Cadence is making me a wuss.

I upgraded my bike's computer (to those friends that don't ride, yes I'm that geeky) to one that allows you to see your cadence (rpm). This is handy while training so that if you hit a bad head wind, you can down shift and keep your cadence at the same level. The idea is you will then be putting in the same amount of effort and not tire out as quickly.

So, after the race this past Sunday, I realized that although this kind of training has helped me build endurance to easily bike like 60+ miles in a ride, this numbers studying has made me a wimp when it comes to raw power. During the race I hit some nasty headwinds while trying to head west to the finish check point. I of course stuck with my old mindset and down shifted to keep my cadence high. Although this helped me from over exerting, it didn't make me push through the wind to keep my speed up.

On top of that, when I did try to power through the winds I found I just didn't have the mental will power. Training based on cadence made me forget what it's like to enjoy the anguish and pain that comes with trying to maintain a good speed when mother nature is against you. I found my heart rate spiking and lungs yelling "just down shift, we'll love you forever if you shit down a gear or two".

I really think the above is why I didn't place in the top 50 at the time trial. It majorly came down to mental strength, and the cadence/endurance training I've been focusing 100% on shot down those chances.

The solution? I really need to mix it up. If I'm biking at night after work, I know I only have an hour or two to ride. I should take that time to really push through and work on my speed... do some sprint intervals, not down shift for head winds, be ok with letting my cadence drop from 90/100 rpm to 50. It just means I'll be building speed strength.

Must... get... motivated...

I finally got my ass back on the bike and LOVED it. I just kept imagining how I felt during the time trial on Sunday, which motivated to push through any winds and hills/highway over-passes. I really need to kick this exhausted/lazy feeling after work, so this was one step in the right direction.

Probably the best highlight of this ride was drafting off a car heading north on Clark. They seemed very confused and nervous to see me doing around 24mph following behind their car. This is also probably the first time I pushed myself to a max of over 25mph all winter!

Ride Stats:
Wed, Jan 16, 2008 - 15.86 mi [Cycling]
15.86 mi in 01:01:55 hours at 15.37 mi/h on Trek 2200. [Cycling] 34F, feels like 27 with wind chill. Winds from S at 8mph.

Sunday, f'in 6am Sunday

This is the over all ride to the race, the Tour Da Chicago Prologue TT, and return ride. Considering the slacking I've been doing, this day was a pretty big eye opener. I tried doing the race on about 4 hours of sleep, no breakfast, and basically all around no race preparation. Like getting up at 6am wasn't tough enough without compounding all that on top.

The results definitely confirmed this sloppy attitude. Although I knew I wouldn't do great, and actually set a goal not to be in the bottom 10, I was still disappointed with how I performed. I'll post more details in a race report to come later.

Overall race stats:

Total Riders:

81

Placement:

58th

Time:

83:29

Route:

~23 miles

Sun, Jan 13, 2008 - 36.80 mi [Cycling]
36.80 mi in 02:24:15 hours at 15.31 mi/h on Trek 2200. [Cycling] Ride down to 37th st, Tour Da Chicago prologue TT race (~23 miles), ride back home.

Week Ending JAN 12 2008

Finished week 6 of official training.

Weekly Stats

Miles Goal:

62.00 miles

Total miles:

15.19 miles

Average Speed:

15.34 mph

I'm a slacker. The winter doldrums caught up with me and I just couldn't get my butt back in the saddle. As you can tell the miles suffered and I didn't even come close to meeting my mileage goal. Can the warm weather get here already??

Thu, Jan 10, 2008 - 15.19 mi [Cycling]

Thu, Jan 10, 2008 - 15.19 mi [Cycling]
15.19 mi in 00:59:24 hours at 15.34 mi/h on Trek 2200. [Cycling] Indoor training, workout 1 interval routine
Posted from My Cycling Log

Week Ending JAN 5 2008

Finished week 5 of official training.

Weekly Stats

Miles Goal:

55.80 miles

Total miles:

56.35 miles

Average Speed:

13.60 mph

Cramming in last minute miles

This was my first long ride in well over a week and first real ride since the flu bug I caught last week. I was happy to see the temperatures finally above freezing, and my lungs were ready to try to catch up on my lack of riding/mileage from earlier in the week.

To get the miles in I figured I'd try to do the xXx racing team's route up to Highland Park. I deviated a little but made it almost all the way up before the weather turned pretty awful. On my way home I decided to add some more miles by also shooting pretty far out west through Skokie. Then I finished up by doing my midnight ride route down into the west loop, then the loop, then back through River North/Gold Coast back home. I also realized I was making great time out in the 'burbs. I didn't realize how much the stop and go riding in the city ruins my average speed stats. In the 'burbs I was at around 17-18mph, compared to 13-14mph in the city.

Ride Stats:
Sat, Jan 5, 2008 - 44.61 mi [Cycling]
44.61 mi in 03:04:22 hours at 14.52 mi/h on Trek 2200.

Nice slow strokes

I think I'm finally shaking this shitty virus I've had for the past week. Since my lungs were still pretty shot I figured I would do some indoor training on fluid pedal strokes. I found a really good interval work out for doing mostly single leg riding to work on my stroke. Basically it's 30 seconds 1 leg, 30 seconds both legs, 30 seconds other leg, 1 minute both, and repeat 10 times. Then it's followed by some low gear riding to keep the pedaling steady.

Stats and Notes:
Fri, Jan 4, 2008 - 11.74 mi [Cycling]
11.74 mi in 01:04:14 hours at 10.97 mi/h on Trek 2200. [Cycling] Indoor pedal stroke training while recovering from illness. Pretty easy on the lungs, resembling difficult on legs for maintaining pedal stroke.