mattm

Sounds like you're going to get yelled at either way. Just sit on if you're not gong to work, but don't get in the way.

Also, you're not that weak. Your power numbers are better than mine - across the board I'm pretty sure - and I would have at least pulled through normally in that break.

Really though, don't sit on. If you're in over your head, just take short pulls.

mattm

Did two hours of tempo-ish pace - 21 mph avg, 95 avg cadence.

It's annoying that to ride a flat route I have to ride some of the most boring roads around here (Middlefield, 84 bridge to Fremont, weird roads in Fremont, Tasmin in Sunnyvale).

caloso

Soccer dad intervals. Brought my bike with me to the tournament so I could ride home and get 20 miles or so, but my son's team made the 3d place game and I ran out of daylight.

mike868y

still off the bike, but i hiked mt washington yesterday. i have very little experience hiking. i'm real sore today.

furiousferret

Last week was a rest week but I massively miscalculated by about 150 TSS. I doubt any of it matters, I'm running such a low calorie deficit this month I'm not expecting any power improvements.

The hard part now is avoiding the junk food we brought back from the camping trip. I'm half tempted to throw it away and deal with the wife's wrath when she gets back from her business trip.

hubcyclist

3x30 @ 85% 127 tss ctl continues to hover in the high 50's, tsb slightly positive due to weekends off.

Ttoc6

Still living the off season life. Went for a fun MTB ride. Another one of those days that reminds me why I enjoy riding bikes. Weather was perfect, and I came across a few spots that just made me stop and stare out across the valley. I'll say, Utah really is pretty this time of year. Trees are starting to change, snow on the mountains, good tacky dirt to ride..

TMonk

good stuff at @Ttoc6.

TMonk

I've managed to be riding enough to stop my TSS from free-falling, which is great. Currently at 60. It's probably not going to get much higher until after the weekend of October 14/15, when I'm leading a group of co-workers and friends into the High Sierras for a backpacking trip. Until then I'll be doing some hiking on the weekends. I'm also excited to ramp it up on the bike after the trip and get back into shape.

On a separate note I've organized another big Mount Laguna MTB weekend this week - it's going to be a big group and I'm looking forward to it. Friday off work and all that.

caloso

Rode the cross bike, as I just realized that there's a race on Saturday I can ride to from my house, and the stars (and my kids' soccer schedules) may just align to let me race. As usual, goat head caused a flat. Damn, I hate those things.

TexMac

Back at it after taking 4 days off, yesterday 30 miles after work. Funny how legs feel so strong but your HR a bit high. Company paid gym at temporary offices doesn't allow people to leave personal items in lockers so i'll have to leave my car with clothes in parking garage for my commute

Wylde06

2x25 sweet spot today. Felt good. Heart rate monitor wasnt working so I cant see how the effort tracked there.

Ttoc6

More mtbing. Took a look at strava and I've dropped almost 2 minutes off a segment time since I started mountain biking. Cross riding has really helped my bike handling. After riding 33c tires a bunch, my mtb tires feel so stable. power is estimated. Dirt has also been much tacier lately.
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scheibo

having some bad luck with crashes this year - chalked up #3 and #4 of the year within a week of each other recently. first crash was due to hitting a wet tar snake under an overpass the day after the first rain (which is always notoriously bad in california due to months of built up oil on the road) - banged up my knee which didn't really affect my cycling much but made it so that it hurts to run . then a week ago i was out for a recovery ride and hit a wet oily mud patch on a road which is under construction and landed on my left wrist. couldn't grip the handlebars but was conveniently right in front of an urgent care facility. i've been in a splint for the past week, but it seems to be slowly healing and yesterday an orthopedic surgeon confirmed the urgent care physician's diagnosis that its not broken/dislocated or anything complicated, but the ligaments/tendons ive strained might still take quite a while to heal which is very annoying.

unable to run due to my knee and ride due to my wrist i've been forced to stick my TT rig on the indoor trainer to turn over my legs and stave off insanity, but i really hate the indoor trainer. for the first few days i also couldn't really grip the bars so had to do some awkward criss-cross arm position which didn't really provide much counterbalancing. thankfully im now able to more or less properly grip the sticks with my splint on now, and my wrist has healed to the point where i actually tried riding on my road bike outdoors in the splint today. kind of a bad idea because i couldnt really use my front brake/steer very well, but i mostly stayed away from any scenarios where i would run into problems. still, while it provided some mental relief, it mostly confirmed i'm going to be on the trainer for a while because realistically i'm not nearly healed enough to actually ride.

i crashed a lot when i first started riding and then had a couple years of no serious issues. i wonder if my luck this year is just regression towards the mean. all 4 crashes were causes by bad road conditions (pothole/gravel/wet/mud) so maybe i need to zone out less when riding and pay more attention to whats on the road. though to be fair, in 3/4 crashes i was actually aware of the conditions and before the crashes happened i was thinking "man, i'd better be careful here" and it still wasn't enough.

overall, its not a terrible time of the year to be sidelined due to injury, though i'd rather it was a month or two later when its rainy and dark id be forced inside on the trainer anyway. on the plus side, without being able to exercise so much i've had plenty of time to work on some projects ive been wanting to do (which are also cycling related... )

topflightpro

Sorry to hear about your crashes. I'd gladly take a broken bone over soft tissue injury. At least with a bone, you know when it is healed. With soft tissue, it's always a bit of a guessing game, and I have found I tend to guess wrong more often than not - i.e., I assume I'm healed sooner than I am because the pain is gone and mobility is back, but the slightest over exertion basically resets the injury. I hope you heal up soon.

