ice road cyclist

Saturday, I got out on the Maple Highlands Trail on the skate skis. The surface is in good condition. The fine powder snow we got compacted well under the groomer. I noticed lots of mountain bike treads, so today I got out for a 90 minute ride. The section of trail between 44 and Claridon-Troy is packed hard and easy to ride on. East of Claridon-Troy it's pretty soft. I was spinning the granny gear.

On the good sections, it's almost like a road. It held up well under the mountain bike tires. I think it would be possible to ride on a 'cross bike as long as it stays in the 20s or colder.

"rest" week

Over the last few seasons,  it seems like I need to work on leg strength to be able to push myself hard enough to really stress my cardiovascular system.

It's interesting how my body adapts to lifting. I have to spend a couple of weeks muddling around with relatively low resistance on the leg press machine, then suddenly, I'll start ramping the resistance up in 12 pound increments so I have to abandon the leg press machine for the inclined leg press machine. I had a good weight lifting session on Monday--it seems like I'm done with the muddling phase and am starting to ramp up the resistance. This year, I'll keep it up through February.

As the weather warms up, I'll cut back on the weights and focus on cardio fitness. The first test of that fitness is next weekend at Tackle the Tower. I weigh about 1 pound less than last year, so any improvement in my time will be due to increased fitness.

In preparation for that test, after lifting on Monday, I took a break from workouts to do some DIY projects around the house. I'm finally upgrading my home office and am installing a click-lock hardwood floor. Easy right? Well, I live in a 100+ year old house, and even the simplest home repairs can turn into a massive project. This one was no exception. Hopefully I'll finish it up this weekend so I can get back into a normal schedule instead of tapping boards with a rubber mallet at 12:40am. All the crouching and standing at weird angles has kept me sore all week!

false spring

picture by Chris Nicula

I'm settling into the rhythm of training for the cycling season. Believe it or not, so is everyone else! The roads in southern Geauga county were relatively packed with cyclists. C'mon people, how am I supposed to get any advantage by suffering in the cold when everyone else is suffering in the cold.

The "warm" (36 degree) weather has made it a little easier to get some miles and hours in. We did a club ride out of Chagrin Falls today through southern Geauga County. It's funny how difficult a group ride seems after many weeks of solo training trips and cross country skiing. When you're in the red on a solo ride, you can slow down, but on a group ride, you need to keep pumping the pedals and breathe through your eyelids.

We rode out Music Street past the "Cathedral House" (east of auburn road, really cool), then looped down to Bell and took Auburn south to Winchell. LaDue reservoir was looking desolate with the ice and snow and gray skies. The traffic was sane throughout the ride.

The pace was pretty mellow throughout the ride, but going over the rolling hills out of my comfort zone took its toll on my legs. By the last couple of miles, as the pace went into pseudo-race mode, my quads were cooked.

Post ride, Chris and Al and I spent some drool time in Mountain Road Cycles newly renovated shop in Chagrin. A pair of new Zipp 404's were on display. Luckily, my ears were ringing from the cold wind, so I was able to resist their siren song.

calorie counter

My Saddle Broke Today: Is It Trying to Tell me Something?

Looking back in my training logs, I've been steadily losing weight since I hit maximum porkitude in 2005. One of my goals for this season is to drop about 20 pounds. I hope to hack off a good chunk of that during the winter months so I'll be more competitive in spring races than I've been since "grunge" was a big deal, and I'll be able to get my male modeling career back on track.

I've been pretty lax about it so far this winter. I figured skiing would do the trick, so I didn't fuss with my diet, and just piled on the hours. Since I ate when I was hungry, it's not a surprise that my weight remained constant.

So here I go again with the calorie counting. I keep track of the food that goes down my pie hole during the day to stay under a target, probably around 2000-2400 calories, that will peel off the fat while I continue to prepare for the season, but won't give me bad side effects.

It's pretty simple. I make a rough estimate of the calorie content of a meal and keep track of the total during the day. I don't make any other modifications to my diet. What actually happens is that the counting just forces me to make decisions about eating snacks based on my weight loss goal instead of hunger.

I know from past experience that the chronic negative calories eventually will catch up with me just as if I were crash dieting. Also, it's mentally taxing and annoying. So this time around, I think I'll try to drop the pounds in steps with a break between them, instead of trying to lose a little every week over a long period.

out on the road

After a couple months of riding in cyclocross mud or mountain bike snow, I got out on the speedy Cervelo today. It's nice to feel power go directly into forward motion instead of squishing mud or snow.

I dropped the Element off at Rising Sun Auto (the best garage to take your japanese or german car) for work on the brakes, then went riding from there around Munson. The road is still coated in cinder dust and the shoulder is narrow in spots where snow is still piled up, so I stuck to the secondary roads and did some all out climbs of the short steep hills there.

Of course, the iBike battery flaked out in the 31 degree weather, so I had no power meter guidance. Instead, I just went as hard as I could so I either just made it to the top, or blew up hugely. I hit Butternut, then swung over to Sherman and drilled it over the rollers there.

It felt pretty good to be out on the road in spite of the gray sky, fog, and omnipresent crud on the road.

the evil within

I didn't realize I had allergies until one year at Race at the Lake on the starting line I felt horrible and I saw a yellow coating of pollen on my tires. After years of suffering in the spring with the "flu", I finally put 2 and 2 together and took some allergy meds, and was cured. After that, I realized I get hit when the snow melts, too.

I figure all the crap that is trapped in the ice crystals of the snow gets released as it melts. Once it dries out and blows around, ugh. Lately, I've been ripping up the nasty old carpet in my house, so I've caught a couple whiffs of 15 year old dusty nastiness. As always, I'm late to start taking Alavert, so I feel like my brain is floating about 4 feet above my head. As it kicks in this afternoon, I'll probably get out for a little ride.

skiing in shorts

That about sums up what skiing at Chapin was like today. I was in shorts and a sweater and I was sweating buckets.

The base is pretty thick, so it might survive a couple of days of mid to upper 30s, but probably not much more than that. It's been 18 days since the first ski trip I did this year. If there isn't a total melt off, we'll probably get another chance at skiing later in the winter. But if the base totally melts, this might be the last chance for skiing this year.