Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 85)

I am so excited.  I just found out that tomorrow I am getting fitted for the loaner TT bike from the brother-in-law of the runner on my Timberman relay team, and I'll be taking it home!  He works at Fitwerx, a premier bike fitting place up here and has generously agreed to lend me one of his bikes for 6 weeks of bliss.  Since I may never got one of my own, this is the closest I'll get to having a tri bike.

You can bet I'm changing my plan this week to ride that bad boy Thursday morning on one of my TT routes!  Only this group can really understand, so thanks for listening.

1. To the first question: I would say yes, most certainly.  The additional strokes will allow more muscle development in areas that will support the primary Freestyle stroke.  By doing the additional swim work you are providing more strength and stability to the swimming muscles, thereby making yourself less likely to encounter an injury.  If you have the time I suggest you learn and practice these strokes.  (I have now given you advice that I don't practice myself but if I had the time I most definitely would re-learn at least fly and breast. (I used to be able to do these.))
2. WO's in the heat require more time to recover.  Especially the sort of heating we have been experiencing in the recent weeks.  (I am still recovering from the extreme dehydration, lack of training, hardcore return to training and increased cycling mileage from the storm work 2 weeks ago.)  Jeff could explain the physiological reason in better terms than I can but you are basically depleting your body of vital nutrients and electrolytes more rapidly in these heating situations and recovering from them can be equally hard to get a total recovery in a short period as we continue to keep our training loads high.  this is one reason that allowing time for a recovery week is so important.
3. Bike load for short duration can be tricky.  As Warren said, I would make sure if you are trying to get a lot of bang for the time you have available you should REALLY load up on those short rides.  Design some very high intensity WO's throughout the week to increase your cycling fitness.  I would say that any kind of gains made in a 30 minute WO will be pretty minimal and I think as you head toward a HIM you are going to want to spend some long rides in the saddle.  The long rides, if nothing else, will develop an ability to stay in the saddle for 3-4 hours, and that will be pretty important in the middle of the race.
   Also, I don't think I would spend any less time than 45 minutes for a cycling WO.  Anything less may not give you enough WU and you may try to rush a CD as well.  Both elements are pretty important, especially the WU.  A short 30 minute HARD WO won't allow much time to really develop the muscular fatigue you're going to be looking for either (my opinion). 

Samantha that's great to hear your training has been going well. I am sorry to hear that you guys did not win the Jeep contest. I was really hoping you guys would win that for your community but I do hope you guys can use it to help the cause.

Warren that is awesome, so I guess you'll be racking up the miles like Stan on that Tri bike! Enjoy riding it and check in with us every now and then to let us know how you are doing

I know exactly how exited you are Warren!  To be able to ride a TT bike makes a huge difference and now you'll have one for several weeks.  I think it's a huge deal! And you should make a big deal of it.

The only trouble I see is that you are going to get a tremendous itch to get your own after riding that kind of speed for 6 or 7 weeks.

Congrats!

It's great to know you are back into the training the way you like.  I know for a couple of weeks you were kind of struggling to get much other than cycling done.  But you know, you need to get those swims going.  Get yourself to the pool or the lake and just get in and have some fun at first.  Then start a WO after you have knocked off a few minutes of chilling out.

Forget the logs!  How was the cruise?

Whew!!!  I'm back to the internet!  The race went great!  Here is a short synopsis before I get everything logged into BT.

I got 2nd in my age group, 5th overall female, and fastest female bike split!

The course was longer than last year due to a change in transition area location.  That made T1 further away from the swim exit.  The bike was slightly longer due to the transition area location and the run course was altered drastically from previous years.  Even with all those changes, I ended up with a faster overall time than last year!

The heat didn't affect my bike ride but it did cause my run time to be less than spectacular.  I anticipated it and decided to bust my butt on the bike and hope for the best on the run.  The gamble paid off!

