Author: kennettron

What a great ride today. It started out with some frustration with my power tap CPU. I never know what buttons do what and sometimes I get it on a weird setting, like showing torque instead of power, or I zero it while I’m pedaling which seriously screws with what watts it thinks I’m doing. If you have a power tap you know what I’m talking about. Maybe. Anyways, I swore at it for a couple miles and finally got it set correctly.

The bike gods gave me some terrific weather, sunny and low 70’s all day. They also blessed me with no flats, no crazy drivers ( first time in weeks), and legs that couldn’t be stopped even if they were towing a fully loaded cement truck.

I rode out to Kitt Peak, climbed up to to the top, screamed down in minutes, and hammered back home, averaging 260 watts for 6 hours over 120 miles. I had plenty of energy at the end to hammer all the way through town, where I raced a school bus filled with middle schoolers. They were sticking their heads out the windows screaming at me to keep up, banging their hands on the side of the bus in excitement. The bus driver was probably freaking out like they always did when I used to ride the bus. I stayed with them or caught them at stop lights for a good few minutes, then sprinted by them right as they turned onto another road.

A ride like that calls for immediate consumption of a giant bowl of oats. Behold, Oatsatron 5000:

Huge quantity of oats, three spoons of brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon.

I  had an interesting experience just now. Someone knocked on our door, I got up to answer it. It was a guy coming to pick up a wildlife survey that he had dropped off for Aaron to fill out earlier today. I went over to the coffee table to get it and Chops, Tony’s dog, ran to the door and attacked the guy, barking and biting at him. The guy tried to defend himself as Chops tried to kill him. I ran out and tackled/tripped on top of Chops, who yelped and ran back inside, where I caught him, grabbed him by his throat with one hand and lifted him up about five feet off the ground, then slammed him on his back on the cement floor. I hope I broke something. I hate that damn dog.

Luckily I don’t think the guy got bitten too hard, but he took off pretty quickly after I apologized. Chops is going to cause a law suit one of these days.

That hurt. Power test today. I did a 20′ test up Mt. Lemmon. I ate too close to the start of the test (eggs with hot sauce, toast, oats, pear). I got to about 7 minutes and was feeling like gold. Legs were fresh, lungs were barely working. And then it hit me, my stomach started rising up and out of my throat. My intestines seemed to be using a plunger to force all those unwanted eggs back up my esophagus. I finished the test of course, but it was pretty crappy. About 30 less watts than what I was shooting for. I’ll do one in a few weeks again but next time I’ll start out slower and eat way before I ride.

Aaron and I in 2006 at the top of A Mountain.

A couple days ago in 2008. Only difference is my jersey.

Horse with an ice pack.

This is my first rest week since I got down here.  I’m aiming  for 15 or 16 hours, which is giving me a lot of time to apply at restaurants and coffee shops.  I’ve filled out applications at 12 places so far.  Come on, how hard is it to get a crappy job filling up someone’s coffee cup?  I blame the politicians for not fixing the economy.  If people and businesses are low on money, why don’t they just make more?  It’s so simple.  So simple.  Jut print more money.  That way everyone’s happy, especially the horse above because she’ll finally have enough cash to buy an ice machine and a bath tub without mold and scum all over it to take a nice ice bath instead of using that old ice pack.

I went to the gym today after riding and was shocked to see how little I weighed.  Especially since it was evening after eating a large dinner.  I usually weigh myself in the morning.  As I was taking a rest in between squat sets, I noticed that the majority of the other weight lifters were wearing tank tops.  They were all admiring their upper body muscle in the mirrors.  I was wearing a tank top too, but unlike them I was admiring how thin my arms were.  Although I’ve lost upper body mass, I haven’t felt a loss in power at all.  In fact, I’ve been feeling harder, better, faster, stronger.

Ahh, Mike brings up a good point.  After I become harder, better, faster, stronger, and more aerodynamic, hopefully a more technologic bike will show that I am not human after all, but a true robot, rocking.  Then I will be able to race around the world at least one more time.

Let’s say you come home after another long, hard five hours on the road. Your legs are sore, tired, and beginning to fill with blood at a breathtaking rate–prolonging the time it takes to recover. What do you do? Every cyclist knows the answer to this question. It’s easy. First, of course, you take a recovery drink. Hop in a hot shower for a bit. Stretch. And then cover your legs with diapers. It sooo simpo!!!

