Massive back pain last week, I couldn't sleep for 2 nights, eventually I twisted my leg for about 10 minutes and suddenly the femur popped back into the socket. After 5 years of trying to fix it naturally I think I'm going to talk to the doctors and look into surgery. 95% sure my labrum is torn, causing my femur to move around.

I also need to stop screwing around and really training. My weight just keeps going up.

Yeah, just playing around. There is sooo much different. Probably not in the ballpark. Just a way to track progress with a kinda known distance.

Ugh. Got a bad cold for 3-4 days, finally recovered, got a few good days of training in then picked up a bad sinus infection that kicked my butt. Finally back on the bike but just taking it easy. It's funny how even mild illness can make you realize how good you have it when you're healthy, despite not being at your goal weight, ftp, etc etc.

I have a dumb trainer, so I'm curious what the erg mode does. Does it change the resistance so you're always doing the target wattage?

Yes. You need the same power no matter what, so the gear doesn't really matter. No matter the gear/rpm, power target is the same.

Stop pedaling for a second and it can be rough to get going again!

IMO, asking if a time is good or not may not yield the right answer. Since my wife races the 4K at the track a lot (she uses it for time trial training), I asked her and she said it was slow for a young male. But she does a 5:45 after three other track races in the same day. So let’s throw out her data point. Also, she is used to watching men at races knock out 4:20. :D

I race the 500 meter and 2k pursuit and not the 4K and I have a different perspective. You were not on the track fixed gear and you did not have to start and finish in the same gear but to be fair there is no perfectly flat road course with only left hand turns. On a 250 meter track professional track, the bike is turning 40% of the time versus on the road one is riding generally in a straight line. On the track there is opportunity to scrub speed and add distance in every turn hence 40% of the time.

So riding the pursuit on a track on a pursuit bike has a high execution factor to increase speed and it is very easy to squander power and takes years to achieve the perfect race.

Having said that, your effort was great. It did not burn the house down but you did it and I would encourage you to go to the track and try different events. If you like the idea of going after perfect execution and since you like time trials and timed events, the track is a great venue and a lot of fun. Riding timed events alone on the track is about as safe a cycling gets. A large part of sport is wanting and trying to do it. Ultimately, your optimized pursuit time will be how you visualize yourself, your training and execution and of course genetics. Good luck.

Yeah, it's not that quick. It was a workout, so I had to mind doing it 4x in an hour at lunch back to back.

I did a stand start and stayed in the same gear. 54/15 uphill into wind and 54/14 downhill with wind. The guess into the wind uphill was WRONG. At the end there's a little false flat at like 2.5% grade into the wind for about 30 seconds of the run. Yeah, I was at like 75 rpm for that. Which for me is really slow.

Pursuit for the next few days will be off the table as fun diversion. I'm making a last go at 10mi for 2020. I broke an hour for the 25mi. So that's off the table. Weather Monday/Tuesday looks good.

Choosing my route now. The 25mi route was great as the 3 laps were fair so that you didn't start or end on a downhill or downwind tossing the effort. Each lap was like 8.xx mi. So 3x was right on 25mi. But, 8.xx is short of 10mi. So, into Google maps I go. The 25mi I did 252w, was scared of the pacing. In recent workouts it appears I should be able to hold 300 for a 10mi try.

Fitness is there from all my sweetspot TT bike work. Just gotta embrace the pain knowing the ramp on HR will work out just right for that 22-23min range of time. Did 12min in 290's yesterday for a KOM just to see.

What's a 1/2?

A few days of easy riding and today I felt good enough to do a 20' effort during my endurance ride just to feel it out. I definitely didn't go 100%, but I still set a 20' power record by ~15w, mostly because I haven't done a 20' all out effort in 6 months lol. My profile on WKO5 also changed from "sprinter" to "all rounder" after that effort so I guess that's a good thing?

