sarals 

First cross race of the season for me this Sunday. I've been watching the GCN videos on YouTube about cross, good stuff there! I've avoided scratching my poison oak, too, also good stuff.

Heathpack 

Good luck @sarals! Knock em dead.

Tues: Rest

Wed: Over/under intervals on the TT bike. New light mount, which was an epic fail. Every undulation in the road would cause the light to swing straight down. Very dicey when you're riding before dawn. Missed all kinds of targets fiddling with the light. 1:20, TSS ~100.

Thurs: Nightcrawlers group ride. Fun as always. First pumpkin spice latte of the season. 1:30, TSS ~125.

Today: Easy spin at Disneyland.



Tomorrow I'm scouting the Santiago Canyon TT course. Riding with a former work colleague, haven't seen her since she left to take a job in the OC about 2 months ago. Looking forward to both the ride & the company.

sarals 

Easy spin, @Heathpack! I'd say so!

I discovered yesterday that the RD for the CX race this weekend moved the race to Sunday. Then, the race that I was going to do on Sunday (in addition to the race that was moved) was cancelled. So, after a quick consult with coach, it was decided that I would go scout Sunday's CX course and "don't get carried away" (who, me?). I wasn't allowed to ride the course when I got there this morning, so I went to a dirt lot and practiced dismount/carry-run shoulder-run/remount and CX starts. I've been watching some (excellent) videos online on how to do this (GCN), and things came together beautifully in the practice. I can now shoulder the bike and carry it. I'm not graceful, but I can do it. The ideal way is a continuous movement of passing my right arm through the triangle after lifting the bike to my shoulder, wrapping that forearm around the front down tube and grabbing the left drop. I'm a bit jerky, yet, but it'll improve.

I learned to dismount differently than I had been prior to today, and the way I now do it (as suggested by GCN) is so much easier and smoother. I dismount on the non-drive side (as before), but I pass my right leg between my clipped in left leg and the bike, and then step out of the left pedal and off the bike. MUCH easier, and it can be done faster and with more stability than the duck walk awkward way I was doing it before. The CX start I practiced is a big ring start, clipped in on the left, immediately clip in on the right (no push off) and dig with one pedal stroke. Works great!

Suffering on Sunday! It might even rain. Wow!

shovelhd

You're making great progress.

Someday when I'm working the pits at a CX race I will film each field negotiating a nearby obstacle. The Cat5's range from a skinny guy with Tourette's to slow and awkward. Guys like Mikey and grolby in Cat3/4 look really smooth and fairly fast. The pros are a little smoother but so much faster, like twice as fast.

globecanvas

FWIW the step through is considered old school, 80s tech. At least by the elite cx guys I hang with. Instead put some weight on your right hand on the top tube, and keep your lower body weight back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-OKMTztjIA


I agree with shovelhd on how crazy fast the elite guys can get over stuff. If you were just tracking their heads and shoulders you would never know when they were on the bike and when they were off.

sarals 

Ah, I hoped you CX experienced folks would chime in!

What I'm doing is this: slow down just prior to the barriers, hands on hoods. Unclip the right foot, and swing it around the back of the bike, pausing momentarily behind my clipped in left foot. Move my right hand to the top tube, back towards the seat post. Swing my right foot behind my left foot, touch and down the right foot and unclip the left at the same time, and lift the bike straight up as I start a stride. Does that sound right? It seems to flow pretty well.

Shouldering like this:

https://youtu.be/pAF1FkdVm9M

Dismount lift like this:

https://youtu.be/LbcVrO5x_r4?list=PL...NHvuTOPMp-z3F6

And then there is this:

https://youtu.be/XE4tWHXf6o8

The second is old school? I can do that easier than the method shown in the first video.

sarals 

Shovel, thanks!

I'm the (not so) skinny girl with Tourette's!

globecanvas

I'm not *that* experienced -- I love to ride my cross bike but I am a dreadful runner and therefore not a very good racer. We do have a lot of top cross guys around here though, a couple of elite national champions and a few perennial top 10 guys, just from this little town.