scheibo

thanks. and yeah, thats kind of what im discovered - i didnt realize it would take so long to heal the soft tissue. however, its definitely significant better than a week ago (i couldnt use my arm/hand at all, now my hand is basically fine and i have limited mobility in the wrist, with mostly only dull pain unless i try to do something stupid). given the progress i think i could maybe be back outdoor riding (gingerly) in maybe 1-2 weeks, though i imagine being comfortable doing a high speed technical descent and manhandling the bike in a sprint is going to take a lot longer than that. that said, i havent had this type of injury before, and i definitely worry about making it worse given my job requires that i spend all day typing, so i'll need to be careful

furiousferret

Good luck with the recovery @scheibo

I had the same issue going over the bars during a cross race, couldn't really move my wrist or 3 fingers well, but nothing was broken. Took a few weeks to fully heal up. My other accident after that I couldn't move my right arm and it was essentially paralyzed for a few days which took 3 weeks for full mobility; the doctors assured me it was 'fine' but losing mobility in a limb is not fun.

Being sketchy on the bike is an understatement this year, I've been doing skills drills and it really helps with the confidence out there (bunny hops, bottle grabs, etc)

mattm

damn. heal up!

(seriously, be patient - heal up - now is the time)

Ttoc6

Another mtb ride today. Felt tired for some reason. Maybe I went harder in the cross race yesterday than I thought. Maybe my time off from training is catching up with me. Maybe it was just the wind.

The big win is I finally made it around this hard, slow, narrow right hand corner in the first 1k single track trail that I normally do. First time I've ever made it around without having to unclip and push. Just one of those obstacles that gives me trouble, mainly due to how far you have to turn the front wheel while pedaling. Doing this style of turning on a road bike would result in a crash due to my toes catching the front wheel. Just a mental block to get past.

miyata man

Get back to me when you are hitting off camber jumps that require moving the bike sideways and fighting to rotate in the opposite horizontal direction to successfully land it. If you really want to get mtb skills leave the kit and home and get used to crashing a lot. Tipping over, sliding out, getting bucked off in the aforementioned three axis at once. The hard skill to develop to the point it isn't overwhelming your attention is flowing through terrain that requires a very specific rhythm where one mistimed step puts you on your ass or kills all momentum.

Having spent a lot of time in a lot of mountains I'd caution about buying a bike above your level of skill. Modern mtb's are so capable they tend to mask shortcomings in the rider until it is waaaaaaaaayy too late. Ride the wheels off what you have now and don't count on any resale value. Same advice I'd give to a first year road racer. On dirt this means even racers need some awareness of trials and 6' dropoffs. Set up what you have now for all mountain riding with platforms and just have fun would be my overwhelming suggestion. You can always throw on clipless pedals in 2 minutes if your buddies suddenly get quicker.

Ttoc6

so about that, @miyata man... I went out to do some jumps and more trail / free ride style riding. And I biffed it really hard on a jump. I hit the base of it thinking it was a table top and would push the front wheel over the top. It wasn't. It was most definitely a lipped jump with a shallow drop. My bad body english and inexperience brought me down on the front wheel first and I tried to rock backwards, but didn't make it. Crashed hard. Slid all the way down the back side of the jump with the handle bars in my back since the front wheel twisted. Busted my helmet and my (spandex) kit is ruined.

I've only got 2 of my college kits left at this point, lol. Funny part of the dirt-rash is my back has scrapes that directly line up with my ribs. Like three slashes from a tiger, but directly where my ribs meet up with my spine.

Taking this as an experiment to try at @Ygduf 's collodial silver suggestion. I've got some tegaderm on some placs and some colodial silver on other. I seem to like it so far. Has a bit of a pain relieving sensation anddefinitely easier to get on and deal with in clothes than my traditional Saran wrap + Petroleum jelly approach.

If I end up racing cross tomorrow, I'm sure my handling is going to suffer because of this....

revchuck 

Ow, that hurts just to read...

miyata man

First off I hope you are just a bit bruised and otherwise wiser. In situations you might be able to save or just need to adjust for a bad takeoff angle. Using the rear brake just enough to stop wheel rotation while in the air helps halt momentum. Obviously you don't want to land with either brake locked up so let go right away. Good to see you out having fun and getting dirty!

The last week or so I've been slowly getting back on the bike and trying to keep it fun. No Garmin is such a major component in that for me. Suddenly the need to approach and better speed limits is nonexistent through residential areas. Suicide squirrels on crazed nut sorties and basically everything being an open construction zone basically made the decision for me. Might not go back as it really truly adds a level of complexity to Winter riding. Figuring out my breathing issue and parking the bike for a month have me feeling much better. Fairly sure being unable to properly ride a bike was messing up my metabolism and making me feel even worse. Whatever it is seems to be correcting itself a bit more every day this Fall.

globecanvas

20 miles of single track today with a local ex-pro. I rode totally out of my skin, cleaned stuff I've never cleaned before, PR'd all the descents, gasping and panting the whole time and still the guy was just casually pedaling along chatting in a normal tone of voice and obviously taking it easy on me. I'm happy to have sucked less than usual and it was a hell of a workout but the gulf between "sucking less" and "pro" is inifinitely wide.

I mercifully and conveniently flatted on the very closest point on the trail to my house, literally 5 minutes of walking through the woods and I was home.

globecanvas

At one point I did a crazy front wheel landing save after having to jump an unexpected rock going too fast on an off camber turn. I made a sound that I've never heard a human make before, sort of a squeal of terror morphing into a triumphant whoop.