hubcyclist

thanks, i'll try some, definitely can't hurt. but yeah, today's stuff was tough on them and it's the first time I've done anything over 120% in a while

wktmeow

I've been doing the leg press single leg. Is the range of motion in the video sufficient? I usually go quite a bit deeper and as such struggle with higher weight.

Ttoc6

Re. Wax. I use a double boiler. I have an old tin can filled with the wax that I put in a pot of boiling water that has worked for me for quite a while.

Re. Master links. Ymmv. I have rr used sram and knc many, many times. I will be ordering some conex links though. They seem nicer.

Re. Tahoe. Yeah, it was nice looking when Google maps decided to reroute me over Donner pass instead of I 80. Beautiful area, pretty lake, a bit scary to drive. One of these days I'm going to just buy a map and out it in my car. Probably better for these long trips...
Lots of signs saying chains required but it was a peice of cake besides that one pass... Even without any cables.

Re gas. Apparently 15.9 gallons according to a website. I don't want to push that though lol. My gauge goes up and down pretty significantly with the hills when I'm driving soooo.

Re. Training. Pissing down rain in Chico so I set up the rollers in a parking garage to do my Openers. 50 ish minutes with about 10 minutes building just past threshold and then a few 30 second leg openers. Feel good. Racing at sea level should be interesting.

I stopped at "a main" cycle shop to work on my bike and pick up another set of velotoze. They were rushing more into store today with the race this weekend. Also got some more embro to try!

caloso

AMain is good people.

Re driving over Donner: I'm not surprised it was no big deal for a Utah driver. Most California drivers are idiots so the CHP and CalTrans has to act accordingly. (Tahoe/Donner locals are fine in the snow. It's the daytrippers up from the Bay Area who are so dangerous.)

Good luck!

Ygduf

you might want to ask a real person

Doge

Pages of discussion over that 3 years ago in the weight training status thread.

The idea at the time was to build an hard finish pedal stroke for power, kick stomp. The kids didn't have the development that could squat less than half the weight needed to get the same foot pressure a leg press would. 1,000 on press is 700+ on feet. 130 pound kid would need to squat/hold 570lbs to get that quad pressure, and then the weight momentum - it was not safe. It was also not to build mass. Much was neurological, but the idea was go as fast as you can, which is slow with lots of weight. Every guy I knew that was squatting 400 (inc me) was was too big to be a roadie (I now have lower disc issues now, I associate with lifting in teens). So I agreed with the concept. You can't see it but there are weight stops set at a pretty safe level as well. I saw a couple collapses. Shook everyone up and made a big noise, but no injuries ever, other than tendon fatigue from spinning too much (per sports Doctor).

Now range of motion is a bit higher using one leg. And weights are lower. Some of that IS to build mass. Being at altitude, being off season, in the military and future focus on track, mass is not so bad. I heard about 400# max on the machine, I don't know for sure. Single leg also adds some twist as I mentioned and is good core work.

tetonrider

you got routed off the interstate? bummer. 80 does go over donner pass, but there's a separate donner pass road. (i used to live in tahoe.)

when chain law is in effect they stop all vehicles. you either need chains or 4wd with M+S-rated tires, minimum. i've never seen them require chains on 4wd vehicles -- the interstate shutting down is the next step.

so... you were nowhere close to empty!

you've had that vehicle a long time; i figure you'd know exactly where 'true empty' is according to the gauge.

you should be able to adjust for terrain.

(i had an old rig for a long time and tested -- intentionally and unintentionally -- how far below empty i could go, many times.)

wouldn't worry too much about the variation caused by hills.

have fun & good luck!

tetonrider

depending on conditions that can be super sketch.

i'm pretty experienced driving in the snow, and some of those turns on the downhill (west-bound) side can cause some havoc.

it's legit.

doesn't help when people un-/under-prepared drive it, but it's still no joke.

furiousferret

Did my first crit practice in 2 years, it didn't go well. Dropped after a few laps, because I was tailgunning and there was a massive yo yo effect, plus I wasn't efficient on the corners. I've been really tentative since my crash, I need to fix that. Anyway, when I rejoined I did better but two teams that showed up en masse and were taking hard pulls and then resting a lap which kinda ticked me off.

aaronmcd

Finally got out to train this week. Went to a show Monday so woke up too late for Tuesday training, and rain all week got to me a bit.

But I did 4x4.5 in slight rain today. 10w higher than last week, almost feels like normal vo2 intervals. The times are not much slower than last years intervals. Felt good, only did 4 cuz I was low on time. Gonna try and get up to my first grasshopper "race" on Saturday. Lots of climbing... I just hope there are a few other non climbers around to ride with after I get dropped by the leaders. It'll be my first year missing Chico after 3 years straight. A little sad, but stage races and me don't get along well. I only go for the road race anyway so that's a pricey and time consuming road race. An awesome one but still.

caloso

Did some Zwifting this morning. I normally set up in the garage but wifi is spotty out there so I decided to try setting up in our front room. Even though I tried to insulate as much as possible (rug/yoga mat/beach towel under the trainer), when I came upstairs to take a shower my wife said "Did you hear that weird rumbling sound? Was one of our neighbors trimming their trees at 6am?"

Uh.... No, dear. Didn't hear anything like that...

