Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 114)

JoAnne the nails look great! I can see you are ready to do this.

Dina congrats to your sisters. I'm sure she must have been as shocked as you were been about that. At least you can give all the baby stuff back to her. I can sympathize as well because after my wife had our two girls I thought we were done and then 6 years later we had my son. It is so hard to get back to that mindset of having to take care of a baby after that much time and just think last time she had twins to contend with!

Tracy, sorry about your friend, yes cancer SUCKS!!!

Dina, congras on being a new Aunt!

Stan, good luck on the bike, I understand about the attachment to your bike.

Dirk, thanks so much for he comments on riding the tri bike, I'm riding her more but just don't have a l;ot of confidence around cars.  I was coming down a big hill and a car passed me and I thought,,,uummm no breaks for me, so I said , just relax and enjoy the ride.  Yes I went on a lot of short streets that made me get out of aero to either stop or turn.

Jo, thanks for the bib #.  Remember, we are all pulling for you.  Good Luck!

Warren, send us some recipes...lol  tell him congrats

Asphalt get together. well coming from Florida may be a bit much..yikes!

Oh Tracy I hate to read that. I'm very sorry for your loss.

Jeff I was able to get that ride in this weekend to gauge my level of effort that you suggested for the upcoming HIM taking yours, Dirk's and Warren's advice in reagrds to gauging my level of effort for proper pacing. To level set on Saturday I did a 15 mile long run. That went great and surprisingly on Sunday I felt good, no soreness and no dead legs.

I did a long ride at an easy effort probably at 75 to 80% effort. No labored breathing, no burning legs. I did the loop I ride 6 times it's around 9.5 miles. It wound up being 57.5 miles in 3:35 for a 16 mph avg. It seems long but if you factor in all the stopping and slowing down I have to do on the loop I ride that really is not bad. I also have to contend with lots of wind when I get closer to the water so I avoided a heavy effort when I rode that part of my loop. I tried to spin more and mash less. I think that I am not far off from rides where I pushed harder for the duration of the ride. I think my nutrition for the ride was spot on. When I finished the ride I felt good.

I then transitioned into my run. I ran 6 miles in 1:03 and I paid special attention to pacing the first few miles as Warren and Dirk suggested. I went out easy and after about two miles my legs started coming to me. I kept the effort pretty easy and ran well for the duration of the run. When I finished I felt like I could have run longer and felt pretty good. My avg heart rate for the bike was very low around 118 and for the run it was 134. I don't think I peaked over 140 on the run.

So I think I am pretty close to being able to dial in my level of effort on the bike and the run for the HIM. I would like to do a shorter ride at a higher level of effort this week just to see how I compare. I am thinking I would like to use the rest of my long rides to keep dialing in the right pace. One thing I would imagine is that I won't be doing all that stopping and slowing down on the course during the HIM so my avg mph should be higher. I'm figuring to be able to ride about 18 mph or so which would but me in at around 3 hours or so and I am feeling like I won't have to go all out to do it.

This is a great tip!!!!  Thanks!

Getting in and out of aero I do it one arm at a time.  Starting on the bullhorns, I will move one arm to the aerobar then the other follows.  Of course to avoid inadvertently inducing steering I make sure to unweight all of my arms first...no weight on the handlebars.  Doing this requires holding yourself up momentarily with your lower back muscles.  If you remove your weight from your arms the switching back and forth works pretty well.

I stay in aero the whole time.  If you aren't comfortable enough to do so, but think that comfort can be achieved (or tolerance) with time, then just keep moving back and forth and strive to lengthen the amount of time you stay aero.  If you are pretty sure you can not achieve tolerance of aero for the whole race, it might be that you are losing enough aero benefit when you rise up that you need to find a new 'fit'....a position that is less aero that you can tolerate the whole time...and in total, that position will be more aero than switching back and forth all the time.

As for climbing, I stay in the aero position.  I used to come up to the bull horns when I got down to about 11mph and lower but that was primarily because, at the time, I needed a break from aero from time to time and I used my climbs to do it.   But I never climb out of the saddle...that's because my TT bike is too unstable to do this safely.  You see, my seat is directly above the bottom bracket, so to climb I have to move my center of gravity way forward so my butt is in front of the saddle.  That puts my CG well ahead of the bottom bracket and with the frame design of TT bikes they become very unstable with all that weight over the front wheel.    Other people have a different fit on their tri bikes with the seat behind the bottom bracket and they have no problem riding out of the saddle...

Tony!!!  Sounds perfect!  Once you have your perceived effort dialed in, just be aware of how race day excitement can overwhelm your discipline.

And yes, average speed when dealing with traffic is dramatically affected so you are right about that.

Your HR values from your brick look awesome for long course racing.  Good job.

You know, I won't train on my tri bike around town.  I make a point to only train on it when I can drive my bike out to a nearby parkway that has low speed limits and no intersections (and sparse traffic). 

If you do train on it around town STAY OUT OF AERO when you are on surface streets with intersections.  You need to have your fingers right there on the bullhorns for maneuverability and access to your brakes.  If you do train on it, ride out of aero unless and until you are in the clear of traffic completely then go aero as long as it's clear.

Stan, I'm very sorry about your bike being stolen.  That's so low.  It really bothers me that people are like that.  In addition to keeping an eye on Craigslist, watch ebay.

You can search for bikes of your brand on ebay using the 'within 50 miles' of you option.  Once you have searched, you can save that search and have ebay notify you for the next 6 months whenever a bike matching that criteria is listed.

I am guessing that there are Craigslist aggregators out there that will let you set up a search in a similar way for Craigslist without having to check it every day for the next 6 months.

