aaaaahhhh. I'm just sitting down to eat dinner #2. Big slammer-jammer ride today cost me a nice 4896 kilojoules. Where did all those joules go? They go to a place called EXPENDEDJOULEHEAVEN. In EXPENDEDJOULEHEAVEN, all the joules recharge by eating Payday candy bars in a well-laid-out rock garden and tell TALL tales about how their host cyclist expended them. For exmaple, "MY cyclist expended me as he was slamming a 1700 watt sprint away from a cougar...", or "MY cyclist expended me while he was blowing by a bike commuter heading down main street with his eyes closed..." Their stories are often exaggerated. Sometimes, a joule will have low self-esteem and be ashamed of his story: "MY cyclist expended me during a recovery ride while he blew a snot rocket that landed on his earlobe..."
EXPENDEDJOULEHEAVEN:
Each and every joule that's expended must meet the maker, none other than James Joule himself. But the joules are told that they can call him JJ, for short. JJ then eats the joules. When he eats 1000 joules, he then poops a whole kilojoule back to the real world, only to be expended another day by some bozo cyclist. And you know what else is awesome? Snickers.
Yea so I'm pretty much blown out from training. Oh yea, I saw so many chieftons on my ride today. SUPER CHIEFTONS! I must have seen at least 50 chieftons out on the ride. Gotta give love to the chieftons. Lately, I have been giving salutes to them... I take both hands off the bars and give them a full salute. It is similar in form to the Wizza-Salute. When the chieftons see that I am saluting, they salute right back. This is what it looks like:
MASSIVE KITCHEN FAILURE. Moments ago, I realized that I put water on to boil about an hour ago, and I just went in to check it, and it was 100% boiled away, and the non-stick surface on the my piece of junk pot has turned white and apparently has burned off into my airspace. So, basically, there are billions of burned particles of non-stick surface in my apartment and it smells like when you drive past Linden, NJ on the Turnpike. (coincidently, where the Colavita warehouse is.) Anyway, now that I am going to get cancer all over my body, I am going to open up all the windows before D-Fal comes home so that it doesn't smell like cancer in my apartment.
bumpedestrians (christoph)Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Geeze, people. The sun comes out and the pedestrians get all loony.
The UVA kids are a smart bunch, but they've been overdomesticated and it's endangering their lives. You see, drivers are really courteous at UVA, and now all the students take safe drivers for granted. They're like the bears in the Smoky Mountains that have become overly domesticated. The bears have lost their fear of humans and the UVA students have lost their fear of cars.
I was riding through campus today and 3 boneheads stepped in front of me without looking. What if I had been a dump truck? Thanks to the agile handling of the steel Surly, my white rite aid jersey is not covered in snowmelty crud.
I propose a plan to re-instill traffic safety instincts into UVA kids. We'll organize a squad of bumper cars that'll fly down McCormick road at unpredictable intervals. We'll see a revival of the inate human instinct to not get smooshed.
Had a dude-fest at my place Saturday night that was so much fun, I don't see myself ever inviting girls to a party again. Click on that photo. Check out how many big players were here- look at em' all! (yea, the Huffdrea and Cate McLean are girls... but they drop most of the boys... so they don't count... but, D-Fal, she's definitely female- and she made an outstanding refried bean dip.)
Otherwise, what's going on... I am training harder than ever before. Either my Powertap is reading hot everyday, or I'm actually improving.
I expect that tomorrow will be a funny day, as today had a serious undertone. I don't like serious. I liked Phil Collins' ...But Seriously album, but I don't like serious.
I also like this bag of New York Style brand Sea Salt Bagel Crisps that I just absolutely killed during this blog. There are crumbs and sea salt all up in my crappy laptop's keyboard. My right arrow button doesn't work anymore, and everyone on Colavita used to make fun of my 10lb laptop. Well, one day I will have revenge... when I invent a nanolaptop that is so small it is not visible to the human eye. Then I will accidentally lose it in my carpet. Whoops.
I am watching people back out of the tight parking lot below my window. These drivers are idiots... are you really that unaware of your spatial surroundings? I could do in three turns of the wheel in what is taking you 13 K-turns. This is infuriating. Holy crap I can't stand it. This person needs one of those airplane director peeps with the orange flashlight sticks. For goodness sakes girl. Oh man you have no idea how painful this is to watch. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I need to shut my blinds. Tough. Very tough. Life is hard.
