Is it winter or spring?

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I am really lazy, it has been almost two months since I have written anything here.  It isn’t that I haven’t had time, it’s just I have been too lazy to bother.  The weather in Northern California has been pretty dry, we haven’t had any rain to speak of, with the exception of last weekend.  This has made things rather nice for riding, but I have been working out in the gym with my wife at least twice a week.  It is a nice break to do some other workouts, and the “group interval training” that the gym does is pretty good.  I have also been running a bit to try and lose some more weight.  It seems like I have been stuck at around 180 to 185 pounds, pretty much regardless of how much riding I do.   I think the running and other cross-training will help get my weight to go down again.  Right now I actually gaining some weight with the additional muscle I have added with the weightlifting and running.  But with the additional muscle it will help in the long run burn more calories.  I can’t believe how weak my upper body is, seems like I don’t have any stamina with my upper body, but just the couple of weeks I have been working in the gym has made a big difference.  Both my upper and lower body have gotten a lot stronger and makes me feel a lot better on the bike.

I have decided to run a half-marathon in April, shouldn’t be too difficult, I could make the distance now, but I want to get to the point I can do a 2-hour half-marathon.  This weekend I ran 7 miles on Saturday and then did a quick 3 on Sunday, but boy am I sore.  It kind of reminds me of running in high school where I would get so sore after running, but I think I handle it a lot better now.  Riding today really helped me work the running soreness out, but I’ll see how sore I am tomorrow morning when I run 3 miles before the group interval training session.

I have to applaud the 1t4i (formerly the Skil-Shimano) pro cycling team for getting out in front of the story about Marcel Kittel, Patrick Gretsch and John Degenkolb using a doctor that used UV blood treatment.  I think that Kittel and Gretsch the ended up having the treatment, but at that time it was not considered doping and the doctor was a legitimate doctor for German Olympic athletes.  I don’t believe either rider that had the treatments were under the impression that they were doing anything illegal and at the time it really wasn’t.  In fact I would say that UV treatment of blood has a stronger placebo effect than any performance enhancing effect.  But like I said, I applaud the team for being transparent in terms of letting everyone know what happened.  I think with teams that really reinforce the fact that they are transparent and provide this kind of information will help make the sport cleaner.  We can never get rid of all the cheats, people will always try and “game” the system, but when teams don’t put up with it we will get closer to having a level playing field.  We can only hope we can get to that point.

 

December is here!

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Wow, can’t believe I didn’t post anything in November, guess I was just too lazy to bother writing anything.  I did do one really great ride in November, I rode with some Cycle Folsom people and rode Mt. Diablo and Morgan Territory out of San Ramon, CA mid-month.  It was really fun and challenging.  Seventy-Six miles and two pretty tough climbs, Mt. Diablo up through the South Gate is about 17 km long (10.7 miles) and averages nearly 6 percent grade.  I thought it wasn’t bad at all, just about an hour to climb, and then we descended through the North Gate.  It was pretty cold out and I rode in arm and leg warmers and there was frost on the road up at the top, glad I brought a jacket for the decent.  Morgan Territory is a Regional Nature Preserve/Park and there are numerous mountain bike trails, but we rode Morgan Territory Road and it was about a 10 km (6 mile) stair step type of climb.  I thought it was much harder than Mt. Diablo.  Maybe it was just the distance ridden at that point, but the stair steps were hard and the we were on the shady side of the mountain so the road was pretty slick and I nearly fell a few times when I had to stand, my rear wheel slipped.  We had a couple of riders lose their way and ended up riding an additional 20 miles, we had to go look for them as it was getting dark and a storm front was going to pass through.  Thankfully we were able to locate them.

The last couple of weeks has been pretty bad for my riding, weather and a general lack of motivation has really been at the heart of it.  I don’t like riding in the cold, or at least what I perceive as cold.  Pretty much have just been doing my commuting, but not a whole lot else.  I think part of it is I don’t really have that much for winter cycling gear and can’t “tune” my riding clothes to the conditions, I need to get better gloves and shoe covers.  I have Belgian booties (sock like shoe covers) and some neoprene ones from Performance that are overkill most of the time.  I have some great gloves from Castelli that work when it is 45 degrees F (7 C) and up, but a lot of mornings it is hovering around 32 to 45 degrees F (0 to 7 C) and I really dislike having cold extremities.  The problem with Castelli gloves is that the stitching seems to be crap, I have short-finger gloves, Rosso Corsa, that fell apart in less than one season.  My long-finger gloves, Lightness, have been restitched almost completely.  I like Castelli bib-shorts and bib-tights and haven’t had a problem with those and other clothes from Castelli, but the gloves really need some work.

