Elk Park Roadie

I finally got the road bike out this weekend!  The weather played nice, the streets were clear enough of debris and it was time to get out and spin.  I headed up to Elk Park for an easy ride.  For those not familiar with Elk Park, it sits at about 6,300 ft and there is flat meadow for about 9 miles where I-15 runs through it.  The beauty is that it has an access road that hardly gets much traffic and can make for some great early season rides as the itch to get out needs to be scratched.

In the grand scheme of things it is a long, straight, flat ride that can get boring pretty quickly but it beats the heck out of sitting on a trainer for any period of time.  The other bennie at this time of year is that the rest of the roads that are thawing out usually have a ton of dirt on them or are in really poor shape with serious potholes from the winter freezing and thawing cycles.

The ride is always a funny ride because you feel like you are just crushing it heading north for 9 miles and you start to tell yourself you are riding strong...It was relatively easy to maintain a 22-24mph speed heading north without having to put a lot of effort in.  The reality check is when you turn around and head back south on the access road and realize you had the benefit of a nice tail wind...the 22-24 avg quickly drops to the 14-17 range and you are battling the wind the whole way back.  It is a funny thing about this particular geography...the wind is always blowing, and always blowing in the same direction from the south to the north.

It was still a little chilly but good to test the legs and see how they did after putting in a good day on Saturday too.  The back to back pushes are usually a decent barometer of just how in shape or out of shape the legs are in the early season.  I ended up doing a couple of laps on the Elk Park access road circuit and it ended up being around 38 miles in a little under 2 hours.  I would have liked to have ridden longer but ran out of motivation to turn around again for a 3rd lap up there.  The wind beat me down enough to discourage such thoughts...guess the upcoming True Grit will have to not only be a physical smack down but also a gut check to dig deep and push through some mental pain too - "Gee Wiz" (as my old stats prof used to say.  We all hated that SOB as he was just a horrible teacher: more accurately,  he was incredibly smart but did not have the ability to dumb it down enough for us!  I remember the long long formulas and how he would start to erase the formulas as he ran out of space and we would just be left with un-legible scribbles from trying to copy the board at mach speed - and at the end of these rambling formula erasing sessions he would say 'Gee wiz, it is that simple'...mold all of this frantic writing and speaking with the fact that he had a really strong Belgian accent which made his Anglais difficult to understand and we were all just at a total loss).  Whoa, off on a tangent there...back to the ride:

I was not able to get the powertap working on the ride but at least came away with some data points via the Garmin Forerunner.  I will have to spend a little time fine tuning the power-tap and computer to make sure it reads for the next ride.

Come Home To Papa

Today should mark the return of my latest fetish in bikes.  After breaking the old Blur frame from ten years of abuse, it was time to step up.   The bike of choice was a Lynskey Pro 29'r which has been built up as a singlespeed.  It does have the option to swap up hangers so that you can go the geared route too, but considering that it is being built up as a fully rigid setup, I am guessing the geared alternative might just not happen. One of my requirements on the frame was to have horizontal sliders so it would be easy to adjust chain tension.  I wanted to stay away from Eccentric Bottom Bracket design.

I am supposed to head up to Helena at some point to pick up my baby...There are still a few unknowns (mostly due to fit - things such as stem length, etc...) but it is close!  I am anxiously awaiting the reunion.

The build includes DT Swiss hub with Stan's Crest rims for a nice and light tubeless wheelset.  I even matched the spoke nipples color to the headset color: red.  It will be a little 'blinged' out but without going over the top.  For a fork, I went with a DT rigid carbon fork which comes in at a nice and light sub 600 grams.  The thought process was that I pretty much rode a fully rigid bike all of last year since I locked out my fork (since it was such a POS).  As for brakes...nothing fancy - straight up Avid mech BB7's.  Cranks will be the SRAM stylo action - nothing sexy but it should be just fine for now...the cockpit is TBD as is the seatpost and saddle (hopefully my Thompson posts will work size wise).

Pictures forthcoming once I pick up the titanium beast later today...come home to Papa!

