Too Much Thursday

I have gotten a little behind on blogging the last few days. Thursday was a fairly intense day of training for me. In the morning I rode with John and Kat and we did anaerobic endurance intervals on a C-57 north of Cedar Falls. The plan actually calls for a hill that is quite a bit steeper than we can find around here, but the main issue seemed to be getting back down to the bottom within the 3 minutes of recovery time that were planned between each interval. The workout was 3 x 3 minute, 3 x 2 minute, and 3 x 1 minute intervals with 3 minutes of recovery between each. It sure does help to do this sort of thing with other people! Thursday morning's workout data

On Thursday night I was back in Owatonna , and the group that showed up was big-- 25 plus. I ended up riding pretty hard again in the evening this made for a day just short of 80 miles with quite a bit of intensity-- enough intensity that I fell asleep trying to write this blog Thursday night lol! Thursday evening's group ride

My collection of kayaks has not been getting much use so far this year. I have been having a shoulder issue that has really been showing itself when I have been shingling the roof. It has been bad enough that I was not sure that I could paddle, so I have been avoiding paddling completely so far this year. This week I finally tested that concern. I needed to collect a little Cedar River drift wood for a cross that I needed to make for an event up at Luther later this summer. I paddled upstream about 2 1/2 miles and then back down-- it was OK

Intervals!

The thing that is most different in the bike training that I am doing this year is that the workouts are not simply going out for a ride, sometimes hard, sometimes easy. They are much more structured and much more planned. In general I feel like my strength is better than usual but my endurance is not as good as it might be (I really have not been getting in as many long level 2-3 rides as I think I should).

Today the workout was intervals, 10 x 10 second intervals with 50 seconds of recovery. These seem to be short enough that your heart cannot catch up with the "on" portion of the interval, but today I did find myself feeling the lactic acid building in my legs in the last 3rd of them.
These were followed with 8 x 1 minute intervals with 1 minute of recovery. These are mentally much harder to do and I found myself "falling off" especially in the second to the last one where I was in Kat's draft.

After that we did pedal drills 60 rotations with only one pedal, followed by 60 with the other pedal, followed by 60 with both. I think I was suppose to have done 8 of these but the HR data looks like I only did 6 :-). These drills are much harder than I would have imagined. I seem to start off nice and smooth and them sometime after 30-40 rotations my pedaling gets very uneven at the top of the stroke and try as I might my leg seems to resist what my mind would have it do! Wednesday's workout data

Graduation Party and a Little Biking and More Links then I Ever Have Posted

It really has been a little difficult to get much quality biking in lately-- roofing, painting, party preparations, the list of what else needs to be done is really long these days. Kathy and I had a good ride last Thursday evening with the Owatonna group, and the local paper came out to write a story about the Tuesday/Thursday group. Kathy is pretty much the longest active member these days. The Photo is from the Owatonna People's Press Article.

Saturday we took a little time from the last minute preparations for Kaia's party and rode in Carver's Death Race. The truth is my mind was not really in this race-- not that that would have made all that much difference, but I was thinking about all of the things I still had to get done that day. Anyway I got to ride this 25 mile, unofficial, unsanctioned, race with my good friend Kent. We have not done all that much together lately-- but he used to be my adventure race partner for a race we used to compete in, in Duluth every September, so we crossed the finish line together (5 & 6 of not that many). My Data from Saturday's race.

Today I met up with John and Kat. We did a 30 minute MTB race simulation on a loop in George Wyth State part that we used last year for cyclocross training quite a bit. It is a pretty flat loop but it is definitely off-road with a couple of technical issues to practice on. It was suppose to be a level 4 effort, I started out a little too strong, probably above my lactate threshold for the first 4 laps and then went a little harder for about 4 more (trying to keep up with Kat who looked really strong today!), and then my lactate level must have caught up with me and I dropped right to the high end of level 4 (what I calculate to be my lactate threshold). Tuesday's MTB race simulation

Back in Iowa, and Time to Breathe

The last few days have been pretty much dedicated to painting, roofing, and general preparation for Kaia's graduation party next Sunday. So finding both the time and the energy to ride have been a little difficult for the last week or so.