Last couple of days I have been sick and haven’t ridden.  Tomorrow I plan on trying to put a on a few miles, but probably just by myself, don’t want to start riding so early to go on the group ride.  Tomorrow afternoon I need to finish doing a brake job on my van.  I have to finish it so I can get to a meeting in San Francisco on Monday, which means another day I can’t ride, but can’t avoid work.  Also, Aaron one of our older kids is coming on the 17th for a month.  Aaron is one of our three South Korean students that we hosted for their high school years.  Aaron has finished his military service and is at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and is going to stay with us while his dormitory is closed over the winter break.  Our son Philip and his fiance are coming to visit for a couple of weeks as well, so we will have quite the houseful.

I really dislike the winter time, the days are so short and I don’t like riding indoors, besides the fact I need a new trainer, the one I have is more than 20 years old now, I got it back in 1989.  I do like the videos I have to train with, I have most of the Sufferfest ones and they are really good, but I just can’t bring myself to ride indoors, again a lack of motivation.  Well with the short days I do need to make the effort to ride, even though I don’t like to do it.  Well enough jabbering on for today, hopefully tomorrow will be good and I can get everything done. Until tomorrow, Cheers!

Week off

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Well I was in San Diego from Saturday to Tuesday morning with meetings for the ASCE Geo-Institute conference in 2013.  Got a lot accomplished and had a good time catching up with colleagues.  I did manage to work out Sunday and Monday, the resort we are having the conference at has a decent fitness room and did 30 min on the stairmaster and 30 min of weights, better than being a total slug.

I didn’t ride Wednesday, too much work to catch up on, but I did manage to get out on Thursday and Friday.  Today I rode my Irish Hill Loop:

For some reason I have had such bad luck riding this loop lately, the last two times before today I bonked or felt like I bonked in the last 20 miles.  Today I had plenty of fluid and food, two honey stinger vanilla waffle (yum!) and some GU Chocolate Outrage energy gel, but almost like clockwork my last 20 miles turned into a slog.  The first 45 were pretty good 19+ mph average, but the last 20 seemed to take way to long and I felt like crap.  10 miles to go and I had a flat. The first tube I pulled out had a hole in it, but at least I found it before I wasted a CO2 cartridge on it, but that is why I always take 2 tubes with me.  The flat doesn’t bother me as much as how bad I felt at the end of the ride. It wasn’t like the climbing was very much, only 1,800 feet, so it wasn’t like it was much of anything to make me feel like crap.  Maybe it is just because I am so far out of my routine and off peak fitness.

I did get caught up on @JeremyPowers Behind the Barriers series, I love these videos.  I am looking forward to watching the Zonhoven Superprestige Cyclocross tomorrow morning on Cyclingfans at 6 AM PDT, should be great.  Well I had better get some sleep if I am going to get up early.

Travel Saturday

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Going to be traveling today, have to go to San Diego for meetings tomorrow and Monday.  I don’t like leaving my family at home all the time, but just the way things work and this is one of two times of year that I have to travel.  Could be worse, I don’t mind travel much, I have a very set routine that I have adopted that gets me through security with a minimum of hassles, in general.  Meetings for for the ASCE Geo-Institute’s 3rd Stability and Performance of Slopes and Embankments Conference which will be happening in 2013.  The first one was held in 1966 at the University of California, Berkeley.  The second was again in Berkeley in 1992 and now the third in San Diego.  Pretty exciting stuff for a geotechnical/geological engineer, although I can’t call myself that in California since I don’t have my G.E. (Geotechincal Engineer) license in California, the only state that actually has a specific title act that restricts the use of the title of Geotechnical Engineer.  But I am a licensed P.E. (Professional Engineer) in civil engineering in four other state.  I just need to take my seismic and surveying exam in California and then the geotechnical engineer exam a year after, since I have already fulfilled more then the four years of experience as a P.E.  Now you know more than you ever wanted to about engineering licensing.

