BamaDC's Mentor Group v4.0 - Closed (Page 23)

To all the Alabama guys...

We're heading to Fairhope for a long weekend in about a month.  We'll be staying at a vacation rental house on the bay just south of the Grand Hotel.  My wife will be at conferences half the day each day and I'll be on my own.  I'm looking to get in a good OWS (since the rental has a pier) and decent ride and run, too.  I looked up what bike routes BTers have posted for the area and see there are a few good places to ride. 

Any recommendations from those of y'all who are familiar with the area? 

Awesome!  Save the harpoon so I can get Mark to drag my butt to the line at Rocketman.

Looking back those times are substantially better than last year, so I should be pretty happy with those.  I really wanted sub-minute, though.  Tomorrow is a super short 500yd sprint for time.  Saturday will be my impression of a beached whale.  Sunday - game on.

There are a lot of straight grid-like roads out that way that aren't going to be terribly crowded that are probably good to ride.  I have driven a bunch of those and remember them to be ok.  If you wanted to go farther afield the road down to Fort Morgan is a nice road to ride - good biking lane.  182 on the beach is pretty good, too.

I know on the weekends there is a group ride from a shop in Orange Beach.  Never ridden it, though.

You're not by chance staying in Point Clear at the old Punta Clara Candy Shop (or something like that) rental are you? There's a rental (and it sounds like the same area) that we stayed at when I raced the Grandman Tri down there.

Great place.

For swims, you could head north to the Fairhope City Park and swim along the beach. Shouldn't be too bad, but it will be shallow. I'd look there.

For biking, you should be good with 98 or any of the other roads there. They almost all parallel each other, are flat, and have low traffic. I'd say you'll be alright as long as you aren't driving in rush hour traffic.

What to come up to Maryland this weekend?  Your swimming skills won't be needed because my OLY might turn into a duathlon!

That sounds like the same area.  Thanks for the heads up on the park, I'll have to check that out.  I did see that the Grandman tri is held in the area, I might try to ride that course if there's a map.  It's funny, when I saw Grandman I read it more than once as GRANDMA and thought it was an odd name for a race.  Oops.

Sounds like it'll be fairly easy to find a good route to ride.  I looked ahead on the training plan and I've got a 3.5 hr ride scheduled that weekend.  Looking foward to a change of scenery!

Nice (except for the swim part!).

How's the cleanup going for you (and everyone else in AL for that matter) from the storms last month? 

I was going to go on a storm chasing trip with a former pro storm chaser here @ work.  Apparently the most potential for action is too far west for a long weekend.  I can't decide if that's a good or bad thing!

When are y'all headed down?  I'll be down that way (Gulf Shores) June 17-23.

I usually ride along the beach rode, but was thinking of trying out Fort Morgan.  I'm scheduled for 37 miles that weekend.

You can look up the Grandman route (18 miles, but you can extend it down 98 forever), it was a pretty good route.  http://www.thegrandman.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=site.display&page_id=2894

And the bike shop in Orange Beach has some scheduled rides.  http://infinity-bicycles.com/articles/rides-and-events-pg58.htm

Or the Fairhope Bike Company - http://www.fairhopebicyclecompany.com/

Or a Benefit ride:  http://rideyellow.org/

Well, I'll be there this weekend! ;-)

I've ridden the Fort Morgan road several times.  If you start at the Publix, hit the Fort, and come back it is about 42 miles.  You have to be on your toes in the areas that have tree covers to make sure no cars pull out on you.  But the bike lane is wide.  Lots of runners and bikers, so you're in good company, generally.  And once the trees go away toward the end it is a nice, open ride.  Can get windy - I've done a couple out and backs at 14 and 30mph. ;-)

If you do the Fort Morgan route and you see a someone at the mile 6 Fire Station, stop and say hi - that'll be my dad.

Well, avoid 59 like the plague.  Super-mega busy pretty much all the time.

