April here

Genetically engineered to produce asinine photoshop composites.

5/31 2 hours easy

I’m doing my own taper week, so I’m mimicking the week Smiley set up for me before the biathlon. I did the 2 sets of 5×4 @ 330 watts workout, and wasn’t terribly stellar, about 310 watts normalized. I’m also starting to cut down on alcohol, hydrating more, and hopefully sleeping more. Sucks.

Here’s a couple of bikes that just piss me off. Check out the Santa Cruz Superlight. Nice bike, well executed, and as far as I can tell, designed almost ten years ago. SC brought out a new line of bikes four years ago, but didn’t phase out the Superlight ’cause it just works so well.

Now check out this year’s hot new offerings from Cannondale and Gary Fisher.

Can you say ‘ripoff’? Not only are these guys totally stealing SC’s design, they stole their old stuff.

5/29 Complete Rest

5/30 2 hours easy

Rested Monday, starting my taper week for the NJ 40k TT. Sofie’s tapering as well, trying to readjust to her regular schedule after vacation. The change in her routine upset her a bit, and now Laurie’s leash is down to about five feet, while I’m often forbidden to help out. This might seem like a parenting vacation for me, but it’s actually trying for everyone involved. Sofie’s screams and cries, Laurie’s exhausted, and I feel guilty and powerless.

Went down to Dave Perry’s shop today to take some shots. Dave’s the owner of those racing rollers, as well as Bike Works NYC. We’ll have a Campo interview of Dave up soon. Special bonus: The Hotness works there. Now how many of you stalkers are going to intentionally break your bikes so you can pay her a visit?

Alex told me about a new swanky shop by Union Square called Altheus last night, so I swung by and checked it out afterwards. The contrast between the two shops couldn’t be more dramatic. Now, it’s pretty easy and pat to say that Bike Works has more soul than some corporate outfit selling expensive bikes to the rich, but…

Rob, Dave, and Hotness vs. Altheus

Well, maybe I don’t know the flip side to that argument. In any case, it’s cool to see that the sport is healthy enough to support so many shops that cater to such a wide range of clientele.

Did a few laps of recon work at Floyd on the TT bike before shooting the races. It’s going to be a surprisingly technical race, despite the pancake flat profile. Managed to flat my front tire, too.

5/28 Rest

Apparently I’ve returned from vacation and landed smack dab in the middle of a rest week. I neglected to tell Smiley that I signed up for a 40k TT on Sunday, so I’ll have to fashion my own taper week. I did a couple of easy hours yesterday, and set off to meet Schmalz today.

My legs felt horrible today, either from the mountain biking or relative inactivity of the vacation. I faked my way to the Spoon, where we met up with Justin Reid, Ted Neu, and Roger Friedman. I hung on ’til state line hill, where I would’ve been dangling on my best day. Today I just let them go.

So, 40k TT in a week, another week of carbo loading and beer dodging. Hopefully my legs will feel no pain by then.

5/26-7

Random vacation thoughts:

Boulder is like dying and going to cyclist heaven. There are bikes and bike racks everywhere, and every third person has that gaunt beef jerky texture to their legs. I used to think that the Maverick was an exotic mountain bike (I’ve only seen it at Interbike), then I saw three people tooling around town on one. And the mountains are amazing. Roll right out of town and you can get on any of a selection of hourlong climbs.

Riding at altitude, for a masher like me, is pretty funny. The lungs go flat long before the legs start working. At 6000 feet above Boulder I could barely chase Sofie around without running out of breath. At 4000 feet in Moab I got anaerobic pretty quickly. I soon learned I had to climb nice and slow so I’d have a little burst for technical sections. It didn’t hurt that my riding partner had been off the bike all year, so I could play the role of the climber, for the first and last time in my life.

My friends live on Sugar Loaf, a mountain community above Boulder. On the road up you can see Magnolia Drive, a steep switchback climb. It was the coolest road I’ve ever seen, with turns so banked that a part of it almost disappeared from across the canyon. I swallowed my pride and begged Amy to take a shot of me climbing it, so I could have something to show my imaginary grandchildren when I’m hobbling along with a colostomy bag. Besides, I’m most photogenic from about 2,000 feet, so this was the perfect photo op for me.

Sofie didn’t handle the trip that well. We’ve discovered that she doesn’t roll with the punches, and all the changes on the trip put her over the edge. By the end of the trip she was hanging on to Laurie for dear life, and would scream and cry if they were separated by five feet. Every time Laurie went to the bathroom Sofie would stand outside, whining and pounding on the door. Speaking of the whine, there is no sound more horrific than the steady mewling of one’s child. I can literally feel the days being stripped from my lifespan when I hear that sound. Instead of dying in my sleep on a Friday, I’m going to bite it on a Monday.

