Cosmic Kid
Posts:4209
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| 09/23/2019 07:07 AM |
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And so it begins....first trainer ride if the season yesterday. Rain all day....even though it was warm, I couldn’t get myself motivated to go it in it.
*sigh* |
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| Just say "NO!" to WCP!!!!
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79pmooney
Posts:3189
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| 09/23/2019 05:12 PM |
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Rode the Harvest Century yesterday. Forecast was excellent. Rain, starting at the ride start was predicted, ~55% chance all day. I rode to the start dry on dry roads.
Rain started 10 minutes before we did and kept up roughly 60% of the day. I was never "soaked" but I spent the day seriously damp. Bike was a mess. I dressed welll,
with no attempt to stay dry but with enough layers to not be cold riding. 125 miles of not hard riding and I felt good when I finished. (But after the hard fix gear Cycle
Oregon, I had zero interest in pushing myself yesterday and never did.)
Between yesterday and the first three days of Cycle Oregon, I've experienced a year's worth of wet in the past two weeks.
Ben |
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longslowdistance
Posts:2886
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| 09/23/2019 07:51 PM |
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Wow! Very strong.
Did good ol' wool gear get you through, or something more modern?
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Cosmic Kid
Posts:4209
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| 09/23/2019 09:17 PM |
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| And Ben shows me to be the lesser man by far.... |
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| Just say "NO!" to WCP!!!!
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79pmooney
Posts:3189
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| 09/24/2019 12:04 AM |
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lsd, I stayed away from wool for 30 years. Allergic to it after exposing myself to bad chemicals building fiberglass boats. (I did a naturopathic "liver cleansing" two years ago and can wear it again but my
wardrobe hasn't caught up.) Patagonia has been my friend. That and REI's cheaper copies. Yesterday I wore layers. A synthetic mesh tank, the new Patagoina T-shirt, a long sleeve REI thermal (that's
long enough to pull down as almost a cycling brief minus the redundant pad), a Mavic spring-fall SS jersey and a tired Showers Pass jacket whose waterproofness left some while ago. The good, heavy-ish
Segoi arm warmers. On my lowers, best shorts, my heavyweight custom old-school basketball knee warmers under regular kneewarmers and heavy Specialized tights over. REI silk liner and Sock Guy
socks. Couldn't find my winter cycling cap so I wore a Halo under a Pace cap.
The day was mid-50s to mid 60s, not much wind. Saw the sun once while I was under shelter. Jacket came off halfway to the start (while everything was still dry) and back on for the rest of the day.
Pulled the sleeves up and centered the zippers a couple of times. Nothing else changed all day besides gloves coming off at rest stops (and twice, having a lot of water wrung out of them). The upwind
starts were cold! (I never thought about it until just now, but this would have been an excellent day for the old Zzipper fairing!) |
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Cosmic Kid
Posts:4209
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| 09/24/2019 08:29 AM |
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Holy crap...I would die with that many clothes on for those temps. I know clothing is highly individual, but just thinking about that many laters for mid-50's-mid 60's has me sweating in my chair!!
I would likely have worn a SS baselayer, SS jersey, armwarmers and light LF gloves and stuffed my (new and never worn) GoreTex ShakeDry jacket in my pocket. Maybe knee warmers (but I know you have knee issues that require extra precaution).
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| Just say "NO!" to WCP!!!!
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Dale
Posts:1767
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| 09/24/2019 02:22 PM |
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...oooooh, GoreTex ShakeDry jacket, tell me more! The price seems nuts but the reviews all rave about it.
And I'm going to wimp out and spend some time on the trainer tonight if the rain doesn't let up. I should go do some wet grass bike driving but just lack the motivation to do all that's necessary both before the ride and the post ride cleanup. |
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Cosmic Kid
Posts:4209
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| 09/24/2019 04:31 PM |
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Haven't worn the ShakeDry yet....but found it on sale @ Backcountry for $195. Figured it will be the perfect jacket for the Iceland trip next year, so I grabbed it.
From what I can tell so far....good fit, snug all around so a minimum of flapping, long arms and generous tail in the back. Can definitely roll it up small enough to fit in a jersey pocket.
Full report after a rain ride.... |
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| Just say "NO!" to WCP!!!!
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79pmooney
Posts:3189
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| 09/24/2019 08:43 PM |
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CK, I run cold all the time. My body temp is regularly close to a degree low. I weigh little over 150 pounds and am all arms and legs. (Small volume, large surface area.) My body runs
well in hot weather (well a little less as I 1) age and 2) have gotten quite soft in this NW world). Didn't love it but in my racing days, I loved that everyone else went slower.
I knew there would be a lot of outdoor stops and that I was going to do them. That it wold be a long day. And that i was choosing to go pocket/space limited so it was wear it of leave it.
(Had the day warmed up or I dried out, I would have had a lot of stuff wrapped around my waist.) I also knew I wasn't going to go hard enough to get hot. That would have required
some of the incentive I knew I didn't have.