On the cycling front, travel also means time off of the bike for me, which makes it hard for me to maintain my weight as I typically can’t/don’t change my eating habits when I am off the bike for a couple of days.  I will try and use the hotel gym, but that doesn’t generally work very well for me, plus I don’t have any good running shoes.

Some really depressing news in the professional cycling world, Geox has pulled out of its sponsorship of the Geox-TMC cycling team.  Now I really don’t care much for the Geox team and its management and some of the riders, but this is just typical of how things are going in cycling and a problem with the whole revenue and sponsorship model that cycling has.  Just look at HTC-Highroad, one of the most successful cycling teams ever, and their inability to secure another sponsor for 2012. It is also unbelievable since Juan Jose Cobo won the Vuelta de Espana.  Yes, they didn’t make it into the Tour de France, but I think winning the Vuelta has to count for something and Denis Menchov did manage an 8th at the Giro d’Italia.  So I think that proves that no matter how much you win or get exposure for your sponsor, it is still a crap shoot if the sponsor thinks that they actually got something worthwhile.  Maybe it would be better if there could be clauses in sponsorship contracts that spell out the minimums (television time, promotional events, social media, etc.)  that the team will provide and can be quantified to ensure continued sponsorship for the contracted time.  These would of course have to be contingent on certain factors not under the control of the team, but I don’t know if you can control media exposure enough to guarantee anything, but that is the idea of minimums I guess.   I know there are quite a few team managers who have ideas about how to remedy the situation, but it will take time and will probably be a painful process, but hope springs eternal.   I guess I’ll end with some pictures from the Vuelta.

 

Cobo, again from Stage 18

Vuelta_Stage_18_Image_1

Geox's Cobo on Stage 18 of the VueltaCobo, again from Stage 18Igor Anton Hernandez (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi winning Stage 19 into Bilbao

Group rides and risk

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I like going on group rides, I have probably been on several or more hundred of them over the years.  From Kansas to Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, New York and Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and France. Some places more than others, but in general they were word of mouth types of rides I found from visiting the local bike shops.  For the most part the rides weren’t really sponsored by the shops, they just tended to start from there.  Typically the rides were not lead by any one rider, you just showed up and someone would suggest a local route and away you would go.  If I was visiting I would ask how fast the ride was, so I knew that if I got dropped how much I would need to know about the route to get back to the start.  I always thought that I was responsible for myself and not anyone else, which I think is the case even today, we all have individual responsibility.  Even today I don’t ride near other riders I am not familiar with, and even the ones I am familiar with I learn how they ride so I know whether to expect them to be sketchy or not.

I think part of the problem now is that there are a lot of people that are just beginning to ride at 30 and 40 years old and with the internet they can find group rides all over the place and as humans we tend to over assess our abilities.  We have lots of people thinking they are Eddy Merckx or I guess now they would say Lance Armstrong.  Add in a the current trend to blame everyone but yourself for your problems, yes I know some things are not under your control, but what I am saying is that people abdicate responsibility for things like riding within your limits or even knowing your limits.  So we mix all these together and we have problems.  With group rides come crashes now and then, heck even when riding by ourselves we cyclists sometimes make a mistake and pay for it with some hurt pride and skin, but hopefully nothing more serious.  But after hearing from a rider that was “new” to our group write a rather scathing critique of our group ride I had to put my two cents into words.