Random non vacation related thought:

It must be tough to be Carlos Santana’s girlfriend. I mean, the guy has an earth shattering orgasm every time he picks up the guitar. What can any mere mortal do to match that?

5/20-5 Vacation

Laurie got me this Moab trip as a 40th birthday present. I’ve only mountain biked in the New York area (Ringwood, Graham Hills, Hartshorne Woods, Round Valley, etc.), so I had no idea how hard Moab would be. The trip was made possible by my former assistant and great friend Amy. Laurie had asked Amy for advice on where to take me, and she suggested Moab, and more importantly, she suggested that she and her husband Chris be our tour guides. They live in Boulder and make the trip a few times a year. We couldn’t have asked for a better situation. We flew in to Boulder, stayed at their house (on a mountain above Boulder), and set off the next day.

Chris told me that bike rentals in Moab are pretty sweet, so I left my bike at home. A quick check on the web turned up a shop that rented Santa Cruz bikes. I originally wanted to rent a Santa Cruz Blur, but Chris convinced me to try the longer travel Nomad. The Nomad had received numerous rave reviews, and Chris thought it would be better suited to the terrain. With a massive Fox fork, a through axle front wheel, and what looked like 8 inch rotors front and rear, coming in at well over 30 pounds, the Nomad was the kind of bike I thought I’d never ride.

Out on the trail, it climbed surprisingly well. I never felt the bike’s weight, and the suspension offered so much traction it seemed to reduce the amount of skill required. All that was required to get over a ledge was a little surge and minimal body english. The fork would soak up the ledge so well that there was no need to wheelie it up. I never thought I could enjoy 45 minute to 1 hour climbs on such a heavy bike.

Going downhill was downright ridiculous. The bike has such a slack HTA that even sitting upright I could see the front side of the fork. For all but the biggest dropoffs I could stay seated and just let the bike roll. It felt more like a chopper than a bike. Whenever I missed my intended line the suspension would just gobble up the bumps. It’s rare that I can go hours and hours on a mountain bike without either crashing or being on the verge of a crash, but that was the case here. I wouldn’t have believed it ’til I tried it, but this bike actually makes riding easier and more fun.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that our humble NY area trails are just as hard, if not harder, than Moab, though obviously much shorter and much much much less scenic. I was very relieved to find that I was sufficiently skilled for the terrain, which made the rides extremely relaxing and enjoyable. The only frightening parts were the singletrack portions with a sharp dropoff to the canyon below. Those were mostly rideable, but when some diagonal ledges threatened to direct my front wheel off a cliff, I was not too proud to walk it.

On the pavement on the way back to town, I noticed that the suspension barely bobbed while pedaling. The Nomad has a suspension linkage designed to stay put under chain tension, and it really appeared to work. Chris was riding a Horst link Turner, which bobbed quite a bit more. He suggested I try an out of the saddle sprint, and I discovered that the bike, which had just performed so beautifully on the trail, was an absolute pig. The bike bobbed uncontrollably, kicking back up just as my feet reached the bottom of each pedal stroke. This would jerk my whole body up, making it impossible to get any rhythm. It’s amazing that a bike could be so purpose built that it would perform so well in it’s intended terrain, and so badly elsewhere.

5/17 2 hours easy

5/18 2 1/2 hours with 3×20 intervals at 165-170 bpm

Did my two hours easy with Mike, who rode with some lights in a backpack. He borrowed the lights from Andrew at NYCVelo, and he was going to return them after the ride. Mike was recovering from doing a 24 hour race in California, so he was just doing a recovery ride.

So, in case you’re wondering what the difference between a good Cat 2 and a crap Cat 4 is, Mike was riding recovery with a big weight on his back, and drove me into my endurance zone. If it wasn’t for the fact that I was supposed to ride easy, I’d say it was a quality two hours of endurance training.

Schmalz scored some Zipp 404’s for a thrash test, and he asked if he could drop it off before work (way before work) for me to glue on some Schwalbe’s. I told him not to hit the buzzer in case Sofie was asleep, so he called me on the cell. I was fast asleep when the phone rang in the bathroom, and I rushed over as fast as I could. The blood drained from my head, and I was completely blind as I felt my way around the bathroom. Unbeknownst to me, Laurie was holding the phone in front of my face while I was fumbling around. Somehow I decided that a towel was the phone, and I put it to my ear and tried to talk into it.

Schmalz should let me have these wheels. They look like they belong on this bike.

Did Thursday’s workout on the TT bike with the 404’s, three nearly full gas laps with recovery laps in between. I’ve never ridden 404’s before, and was pretty disappointed that they didn’t feel exciting or cool. In fact, they were downright harsh