They work. I finally found a way to cool down my legs without spending a fortune on ice baths or ice packs. Although now the freezer is completely full of frozen diapers. I’d like to have one more on top of each shin, another for the quad, and one for each butt cheek, but like I said the freezer is packed.  So I just shift them around.

Yes my tan lines keep getting worse, despite sunscreen.

Directions to make your own diaper bags:

Buy some diapers. I bought the jumbo size for 22-37 pound babies. (Unused.  Don’t make the same mistake as me.)
Open it up and saturate the chamois part with agua.
Fold it back up and stick it in a zip lock bag. I use two diapers per bag.

The weather was great today.  65 degrees with clouds and a bit of sun. I got dumped on during the last 15 minutes of the ride, and the cool rain felt great. I pushed it somewhat hard for the last three hours, which put my average watts at 268 for five hours. I’m down to 170 lbs, and I don’t think I’ve lost any power, especially after feeling so at ease today.  When I got home, Aaron and Tony had already started the turkey. We made mashed potatoes, gravy, and stuffing too. Plus pie.  The stuffing was the best I’ve ever had. There were two sticks of butter in it. Amazing.

Chops vs. the uhhh….turkey neck.

Today I had one of those rides where everything goes perfectly.  First of all, today has been the coldest it’s been since I first got here.  It was a cool 70 degrees with overcast skies, which meant today has been the first day I haven’t overheated.  Even though I’ve been down here for three weeks now, I’m still not used to 85 and 90 degree temps yet, considering I came from 50 to 60 degree days up in Eugene.  So the weather today felt great.

I rode out to the base of Mt. Lemmon, filled my bottles at the McDonald’s, and rode up into the clouds to Windy Ridge, 14 miles up.  My legs felt great, easily pushing 260 to 320 watts without any fatigue.  I ate my first bite of food at two hours, and shortly after turned around back down the mountain.  The descent went by quickly and I rode back to the outskirts of town to the McDonald’s for another water refill.  From there, I headed back to the mountain, and rode up at a quick pace, getting to the 18 mile post with ease.  I figured 32 miles of climbing and about 10,000 feet of elevation was good for the day, and sped back down the mountain and got home with only having to yell at and flip off one driver the entire day.

I came home to find all my homemade ice packs lying in the sink with their insides leaking out, some already just empty, wet zip lock bags.  A note on top of the pile of bags in the sink read, “salt ice packs=huge fucking mess in the freezer” with a frowny face.   After making a small test bag filled with salt water a few days ago, I went to the store, bought a thing of salt and a box of zip lock bags.  I should have bought the real zip locks instead of the cheap store brand, but I saved a buck doing so.  My second error was not paying attention to the failed test bag I had made.  It worked well for a day, but then started leaking and I had to throw it away.  For some reason, I figured bigger bags would mean less leaking.  Wrong.

The bags leaked and filled the freezer with 2 inches of salt water, which one of my roommates (TJ) kindly cleaned up for me.  But the mess doesn’t end there.  While I was making the bags yesterday, I laid them out on the counter.  They were already leaking at this point, so I quickly put them in the freezer to start freezing and therefor stop leaking.  Those few minutes of counter leakage were enough to cover the counter tops with huge, white salt crystals.  I keep wiping them off with water, but the salt won’t go away.  And it’s not just the one counter I set the bags on, it’s ALL of the counters.  I think the salt crystal disease outbreak spread to the other counters due to “Used Sponge Transfer,” or UST.  UST not only causes the spreading of salt crystal disease, but can also be attributed to many other Counter Top Dysfunctions (CTD’s) .  Such as: hot sauce saturation, which gives everything a hint of hot sauce because the sponge used to clean the dishes was saturated with hot sauce that spilled everywhere on the counter.  (Maybe not a bad thing, actually).  Another CTD caused by UST is dog hair infestation.  The sponge drops onto the floor, gets a healthy dose of dog hair, among other things, and the dishes and counter tops start resembling shag carpeting.  The list goes on and on.  Well, no.  That’s about it.  Other than bacteria being spread everywhere.

My next ice pack creation will be much cleaner and easier to manage.  And what keeps things cleaner than a baby diaper?  Fill a baby diaper with water, fold it up, and put it in a zip lock bag.  I found out about this idea on Instructables, which is a cool website that has tons of ideas on how to make things you don’t need.

