If anyone isn't aware, the town of Newport, RI has a large tourism industry. I've learned over the last 3 years that cycling and tourists are not a good combination. I've had close calls before from people paying more attention to what they are doing while driving than looking at the sights. Anyway, today I came real close to eating someone's license plate for lunch.
I was just in the first 5 miles of my ride. The first part of the ride is a straight, rolling road. I was unfortunately on the Tri bike. This means that I'm in the aerobars. Due to the fact that I was on a slight downhill, my speeds were fairly fast. Well, all of the sudden, a 20 year old decides to back out of his driveway from the opposite side of the road as me to head the same direction as I was going. Even though I was in the middle of the lane, the kid either didn't see me, or didn't look. I jump off the aerobars onto the brakes as fast as I can, which isn't all that easy, and start slamming on the brakes. As I do, a lady comes running out of the driveway screaming trying to get the kids attention to pull back in. For some unknown reason, he decides not to move. Which turned out to be a good thing. I had only one option: head left into the oncoming lane and turn into his driveway. Because he was sitting in the middle of the road, the car coming the other direction had stopped. The woman came over to me asking if I was ok. I was just shaken a bit.... so I clipped in and headed back out. As I'm leaving, the kid tried to say something but all I hear is the woman (who I assume was the mother) yelling at the top of her lungs at the kid that he could have killed me.
After this incident, the decision was easy to avoid Newport at all costs, especially on a holiday weekend! My weekday local evening rides may have to stop...
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Pics of Tri Position and Road Ride Results
Figured since I had the fitting I should post a photo of the results along with a ride report. So here is the photo:
This past Friday the weather was nice so I cut out of work a bit early. It gave me enough time to do one of the longer routes where I live. It is a really nice 36.2 mile route around the southern part of Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island heading through Newport onto Ocean Dr. Traffic was a little heavy in parts as some of the tourists were out driving around. On a blind corner, I almost ran into the back of a tour trolley that had just stopped near a farm.... "Serenity Now"! The sun was out in force until I hit mile 30 passing the beaches. The wind had shifted, the air cooled off, and it brought the fog in. The fog/mist eliminated the sun which dropped the temperatures 10-15 degrees immediately. My speed took a huge hit. I lost a full .5-.7 mph average on the last 5 miles.
Result: 36.2 miles, 1:51 minutes, 19.57 mph (Garming said 20.2 mph at the first 31 miles)
Fairly inline with my 10 mile Computrainer TT results.
Result: 36.2 miles, 1:51 minutes, 19.57 mph (Garming said 20.2 mph at the first 31 miles)
Fairly inline with my 10 mile Computrainer TT results.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Start of the season indoor ITT
Now that my knee seems to feel good and I've managed some good paces on weekend group rides, I felt as if it was a good time to do a start of the season ITT. Doing the test indoors on the computrainer gives a good indication of fitness and power eliminating effects from the bike aerodynamics and outdoor elements. On the trainer I chose the Computrainer 10 mile TT course. I believe it is one of the default courses that RacermateInc uses in its 20% performance increase money back guarantee. The course is basically a rolling course with not greater than 3% gradients.
- Avg Speed - 21.0 mph
- Max Speed - 23.7 mph
- Avg Power - 210 watts
- Peak Power - 385 watts
Sunday, May 10, 2009
New Goodies!!
So the first item was actually purchased during my bike fit. It is the infamous ISM Adamo saddle. For anyone doing triathlons or TTs that has problems with seats putting pains where there really shouldn't be pains, these seats are for you. Basically, its design puts the pressure right back on your sit bones where it is supposed to be. There are several models available. Each has different amounts of padding so its just a matter of finding the "right" one.
The next item was a recommendation by the fitter. I needed to lengthen the front end of my bike. I did this by replacing the standard Vision TT aerobars which were 250mm in length with the Profile Design T2+ S-Bend aerobar clip-on extensions. Since I was changing the bars, I also changed the light gray shifter and brake cables. After a week of adjustments, I finally have what I feel is a manageable setup. Once interesting thing was I routed the shifter cables through the plastic ends of the aerobar extensions. You can see these barely in the photo. I outfitted them with Zipp bar tape which I am pleased with.
One of the problems I ran into was where to mount my computer. The bars are fairly narrow and doesn't give much space. The computer I have, a Garmin Forerunner 301, is a wide computer and will barely fit between the bars. Off I went to Home Depot. I came out with a 3/4" curved PVC pipe. After a little bit of dremeling, I came up with the following mounting bracket:
The PVC is dremeled so it has curved ends to fit between the bars yet rises up slightly between them. The gray PVC was then covered in black electrical tape to semi-permanently mount it between the bar ends. The computer mounting bracket is then zip tied to the PVC. Here is a final shot showing how the actual computer fits in between my arms.
