Mike's Bike Blog

I'm not sure if this is a written rule but crashes usually happen in 3's, celebrity deaths happen in 3s. My last 3 rides fell to this pearl:

Sunday
First thing in the morning Jack and I got out for an hour of pace line work and decending drills. After that I was going to ride for another hour. I headed out on Limecreek Road towards Volente Beach. 2 Miles into it I hear a loud pop and the hiss of the air being released from my back tire. Upon inspection my tire had a severe blowout. I booted the tire with a dollar bill and changed the flat and rode home. That evening at the boys' soccer practice I changed out the tires with a set of Hutchinson Fusion tires I've had for awhile and got a 20 minute ride in.

Monday
This day will probably be remembered as Chaingate from the Tour de France. The day Andy Schleck lost the yellow jersey when his chain came off. I had my own chain issue. I had the TT bike and was planning on doing a 45 minute Sweet Spot interval (SST) which starts at the base of Courtyard and up City Park Road and down to Emma Long Park and then back up City Park and finally up the backside of Courtyard and finishes at the top. I was making my way up and was on the final part where it kicks up to around 20% grade when I hear a click and see the shifter for the rear derailleur move! Since I was out of the saddle when this happened the unexpected shift caused me to fall forward a bit. In the mealy I didn't realize the chain had came off so when I sat back down and started to peddle I got 3 or 4 spins in until I realized what the lack of resistance meant. By the time I realized the chain was off I didn't have time to unclip and braced myself for impact. There was no support vehicles for a bike swap nor any fans to give me a push so I had to go down a little on the hill and go back up. With the phantom shifting I decided not go up City Park cause if it happened again I didn't want to risk rolling into traffic and getting run over.

Tuesday
Still had the TT bike and was going to get a full 40 minute SST workout in but was going to play it safe and doing 40 minutes of down and backs on a 1 mile stretch of road on Rivercrest Dr. For this type of workout I'll usually do Bunny Run Road, which also runs parallel to Capitol of Texas Hwy and is right behind BreakingPoint Systems.  The nice thing about Rivercrest is it's a little flatter then Bunny Run and offers more shade. The downside is the road is much narrower and on some days there's too much day worker traffic (landscapers/construction, etc). I usually give it a ride as a warmup to gauge the amount of traffic and if it's light will ride it or go back up Hillbilly to Bunny Run. Today, the traffic was really light and was a perfect setting for a 40 minute SST interval. 10 minutes into it as I was approaching the turnaround point a truck that was parked on the left side of the road, facing the wrong direction starts to make a Uturn. I'm approaching at 23 mph and see the impending collision and hit the breaks. There's no way to swerve around him. I'm still not sure how I was able to stop as fast as I did. Instead of hitting him straight on I turned right a bit. I grabbed his big side mirror with my left hand and my bike came to a stop with a small thud against his passenger door. The left side of the handle bars are the only part of the bike that made contact with the truck. The left bar end shifter left a small dent and a scratch. There was surprisingly no damage to the bike, luckily all that happened was the impact caused the front derailleur to shift.

I took the bike into Southwest Cycle Sport and the culprit for the phantom shifting was more than likely a bent derailleur hanger. Peter made some other adjustments and I should be as good as new again. I rarely ever get into the small chain ring on the TT bike but hopefully the next time I try to go up a hill like Courtyard it won't fail me again. Now I'm ready for some good luck after getting the last 3 days out of the way.

On Saturday I set out for one last Hugel tune up ride. I wanted to get in some hills and distance for final preparation for the ride. The Gawd Dam Loop is my own creation that basically follows the traditional dam loop, but I throw in a sprinkling of the Hugel route hills of Bluegrass, Beauford, Courtyard and Cuernavaca. I also threw in Alexan just for fun.

