winter cranking

Well, winter's here again and that means Dez has flown south for the warmer climate and dry weather for some good winter miles.



I rode the PCs for five days straight right after Christmas because I took a trip and brought only that bike with me, so a solid 22hrs were logged on the PCs that week. During moving and what not, I had not been keeping consistent really, but was still getting a couple rides of 4 hours or so in every week on the PCs.

After moving to SoCal the week before Christmas (and my Birthday), I was feeling rather homesick when I realized that I would be spending the holidays all by my lonesome in a strange city. So on Christmas Eve I decided that I was going to make the journey back home for the holidays and hitched a ride to Sacramento with a couple of guys who were willing to strap my bike to the roof of their 4Runner and give me a lift. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to get back on the PC wagon by bringing only that bike with me to Norcal so that I would have no choice but to ride it. And ride it I did!

By the end of the week, I was totally exhausted and feeling very satisfied with myself for getting back on PCs. Upon my return to Socal, I continued to ride the PCs for the next few days and broke the cleat on my right shoe on one of my little adventures.... What followed was 1 1/2 hrs of left legged pedaling to get my sorry butt back home. It is not flat here, in fact it is quite hilly terrain and I was actually forced to walk my bike in one spot, very humbling. A new set of cleats got me rolling again and I began to integrate the normal bike back into the routine later that week.

I took a few days off the PCs to do some super long exploring type rides in my new surroundings and ended up logging two 4 hour rides on the PCs this past week. The first ride was on Tuesday and it was a real suffer fest. I did hill repeats 6x up and down a climb of about a mile @ 7%. Then, I rode across town to a little lump of dirt in the middle of the city called Mt. Helix and did 5 repeats up and down using different routes to get to the top. I'm not sure of the % on this climb, though sections most certainly reach 15+%. Mt. Helix is about 1300' and I figure the base of the climb is <300', so it's not a bad little elevation gain for the length of the climb. I paced myself well and at the top of the 5th ascent I completely exploded. I hobbled back home grinning from ear to ear.

The effects of Tuesday's ride, combined with 5hr rides through mountainous terrain (5000-8000ft) on Wednesday and Thursday on the standard cranks led to TSF yesterday on the PCs... TSF is Total System Failure and that is definitely where I was at yesterday by the end of my ride which included repeats up a 2mile climb (x4) as well as the getting to and from the climb which includes 2000+ ft of elevation gain/loss. It's good stuff down here.

This is going to be a short week as I am switching my rest day from Saturday to Friday to prepare for the coming season. I think the route which I'm looking to complete tomorrow is going to be 150+ miles though so it will be a good week none the less. No Andrew, I will not be riding PCs tomorrow!! I am still uncertain as to whether or not I want to race in the 12 hours of Temecula later this month, I'll still be racing in November and 10 months is an awful long season of endurance racing..... We'll see.