The last goody I got was related to running. If you have been following my blog, you know that I've had recent knee problems that have kept me from doing pretty much anything. Well, I finally decided that after 500 miles of biking, I should make an attempt to run. I started slow doing 2 minutes walking at 4mph and 2 minutes running at 6.5 mph. Not blazing at all. One big thing that I noticed was that if I accidentally over-extended my stride, my bad knee would experience sharp pains. I came to the realization that my running form may be what caused my injuries in the first place. I may have had a double whammy of overstriding and a major heel striker. In an attempt to fix this, I bought into the marketing hype of a shoe company. No its not a major player... its Newton Running. So I am using their 30 day "free trial" period and bought the following:
The shoes are their "Gravity" cushion trainer model. The shoes are very interesting concept. They are designed to promote forefoot/midfoot running form. The heel material is less, they have a more flexible forefoot, and they have "lugs" underneath the midsole. The lugs are supposed to be some type of energy retention system. Whether these lugs work or not have yet to be seen, but I'm not getting my hopes up. So after I got home I took them for their maiden voyage. Another 2 min walk, 2 min run session at 4mph/6.5mph. What I noticed right away was the shoes wanting to "keep me on my toes". Its a good thing I was only running in 2 minute intervals, because I don't think I could go further. Two observations were made after the 20 minutes of running. My cadence improved 10 steps per minute from 80 to 90. Changing to this running style is going to take some time. In the end, I didn't once get a jolt of pain up in my knee. I attribute this to not heel striking and letting the knee try and absorb the shock, this was since the foot was doing most of the shock absorption. Over the next month, updates will continually be made on these shoes and my progress in a gait change.
The next item was a recommendation by the fitter. I needed to lengthen the front end of my bike. I did this by replacing the standard Vision TT aerobars which were 250mm in length with the Profile Design T2+ S-Bend aerobar clip-on extensions. Since I was changing the bars, I also changed the light gray shifter and brake cables. After a week of adjustments, I finally have what I feel is a manageable setup. Once interesting thing was I routed the shifter cables through the plastic ends of the aerobar extensions. You can see these barely in the photo. I outfitted them with Zipp bar tape which I am pleased with.
One of the problems I ran into was where to mount my computer. The bars are fairly narrow and doesn't give much space. The computer I have, a Garmin Forerunner 301, is a wide computer and will barely fit between the bars. Off I went to Home Depot. I came out with a 3/4" curved PVC pipe. After a little bit of dremeling, I came up with the following mounting bracket:
The PVC is dremeled so it has curved ends to fit between the bars yet rises up slightly between them. The gray PVC was then covered in black electrical tape to semi-permanently mount it between the bar ends. The computer mounting bracket is then zip tied to the PVC. Here is a final shot showing how the actual computer fits in between my arms.
The last goody I got was related to running. If you have been following my blog, you know that I've had recent knee problems that have kept me from doing pretty much anything. Well, I finally decided that after 500 miles of biking, I should make an attempt to run. I started slow doing 2 minutes walking at 4mph and 2 minutes running at 6.5 mph. Not blazing at all. One big thing that I noticed was that if I accidentally over-extended my stride, my bad knee would experience sharp pains. I came to the realization that my running form may be what caused my injuries in the first place. I may have had a double whammy of overstriding and a major heel striker. In an attempt to fix this, I bought into the marketing hype of a shoe company. No its not a major player... its Newton Running. So I am using their 30 day "free trial" period and bought the following:
The shoes are their "Gravity" cushion trainer model. The shoes are very interesting concept. They are designed to promote forefoot/midfoot running form. The heel material is less, they have a more flexible forefoot, and they have "lugs" underneath the midsole. The lugs are supposed to be some type of energy retention system. Whether these lugs work or not have yet to be seen, but I'm not getting my hopes up. So after I got home I took them for their maiden voyage. Another 2 min walk, 2 min run session at 4mph/6.5mph. What I noticed right away was the shoes wanting to "keep me on my toes". Its a good thing I was only running in 2 minute intervals, because I don't think I could go further. Two observations were made after the 20 minutes of running. My cadence improved 10 steps per minute from 80 to 90. Changing to this running style is going to take some time. In the end, I didn't once get a jolt of pain up in my knee. I attribute this to not heel striking and letting the knee try and absorb the shock, this was since the foot was doing most of the shock absorption. Over the next month, updates will continually be made on these shoes and my progress in a gait change.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