The Garmin reported back 5695 feet of climbing in 59 miles. It took me 3 hours 17 minutes of riding time. I stopped for 10 minutes, that includes 1 water stop and stop lights. I averaged 17.9 mph for the ride. Most of all I felt great the entire time even going up the Austin cobbles of Beauford. I also did this ride with my 11x23 cassette, not really the gearing I'd want to do the full Hugel with. Next week I'll switch out my cassette and put on the 12x25. I have been contemplating purchasing a 11x26 for my hill and all around cassette and leave the 11x23 for most racing. One last noteworthy piece to the ride was on the home stretch on 620 I opened it up a bit for a 5 minute interval I still had enough to average 23.9 mph and maxed it out at 30.8 mph.

Next week will be business as usual, I'll have hill repeats and intervals just no rides over 3 hours. I will pull back the week before Hugel, the number of intervals will be cut down along with the time. Since Hugel is not one of my A priority events I won't be doing a full taper. I'll just take a week of tapering to lower the fatigue and be fresh and ready for November 14th.

A father in my son's Jack's cub scout den, Ken, a fellow cyclist invited me out to the VOIP Saturday group ride. He meets the group in front of Rudy's BBQ on Hwy 360. On Friday night I emailed Ken saying I was on for the ride. We didn't have a set plan, I knew he left his house at 6:15 as he rides down from Cedar Park. I tried to get to his house at 6:15 to meet him, but I got there a little late at 6:19. I checked my email and saw that he emailed me to meet him at the corner of El Salido and 620 at 6:25. There was no way I could get there in 5 minutes but I took off. I got there at 6:29 but no sign of Ken. I wasn't sure if he was running late so I waited till 6:40.

Running this far behind I couldn't take my normal route to 360, I was going to have to take a direct route. Ken said he takes 2222 to 360, I've never went down the big hill on 2222, in fact it is something I vowed I would never do. Riding along side cars going 65-80 mph  with no shoulder never appealed to me. Although the shoulder was widened last year on the stretch approaching the hill, but the decent down the hill you still have to take the lane. Luckily it was early morning still and the car traffic was light. I bombed down the hill reaching 50 mph and thankfully not one car passed me.

I still had to navigate 360 and climb the hills. It was going to be close as to whether or not I would make it to the rendezvous point by 7:30am. I passed quite a few cyclists on the hills and I was passed by one rider as well. This guy looked the part on his Cervelo and matching kit. He was an older gentleman with graying hair, wafer thin. He was probably 5'6" and 135 pounds. I debated if I should grab his wheel, but I was already teetering on my red line and figured I'd be completely blown if I did.

I got to Rudy's at 7:35 and luckily Ken and a small group was waiting but the damage had been done, I'd spent the past hour going full throttle to get there on time that I was spent. I would guess there were about 18 people in the group as we rolled down 360 heading to MoPac. This version of the Dam Loop is probably a bit closer to the classic version as it goes down Southwest Parkway to 71 and down 71 to Bee Caves. I've never ridden this portion of the Dam Loop. I typically will go up Bee Caves Road to Bee Cave and I've never ridden on 71. I was a bit skeptical about it as I wasn't sure how big the shoulder was. For the most part it is quite rideable I think there was only one short bridge section where I felt it to be a bit questionable.

Back to the ride. As we hit the longer climb up Southwest Parkway, before Barton Springs Road my legs were already protesting. We hit this hill maintaining 20 mph going up. Close to the top the speed knocked up a mile or two and I couldn't counter. I slowly drifted off the back, but kept the main group in sight.  The group was already split in 2, the main group that I just got dropped from and then another group. I was between the 2. I rode by myself to Bee Caves picking off a few riders here and there that got dropped from the main group.

I also got dropped on 620, after a light of all places. We stop at the light and I'm expecting a slow roll out, so I'm not paying close attention, getting clipped in. I look up and everybody has taken off. I did catch up to the 2nd group and rode with them down 620 to the next regroup stop at the Walgreens on the corner of 620 and 2222.

The home stretch was fairly mild as we rode 620 to Anderson Mill Road. Ken and me departed from the group from there as they turned down Anderson Mill to head back to 360 and we headed the opposite direction into Cedar Park.

Next time I will have to roll to the start at a better pace so I'm not shelled before I arrive. Looking at my overall power file my average watts were below what I expected. The entire ride only averaged 201 watts. That could be partly do to sitting in at the back of the group. But looking at key efforts the average was still below what I would have thought. The effort felt harder than what the file indicates.