Enough for now.  I need to get unpacked and organized.  I hope everyone has been doing well over the past week.  Cheers! 

Tracy congrats on the great finish as Dirk said it sounds like you had another great race. Look forward to reading the RR.

I'm back! and I've sure missed this site.  I can't wait to go back and read everyone's post but right now I have to catch up on work e-mails..yuk

Our team won the "consulation bracket"  I guess that is good but being in that bracket is not good.  I'll just say we had a small baseball park to choose from and other states do thins differently and use the whole county.  1 team had 140 teams to pick their players, another had 600 players to choose from.  We did as good as we could do under the circumstances. My son did not make an error in the tourney.  He played 1st and pitched. he made some awesome picks at 1st base from bad throws.

The motel had a stationary bike, treadmill, eleptical and dumbbells up to 50 lbs.  I went to the pool in the afternoon and a lot of teams were staying at the motel and it was packed w/ little sisters and brothers, I'm talking 4 years and up to maybe 12.  I was going to swim early in themorningwhen no one was there butI got to thinking...how many times did someone pee in the pool...I didn't swim!

I rode the stationary bike, tried to run but IT band SUX! and did the eleptical a little.  So i did lots of arms exercises w/ db's and rode the bike...

Going to orthopedic dr today for cortisone shot in elbow and see if he can fix the IT band.

hope everyone is surviving the heat! and working out hard!

Great race Tracy.

Good luck on the injuries Karl.  It's tough to deal with your body not co-operating.

That wedding story is sad but in a way cool.  I think they will see in the end the marriage is more important than the wedding and will have a great story to tell.

I'll post more later, but did my first ride on the bike this morning and all I can say is WOW!  It may not ALL be about the bike, but some of it is.

Jo63 - 2012-07-19 7:05 AM Sam sorry you didn't win the contest Tracy awesome race congrats! Warren I agree with Dirk on the Tri bike since I got mine I feel there is such a difference than my road bike. As for my cruise,we had a great time I didn't get in as much training as I would have liked but since we got back I feel so much better with my training so maybe I just needed a bit of a break. One of the generators quit so we didn't have enough power to get to Jamacia where the wedding was supposed to be, the bride cried most of the time as they ended up getting married in our new destination Cozumel, it was not at all what they had planned I told her in a year she will look back and have a story to tell and the most important part is that they are together. I dont think she believed me ......They did get absolutely everything paid for because of the problem so hopefully they will feel better once all the emotion is gone when they get home.

JoAnne welcome back from your vacation. Glad to hear you had a good time and sorry to hear about what happened with the wedding. Sounds like you got the break you needed and hopefully that will re-energize you so you can finish out your IM training strong.

Jo, sorry about the wedding but she should be glad they are married and found a good man.

Warren, enjoy the bike!  is that the 1st time you have ridden a tri bike?  How was the learning curve? 

Ok, self indulgent bike report:

Here are some musings from the first ride with the TT bike.  And yes, it’s my first ever ride on a TT bike, and actually my first ever on a really nice bike of any kind, so some of this may be just riding a very nice bike.  It is a Serotta, with a sram force components, mavic wheels (I’m not sure if they were elite or one of the carbone sets, I’ll check tonight).  53/39, and 11-26 cassette.

1. It is super fast.  On the flats and downhills, I felt like the bike was literally pulling me along and trying to get me to go faster.  I can’t really explain it any other way.  Relatively flat sections I’m used to seeing 21-22 at moderately hard effort were showing up at 24-25.  It was crazy.
2. It is twitchy.  The handling took me a while to get used to.  In fact, by the end of the ride (1 hour) I was just really feeling comfortable, but not totally.  The shifting was strange and I was often not in the right gear.  I wasn’t ever really pushing all out because the governor was holding me back for fear or handling issues.  This will likely improve with practice just as it has with my road bike while I’m in the aerobars.
3. It is comfortable.  I’m sure this has to do with the geometry, but in the aero position I felt similar to what it feels like on my road bike when I’m on the hoods.  Hips were so open I wondered if something was wrong with the position.  I was able to comfortably stay in the aero bars even climbing short hills at 12-13 mph.
4. It is stable at high speeds.  Even at 40+ mph the bike was totally stable - which seems at odds with the twitchy comment - except I think the twitchiness is just me getting used to the handling.  It just felt very stable and not bouncy or out of control as the speed went up.
5. It is simply fun.  I was actually laughing out loud at times at how much fun it was to be cranking away on such a cool road machine.  I gotta get me one of these someday!