I missed out on the group ride this morning because my bike was still in the shop.  So I ran to the YMCA instead and lifted.  I looked at some pictures of the UO team’s ride today on Facebook and was chilled to the bone at the sight of all the fog and warm clothes people were wearing up there in Eugene.  Every time I step outside in a pair of shorts, T-shirt, sunglasses, and sandals, I can barely believe it’s November.  And because of this, even doing seemingly boring things like walking to a store or the Y are filled with joy.  In case any of you forgot, the sun feels really really good.  

After I got back from the gym, Aaron and Tony and I went to Costco, where I salivated over the samples in my quasi-sane state of mind.  Stupidly, I hadn’t eaten (very much) before we went shopping, but I resisted buying any junk food.  Although I did eat a piece of pizza.

My bike was finished up by the time we got home, so I went and picked it up at Fair Wheel Bikes and had enough time to get in a little over three hours before it got dark.  I felt great today.  I had an unbelievable amount of energy.  350 watts felt like 200, and I had to force myself to calm down.  It was hot out, but later in the evening it started cooling down and if it hadn’t started getting dark, I felt like I could have done another seven hours without tiring.  Near the end of the ride, I caught up with the tail end of the Tour de Tucson, which is a giant bike tour that attracts thousands of cyclists from all around the country.  I began passing these stragglers like they were standing still and I was in a rocket ship powered by 10,000 Clydesdales.  The other riders, the police controlling traffic at intersections, and the volunteers along side the road handing out food, must have all thought I was part of the tour.  Because they began cheering for me and calling out times as I went through each intersection.  I passed a large food stand and began slowing down, contemplating how I would explain that I had lost my bib number because I forgot to close the safety pins.  And then greedily stuff my pockets with power bars before they had time to think about what I had just said.  I thought better of it, and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble.  But tomorrow I’m definitely going back and picking up as many discarded water bottles as I can carry.

It’s about time. The only way people are going to stop driving cars is when it gets too expensive. And luckily, we’re approaching that stage. 3 million auto jobs lost in the first year? Good. Thats 3 million more people to build and sell bikes. I hope the chinese auto makers go under too.

In other news, I have an off day tomorrow. Which is good because my bike is very messed up right now. It’s currently in the shop being worked on, maybe. The mechanic said they would try to get to it tomorrow, but they’re extremely busy because of the Tour de Tucson on Saturday. My crank keeps getting loose and I have to get off and tighten it every 10 minutes.

One last thing. Last year I always took an ice bath after every workout for 10 minutes. But I didn’t use ice, the water in the faucet was way below 60 degrees, which is what you need for an ice bath. But the water that comes out of the faucet here is too warm. The coldest it gets is probably 75 degrees. There is no room in the freezer for ice bags, plus buying ice every day is too expensive and impractical. I’ve been contemplating buying a bunch of re-freezable ice packets to strap to my legs, or I could soak some small towels in water and then freeze them, then wrap those around my legs. If you have any suggestions, let’s here hear them.

Damn you Gilad. Today sucked. It was hot, I got super dehydrated even though I drank 10 bottles, and I could barely push 220 watts at the end.

Usually before a ride over 100 miles, I like to eat a big breakfast. Not today. I woke up, fried 1 (one) egg for breakfast, and started riding. I went for 2 hours before I was allowed to eat anything on the bike. I ate a banana. About half an hour later, after eating some more food and drinking some Gatorade, my watts started dropping drastically. I had averaged 245 for two and a half hours, but now I was having trouble keeping those watts up. Pretty soon my average had dropped to 235. The sun was baking me, and I realized that I should have picked a route with more shade…..wait. It’s a desert.

I got to the three hour mark and turned around, deciding to just go back the way I came instead of making a loop. About 3 minutes later, my crank fell off. The ironic thing (this is for you Erich and Tony) is that it was the same road that this exact thing happened to Erich last year in Arizona. Except I was way farther away from town. But that didn’t matter anyways, because I wanted to just fix it there and keep riding instead of hitching a ride.

After flagging down about 10 cars in a row that didn’t have any allen wrenches, I stuck the crank in my back pocket and rode six miles with one leg to the nearest gas station–the whole way imagining that I was riding the last few miles of the Paris-Roubaix and my crank had fallen off during my solo break away, and Fabian Cancellara was closing the gap.