Ben |
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Cosmic Kid
Posts:4209
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| 10/29/2019 08:59 AM |
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Welp....looks like trainser season is officially on. Weather is gonna be schitt all week (1-3" of snow on Halloween). Was 37* and rain / snow mix this AM.
Hopped on the trainer and started my journey on TrainerRoad. Had TR controlling my wattage and then also ran Zwift using that wattage for "entertainment."
I am doing the Traditional Base program from now until Jan when I will switch to SweetSpot Base to bring in a litle threshold work. Gonna try and do the mid-volume variant, but that quickly ramps up into 3 hour rides on both Sat & Sun. On the trainer....ugh. If the weather is OK, i'll just do the workouts outside.
Started today with the Ramp Test to estimate FTP. SO MUCH EASIER THAN A 20 MIN FTP TEST!!! A brief warm-up and then a succession of increasing wattage ramps every minute until you reach failure. So evne though the workload is increasing, it only gets uncomfortbale for the last ~3 min or so. Results were better than expected...I had kinda pegged my FTP ~230w right now and the results said 240w. Still a fair amount lower than my in-season wattage, but not as bad as it normally gets this time of year.
Then did the Whorl program....75 min of aerobic work. Mind-numbingly boring on its own, but I just watched the Zwift screen and listened to music. Wasn't too bad actually.
Going to try and be very structured this winter to raise FTP for next year....I wanna hit 4 w/kg in 2020 (~280w). Stretch goal will be 300w, but I don't think that is realistic....we'll see. |
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Dale
Posts:1767
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| 10/30/2019 07:37 AM |
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+1 on the ramp test. Start out and build to failure. Haven't done an FTP test since last spring. Might do one in the next week or so. Racing Saturday in St. Louis
FWIW, I just got out of your neighborhood in the nick of time. Left Fox Lake about 2:30pm, beat the traffic headed south and roll into bed about 11:30.
That's the third time in as many weeks I've made that trip. Some clients just don't succumb to my charm on the first visit 
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Cosmic Kid
Posts:4209
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| 11/12/2019 08:45 AM |
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3 weeks into TrainerRoad Traditional Base, Medium Volume. Pretty simple and easy so far....just a lot of LSD. Nothing more than ~75% of FTP (other than an occasional high RPM "form sprint"). Just a fair chunk of hours on the trainer....this week I have 4 2-hour rides on the schedule.
Tweaked a few things with my set-up this year. Running TrainerRoad via Bluetooth on my iPad. I then am running Zwift via ANT+ on an old laptop. TR is controlling my power and Zwift is just getting my power signal, so it is not controlling my efforts....i'm just riding around in Zwift according to my TR power.
I then got an AppleTV, which I am watching various shows through. I can also run Zwift off that, if I want. Since everything I am doing is low intensity, I am just watching TV for now. So far I have burned through 1.5 seasons of Succession (excellent) and half of Jack Ryan S2. Given the length of these rides, I am gonna need to add to my list of stuff I wanna watch....I go through ~2 episodes of whatever show I am watching each time I get on the trainer.
Also doing all these rides on my TT bike....I am just more comfortable in the aero position on longer rides.
Definitely digging the set-up so far....once I start higher intensity rides, I'm going to probably run Zwift on the AppleTV and then just listen to music while I ride.
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| Just say "NO!" to WCP!!!!
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longslowdistance
Posts:2886
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| 11/12/2019 09:50 PM |
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Maybe embarrassing to admit, but I'm working through 70s TV show Kung Fu as I perspire on a trainer.
Free with Amazon prime. Show ran for three seasons. Some is crap, but a lot is not. For some reason, it's working for me on a trainer. Pace is mellow with a heavy dose of watered down Dao, and some bad ass but kindly intended martial arts, and a big, soft dose of where is your head and where do you want it to be stuff.
The 70's was a time of re examining.
IMO the inevitable blowback to Trumpism will bring us closer to what this little show offered as an alternative. |
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Orange Crush
Posts:4499
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| 11/17/2019 07:17 PM |
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Thanks to you fools strava is filled with nonsense trainer entries. The only stuff that still makes sense are my kids cross country races and my friends friday night track sessions. Time to unfollow some people lol.
My setup remains to check real time and long term weather forecasts and adjust my schedule accordingly. Successfully identified and engaged the weather window this afternoon. All day ride planned for Friday. The wet coast rules especially now that with climate change we're becoming more the way California used to be. |
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Dale
Posts:1767
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| 11/18/2019 08:55 AM |
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| The weather here bounces up and down like a superball. 70* and sunny one day, 10* two days later so it's alternating between the trainer and outside in short sleeves. Saturday it was 28* at the start but sunny and looked like low 40's for a high. I did 55+ miles of gravel with a buddy. About froze the first few miles... mostly downhill so there you go. After those 5 or 6 miles we hit some climbs and things went swimmingly from there. Just shy of 4 hours and I was toast but it was great to be outside! Tomorrow looks like sunshine and 60 so it's outside for me again. |
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