Spring Tease

Our weather has warmed up a little as of late and it is hard to tell whether it is the start of a warming trend leading into spring or whether it is just wishful thinking.  Either way, the warmer weather has been a welcome relief.

I suspect that spring might be around the corner as bears in Yellowstone are coming out of hibernation and our pups are starting to shed their winter coats a little.  With a little luck the roads will thaw out and soon enough it will be time to ride outside.  Although our winter has been really harsh on the local roads...lots of changes in temps have led to some scary potholes everywhere that could easily taco a wheel in lickity split time.

Until our weather is consistently warmer and the snow no longer frequents us, I will continue the personal time with the indoor trainer.  It finally dawned on me to switch out saddles on the trainer the other day.  The trainer came stock with a big wide, uncomfy saddle that just did not break in (or break me in) so after 2 yrs of straddling the stock cycleops saddle, it was time to switch it out to something more in line with what is on our real bikes.  The hope is it will make it just a wee bit more comfy to stay on the trainer longer...hope springs eternal I guess  (keeping with the 'spring' theme)...silly puns

Skillzzzz

Thanks Dan-O

love some of the comments on his other videos....  'a bit crackers'

A Hill in Spain from chris akrigg on Vimeo.

Bike Alternatives

'nuff said:

a great way to wear your shoes out quickly and whatever you do, don't lay it over!

runbike?

Just in case you can't decide whether to bike or run, there is now an option for you so you don't have to decide...as Rush said 'If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice'.

do we call this new activity ruking?  or bunning?

The only thing missing is training wheels...

http://www.runbike.com/

It is like running on the moon?  

Integrating Compex Into Workouts

As the winter plods along, it is time to start thinking of getting the legs into riding shape for the upcoming warmer months - albeit those warmer months might be few and far between in Big Sky.  For the last couple of years it has usually meant spending some time on the trainer and working on maintaining some fitness for the upcoming riding season.

I have slowly been learning about the Compex e-stim unit and how to integrate the unit into some sort of training schedule (and I use the words 'training schedule' loosely at this point considering the lack of hrs and regular time in the saddle).

The current plan is to do an e-stim session 3 times a week after the regular workout.  The e-stim sessions should be scheduled and or done after your normal workout so that you don't tire out the muscle groups for your primary workouts.  After an e-stim session, I always run an 'active recovery' session on the e-stim to flush out some of the build up in the legs.  So a weekly schedule for me might look like:

Life being what it is, things move around and I often find myself adjusting to a variety of things such as schedule or how the legs feel.  If the legs feel heavy, I will back off and maybe add in extra 'active recovery' sessions on the e-stim if needed.  I have recently be doing 2 weeks on, then a rest week.  During the rest week I will either not do e-stim or do a light version of the scheduled training program.

I am currently running the 'explosive strength' program on the Compex three times a week and after about 4-6 weeks will move to the 'strength' program for 4-6 weeks then the same rotations/timeframes for the 'resistance' and finally the 'endurance' program.  During these phases, I will increase the e-stim around 5-10% a week in terms of numbers during the program.

So it will be a 4-6 week cycle of going from 'explosive strength'-->'strength'-->'resistance'-->'endurance'.
The 4-6 weeks will help the muscles not to 'adapt' to the training.  Our bodies are smart enough to know when they need to adapt and a result it is good to change workouts up and shock them a little (not particular just to the e-stim but to overall training).
I think the biggest bang for the buck will be the endurance training as it relates specifically to cycling.  The key is to manage all these variables so they all synch up to your ultimate 'A' race or taper time frame.  My current schedule is still up in the air because I have not currently signed up for an 'A' race (currently working on a short list).  My first event of the season will be the True Grit in St George (late March) and it will be interesting to see just how much of a suffer-fest it might be considering the lack of ride time and that it will be the inaugural ride on the newly built ride....

At this point it is all just mere speculation on my end and I look forward to seeing if all comes together.  At the end of the day I have to keep workouts fresh or else my mind starts to tune out and get burned out.  Everyone has their own theories based on how their bodies react to certain things so there is constant tweaking, but I have found it is good to have an outline for training.  Having said all this, I am sure there will continue to be a learning curve and am curious to tweak the variables as needed.