Went for a run, felt good, so kept going to go 1/2 marathon. I'd never broken 2 hrs before.

did a zwift race today, kind of weird to feel like an hour averaging 90% is a pedestrian effort lol

I'm trying not to go down a rabbit hole of adjusting my rear derailleur (set up fine with my wheel) but I get a weird grinding when in the highest 3 cogs (smallest/fastest/whatever), so when I'm riding I'm kind of limited to 5 gears. I mean, realistically I probably won't ride outside until spring, but at the same time once I get back to trainerroad I basically keep the bike in one gear combo and rely on ERG. Such problems lol

It depends. In 2014, I raced track nationals in Seattle. I got a bronze in the 500 and 2k pursuit. The other podium spots were taken by specialists. There was not a separate podium top step for someone who was good at both.:D

Did another ride today with the 9y/o. Fastest hour average ever, 13.2mph! Faster than a lot of grown ups!

You could just give the indexing a few turns at the RD and document how much it was for when you go back to the wheel. Or you could just do it and change cables in the spring making it all moot. It's probably not going to be more than 1/2-1 turn.

i tried the indexing thing but I think it’s the high limit because I’m a Luddite with a Claris drivetrain so I have a spacer on the trainer 11spd free hub and the wheel is 8/9/10 hub. I’ll probably mess with it this weekend and see how it goes

Tired of painting. Break to ride TT bike. Fixed rear brake that would rub sometimes. New cable.

Threw some grip tape on the bull horns. Love it.

Saddle up a hair, 1/2” stack riser removed. Hour of tempo and sweetspot, same power. No loss there. Route was hilly so slower, will see about aero of the change later on flatter land.

Freaking road helmet is a cheese grater in TT position. Yuck.

Felt good today so went out a bit hard on some hills that I thought I could pr on.

Turns out I forgot to start the wahoo for 14 of my 32 miles. I got 2nd best times on the same climbs on the second loop around. I'm 99%sure I was a bunch faster the first time through. Mostly bummed because I missed the data.

Knee feels decent though so ill take it. Might start riding alternate days for now with yoga on the other days to get some recovery.

Also swapped from a 130 to a 120 stem and feel so much better. It's one of the ritchey 260 stems so it was a biyatch to install. Never had to look at installation instructions for a stem before.

Pretty happy with position for now. May need to move left cleat back because my Achilles feels like it's working a bit too hard.

I definitely couldn't make zwift racing a routine part of my training, I've done 2 weeks of it and don't find it super motivating to go out and constantly smash it, I like my intervals and rest between them lol.

But I did a 3hr z2 session on the trainer on saturday, and wanted to do another 3hrs yesterday but got texted by my wife 1:40 into the ride that we had to get ready to go to a time slot she had booked for us to go to. Boo. Stuff like that is a big reason why, as much as I'd like to try doing like 4-5hrs on the trainer, I just don't have time to routinely do it, 2hrs with sweet spot is like the ideal balance for me.

We went hiking on Saturday just up the street from us, we're trying to make hiking more of a thing, and seeing a bunch of people on MTBs having fun made me want to get into that. Not sure how much I'd use it, although I'd have no excuse being quite literally a 5min ride away. MTB is a rabbit hole I'm not prepared to go down, mainly from a cost perspective, unlike road there seems to be way too much compromise in quality/function on the lower end.

Saturday, 2 hour TTT ride from Camp Pendleton South Gate to San Clemente with wife.

10 PRs on the ride and 24 accomplishments according to Strava on a route we ride a lot. We had a 5 minute segment at 26.7 mph with favorable conditions. That is still fast for that segment. I had to check to make sure that I did not accidentally get on Anna Van der Breggan’s wheel.

Yesterday, we Saturday’s route in reverse and had to score a bunch of PWs. Personal Worsts. Thankfully, Strava does not score them.:D Strava could offer a new I sucked today score.:eek:

We call that a “recovery” ride.

Tried a new parking spot and lunch route. Not bad. Need to lower the tire psi a hair I think. Got a KOM. Pretty quiet route, wide enough road.

Still not loving my road helmet for TT practice. Looking now for a discount Evade or something.

MTB rules. I would agree with your assessment about cost though. Make sure you get tubeless, hydraulic disc and 1x shifting. Your looking at like 1k (new) to get into the bottom of that market.

