Saturday, February 06, 2010

Old Man Winter blows.

Clever title? Cabin fever hasn't given me writer's block (see: The Shining for a good example of cabin fever leading to writer's block). Good think Jack wasn't a cyclist, he'd have cracked waaaay sooner if he were riding a trainer instead of writing a book (though Danny was able to ride his trike all around the hotel, so maybe Jack could have set up an indoor crit-style course to train on. Or better still, w/ obstacles [stairs, apparitions, etc.] he surely could have set up good indoor cross course, but these hinder my point, so forget about all that).
What was my point?
Oh yeah, some more semi-serious winter weather blew in and dumped a good amount of snow on us and left it cold and windy.
I rode outside almost everyday this past week. Wednesday I got out for over 2hrs, but ended up w/ 2 mostly frozen water bottles and numb hands/feet. Pretty miserable ride. The week was an easier week (no intervals) and I was to "test" on Friday. Testing consists of riding 20min as-hard-as-you-can and ~trying~ to increase your power output. I had a course all planed out and went to scope part of it Thursday to get a few time markers and stuff. Well, that turned out to be for naught, as the bad weather started blowing in overnight Thurs, and I had to test inside Friday. Testing inside is different than outside because of the static nature of trainer resistance; you have to break it up into segments, then hold steady power and try to increase it each segment (I try to do 1-10min, then 2-5min segments), as opposed to the dynamic nature of outside riding w/ hills, wind, etc to change your effort (power output) all the time. Anywho, I tested almost the exact same as my last test, which was also forced indoors by weather (actually 1watt lower). But if I factor in the alleged 10% decrease you're expected to display inside as opposed to out, I'm still above where I was last Sept (which was done outside). So I can't complain about that, just the weather.
Speaking of, the 10-day forecast looks like more of the same...terrible.
On the plus side, if (we) do ride outside on Sundays right now, we're leaving late enough in the day (to let it "warm" up) that I have eaten a homemade waffle almost every Sunday for the past several. I normally don't want to deal w/ the denseness of a big Belgian waffle while riding, but w/ 3-4hours to digest it, it's been waffle game-on.
(We) may get out today (Sunday). It's sunny, but ~11* right now (10am).
****Update****
We got out today. I rolled w/ a group of good guys, but it was cold (~25*) and windy, and the group was blown apart. Still, I was just happy to have gotten since, as mentioned earlier, nest week is not looking so hot...
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.
All spin and no ride make Adam a dull boy.

Man, this is way easy w/ copy/paste. I wonder how he did that w/ a Smith & Corona.


I'm not a football fan, but watching The Colts move the ball down the field is impressive.

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