Ygduf

between my legs feeling the cramps of last Sunday's race and my tooth exploding I haven't trained much. Missed 1 day, 3x zwift rides - all steady low-moderate effort stuff.

I think I'm technically supposed to avoid strenuous exertion, but did 70min at like 270w then lifted this afternoon. Probably 1 more zwift day and then I'll try to get outside Sunday.

Turns out that for my 75-80 min trainer rides, which is all I can take, honestly, 1 episode of Last Kingdom and 1 episode of Clone Wars, both netflix, fill the time nicely.

topflightpro

It kind of depends.

It looks like he has the back rest pretty far up. If you can get your upper body leaning forward, so that your glutes and hamstrings are fully stretched, then you don't need/ can't really go very deep.

Still, I'd argue that his upper body wasn't as far forward as it needs to be to get the stretch I'm speaking of.

wktmeow

Yea, I'd always lean way forward when I did them to engage glutes more. I just was used to going full depth for squats, so I felt like low ROM reps were cheating. But, I'm not doing those for this round of weights anyway.

Felt surprisingly good for today's 4x8's considering the low volume these past few weeks and doing weights. Hit very consistent numbers, and didn't struggle as much as usual. 316w - 318w for all four! Heart rate is looking good at sub-threshold area too, I'm a good 10-15 watts up for 160bpm from early season. Big gear and weights tomorrow, which should be the last hard work until San Dimas. Hoping I can hit some good numbers up that climb, and beat last year's time. Very doubtful that I'll place anywhere in the top 3, but top 10 would be a cool bonus. The most interesting part will be seeing the power difference. Last year on my 'reading high' stages, it was a power PR but not a very good time. I did 334 'fake' watts, and came in at just a bit over 19 minutes. Thinking I'll start with a target of 310 or so this time around, and then half way through give it some more if I have it in me. From past experience, I can usually come fairly close to my repeatable 8 min power for a single 20ish minute effort so I think that'll be a good target. Not sure how my endurance will fare for the road race though, I haven't done many rides over 3 hours for a while.

hubcyclist

bad training day yesterday, was doing a trainerroad workout called spanish needle +2, which is basically 15sec @ 150%, 15sec recover, over and over for 15 mins at a time, 4 times. I made it halfway through the first one lol my body just isn't used to that type of stuff yet and if there's any type of knock to following pre-canned stuff like trainerroad is that it has people follow stuff that they might be not be totally really for. I did some sweet spot afterwards but the legs weren't happy after my initial efforts. Didn't overdo it to live to ride another day!

jacksonhandy

LOL. I did that one yesterday too. It. Was. Awful. I tried to grind to the end, but ended up dialing back to 90% on the last half of the last set. Still didn’t make it.

I think I might just do 2.5 hours outside today.

hubcyclist

yeah, the original spanish needle is 4x8min of those, I think I *might* have been able to survive that, 7-8mins seemed to be my limit. it's too bad since I want to be better at that type of thing, since my profile is more of a sustained power, given how much sweet spot work I had done previously

jacksonhandy

I totally skipped over the +2 part of your post. Yeah, I wouldn’t have made that at all. I did regular Spanish needle.

rubiksoval

Did 15 mins of vo2 repeats (3x4 min and then 3 min) and then did a group ride and totally cracked 2.5 hours in and got dropped twice. First cramps of the year. Ah, the physical and mental anguish of the pre-season. Three weeks to go until Sunny King and starting to question if I'll be half-way ready.

hubcyclist

started doing a threshold session that would have been 6x10 between 95-99% but got interrupted after the first 10 and then had to run an errand, so later I jumped onto a zwift race in the first time in forever, NP of 240 (IF .86) for ~75min, not up to some of my previous standards of zwift racing, if I recall correctly (more in the .92 IF range). Finished 59/209 or something like that. 130tss for the day, which was on par with what my plan had anyway, s'all good man

rideaz

80 solo miles yesterday, 9500 feet vert on mix of road and gravel. I'm last minute cramming for the Belgian Waffle Ride next month.

furiousferret

Rest week over which included my first crit in 2 years (which I raced like I was a Cat 5 again, but on plus side I didn't crash). Now 2 weeks of real work.

wktmeow

Went a bit over on my workout yesterday. Was supposed to be 2-3 hours with 2x20 big gear efforts. Did the efforts, but also ended up doing 78 miles and 6k feet of climbing. Then hit weights in the evening. Tired af, but now I have recovery days through Weds. Just hoping the fatigue doesn't impact my immune system, since the wife is sick right now.

caloso

Took my son skiing Sunday. Beautiful spring conditions, just gorgeous. Expected my legs to be more fatigued today, pleasantly surprised.

Radish_legs

I did another one of the fast group rides I had never done before. With my masters 40+ racing teammates. They are cat 3 and above. So the question was whether I could hang with them on this ride that has no re-gather points and no traffic lights (rare for our area). I did in fact hang with them. And finished about 5th or so. I think now I've done just about every "fast" group ride in my geographical area. It feels a bit like I've checked off all the boxes since I started riding again in summer of 2014. If you are ever in the Dallas area, I would put this ride near the top of the list for most fun.

I can't imagine any of you possibly wanting to watch the rollout of this ride, but here it is. I'm messing with the new version of VIRB software. FYI, this upload was 80 gigabytes (yikes).