I'm on my pre-base blast week. CTL at like 65, usually tops at at 100 in Jan/Feb. I like to hit the legs with 17+ hours 'out of the woodwork' in late October before being lazy another week, then starting training for real in November with a more sustainble ~12-14 hr/week (avg) 3 week block. No way I could sustain 17 rn. But I should be able to for a week.

My wrist is still kinda screwed up so it will be largely indoor (boo). But I should have some outside time tomorrow at the track, Friday on the TT bike and I'm thinking I'll be good for 3 hrs outdoor on the road bike on Sunday to cap it off. I'm being patient with it.

Here's what I'm thinking:

M (this morning) 2 hrs of Zwift with two ~24 min climbs at SST (epic KOM)
T: 1 hr total with Zwift warmup then some 3k pursuit efforts on the motor
W: 5 hrs indoor Zwift (yikes)
Th: off
F: 2 hours, Zwift warmup early (untill it's light out) then I'll head down to Fiesta for 1x20' at SST, more time in position on the way out and back at z1/2
S: 4 hrs Zwift (still yikes)
Su: 3 hrs outdoor

100k Zwift ride, 400 at the start. The problem is you're in a group so your think that all is okay. Well, apparently the main group hammered at the start and left about 200 of us. I pretty much TT'ed for an hour, until I gave up.

Zwift then crashed at the end. Apparently its broken if you have it set in Spanish.

Looked at the recorded 1:15 end for the ride yesterday and the average wattage etc was higher than for the 1:30 shorter ride on the same loop. Now I really wish I had that data lol. Guess I need to go out and hammer that ride when I'm back in philly in 2 weeks.

Another zwift race for me today, 48mins with IF of 0.93, a little lower than some other recent efforts. It was a combined category start and it started off really fast (or I didn't put enough power in), had to put in a good 30 sec effort to close a pretty big gap to the main group once, was dangling at the rear for a bit and didn't catch the main group separating from some others in front of me so I ended up in a grupetto the rest of the way, picked off a few along the way but another larger group caught up and had a pretty big group toward the finish. I finished like 35/66 starters.

It will be 3 weeks this Friday since I fell off my mtb. I've been trying to ride a little, went out Saturday and did a few thousand feet of climbing with some people which made the hip pain worse that night. Plus, I got dropped on one hill by a guy on an Eliptigo. Then a bumpy descent made the ribs hurt, especially when I slammed into a pothole.

Today I did 2 hours of mostly easy spinning and so far it doesn't hurt any worse than before I started. Never had the sense to stay off the bike when I should. I'm a fredly club rider but I've been trying to regain fitness since I retired last year and I felt like I had come back a bit and my friend who has been helping me says it's obvious to him that I have. Frustrating to have to give it back. Maybe I should take up hiking. I used to be pretty good at that.

60min of endurance for me today, my son was on zwift next to me. He averaged "100w" for 60mins on a zwift race (he's not into racing but it's just something to engage his mind a bit). I think the z-power is in the neighborhood of real life because I average 90ish when we're out in the neighborhood together. Anyhow, I inadvertently made him a sandbagger in the D class because his w/kg is 3.2, which would make him a high C/low B lol

5 x (3' + 3') VO2max intervals before work this morning. I remembered that there was a park where my kid used to have soccer practice. A little less than half a mile around, no traffic other than a few dog walkers, and no stop signs if I go clockwise. I think I found my own personal road velodrome.

Couldn't snuff the 5 hrs of zwifting this morning. It was a combo of some solo riding while doing work email, a B-pace 3R group ride and some more climbing to get me closer to the Tron bike. Did Epic KOM twice.

Cut it 10 min early, mostly because I had time constraints. Took the day off and had appointments for a haircut and at the Verizon store.

Moar zwift today, averaged 3.9w/kg (4w/kg normalized) for 52mins. It was a combined A-D field and it turns out I was in the bunch contending for 4th place in the B's at the final sprint, but I did little more than up my power to only about 500w and ended up 16th. Oh well lol The other thing is that I always end up wishing I had 11 speeds rather than my 8, because there are a lot of times when I'm on the 17t and feeling a little under powered (and maintaining high cadence) but going 15t would be a little too much power or too low cadence for my preference.