After talking with the guy who is lending it to me, we’re going to put a compact crank and probably an 11-27 or 12-28 cassette since there are a few climbs at Timberman which I don’t think I can comfortably tackle with 39-26 gearing.  I’m going to ride the course this weekend to be sure, but I expect two climbs to be nearly impossible for me with that gearing.  Both top out at around 13%, so I’ll be real stomping it at crazy low rpm and I’d rather have some more gears.

Karl congrats on your son and his team's performance at the WS. Glad to here that they did well and he played well. Sorry to hear about the ongoing IT issues I know that it can be very, very fustrating. I hope the Dr. can help you out with that today.

Warren thanks for the update and I am glad to hear that you are enjoying the bike and that it does make a noticeable difference when you ride. I am thinking there is no going back now and a TT bike could be in your future perhaps

Warren, thanks for posting the bike ride...yep, you'll have one soon...No going back now...lol  start saving!!!  The 1st and only time I rode a tri bike, I was horrified!!!  My road bike does not have aero bars and I just about crashed!!! 

Keep us informed!!!!!

I've been reading all of your posts, not just making many of my own these days.  Sorry if I've seemed out of touch lately. 

Jo, welcome back from your vacation!  I hope you had a great time. 

Samantha, I can't believe you didn't win!  I thought you were a shoe-in.  Well, we still all enjoyed seeing a little bit about what you do. 

Dirk, I thought you were going to have a bunch more work to do with this morning's storm here.  Hopefully you aren't overwhelmed again.

Happy birthday, Matt!  How are you celebrating?

Warren, we are all so jealous of you right now.  I'm glad you are enjoying the rides.  I really appreciated your feedback from your first ride too.  So I am pretty clueless about things like this, but give me a ballpark figure for how much a bike like that would cost new.  I know they are expensive, but around how much?  Maybe one day....

Jo- I agree, the lack of training was probably a blessing in disguise, and I think it was probably a good thing you got some extra recovery time as I'm thinking about how you were feeling before.  Now that you're fully re-energized you can get back to your training feeling fresh with a brand new mindset!

According to Geoff (the lender), the frame was about 4k new.  Wheels are probably 1000+, after the rest of the building and such I would say ~6000.  That’s a wild ballpark.  But as Geoff said, Serotta is an expensive frame; it costs more than comparable frames from other companies, and this was custom made.  He had some zip 808s laying around in his garage but I couldn’t convince him to lend me those - that would up the price considerably!

I’ll certainly never have one like this, and you can get a nice TT bike for a LOT less.  I’m looking at a really nice Planet X bike on Craigslist for 2k right now.

Same here Allison, every time I get ready to post I only have a few minutes or I get interrupted  with something.

Just for perspective, I bought my tri bike at the end of the season (January) when everything was on sale. It is a Felt B16 - it cost $1700. Not on the same level as Warren's bike but it gets the job done.

I'll be back with more later. Gotta get the kids to piano lessons.

Warren love reading about how much fun you are having on that bike!

To be clear, it's not my bike but one an incredibly generous friend has allowed me to use for a month or so for my upcoming races.  My wife's comment when I walked in this morning looking like a 6 year old on Christmas morning was "now you're gonna hate your bike, aren't you?". 

We got a good chuckle, but I do think for the massive climbing I'd still much prefer my old faithful.