Winter in the Land of my Bikes & Wife

Norm said:
James - Can you be disassembled and put in a box?
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he'd fit in a padded manila envelope 😀


i'm planning my first real ski trip to VT in late jan and the peaks there are 3000 also... i'm not sure why but i like the challenge and the abuse even though i doubt i'd make it 1/5 up that quarry trail you posted....



Re:driving to races
This is an interesting thought because last year I basically (ask Pearl n Chainsaw) refused to drive anywhere and wanted to only do 6mr - now this year I'm penciling in the entire h2h series on my calendar 🙄

I wonder which I'll like more? Won't know 'til I try it right?
 
martin said:
This is an interesting thought because last year I basically (ask Pearl n Chainsaw) refused to drive anywhere and wanted to only do 6mrQUOTE]

which IMO is crazy. i love 6mr but shit all you're doing is cheating yourself out of a lot of other great trails.
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you wouldn't be the first to call me crazy, but like norm said - any time you spend driving you're spending not riding - people have different schedules, some tighter than others ...

btw u riding 6mr thurs? ;-)
 
Do you miss me? I always wanted robotic legs. Without legs, I can fit into a standard UPS box. I'm sure some Taiwanese doctor can hook me up with the robotic legs. I even have a UPS account I could use at work. Just supply the address and I will work up a price.

Just debating between CF and Ti.

martin said:
but like norm said - any time you spend driving you're spending not riding - people have different schedules, some tighter than others ...
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You aren't married and don't have kids, why is your schedule so rough!? You aren't crazy, you are just scared of rocks 😉

If you do the Racing time to Driving time ratio, you will be upset. Cancel the H2H Series.

Riddle me this:
You'd rather ride six mile every day after work than 20+ miles at Allamuchy once a week? Child please.

I know my answer. It isn't the same as yours 😉
 
Child please. We're not riding there thursday or anytime soon. Word is its soft and that sucks. We'll need to travel (drive more than 6 minutes down the road to the 27lot) if we want to ride mtb's this weekend.
 
pearl said:
You'd rather
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i wouldn't rather 🙁 i'm forced to squeeze it in when i can is all.


@dustin - the winky face meant i was JK i've been following the trail reports on here and FB

but snow on fri/sat is predicted, only a dusting though, so might be nice? you gonna go west like jimmy did? we should prolly move this discussion off norm's blog
 
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kush said:
Boobs are rarely perfectly symmetrical. So this will do. I remembered I did that in puerto rico actually 🙂

Yes, I would eat all that stuff, except for the McDs :drooling:

Steve, I struggled with the concept as well. This program does include long endurance/tempo rides back to back on the weekends, approximately 7-8 hours over two days which is plenty to get the benefits of long steady distance. Then there are 2-3 breakthrough workouts during the week that do focus on specific areas of your game with intensity, but the bottom line is that this combination is designed to raise your FTP which is after all the end goal of training.

It's impossible to know whether I would be better off doing the classic periodization, versus this. I don't know if I will blow up and burn my power meter in effigy. I do like experimenting, trying new things, meeting new people and long walks on the beach.
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How about pina colada's and getting caught in the rain? (showing my age).

If you read through the morass and geek speak on Google wattage, you will note a common theme that intensity of periodization is inversely related to the amount of time available to train. So doing endurance rides is great for 20hr/wk people, but for folks like me with ~8/wk on average, a steady diet of sweet-spot could/should be a replacement, and that is exactly my experiment this year. You will also note a shift in terminology from "base" to "foundation" for the recreational athlete to get people away from thinking January should be these super low intensity rides because when you only have 2-3hr on a Saturday to do a ride, you should get some below-threshold efforts in. I completely understand why Norm doesn't want to do 2x20's, but that is what I'm living on right now until March when I up the intervals to LTR and hopefully pick up the watts from where I've stagnated the past few years using a "traditional" periodization plan through the winter months.
 
I'm not much into health food,
I am into champagne.

Also, you'll notice I didn't say "long slow distance", but rather long steady distance.

I feel like such a rebel 😀
 
It's a roubaix murder train made from broccoli that eats swedish fish and poops monster. It's all the rage despite it not being all the rage.

-Jim.
 
martin said:
i wouldn't rather 🙁 i'm forced to squeeze it in when i can is all.