Anyway, the step through you described in your earlier post ("pass my right leg between my clipped in left leg and the bike") is old school. My buddy calls it the "mullet dismount," as in, the last time he did it he had a mullet. If it works for you, great, but everybody I know does the so called cowboy dismount where you just swing your unclipped leg back behind the clipped one, which sounds like what you described in your later post. Then swing the bike out and up, the faster you're going, the more you swing it out.

sarals 

GC, you're more experienced than I am!

I messed my second description up - I left out that I pass my right foot between the bike and my left foot, and then when it's about to touch down on the ground, I unclip the left foot and I am in a stride. If that's the "mullet dismount", well - I was young back then when it was in style

Jeremy makes EXCELLENT points in his video about NOT doing what I'm doing. Something about "loosing teeth".

I can do either style. Right now stepping through "mullet" style is smoother, but I shouldn't get into the habit.

GC, thanks!!

sarals 

Openers on the road bike this morning. Two attempts, the first was interrupted half way through by a flat. Then the CO2 cartridge discharged when I screwed it to the dispenser. Walked back the car (hey, there's walking /r***ing in a cross race, right?), pumped the tire up and finished the openers ride. Total TSS was less than 30. In the ballpark. The rest I've had (easy rides, no rides, etc) has done me some good, I felt very good this morning.

Heathpack 

Santiago Canyon TT scout this am, ~1:50 total, ~90 TSS.

My game plan was two passes of the course. As I mentioned previously, I was meeting a friend who I hadn't seen in a few months. We had a nice chatty warm up and then I did my first pass through the course at a moderate effort, which turned out to be ave power ~92% FTP.

This course is something new for me, different from the dead-flat and flattish courses I've done before at Fiesta Island & Piru. This one starts with a 4 mile climb, at first gradual (1-3%) and then the last approx 1 mile steeper (4-5%). Then maybe a mile descent at 4-5%, then from there rollers but mostly downhill to the finish at the 11 mile mark. Overall an uphill course with around 800ft elevation gain, just a straight course, one-way, no turn.

I can't really look too deeply at the data until I get home. I was planning to ride positive splits (if that's the correct term), but it appears to me that other than the 1ish mile descent, I rode this at about even power 1st half relative to 2nd half. The descending on the TT bike was no big deal, I had been a little worried about it. I came off the aerobars once or twice, while passing people and at the transition between some dark & light pavement, I wasn't really sure what the road was going to do (it did nothing, the transition was smooth). My first experience with enough crosswind to blow the bike around a little, which was also no big deal. Also discovered the funky effect of wind on your aero-helmeted head when you look behind you to check for traffic while passing someone at high speed on a descent. Yikes, weird.

Felt pretty ok at the end, effort for sure seemed no more than moderate.

Chatty ride with my friend back to the start, so another 11 miles with some climbing. She peeled off and I was planning on another pass through at a stronger pace. But I couldn't get anything going and wound up just aborting the ride & calling it a day. I think it was being on our feet for 8 hours at Disneyland yesterday, that's got to have an effect on the legs.

Commented to husband on the way back to the hotel that I really wanted another run-through, maybe I'd have to drive down again. He suggests I just do it again tomorrow morning. "But we're supposed to go to Disneyland." He points out that we have been to Disneyland many times vs I have had only one pass on this course on a TT bike. We don't have to check out until 11. And furthermore, our lunch reservation is not until 1:30. Enabler!

So: this afternoon is recovery in the hot tub, tonight is a big fat Armenian wedding and tomorrow morning I'll make another run through this TT course.

sarals 

@Heathpack - That's the kind of training I need. The only thing you're missing is the massage!

happybday29475

It used to be thought that the old style of dismount was marginally faster since it allowed for a full stride with the right leg, but that's not universally agreed upon any more. What is agreed upon is that the old way is unforgiving and occasionally leads to spectacular photo ops, while the new way is very forgiving. Watch a pro race, eg early tomorrow am, and you'll see that not many "step through" any more.