Unfortunately it's rare that police bother to investigate bicycle theft since they have many more important things to do....or perhaps they are lazy, don't know about your jurisdiction.  But a lot of people are successful in investigating their own thefts.

Jeff I forgot to mention the race day excitement and I am glad you brought that up. It is the X factor and I know Dirk mentioned this alot regarding his first HIM. I defnitely need to stay disciplined. I know it's easier said then done. I think I learned my lesson from the sprint where I was trying to race and wound up on the ground. I am planning to pace and not race this one so to speak as my goal is to finish first and foremost.

I am sorry to hear this.  Great pains are being worked through to try to eliminate cancer but until that day we'll continue to see people dying from it's various forms.  There are so many forms of it that I often wonder if any one of us will go untouched by it ourselves.

I have used my TT bike a for all of my training since I purchased it.  I have become quite well acclimated to the position and I have pretty good control of the bike.  That said, I definitely can't control my TT bike like I can my roadie.

I am quite lucky for my routes.  Nearly all of my route don't involve heavily traveled roads, hard hidden corners or blind intersections.  With my roads and routes it's safe and easy to use my TT bike for almost every ride.  But, I looked the route you posted on your FB Jeff and you and I have totally different concerns with traffic.  With all the elevation changes and blind corners you would certainly need to take things to a different level.

BTW, I would love to be able to climb like you can in TN.  My big climbs involved 52 miles last Saturday with a total elevation change of 817 feet and the long training ride before that was 56 with 1300 feet change.  The second long ride was the exception not necessarily the rule.

bswcpa - 2012-09-03 8:07 PM DIRK and JEFF re: NUTRITION - So according to my weight in the article you linked, Dirk, I should be taking in 165-230 calories an hour. I can't stomach HEED - it makes my mouth dry and leaves me grumpy. I haven't tried Perpetuem but happened to pick up a container of Perpetuem Solids a while back but haven't tried them. I'm going to do a 30ish mile ride tomorrow morn and can try them then but I only have a 6 tablet container so I don't know if I can get more before race day. I've used Shot Bloks before with no problem so that's an option to add in. With only 6 days until the race I'm not willing to gamble on the unknown so I'm unsure of what to do at this point. I can take e-gels (150 calories) from Crank Sports and remembered that I'd bought their e-fuel electrolyte energy drink concentrate that I can stomach and use instead of Gatorade. That's another 70 carories but that's if I drink the whole 24oz. I'm planning on taking fig newtons too because I've used them before and it's a solid that sounds good to me when I'm biking. I'll probably grab another payday too but I promise not to stay in aero, eating one while cornering again. Can you give me some guidance on fueling on the bike, then? I assume it'll take me roughly 3 hours to do the 56 miles. I'd appreciate whatever help you can give. 

I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to post anything for your pre-ride question.  This week's mornings are shorter than usual because of the holiday week.  (I have to be at work earlier and I don't want to get up any earlier than I have to.)

How did you do with the Perpeteum Solids?  Regardless of how you did I would go with the Clif Shot Bloks rather than the Solids.  You mentioned that you have been able to tolerate them fine in the past and I agree that you should keep it in the safe zone going into this weekend.  And if you can tolerate the E-Fuel then I would suggest you try to mix that in a heavier than suggested form but only slightly.  If you mix it too rich you may not be able to tolerate the taste and you won't drink it anyway, setting yourself up for a little more failure by not using it as much as you need.  I would also suggest that you try to taste the E-Fuel "heavy" mixture during the day to make sure you can stand the extra "syrupy" taste that might occur.

How many calories does a serving of E-Fuel represent?

You will also need to make sure you are taking water on the bike too. 

I just did a little bit of research (because I couldn't remember some of the info) and the Bloks have 100 calories per serving, 2 serving per package.  I would try to mix the fuel sources by using the 2 in combination if you know you have been able to work with both of them in the past.  The liquids are going to digest faster and keep you going better.  I also know from my personal experience with Shot Bloks, which I love by the way, that they seem to dissolve relatively fast in my stomach which if that is the case for you that will work in your favor as well.

As far the E-Fuels, I have only been able to spend a few minutes looking into them but they look like they are formulated with similar things in mind the the Hammer products use.  My only concern is the low caloric count they seem to have which may be fine if you can mix them rich. 

Another thought about using Gatorade is using the powered mix, allowing you to be able to mix that strong and get little more benefit from that.  But in this case I personally think Gatorade is trash and you can do better for your body.  The huge caveat here is that you KNOW you can do Gatorade and maybe that will make you feel more comfortable.

Ultimately it comes down to what you feel you can use from your experience in training.  The big thing I would like to see is that you take a solid nutrition plan into Sunday's race and that you stick to it.  I really don't want you to have to suffer through another race.

I'm sorry to hear about your friend, Tracy.  Cancer does suck. 

Mt taper week isn't going as planned.  Monday I planned a ride and a swim and only got the ride in and spoke to my dad on the phone long enough that I missed the swim opportunity (it was his birthday).  Then last night I ocme to find out that the pool I normally swim at was closed for a week. 

Now I'm headed for Ashland, Ky. for the night.  I am planning a run down there of only about 5 miles and then a bike tomorrow and I'll keep that low key as well.  I am really wanting to get a swim in though.  I am also taking some swim gear to Ky. with me and try to see if I can find a pool there.

Allison,  I'm glad you still check in once in a while.  You don't come around much anymore and I, for one, wonder how things are going for you.

Thanks for all the tips on the tri bike riding.

Tony, looks liek you have a good plan, now trust it.

Brenda, I do what Dirk does, the powdered gatorade is the cat's meow and ti is cheaper.

Jo, just thinking about you getting ready for your IM.