After finding the right size allen wrench (my multi tool conveniently did not have the right size, by the way), I was back on my route.

I kept on grinding away, despite my legs cramping horribly. Actually, I’m just going to say it. My legs were “tired.” Cramping is just a way to say your legs are tired without actually admitting it.

At 4.5 hours in, I upped the watts to 300-320 and turned on my Bile Intervals playlist. But even Rob Zombie couldn’t usher those kind of watts from my torn up legs. I would grit my teeth and do 350 for a few minutes, then the watts would slowly creep down to 250. I would look down at my CPU and see the fleeing watts on the display, and grit my teeth again for as long as I could bare. I did this for half an hour. I was supposed to do it for a full hour. But my headache and legs were throbbing, so I soft pedaled for 20 minutes with my salt-stained head hung in defeat.

But, out of the rising mist of the desert air, up ahead of me a bright white light glowed around my saviour like the gates to heaven. It was like finding a drinking fountain in the middle of a Saharan sand dune, a buffet line in a jewish concentration camp, an answer sheet for a final you didn’t study for, a wad of one’s out in front of a strip club, a cruise ship full of bikini models ship-wrecking on your desert island after you’ve been stranded for 11 years, or a really really really good burrito…..there it was: A convenient store with a Slurpy machine. I indulged in blue frost blueberry, and had just enough energy to bust out another hard 20 minutes before getting to town and soft pedaling for the last 15 minutes home. And yes, I did get passed by a number of commuters in those last 15 minutes and I don’t care.

I hope life as a pro rider isn’t as boring as what I’m going through right now. All I do is ride, lift weights, go shopping for food, and lay around watching movies and taking naps. I feel somewhat like the family dog, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my roommates as the come home in the evening. My job search is going so-so. I stop by either the pizza place or grocery store about every day (both of the places that I’m trying to get hired at). At least working will give me something to do for part of the day.

I think the main reason I’m bored is that I haven’t been riding with anyone and I don’t know anybody here other than my roommates, and I don’t know them that well either. So I’m hoping that in the next few weeks, as I meet more people, I’ll be less bored and lonely.

I took it easy in the gym and on my ride today. I was still feeling a bit tired from last week, and it was over 90 degrees out on the pavement this afternoon. Tomorrow is a long day. In fact it’s a pretty loaded week, which I’m looking forward to. As an added bonus–to make things more difficult, which I always like, I won’t be eating for the first two hours of my rides from now on. The objective: to lose weight. Plus for tomorrow’s breakfast, all I get to eat before the six hours on the saddle is one egg. Ha! I’ll let you know how it goes. Should be fun!

When I walked into the weight room this morning, I was disappointed to see that there was someone else using the only squat bar. So I started out with some other lifts, which I don’t like to do first because then my legs are already a bit tired for the squats. After a set on the leg press, I looked over to see the elderly women using the squat bar replace the 35’s with 45’s. And she wasn’t done yet. She did another set of those, then put five pounds on each side. This must have been her fifth set of 10 too. I was impressed. A sixty something year-old, thin women squatting 145 pounds, which is more than most guys do (Tony and Will).

Today’s wind attempted to blast me backwards the entire day with gusts up to 40 miles an hour. It was slow progress making my way over to the base of Mt. Lemmon. I thought that the wind would subside once I gained some elevation, but it did not. And then I realized that that logic made no sense. I pretty much got blasted all the way up to where I turned around at ten miles, flew down the mountain with the wind at my back, and then rode back up another five miles before heading home, now with the wind, at 40 miles an hour on the flat.

Cool animals I have seen on the side of the road this past week:

Dead coyote
Dead skunk
Dead bloated cow with stiff legs and intestines bursting out of its anus
Dead deer
Dead squirrel type things. Must be ground squirrels
Dead rattle snakes
Dead cats
Dead dogs
Dead rabbit
Dead big green grass-hoper type insects
Dead birds
Dead human beings (on the news)
Dead raccoon
Tarantula

The tarantula was pretty cool, but kept heading back towards the center of the road despite me nudging it with my cell phone back to the side of the street. So it probably ended up dead too. I hate cars.

Oh and I did see a pack of wild pig type things called javlinas. I came upon a group of twenty crossing the road in front of me. I tried to get some pictures of them on my phone, but they were skittish and ran away from me. I oinked and snorted for them to return, but I realized too late that I was using an incorrect dialect.