One of our regular riders, one that I haven’t really rode with much, crashed after being “dropped” from our ride.  The “new” rider had apparently also been dropped or chose not to stay with the group and was witness to said crash.  Edgar, the regular rider, apparently touched wheels with another rider, not the “new” rider, and went down hard, hard enough to knock him unconscious, always a scary thing.  Well the “new” rider proceeds to blame all of this on the ride leader.  Now the “new” rider also prefaces his critique by stating this “performance” statistics of max power of 2,000 watts with sustained climbing wattage of 700 watts, and also states he has Drs Max Testa and Eric Heiden as his “coaches”.  Well, as far as I know you can get Dr. Testa’s time as a coach if you are willing to pay the price, and from what I know he is very, very good. Eric, whom I have meet him in the past, back when he was with 7-Eleven, is an orthopedic surgeon who practices in Salt Lake City, so I suppose he could have had some contact with Dr. Heiden as a surgeon.  But I have to call bullshit on the wattage numbers, first if you can make 2,000 watts in a sprint your should or would be a professional sprinter (I don’t think I have ever seen anything that high reported) and if you can sustain 700 watts for a climb, even a short one, you should also be able to not get dropped even riding with one leg.  It just seems to point out that the “new” rider has no basis for his critique.  Maybe his previous group ride experience was a hand holding experience with perfect paceline rotation, but in my experience, however extensive or limited you may deem it, you rarely get a group so well oiled that you don’t get some surges or gaps or squirrelly behaviour, just the nature of riding with a group of riders with some varying ability.

I do think that we do need to ask riders who may not be up to the level that is expected for a particular ride to please try an easier ride.  Now most rides have certain performance expectations listed, at least with our meetup group page, this gets back to the tendency of riders to overestimate their abilities.

Just watching TV

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I have an unfortunate addiction to TV, it wastes all sorts of time, but there are some good programs on this Fall.  I like Person of Interest and Big Bang Theory on CBS. Thank God for DVRs.  Now when I watch TV I almost always have my laptop with me as well, I think that if I don’t have my laptop on I am not doing enough things at the same time.  I am usually working on work that I didn’t get done during the day or just getting some extra research done.  I think we have got to a point that we can’t unplug sometimes, or at least I can’t.  I think that is why I enjoy riding my bike so much sometimes, I can get away from everything and really unplug.  Although sometimes I can’t ride, even if I have time, because I feel like I need to be working. Oh well, back to work and TV.

Really Ricco? and Finally Cav!

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Can’t believe Ricardo Ricco has changed his story again and has now said he “did’ have a transfusion, but it was one that was ok’d by a doctor for iron.  Here is the story on the Cyclingnews website.  I guess my question is, if it was medically necessary to do the transfusion, why would you do it at home, with blood from a home refrigerator.  Just doesn’t make much sense.

Finally Mark Cavendish made his decision to announce his signing to Sky, along with Bernard Eisel. I guess Sir Cav will have to ride a Pinarello instead of a Specialized.  Sky does have quite a few sprinters, so I assume they will spend the winter and spring camps working on a leadout train for Cav.  Time will tell if he will continue to have as much success he had at HTC-Highroad.

 

Welcome to the “new” blog!

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Well here it is, the “new” blog!  I moved my blog from the blogspot site to a hosted blog using WordPress because I wanted to have more options to how my blog looked and how it functioned, so I made the move and here we are!

So, I finally got my shifter/brake lever back from SRAM on warranty and got the road bike put back together.  OMG it feels so much lighter and faster than my cyclocross bike, but in reality it is not any faster, I have the same average speeds recorded on my Garmin.  I don’t know if I would use less wattage, I guess that would be the case since less weight to push results in less watts.  It just feels so much more nimble and fast. I guess if I had a high-end cyclocross bike it would feel just about as quick as my road bike.  It had been nearly a month and a half since my shift/brake lever went wonky on me and I had to send it in.

As much as I have been riding my cross bike I have yet to do a cyclocross race this year.  There have been two races in the Sacramento Cyclocross Series and I have missed them both.  It looks like the third race is scheduled for October 23rd, and of course I am going down to San Diego on the 22nd, so there goes another one.  That leaves five left in the series, hopefully I can make at least three of them.

Riding in to the office yesterday I got hit by a car again, another driver who didn’t signal at all before whipping a right turn, right into me.  Thankfully I survived the incident without damage to the bike and only minor damage to me.  I am extra cautious at intersections and I am always looking at taillights as I come up one, just to see if there is anyone I am going to have to avoid.  Well this guy had no signal on and was hugging the left side of the lane, which led me to believe he was going to be going straight through the intersection.  I had my lights, both front and rear, on and my Davis kit, which is bright orange on, so I was about as visible as I could make myself.  Oh well, I survived and will be even more careful, although I don’t know how.