Racer Ex 

I stop then look for someone to help me off the bike.

Raced the SS steel anchor today. Not in great shape after vacation. Think I got 2nd or 3rd in a small SS field. Thin air hurt. Stairs were horrible. Dismounts improved as I went.

They are doing the state champs up here, Nevada only. Thinking I may need to throw on some gears, there were times when I was spun out and others when I was crawling. I could do a single ring Di set up for around $300.

Hmmmmm.

sarals 

Dismount? This way?

LAJ

I've been on the JRA program for a couple months, which is nice. But I've also been on the 5x5 weight program, where 5 pounds a session are added. At this point, the weights aren't conducive to riding, but I think they're helping. Every time I get on the bike, my legs feel like hammered ****, but they seem to function pretty well. We'll see how this plays out.

chasm54

Great 2.75 hour Z2 ride today, in beautiful autumnal weather. It's going to turn wet and windy from tomorrow, though, so that'll test my resolve a bit more.

Spent a happy couple of hours yesterday creating a training plan for a seven-month macrocycle. It seems ridiculous, in a way, because I'm not intending to compete. But I'm weak - if I don't have a plan I just drift, and weeks pass without my achieving anything. So I've picked an arbitrary date at the end of April to peak for and broken it down into 3-week mesocycles to allow for old man rates of recovery. We'll see how we go - and especially, how quickly I can lose the weight.

Heathpack 

Nice rides lately, @LAJ. Epic. And fast.
@chasm54, you have your own private TT road in your new neighborhood, right? Goal-setting city IMO. Why not some intermediate goals between now & April, to maintain your focus? Ride the TT once a month or every 6 weeks or something like that? Just a thought.

Ok, as to my update: First off, if you ever get invited to an Armenian wedding, by all means go. It's quite the experience. Kind of like a rave but with aunties and grandmas. Just don't go with the expectation that you will get up early the next morning to ride your TT bike.

Slept in, skipped Disneyland and cancelled our lunch reservartion. Scouted the Santiago Cyn TT course once instead. Rode it at 100% FTP, went pretty well, I think I should be able to ride it at 105ish% FTP without too much problem, not sure how much time that will gain me though. Today was about 2 min faster than yesterday but still maybe 5 min off a winning time for this TT. Yikes, I feel sorry for my coach, not sure how he's gonna knock 5 minutes off my time in only 5 weeks. I'm not really sure I'm approaching this correctly, splits looked pretty even again. Hmm.

Cloudy and cool today and a little windier, maybe 8-9 mph winds with some gusts 12ish mph. Just enough to experience getting blown around a little more. Again no biggie. Did get completely startled however when I moved close to the white line to go around a man-hole cover just as an SUV whizzed past, sucking me towards the travel lane. Also got rained on for the last 2 miles and for my cool down. Stayed in the aerobars for the entire ride this time, with the exception of a funky zigzag section that is a 90 degree right turn, slight descent through a short tunnel, then out of the dark tunnel into sunlight with a sharp left turn and a pothole exactly in the middle of the best line to take exiting the tunnel. Fun.

Ennjoyed it, that's a interesting course for sure.

LAJ

Thank you, @Heathpack.

I have a feeling you'll be just fine in five weeks. Of course, that's providing you don't search out any Armenian weddings the night before.

IBOHUNT

2 hours on the trainer. 1st hour in Z2 then 58 minutes of Sweet spot followed by 2 minutes of 115%; TSS 160
Changed clothes, put some in the washer and went ru**i*g; 10 miles in 1:35 rTSS 133

Tar'd

chasm54

Good grief. You're a beast.

IBOHUNT

On this side of the pond it's idiot not beast my good man

Heathpack 

58 minutes?! After all that, you couldn't hang on for the final 2 minutes to make it an even hour?

(Says she who just this morning aborted a similar interval 25 minutes in and also did not run a single step)

revchuck 

I'll second that!

IBOHUNT

Actually the last hour was

30 min sweet spot
28 min at FTP
2 min at 115%