Threadbare

I went for a quick one hour jaunt up over the Wall and out Hwy. 128 to US93 and back this evening. On the return trip, a rider named Will from Vitamin Cottage caught up with me so I jumped onto his wheel and chatted with him for a little while. No more than half a mile after Will turned off, my rear tire went flat--about a mile from my workplace. Figures. I was hoping that I could ride the tire soft, but it lost air quickly. When I inspected the tire for the cause, I found this:

The casing was showing through nearly-bare spots all around the tire. I guess it was about time for a new one. I threw on a blue Maxxis Detonator--the season is winding down, so a training tire seems like a good choice. Besides, it looks cool on the Giant.

On another note, fellow rider Brett was hit by a car today! Fortunately he's mostly OK, but his wheels were trashed and his helmet cracked, among other things. Knowing Brett, he's downplaying the severity of his injuries. The driver was at fault for running a stop sign--but as anyone who rides regularly knows, it doesn't matter who's right when you're on a 15lb bike vs. a 2-ton vehicle. Brett's advice:

Stop at the stop signs, and always wear your helmet.

Hope you heal up well, Brett!

Hot, hot, hot!

I spent the early part of the day working on my mom's 91 Civic, preparing it for sale. It's pretty sound mechanically, but pretty ugly looking. I bought some bumper slide brackets on eBay to re-attach the front bumper, and I ended up machining a 3/4" spacer with a couple of holes for the mounting bolts on the driver's side to even out the bumper since the metal bumper had been pushed in. I also did a bit of MacGyver engineering on the rear passenger's side busted slide bracket to make it work. Finally, I spent some time with rubbing compound trying to buff out the oxidized paint before deciding that it was going to take far too much effort to make a real difference. There are a few little things I might still fix (cracked DS mirror, cracked windshield, busted antenna), but I'm going to post it to Craigslist this weekend and fix the other items as time allows until the car sells.

I haven't blogged in a while, and it's not because I've been riding a lot. In fact, I only have ~1200 miles on the road bike this year, which is pretty sad. I'm going to try to make a late season run at a reasonable showing in the King of the Rockies race at WP next month, and right now that means I need to log some miles.

Because of the car work, I got a late start on my ride, leaving the house around 4pm. I was worried it was going to be super-hot since we've had a near-record-setting 14 days in a row of 90+ degrees in Denver; but fortunately, the clouds were out and I never felt like I was overheating. I did, however, feel the need to consume a lot of water.

I stopped for water at the little shop just before the big downhill on the north side of Carter Lake. They have a bike rack out front and a sign that reads "Cyclist Parking", which (to me) implies they are cyclist-friendly. I walked in, water bottle in hand, and asked politely if I could fill my water bottle. I was shocked by the rude response: "No. We have to pay for that water." I walked out without saying another word.

So, looking at a recent Longmont utility bill, I pay .002530 dollars per gallon for the first 10,000 gallons of water I use. Let's say that this campground needs to have water delivered and stored in a tank due to its remote location, and with gas prices going up...let's say it's 10x as expensive. Thus, we're talking 2.5 cents per gallon. An average water bottle holds no more than 22oz. of water, even less since I had brought along some Cytomax and dumped it in the bottle, but let's stick with the 22oz. figure to be on the safe side. Thanks to Google for the conversion:

22 US fluid ounces = 0.171875 US gallons

Hence, filling my water bottle would have cost

0.17875 US gallons x 2.5 cents/gallon = 0.45 cents

I could have rounded up and offered him a penny...think he would have been offended?

In any case, the ride was 68 miles of goodness. I hit 54.5mph on the backside of Carter (on the low side of what I usually see), then continued up over the backside of Horsetooth into Fort Collins and back. Sights along the way included some pigeons humping in the road, a deer crossing right at the deer crossing sign, a yellow Lamborghini Murcielago cruising the opposite direction just as a Larimer County Sheriff's vehicle passed me, a Volvo 164...nothing so interesting that I regretted not having a camera with me, but enough to keep me entertained.

I rolled up to my door around 7:45, and I was very happy to be done. My legs were very tired (on the verge of twitching for the last half hour--must have been low on electrolytes or nutrition!), and I had a hot spot under the middle metatarsal of my left foot for the last 1.5h. That's become a pretty regular occurrence, regardless of what pedals or shoes I'm using. I should probably go see a podiatrist about it.