Kathy and I rode with the Owatonna Group on Tuesday night, for me it was mostly a Level 3 low level 4 ride which after a day of roofing meant my legs had done just about all they were capable of on Tuesday! It is pretty hard to take a good picture on the fly with an Iphone-- You have to hit a virtual shutter button on the side of the other side on the phone while pedaling, and steering, and hoping you don't drop the darn thing. Anyway, I got Dave and Jim and my shoulder lol. But there is a nice advertisement for My Friend Richard's B&B in Washington Iowa if you are ever in the area....

I have got a first layer of Carbon fiber on the bike frame now, I have decided that I will need to let the first couple of layers fully cure so the I can fill and fair out the imperfections that have become apparent now the the core is covered with CF. I have been trying to figure out a way to bond the dropouts to the top stays and chain stays. I chose Nova Cycle dropouts I did because they are set up for disk brakes. The issue is that I think they were really meant to be welded to an aluminum frame. The challenge is that I have to find a way to wrap them with CF well enough that they are not going to be a weak point. They have a ridge to strengthen them and that makes a sharp corners that is difficult to get the CF to wrap around. I have been thinking about this ever since I first attached them to the frame. Here is what I am trying, first I thickened some epoxy with fumed colloidal silica (my universal thickening agent of choice) to fill take up some of the space. I made some temporary inserts out of a couple pieces of bungee cord wrapped with electrical tape then I folded the CF around the corner and taped it into place-- more to come lol

My Mood is a Slave to the Weather

We had a whole day of outside, getting the backyard garden ready for Kaia's graduation party planned, and the weather, and the weather was not cooperating very well. It started out as a gloomy rainy day in Owatonna, and I had a mood to match, but by mid afternoon the weather and my mood had cleared up a bit, so we did get some of the yard work done and Kathy and I got a nice 30 miler in, in the evening.

Kathy was trying out a heart rate monitor so we spend part of the ride at a little higher intensity to start to get an idea where her HR zones might be. toward the end I started stopping to harvest road ditch asparagus, the other thing that I have a hard time passing up this time of year (a nice dead morel/elm tree would would be the other).

Windy Wednesday

Today was WINDY! but the good thing about Cedar Falls, is that the bike trails next to the river are pretty much out of the wind. I did the today's interval workout on the roads in George Wyth Park, that was pretty much out of the wind too. Anyway, the workout was a pyramid interval at Maximum intensity 10 seconds on 10 off, increases by 10 seconds up to 1 minute on with a minute of rest and back down. It sure felt like Maximum effort, but my heart rate was not anywhere near max. I am thinking that even with the 1 minute interval my heart did not have time to catch up to the effort:

Wednesday"s Pyramid Intervals

I the frame building front, I am starting to layup the carbon fiber with some 4.7 oz. unidirectional CF cloth. I started with some of the trickier odd shaped places like the bottom bracket area, and the junction of the top tube and down tube. It took me 4 pieces of CF and quite a bit of experimenting with a paper patterns to get the Bottom Bracket area covered. I might have a little too much overlap, but I think a little extra material down near the cranks will be a good thing!

I am getting pretty good at poking holes in electrical tape to let the excess resin out when I wrap the CF to compress it. I am thinking I should order a case of electrical tape because I am going to use a lot of it!

Does Roofing Really Count as Strength Training?

I spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday roofing, except for a short one hour ride on Saturday, that is about all I did, apart from spending money on the things I did not remember to include in my estimate-- like metal drip edges, step flashings, 2x6's for the roof jacks, nails for the framing nailer- the list goes on and on. The good news is I am about 1/4 done, the bad news is wow I must really be a fool to do this myself lol!

Anyway, it is kinda nice to have to go to Iowa to get away from "the project." It gives my sore shoulder (and the rest of my body) a bit of a break. Today I rode with the Bike Tech "b" group. It was windy but the ride was nice-- about 24 miles mostly in zone 1 & 2 for me. Tuesday Night's data.