Mike's Bike Blog

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.