Thursday, I dropped my bike off at ATC on Thursday. I was having problems shifting from my ride on Tuesday. Brad looked at it couldn't figure it out immediately. I dropped it off and then headed to practice with Texas Iron. Let's just say that I hate traffic in Austin. It took me over an hour to go about 15 miles to practice. Not fun. The freeways were Ok, but the surface roads up north were absolutely horrible. Damnit. I was late, but not too late. We did a hill repeat workout. After the warmup, we ran warm up a hill, then a long descend down the other side. I was doing these in about 5:30 each. My body isn't used to running uphill or downhill, but I think I was doing the uphills better than the downhill. I felt like I was running like Phebe from friends when going downhill. I kept my heart rate at around 170bpm. I've could've gone harder, but like I said, I was keeping my heart rate in this range for almost 6 minutes and I'm not used to that yet. Did a 400yd active recovery after each one and then went right into the next one. Tough but good.
Friday was intended to be a swim. I woke up, it was cold, and I didn't make it. I keep being lazy about swimming but that's about to change. I've gotten in contact with T3 so I should be swimming with them next week.
Saturday was another ATC ride. It was either because I was on my Dual which is faster right now or because the group started out slower. I was able to hang onto the main group for awhile with a heart rate of around 170-175. I held it there for a few minutes. Once my heart rate hit 179-180, I blew up and dropped off the pack. I'm happy because I was able to hold on longer. I kept riding at a pretty good pace but not too hard the rest of the ride. However, the wind was absolutely crazy. It felt like it was always either a headwind or a crosswind. My bike was getting blown all over the place and I had to be very careful in my aerobars. Being in my aerobars was squirrely in the first place because I haven't been in them for 4 months. I also had an incident that could've been a lot worse. I was going down a hill on Hwy 71 at 30+mph. I've been buzzed on this hill many times before and I've learned that when I'm going down this hill to go ahead and get in the middle of the lane. Well, I was in the middle of the lane and some asshole tries to pass me on the left. Not like in the lane to the left of me, but in my lane but on my left. Missed me by about 18 inches. Scary as shit since the wind was blowing me all over the place. After he passed me, I moved further to the left so no one behind me would think about doing it again. Man, it just shows how some people in cars have such little courtesy for people on bikes. If I'm going as fast as traffic or close to it, I should have my own lane. Enough of that. I kept riding and there was wind the entire way. I was doing OK until the last big hill. I was going up it and it felt like my quads blew up. They were just done at that point. I got back to shop fine though.
After the ride, did a 30 minute brick run. Because my quads blew up on the bike, this run really, really hurt. I don't think I was going that fast, but I kept going. I estimate that I did aboub 3.5 miles and my avg HR was 144 but that can't be right because it felt a lot tougher than that.
I spent the next couple of hours at the bike shop. Don helped me out refit me on my bike. Here is what I looked like before.
My back isn't flat and my shoulders aren't over my elbows very much. It felt OK, but not great. I ended up moving my saddle forward and flipping the stem over. Before, I had about 48cm from nose of saddle to end of stem. With this new position, I have about 50.5cm. Here is what it looks like.
I not subtle but not drastic change but still a change. Don recommended that I put on a shorter stem to get my torso over my elbows more and here is what that looked like.
However, I didn't feel as good in this position as I did when I just flipped my stem. In the original and this shorter stem position, I felt like my back was curved more. When I flipped the stem over, it felt like my back was in a more neutral position and was flatter. This just felt a lot better. Also, the angle from ankle, knee, hip was 148 degrees so it was close to the recommended 150 degree angle. My torso and hips were at 90 degrees as well as my arms and my torso. I just felt really comfortable in this position. My seat height seems to be a good height as well. I may go lower in the front in the future, but I'll start here for now. I still have about a 4" drop from my saddle to my aerobar pads and that's pretty significant. My saddle is almost all the way forward. The last time I had it in this position, I had an 80.5 degree geometry which is pretty damn steep. What do you think of my fit?
After that, I helped Don set up his computer so that his video camera can download pics onto his computer so that he can post them on his website. We helped each other out that day.
Today was a 60 minute base run. I ended up going on the Shoal Creek Trail today. I've been hearing about it for awhile now and decided that I would take it today for a change of scenery. It's was pretty cool. Some parts of the trail were pretty overgrown, but nice most of the way. However, this is something that I wouldn't want to run on at night. Lots of dark, foreboding places. I had a really good run today. I usually do my base runs too hard and today I took it nice and easy. It really felt like an easy base run. I worked on my form and tried to pick up my knees, keep my shoulders relaxed and down, and kept my weight forward. I think it worked most of the way. My body was feeling pretty good as well. The weather was fantastic in the upper 50's. Windy again, but that doesn't matter as much as when on the bike. I just can't see enough that today was a fantastic run.
I was going to swim in Deep Eddy afterwards, but anything downtown was packed due to the kite festival at Zilker park this weekend. The DE parking lot was full and I was done for the day.
Oh, some other good news. My weight was down to 188lbs on Friday. My next goal in sight is 185lbs. I'll be there by the end of March, damnit!
Shoe mileage: 224 miles
Weekly run mileage: 15 miles (I'm going to start keeping track of this)
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