknds/4 master's races. Spending the week between with some tourist type stuff. She's onboard so need to figure out the dates. I'll get my ass handed to me since I'm sure ill have to back row start but it will be fun to actually race those I follow on TWITTER.

If I had my crap together I could have rode my commuter to work tonight & tomorrow night but alas I don't. Going to have to get it ready since it looks like Spring is almost here. Work is a whopping 7miles from the house so I have no excuse not to ride to work now its warming up. I'm just not hard core enough to do it all winter. Been there done that, it sucks, don't want to do it anymore.

Finally set up Google reader on my Blackberry. All it took was me switching from the native BB browser to Opera Mini 5 beta 2. Let me tell you if your not using Opera your an idiot. It freaking rocks. Now I have more frequent access to Reader I can actually keep up with blogs now. Especially since some of you refuse to use TWITTER & Facebook just pisses me off most of the time.

Which reminds me went to the Dr. The other day. Turns out low tolerance for crap isn't a medical condition. I do think the Dr. was willing to write me a note saying I should work days...that is if I was willing to work days. He also said I shouldn't switch my sleep schedule on my 4 days off. Told him that wasn't going to work for me.

So for now I have made some changes to my routine & have gotten my on shift sleep during the day up to 7hrs from the 5 I was getting. Already made a big difference. I think the extra sleep & my continued focus on my diet will pay off in spades come cx season. 4 days off at a time doesn't hurt either.

Ok I've binged & purged time to let this update go. This update done from my phone so typos & spelling where thrown out the window.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The Cobbled Classics Begin

A great review of the beginning of the Cobbled Classics:

How The Race Was Won - Het Nieuwsblad 2010 from Cosmo Catalano on Vimeo.