With a certain Handmade Bicycle Show in town this weekend, there has been a ton of pron posted to blogs and forums this weekend. While out for a ride with Nate on Friday afternoon, I was able to score some first hand amateur homemade stuff. Enjoy!

The Upskirt

Who am I?

Since the beginning of the year, I have been on a kick to really learn who I am.  Not so much on a personality or emotional level but more in the terms of how my body works.  For the past 29 years, I have been under the assumption that I didn't really need to know all the workings of my body as they have always just seemed to work.  Now that I will be hitting the big 3-0 in a couple of months, I have really been trying to figure out what really works best for me when it comes to riding/training.

I first started by wearing a heart rate monitor during all of my snowy indoor riding sessions.  There have been quite a few of them this year which I am sorta proud of as I hate to ride indoors.  It ranks right up among the other things I hate, running and painting.  All three suck equally!  By doing so I have been able to prove the old estimate of 220-age=max wrong.  That would put my max at 190.  I been able to get it as high as 197 and I am sure I could get it up to 200 in a race situation if needed.  Now I know the max hr isn't something to brag about but it is necessary for me to understand where my thresholds lie.  These will be important for the longer races/record attempts I make in the future.  The longer I can stay in my upper threshold without going above it the faster I will be.  The next step is to get an accurate reading of my resting heart rate.  So far that reading has been all over the map which means I wasn't really "resting".

While waiting for Jenn while she was at swim training the other night I did some searching around on the UMCA website for any new articles.  It is a great place for information if you have never been to it.  Well there was a two part article on recovery published not too long ago.  The first part simplified the caloric intake necessary to remain strong on the bike and to stimulate faster recovery.  Despite the article being written in English and the math simplified for us simpletons, it meant nothing to me as I had absolutely no idea how many calories I consume in one day.  I have since made an account on Fitday.com and have been tracking everything I eat each day.  I am on day two and can already tell you this experiment will not last long.  But hopefully I can stick with it long enough to get an idea of just how many calories I take in on an average day.  I eat pretty healthy these days but more importantly I am eating pretty consistently as well.

Hopefully, if I take all of this knowledge I am gaining and combine it with all the motivation I am still riding high on, I may just find out who I am.   Now to go ride!

Last weekend was great! I was able to get outside and ride without having to bundle up like a sausage not once but twice. On Friday, The Masta of Spin and I decided to take a ride through the center of the universe. Once we got North of town, the most ferocious animal jumped out of nowhere and attacked Nate's rear tire. Nate forgot to pick up his tube before leaving and I still had not remembered to take the saddle bag off the cross bike and put it back onto the La Raza. After trying to phone for help and nobody answering, I started a TT back through the center of the universe to the car. Legs and breathing felt pretty good for this time of year and would have been an excellent ride if not for the whooshing wind.

Saturday brought on an afternoon ride with Jenn and Nate. Once again a trip through the center of the universe was planned. The change in ride time found the animal fast asleep when we went by his low lying ditch. I think he was probably just full from the huge chuck of rubber he scored out of the tire the day prior. The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, just a good solid ride. And since it has been argued that "If there is no photographic evidence, it didn't actually happen", I took a not that exciting picture to share.


The next couple of days, it looks like will be rainy/snowy/mostly rain again I will be relegated to the rollers after work. Then on Saturday another 50+ degree day is going to happen so I will be getting outside to ride. Who knows, I may even start to take down the Xmas decorations. I wouldn't get your hopes up though...

Tomorrow...

As little Orphan Annie has always sung, "The sun'll come out Tomorrow So ya gotta hang on 'Til tomorrow Come what may Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya Tomorrow! You're always A day A way" It has always helped me to look forward when things look a little gray. I have a lot to look forward to starting this weekend.

• Inventory at the store will finally be done. Snow has canceled it not once but two times already. It is going to feel real good to get it over with.
• The Winter Olympics have started. I always look forward to the Olympics as I tend to find a never ending array of motivation in the stories of the athletes. Which is what the Olympic spirit is supposed to entail.
• The snowy white stuff looks to be gone for a least a week once a small storm comes through an Monday. The temps are due to be in the mid to upper 40's the entire week and it looks like it will be sunny to boot.
  

The one thing I am not looking forward to is spending a week home alone while Jenn is away at her annual conference. Which is why no matter what day it is or how good the weather is, if asked I will say I am looking forward to Friday! Until then, I am going to try and get some two-a-days on the rollers at least a couple of times this week. The hardest question while doing them will be whether or not to follow along with a Spinerval or the Olympics. Why is life so full of difficult questions?

Got one over on ...

Since moving away from Chi-town as a kid we haven't really had more than one or two of what I would consider to be "winters". This year I had a plan though. I thought that maybe just maybe if I were to leave all of the Christmas decorations and lights up around the outside of the house, good ole Mother Nature would get confused as to what time of the year it actually is and bring us some of the powdery white stuff. I think it may have worked as the last two weekends (including this one) we have been dumped on with a little wintry mix thrown in in the middle of the week just for kicks.

This storm had Jenn going in to work snow duty once again last night. Not wanting to be overly bored with her not around, I decided I would take a stab at riding the rollers two nights in a row. Both nights, I followed along with Spinervals Vol 7 The Uphill Grind. A 45 minute interval set designed to put your heart into your throat.

I have been fighting a on again off again head cold for the past couple of months as if it were a crazy ex-girlfriend who would not leave me alone despite me moving on. And in true crazy ex form, once she found out she could no longer get to me, she went after my wife. Jenn is not happy to have caught one of my colds again because they always hit her harder than me. Last night I decided to wear the heart rate strap while on the rollers for the first time this year. In the 45 minutes my heart rate averaged 164 and I saw a maximum rate of 193. I am not sure if it is a good thing or a bad thing to be able to get my rate up that high. I am not sure I have ever gotten it that high before. Does this mean my heart is getting bigger and stronger or the opposite? The exciting news for me though was despite my breathing being a bit out of control, the lactic acid in my legs was borderline ridiculous but bearable for at least 4 seconds more.

Tonight, looks to be a wash as I will probably be conducting inventory at the shop and then tomorrow I will be back at work and then home to catch some of the Super Bowl.