Tomorrow Craig is coming up early for a ride at Hall Ranch, so it's off to bed I go!

CCTT #4

It's been ages since my last post, so I figure I'm due for at least a quick one. (For what it's worth, I have several 'saved up'...I have a bad habit of getting them mostly done but not having the pics uploaded, and that sort of thing. Look for some magical pre-dated posts to appear as soon as I wrangle some time to catch up, hopefully this weekend!)

Tonight was the 4th of the seven races in the Karen Hornbostel Memorial Time Trial Series held at Cherry Creek State Park by the ACA. This is my third year racing the series. It's a little inconvenient for me to drive down for the races since they're on Wednesday evenings and rush hour traffic turns it into anywhere from 1 to 1.5 hours of stop 'n' go, but it's really nice to see the rest of the Ride Against the Machine crew each week and race each other into shape. The course is a mere 10.5 miles long, mostly flat out-and-back with only one hill of significance.

I considered missing tonight's race. I haven't been on the bike since Thursday, which was the day of my PRK surgery (posts to come, promise!). I was off the bike for a couple of days due to the surgery, but then I caught some sort of stomach bug that made me so miserable I didn't even want to ride the trainer. On the bright side, I lost about 4lbs. this weekend because I couldn't really eat or drink for a few days. The weight loss was probably all water or muscle, the worst way to lose weight, but I'm trying to stay positive here.

Anyhow, my sleep habits went WAY south--as in 5 hours laying in bed trying to fall asleep Monday night, feeling absolutely miserable and exhausted, finally crashing for a few hours in the morning before dragging myself into consciousness to get to work on Tuesday and be productive. Last night I was able to extend the "sleep" period to about 4.5 hours.

Prep for today's race? Let's see...lack of sleep, check. Poor nutrition (instant ramen and a Monster energy drink), check. Dehydration, check. Oh what the heck, I haven't missed a race yet, including the blizzard-like conditions two weeks ago.

I got to the course WAY early for a change, and actually had to waste some time before starting my warmup. Marni borrowed the fluid trainer to warm up, so I brought along my ancient Minoura wind trainer for the warmup. I did a long (for me) 50min warmup, and timed my wrap-up the same as last week since I made it to the starting line in perfect timing. That would have worked great...except I didn't account for the fact that it takes longer to tear down the wind trainer. D'oh! So I missed my official start by just over a minute, as I had to wait for the minus-one-minute-rider to start before I left the line. Oh yeah, the PowerTap head mount broke again on the way to the starting line after hitting an expansion crack despite my quick epoxy fix at lunchtime. Grrrr! You'd think a $1k gizmo would have a better mounting system...

It was windy (ugh!) but nice and warm (almost too warm for my preference--my engine runs hot). Several of the RATM crew missed their starts as well tonight, and one of the side benefits for me was that I had some fast rabbits to pace me on the outbound stretch until they pulled out of my sight. With the PowerTap mount broken like last week, I again rode "blind" and just went by RPE (Rating of Perceived Exertion). At the finish line, my unofficial time per my PowerTap file was 27:03, which is only 11 seconds off my PR that I tied last week. For any geeks that care, my normalized power was 204W (201W average), slightly down from last week. Considering the circumstances of the past week and the strong wind tonight, I'm very satisfied. The official time doesn't particularly matter to me because I'm pretty slow, so it's not like I'm fighting for standings or points.

The rest of the RATM crew also rode very strongly, with most people pretty darned close to their PRs considering the wind (in my opinion). The actual TT times are hard to decipher due to the missed starts, but unless I hear otherwise I think we all did pretty well. Quite frankly, this was one of my favorite CCTT nights yet. The missed start didn't really bother me, and the only real downside in my book is that allergy season apparently started for me tonight (but fortunately not until after I finished the TT). A few of us grabbed some grub at Tokyo Joe's, and then I fought heavy winds for the 60 mile ride home! Thankfully the Jeep did most of the work. *cough, cough*

I'm very much looking forward to next week's post-TT RATM BBQ at Scott's place! G'night.