@dustin - the winky face meant i was JK i've been following the trail reports on here and FB

but snow on fri/sat is predicted, only a dusting though, so might be nice? you gonna go west like jimmy did?
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Um, east-ish actually
 
i am the king of driving to trails

norms boobs look tighter together than kush's which seem to be spreading apart from age
 
Day 6 - 1/5/11

Blog link:
http://normbrero.blogspot.com/2011/01/day-6-sun-museum.html

Ride link:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/62015105

So Ilya will be over next time we come, which is cool. Assuming my bike doesn't disintegrate, figure we may come back in a few (2-3?) years again. Unfortunately with school starting for real next year, that relegates us to the summer, which brings new meaning to the word "hot".

There needs to be a balance with the riding/driving thing. If you only every ride your closest park and ride the same road loop, you're not really getting the most of things. I'm not going to give up racing. But I raced 30 times last year, most of which was in the second half of the season. Every race is an event, so it's always fun, especially when I would go with someone. But there were also races where I would spend 8 hours on a 2 hour race. That's pressing the limits of tme effectiveness.

Ted sort of gets at where I am. Without really even trying, I'm on pace to ride 14 hours a week. Once I start doing some of these monster rides, that's only going to go up. This is on a week when I'm working the whole week. So the last thing I need right now is forced intensity. The hills provide enough. On the "toughest climb" the other day my max HR was 183. Plenty of solid training benefit in there.

I posted some good pics on FB and the blog. So here's the "dark side", how dirty everything is:

5327008804_b6d889fb6a_z.jpg
 
"Turtle Island" looks a lot like the fish from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
 
Great stuff Norm. I would be interested in an experimental year where you only raced like 5 races (i was gonna say no races but ride to train / ride to race right?🙄) and see what it does to your motivation, mental state, body weight, where you ride, how you ride, etc....if it is all about the science, then I think you are due for this one of these years. Maybe if you get stuck in Cat 1 for a few years and don't see yourself moving to pro?

I am not sure why Martin doesn't have time to ride, but I don't think you are missing the full experience of riding if don't drive to different parks. Sure, it adds to the experience and variety of the spice of life, but it's all boils down to spinning 14" circles and rolling on 2 wheels.
 
Norm said:
However, and I think long time readers like ChrisG and Walter may have seen something like this coming, this trip will amost surely change my perspective on things. As I was climbing those hills yesterday I couldn't shake the notion that the absurd amount of racing I had done last year was just too much. If I had ridden my bike all that time instead of spending those hours driving, I probably would have logged 15-20,000 miles. We'll see.
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Sounds like your going native.:hmmm:

you know...just like in Apocalypse Now. We may have to send jimmy hat up the river on a recon mission for your retrival before things get out of hand.
 
Actually Norm, my thought as to why you don't want to do intervals had more to do with treating this as a sabbatical rather than boot camp. I was there alone, so in a sense, i wish I rode more in Rwanda, but I still enjoyed the amount of reading i did there as a mental refresh and when I did ride there, it was fantastic (ie just went for a ride). Of course I'm slow as shit now, but hey, you can't win them all. At least now I have more motivation to go out and train given I took the chance to recharge when I had it.
 
Day 7 - 1/6/11

Blog link:
http://normbrero.blogspot.com/2011/01/taiwan-day-7-ordinary-day.html

Yesterday's ride was just easy:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/62144495

My GPS starts to lose elevation data when it rains so only the first half is right, I would guess. After that it starts to flatline. Yesterday was my first actual ride in the rain. As expected, it's cold and wet-grimy.

Kev, at some point I'm sure I'll stop racing and just ride my bike. I don't know when that will happen but I'm not getting any younger. I have no notions that I'm going pro ever. I'm not counting calories on this trip and my pants have gotten looser so far. I'm starting to think I use the calorie counting to overeat at home sometimes. I may give it up when I get home unless the scale says otherwise. As you'd imagine, it's a chore I'd rather not do.

I can't imagine riding the same spots every day. If I could only ride 1 park and 1 road loop, I wouldn't ride half as much as I do, I'm sure. I need variety to keep me interested. I know a trip like this is more than most people could handle. But you gotta step outside the lines once in a while and do different things. well, at least I do. In a sense, the racing may actually be a box I've painted myself in. I'll have to think about that more.

Ted, I don't think I'm going to come home any less fit. I don't really have it in me to JRA, at least not without the help of beer-drinking relatives.

I gave in and started cleaning it:

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