Suffer-o-rama

I have it back now. I stripped the frame, brought it in to the shop and left it. When I got back home (it’s a bit of a drive) there was a message waiting for me. “Your botton bracket is done”.

I called and said no, the shell was loose in the frame. They said no, it’s just the BB. So I went back there and they’d re-installed the BB for me. The mechanic was nice enough to explain that he’d removed the fixed cup, greased it and re-seated it on the BB, then torqued it to 45 ft-lbs. “But Cervelo says anything more than 25 will destroy the frame!” I replied. “no, it’ll take it” he said.

There’s no click now and it’s not rough like when I have tightened BBs a little extra to get them to stop making noise.

Did I imagine seeing and feeling the shell move? It was a small amount but I was pretty sure it was there. Will tightening the crap out of it “fix” it if it was really coming loose? I can only find out by riding it.

Facing the prospect of not having my favorite bike was really bumming me out. Now I am just not sure about the fix and I need to test it out before the death ride next weekend. And I have to reassemble the bike, but that’s not hard and it’s giving me a chance to clean it.. It was pretty filthy, especially where the sports drink spills.

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Crap! The BB tick in my Cervelo R3 is due to the BB insert being loose in the frame. Shit goddammit!

It looks like I will be riding my #2 bike for a while.

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Late last week I decided that I wanted to do repeats on Mt Diablo on saturday. I did look at the weather, and yes, I noted that there was a heat advisory. But I kind of like heat, and I wanted to get some heat acclimitization in. It’s been colder than usual so I haven’t gotten much warm weather riding in.

The first two repeats were nice. I didn’t go all that fast- 1:10 for the south gate and about 1:13 for the slightly longer north gate- but the weather was fine. Even at 8am I was able to start off without a vest or arm warmers, something that rarely happens.

On the descent back to the south gate it got kind of warm. Then it got hot. Then I went around a corner and someone opened the door to hell’s own blast furnace. It was stupid hot, hot enough that the air was rising off the baking ground in evil waves of heat. It was so miserable that I had to laugh at how ridiculous it was. When I got to the car, even the cold water in my cooler was warm. But it was still cooler than the hot water in my bottles so I put it in. I thought about quitting but I knew that if I did I’d be disappointed- I wasn’t really tired yet, just hot. So I decided that I’d go at least to the south gate ranger station (about 1/3 of the way up) and see how I felt.

A mile or so up the road I passed a car that had another Webcor rider about ready to go on his ride. We rode together up to the junction ranger station (about halfway) where he said that he wanted to go dunk his head under the faucet and I should ride on. A couple miles up the road my feet started hurting a lot- when it’s hot they swell up. It got so bad that I stopped in a tiny little bit of shade and took off my left shoe for a bit, then put it on with the straps real loose. Aaah, much better. By the top I was severely overheated… when I got there I stood in the shade and panted like a dog for a while. After about four bottles of water and some more salt tablets I went back down. On the way down I squirted some of my water on my legs to cool down, but it was like taking a hot shower. When I checked my data after the ride I found that the max temp on the ride was 109 degrees. I felt so bad after getting home that I spend the rest of the day, and all day Sunday, hiding inside on the couch. It would have been more productive to have done something easier and cooler near the coast so I would have had something left for a ride on Sunday.

Note how the power goes down for each climb but the heart rate goes up:

ericm training rides

from my crash two and a half years ago. I got a permanent crown on the last broken tooth today. Other than a mouth full of fake or dead teeth I don’t have any lasting effects. I’m not scared of descents at all, or any more nervous in groups. There’s some scars on my knees but the road rash on my face healed perfectly, much to Laura’s relief.

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I was going to do Mt Diablo repeats today but there was a TT on the north gate road, so I went to Mt Hamilton instead. It’s a good thing I did, it turns out that I am still tired from this week. I only managed the front and back side (6500′) and was pretty slow.

There was a guy crashed with a possible broken collarbone on the back side. I stopped to make sure he was ok- he already had a friend there. No cell reception but when I got to the bottom there was a truck full of local ranchers who were getting reception by standing outside the truck and holding the phone up, yelling at the sherriff into it. I thanked them about 20 times and went back up. The collarbone guy was sitting up and was feeling better but still not getting up. The sherriff and CDF truck passed me as I continued the climb, and the ambulance went by as I was at the observatory.

The rest of my ride I was a bit more conservative on the descents. All it takes is one mistake and you’re looking at 4-6 weeks off the bike.

ericm training rides

Today: 1.5 hour easy recovery ride. I think my heart rate might have gotten up to 110 once.

This week I did three hard days- the Chain Reaction ride tuesday, with some SST before, for 2.5 hours. A three hour ride wendsday, with 40 minutes of SST up a new climb I have been doing lately. Yesterday I set out to do three 5 min intervals before the Chain Reaction ride. I killed it on the first one, averaging 317 watts, then was too tired to do the next. But I recovered for the ride and did well there, with a best 20 minutes of 272 watts.

The open source power meter software I have been using lately uses the Monod method to calculate Critical Power (basically the same as Functional Threshold, or what you could do for an hour if you went all out). It says my CP is 270, which is higher than it’s been, well, ever.

I am not doing any short intervals though, and it really shows in the group ride when it is time to close a gap. And my sprint, which has never been very good, is not as good as last year. If I was going to be motivated to do regular racing instead of stuff like the Everest Challenge, I’d need to have a different training regime.