Testing & the SPEED Clinic @ UVA (ian)Monday, February 19, 2007
Who likes performance testing? I do, I do. There's nothing more enjoyable that a good ol' barf-in-your-mouth and sweat-your-tallywacker-off session. Well, except having Jay Dicharry at the SPEED Clinic at UVA do it up. Last Wednesday, I did some testing at this incredible lab at UVA's Fontaine research park. Did a VO2 test with the brand-new and way-cool Oxycon Mobile VO2 equipment, and did a LT test with a couple of bloody pricks. It was a pleasure to bleed on Jay and barf on his $25,000 equipment. Also, I got some immensely useful fit analysis that you'd have to see to believe. Jay is a guru.
I'm fairly sure that everyone looks like a jackass with the mask on, but I take it to the next level:
Long story short, my VO2max stat is off the charts, and my LT has some room to grow.
So, about the SPEED Clinic at UVA: Holy crap, people!!! This place deserves a serious skinnyplug. Jay has this place so dialed-in, it's ridiculous. Aside from having the most modern testing equip, the staff actually knows how to use it, inside & out. From the moment I stepped in the lab, I felt completely confident that the testing was being carried out correctly. There are plenty of places that can do VO2 and lactate testing, but only one place that pairs such testing with the most sophisticated biomechanical analysis available (on Earth).
When you're testing, it is so important to know that everything is being handled correctly: test protocol, equipment calibration, blood lactate sampling, timing, change queuing, etc. It was 100% peace of mind all up in therrrrr.
I want to say a little more about the biomechanical analysis capabilities of the lab... It has super-high-tech infrared cameras all around the test platform that record, in incredible detail, the 3D motion of your body. Combine this ability to analyze motion, real-time, with real-time power and physiological data, and the analysis potential is seemingly infinite. Jay has worked extensively with some of the top names in cycling fitting & testing, as well as in those in the running world. He's doing things with this data that will knock your socks off.
Seriously, I lost one of socks there last Wednesday. Knocked 'em straight across the lab.
If you're reading this blog thinking to yourself that 1) you are due for some testing, or 2) you want to go faster, or 3) you are a bike dork that likes to be wowed, call the SPEED Clinic (434-243-5605) and hang out with Jay for a day. Tell Jay a skinnypro sent you. Way cool stuff. Impressive.
Roller Races, coolest thing ever (ian)Thursday, February 15, 2007
I recently received an email from an ol' buddy of mine, Tom Dolan, who I used to race with on my dad's shop team, 3D Racing Team in NJ. Tom included some photos of a recent event in NYC: Roller Racing in a bar in Chinatown. Supposedly there was some betting, and Tom won. Some photos of the race are below, including an appearance by Floyd Landis. A club in NYC owns a set of the super-dope Barelli Quadruplet Competition Rollers: Bike Works NYC has a sweet website on the history of these rollers. Check it out, make sure to scroll down.
These things are so totally dope that I can't even believe it. They make me want to crap my pants they're so awesome. 3D Racing Team got a hold of a set of these and held several roller races waaaay back in the nineties-- way back before I was riding bikes, and I remember being totally entranced by the action. Roller races are a beautiful spectacle and are totally rad- they draw a crowd and lots of hooting and holla'in'. I want to buy a set of these things and hold roller races around campus with the UVA team. All the babes would come and form a circle around the spandex competitors and carry the victor (me) around campus on their shoulders.
Little known fact: Tom Ayers (Saint Thomas) and another elite rider set the WORLD RECORD (in 1970-something) for the greatest distance ridden on rollers over a 24-hour period. They set the record in some mall in NJ. If I remember correctly, some Russian team beat the record shortly thereafter. Darn Russkies.
So, Dolan sent some photos of the Chinatown roller event. Even Floyd Landis showed up to slam some PBR's and enjoy one of the coolest underground sporting competitions in the world.