On a completely unrelated note - this is why we aren't pros. 480 watts for 18.5 minutes up Sierra Road yesterday.  Good grief.

We'll be there 6/16-6/19.  I was thinking of looking up a bike shop, thanks for the links.

If schedule permits let me know if you want to try and ride together.  Although, I have no idea what our schedule is like.  We're traveling with at least one other couple and so far my plan is to just show up and go where I'm asked to go.  It's their conference, I'm just tagging along.  I may have a lot of free time, who knows. 

That sounds like a pretty good route.  the wind is similar on one of my regular routes - kind of a love/hate thing.

Side note: my dad is a fire fighter as well.  Going on 30 years now in Grapevine, TX (north side of DFW airport if you've ever been in the Dallas, TX area).  He's a Deputy Chief now looking for a Chief's position somewhere.  Fire fighters are good peoples.

Good report!  BTW, you pull to the right because you breathe to the right.  Natural tendency that you have to figure out and work on.  Nothing unusual.

I've been watching parts of the race and call the end of that stage.  The really scary thing is those guys walked away from whole field of equally strong riders.  There is a Baltimore based team (Kelly Benefit/OptiumHealth) that I've been following and it's interesting to see the difference between the bigger international teams (BMC, Leopard, HTC, etc) compared to some of the smaller more domestic ones like Kelly.  The big teams setup their guy(s) up coming into Sierra Rd by pushing the pace at the front.  The smaller teams didn't seem to have the depth in their team so it was left to individuals to try and keep up which took a lot out of them when.  Same thing seemed to happen in the Giro last night. HTC punished the peleton and set up Cavendish really well while it seemed like some of the other sprinters were relying on other people to lead then out.  Cycling definitely is a team sport at that level.  But those are just some armchair observations of a guy that doesn't know much about cycling...

I tend to swim towards shore.  Last fall I did a race with and out and back swim along the shore line.  On the way out I keep swimming to the right and on the way back I keep swimming to the left.

I related news, looks like my race will be a triathlon after all and not a duathlon!

Congrats on a good race!

I'm thinking about taking advantage of Xterra's wetsuit sale.  Vortex 3 Full is on sale for $189 this month.  This is about as good of a deal as I've found with the BT discounts on a full suit.  Pretty sure I saw that one or two people in the group have the same suit.  Is this worth it?  Would you buy it again if you had to? 

I'm looking now so I can get some good time with it before Sept.  I've read that Atomic Man is almost always wetsuit legal. 

Redemption day:

500yds - 5:59.59

Heck yea.  Bring on the swim.

There are 225 registered racers, Sands!

Time for business!

I have one. I got it for a similar deal and have been happy with it..  Only swam with it twice, one in practice and once for a race last fall. I actually had to send it back for warranty service after my race last year.  Xterra was very helpful and easy to deal with and sent me a brand new one right away.

  I went to St. Louis today and had a bike fit done on my tri bike....WOW.  They hooked me up to a computrainer and used video of me riding the bike.  They then used a laser on my legs while riding and I saw that my configuration was all JACKED up.  I guess the "that feels about right" was not a great concept.  They stretched me out more on the aero bars and changed just about everything that could be changed.  I also found out that a broken ankle that I had years ago was causing me some pedaling issues.  Left ankle was dropping inwards towards the bike toooo much and my knee was moving away from the bike at the same time (not sure how to explain technical terms...lol).  Bike tech advised that my configuration and pedaling issues were casing me to loose wattage.  Bike tech placed inserts in my shoes and under my cleat.  I also purchased a new ISM saddle.   Seems to be a good fit and only time will tell about this saddle.  I meant to get a fit done last year but wife informed me that I had spent too much money that year.  

  I had heard how important a bike fit was but I didn't think that it would change that much.  Doesn't feel like my bike, which, is even better for longer rides.  FIt cost me a few bucks but it some of the best money spent to date.