Stats:
Distance: 56.73
Kj: 2202
Power: Avg: 201 Max: 849

I don't have a lot to report from the past week, it was a recovery week for me as I was winding down from the Build 2 week 4 phase. I did start working onsite at a client location that is on the North East side of Austin, just off of Cameron Road. This has given me the opportunity to seek out new routes for my lunch time rides. The terrain is definitely different than what I've been riding in. The East side is mostly flat, there are a few rollers here and there but they average about 3% compared to the 8% to 12% for the hills around the headquarters. Coming up with new routes has been fun and I have several other routes to try out. I did make one mistake for a recovery week, on Wednesday I answered Joe Doyle's invite to play hockey. I'm a sucker for either a ride announcement or drop in hockey invitations. It had been about 6 months since I last grabbed a stick and strapped on the pads for hockey. I was sore for 3 days after, hockey muscles and riding muscles are similar but obviously don't use the same ones or in the same proportions. Whatever it is I was sore.

The weekend riding was good, on Saturday I did a 1 hour threshold test. No big jump in numbers, it basically confirmed that my last jump in FTP was warranted. I could have jumped it up again as my Normalized Power for the hour was 301 watts and my average power was 289, so for now I'll leave it at 291 unless I'm finding intervals to be too easy at those levels.

Sunday I caught the Southwest Cycle Sport group ride again. This time the turnout wasn't as strong, there were only 4 of us this time. Even with the smaller number of riders it was still a blast. There wasn't as many attacks, I think the route kept that in check. We headed North this time and ended up doing a dam loop of sorts so we had the climbs around the dam, 360 and Bee Caves. The only other thing worth reporting on the ride was as we were on 360 just after the 360 bridge we got passed like nobodies business by a guy on a tribike. We weren't going very fast, we had just stopped at the light before the bridge, maybe 20 mph. The guy on a tri bike goes whizzing by us. I was a little surprised nobody reacted to this blatant challenge. I guess the seasoned racers knew better, whereas myself I was ready to launch into a full on pursuit. As we reached the first hill we kept our pace steady, looking up the hill it was obvious the tri guy was in difficulty. He was laboring with each pedal stroke. He was soon standing, rocking the bike from side to side with his legs pushing the pedals in slow motion. About 1/2 way up the hill as we were about to overtake him, he pulled off and unclipped for a break.  It was a good 40 miles at an average speed of 19.5 mph.

I brought the head unit to my PowerTap and kept it in my jersey pocket to record the ride just incase the Garmin 705 crapped out again. I'm having data drops as the difference between the 2 was about 4 minutes or 1 mile! I adjusted the wheel magnet a little as it was a bit off, I'll give that a try. Next I'll swap out the battery in the speed/cadence sensor.

For today's lunchtime workout I did my Greystone/360 route as a 30 minute Time Trial effort. The time trial starts after I cross Mesa Drive on Greystone. For the 30 minutes I averaged 18.14, my normalized power was 292, average power was 258.

The only notable thing on the ride was when I was heading down Mesa towards the end of the Time Trial, I see a rider ahead of me which gave me a nice carrot to chase. As I was approaching the light at Spicewood Springs he slowed at the red light and then ran the light. The rider nearly got run over as he went right in front of a car making a left hand turn who had the turn arrow. I caught him shortly on Mesa, get this he was in full Garmin/Chipotle kit. Not only was he in full kit, but he had a team issued Felt along with a Garmin 705. I was going to say something to him about the light, but kept on going as I was still going on my Time Trial effort and passed him at 23 mph so didn't want to slow down to chat. He did sure look the part though, besides the fact that I caught him and passed him. You never know the pros might be in town for the Tour de Gruene. Word has gotten out that local rider Lance Armstrong is signed up for the team time trial this weekend.

On further investigation it could have been Garmin-Chipotle rider Pat McCarty who resides here in Austin. Pat if that was you, don't run red lights, APD is out enforcing bike related traffic infractions plus it's dangerous and gives us all a bad name. Second if you want a rematch let me know, however I prefer it be on your recovery day.