Maxing, Am-Blowby™, Salt (ian)Sunday, February 11, 2007
I got a coach. His personality is too strong to announce casually in this blog; a whole blog will be necessary to introduce the new man in my life. Anyway, he blew me out today. Today, the workout called for establishing some max power numbers for 5 min, 1 min, and 15s efforts. The only anaerobic stuff I've done this year so far was at the Bahamas. I took my creaky, lanky legs out this afternoon in the 30-something degree sun and laid down some watts. Numbers were definitely less than maximum's achieved last year, so, unfortunately, I haven't magically gained anaerobic capacity without training it over the winter. Maybe next year.
Anyway, all the interval durations created the same feeling in my legs: SPONGY. It was like my legs below my knees were rubber. I didn't feel like I was connecting solidly with the pedals. Does any one else experience a sensation like this when ya first start pumping it up after the winter? The Bahamas felt the same way. It was as if the hardest efforts felt no harder than the moderately-hard efforts. Plus, when I was trying to maintain threshold watts during my warmup, it was a real challenge to modulate the watts, especially in the rolling hills here- it will take some weeks to get back in the groove.
Early in the ride, I was coming up on another dude riding. His pace was similar to my warm-up pace, and I would have loved to ride up next to him and say hello, but I had the new iPod crankin' and the new Shure in-ear-canal headphones stuck deep within my ear canals under my hat. Even if I paused the tunes, the earplug-like headphones block out all noise. So, I thought to myself, instead of blowing by him, should I say hello on my way past him, and, quickly, explain the situation to him:
"Hey man how's it going. [pause] Yea, I actually didn't hear your response because I have my iPod cranked and I have these in-ear-canal headphones in, and they are too much of a hassle to remove them from under my earwarmers just to say hello to you. But, I hope you have a good ride. Later."
While I considered this polite alternative, I decided that it would be better to just BLOW HIS DOORS OFF. So, I lingered 30 yards behind him for about 20 minutes until it because time in my warm-up to slam a threshold interval. So, I ramped it up, and blew past him at about 28 MPH. The amateur fool never saw it coming. And, in that moment, the Am-Blowby™ was born.
Had a healthy helping of road salt today. VDOT dumps so much salt on the roads around here when it snows that it hangs around for weeks. When cars pass me and kick up the powdered salt, it gets all up in my grill and I breathe it in and can taste salt on my tongue. Yum. Road salt.
Finally, D-Fal and I dropped by Whole Foods this eve. (btw D-Fal is running the C-Vegas 10-miler, and trained 7 miles today... nice) Anyway, these two cool dudes at the WF checkout, Michael & Randy, were pretty awesome fellers. They happily acquiesed to my outlandish request for 3 rubber bands around my eggs, and even went out of their way to provide a mini-bag full or rubber bands for our domestic use. The whole checkout experience was fantastic. I hope they are working the next time I save up enough money to blow it out on 6 items at WF.
Ya. I know I have no place to complain about the cold... since it's colder than the teen's and twenties north of Virginia, but, still. GAAAAHHHRRRRRRRH.
There is a certain temperature at which the people driving their cars next to you change their reaction in seeing you from: "Wow that dude must be tough to ride in the bitter cold." to "That guy is clearly an idiot." Today was about 2° to the idiot side of that temperature.
Here's a pro tip for y'all... if you want to keep your face warm, just put some activated charcoal warmers on it:
Also, they work quite well for your toezies, er, toes.
Will furnish a full trip de-breifing on the Tour of the Bahamas when I get settled back in to frigid-world living. I'll just say that it was a shock to the system, but the system shocked right back.
Good things going on within the Team, and good things going on in my mus.
pickin up slack (christoph)Sunday, February 04, 2007
Since Ayers is racing in the Bahamas, I reckon I'll pick up the slack around here.
I just came in from a brisk couple of hours in wintery virginia. Lots of layers. I sure hope Ian is maximizing his TLD - tan line differential - for the both of us.
The scene down there looks a little like this:
yes, I am a photoshop expert.
Last month in Europe I did some riding on my dad's sweet Lemond road bike. However when I was riding with my dad, he rode the Lemond and I rolled on his old rig.
I'm smiling because my luggage rack is full of chocolate bars, raisins, and almonds.
When Sheff encounters people like this on the road, he takes their picture and blogs about 'em in the Cat 3 Corner. hah.