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Because of my allergies, I can only eat about half the Clif bar flavors, and fewer of other company’s bars. Most of the Clif bars I can eat contain chocolate and are sickeningly sweet, making it tough to choke them down four hours into a hard ride. So the last few years I have been eating just the peanut or the cranberry-apple-cherry Clif bars. (the apples and cherries are cooked enough so that I’m not allergic). But with the recent peanut salmonella scare, the peanut Clif bars disappeared from store shelves. I am now officially sick of cranberry-apple-cherry (hereby known as CAC) flavor, and there’s months left of the riding season. So I started looking around the internets to find a good bar recipe.

It turns out that there’s a lot of them, and most of them are gross. But I got some ideas. I decided that I want to use rollled oats as the main ingredient. They are mostly complex carbs, some protein, tasty, not sweet, and cheap. I also found out about rice syrup- it’s mostly simple carbs but does not taste as sweet as the same amount of sugar would. A mix of complex and simple carbs would be ideal. As a experiment I made some simple bars with rolled oats, rice syrup and some old raisins I found in the back of the pantry, loosely basing my recipie after one that was kind of close.

But I misunderstood how they’d cook. After the recommended cooking time they looked entirely unchanged, still pasty and gooey. I expected them to firm up and get golden brown and delicious, like a muffin or cookie. So I kept cooking them. After a half hour I relented and only then noticed that they were burnt on the bottom. I let them cool, tasted one, and it almost broke a tooth! But other than being way too hard and tasting more than a little burnt, it wasn’t too bad. I put the rest in a bag on the counter and they disappeared after a few days. I’ll try again soon.

ericm Food

I did my first long Mt Hamilton ride today (Mt Hamilton, the back side, and the top of the front again- 60 some miles and 8800′ of climbing). I did a couple good blocks of SST, about an hours worth, on the front side. I haven’t done that much SST before but it turns out to be pretty comfortable for me. That’s supposed to be the point- most of the gain (vs riding close to threshold) without the pain. On the descent of the back side near the bottom I spotted a couple Webcor riders heading up. Of course I wanted to chase them so I went a little harder than SST, but not much. I finally caught them near the top and it turned out to be Bo and Bryan.

They are both much faster than I am but they were doing a super long ride- 2x up Mt Hamilton including twice on the back side, for a total of 14k’. So they were on an easy pace, one that I could keep up with. They rode with me my second time up the last part of the front side, then they went down to do the back again while I went home. I felt good all day, even on the last two little climbs on the descent where I am normally wiped out.

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A few years back I developed an allergy to stone fruit and tree nuts. That includes some of my favorites like almonds, cherries and nectarines. Apparently it’s caused by a lifetime of hayfever…. all those histamines throw your system out of whack. Cooked fruit, if it’s cooked hard, is ok. But it doesn’t taste the same. Being allergic to nuts means that there is a lot of sports bars and century food that I can’t eat. At rest stops I have to examine the food carefully for signs of nuts and fruit.

Anyhow, since this spring my asthma seems to have gone away, and I got it about the same time I developed the food allergy, I was hoping that the allergy went away too. So just now I tried a cherry. Unfortunately my throat started tingling like it was going to swell up after a few minutes, so I was off to the medicine cabinet for some Loratadine.

Damn. Guess I should have savored that cherry.

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5/23/09

The last event in the KOM series. Going in I was in 5th overall, eight minutes behind the same guy I was eight minutes behind the same time last year. I managed to gain enough time on him to finish fourth last year. I was hoping I could do the same this year, especially since the conditions would be more favorable- last year was very cold and windy, which isn’t good for me.

But I had a poor ride. I started out strong, going fast up the first climb, and got caught by a fast group on the long gradual descent. Then we got caught by Alex and Deya on a mixed tandem. They are super fast and Alex was really looking forward to this event with its long flat section. I didn’t budge when the tandem went by but a couple of the guys on the front waited until they were about 20 meters up the road then decided to chase. Unfortunately you have to chase immediately when you want to get on board the train. We almost got on but then the tandem put on a little more speed (I think they looked in the helmet mirror) and the group gave up after a couple miles.

I rode with them on the first half of the flat part. We had a good tailwind so we were flying, just not as fast as the tandem, which was soon out of sight. Halfway through the flat part there’s a rest stop so we stopped for water. Alex and Deya were there and I told them they were going well. Even though I used the porta-potties I got out before the group, so I was solo for another 10 miles. Near the end of the flat part I got caught by two guys, one from the original group. We worked together on the lower gradual sections of the second climb.

The winds were still favorable here! A complete reversal of last year where it was all headwind. But with a tailwind it got really hot. And I was suffering with stomach problems again. I wasn’t climbing like I should but I was holding my own until I got to the 75 mile rest stop at the top of the steep part of the “heartbreak” climb. I got ice for my bottles there and as I was putting them on my bike one of the guys I’d been riding with said “hey dude, you have a flat”. My front tire was flat.

I had my fancy carbon wheels, which in the past have been kind of difficult to mount tires on. But maybe because the tire was already stretched out, it wasn’t too bad. I also got to use a floor pump that the rest stop crew had, instead of my frame pump. But it still took 5-10 minutes to change the tube. The whole time other riders I’d passed were coming in and leaving.

Getting the flat also took the wind out of my sails for a while. I was already feeling bad and now I didn’t think that I’d be able to put in a good time and that further depressed me. I spent most of an hour riding slow with a heart rate around 130. Near the end a guy came by whose wheel I could hold, so I had a draft through the gnarly headwinds at the end.

I finished in 5:45. That’s better than I have done before, but the guy I was hoping to gain time on did it in 5:15, almost the winning time. The tandem was almost as fast. Unlike last year there was no one close behind me in the KOM standings so I maintained my 5th place. I’m a little bummed but it was the best I could do. What really concerns me though is that in the last two long hot rides I have done I have had bad stomach problems that kept me from eating. I have to figure this out.

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