Be the doughnut! (or, how I learned to stop worrying and enjoy mediocrity)

The Sprinkle kit hit a homerun. Can I have one? Even though I'm not on the team, like @The Heckler mentioned last year - a club kit. It kinda goes along with some of the comments flying around last year about MTBNJ having a cross specific kit. Good stuff!

I just caught up with this blog and I am very interested in seeing how this training plan pans out with your overall satisfaction with racing this season.

I can relate with the comments you made about going out and riding and naturally pushing hard regardless of a training agenda. I just like to go fast or try to go as fast as I can because I think going fast is more fun than going slow. BUT taking time to slow down and smell the flowers, take in a sunrise, save a turtle, is equally just as important. I don't believe I could get to my peak just riding hard. i need the plan to tell me to do more than I am comfortable with. If I went out and just rode hard, I could probably get to 90% and do pretty well at races and my happiness level would be more balanced. To follow a plan and push past the breaking point will get me to 110% and I will do better at a race but I will have more moments of "i hate this shit". I guess we all decide how much happy to sacrifice for better results.

Timing of this conversation is key, if you were to ask me my thoughts on training in April, I'd be all hopped up on Aggro speak about intervals and sharpening. Now that I am approaching the end of MTB season, I am more inclined to talk about other things like having fun in rock gardens and fall weather riding mostly because I am tired of spending time riding alone and doing suffer repeats.

Stans and corrosion on aluminum - stans messed up my road wheels when I had them setup tubeless. Weird chemical reaction. does orange seal have the same reaction?
 
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I think you missed your opportunity to see the Jersey Shore. Well, the boardwalk. With all the arcades and games turned into stores, it's kinda just like a loud outdoor mall now. There used to be a hundred of these semi home-made games where you could win a stuffed animal. Interesting electromechanical stuff. Most of it is gone now though. I think the rides were home made too. The pinball museum in Asbury has a nice collection of 100 year old arcade games. Really really interesting how they got these games to work before the transistor was invented (by a gunks climber) ;)
 
Funny, I have stans wheel that have had fluid in them for 5 years, totally fine, spokes still turn perfectly. Never had an issue with stans corroding anything. Im guessing this must be related to non anodized aluminum.
 
UtahJoe said:
Funny, I have stans wheel that have had fluid in them for 5 years, totally fine, spokes still turn perfectly. Never had an issue with stans corroding anything. Im guessing this must be related to non anodized aluminum.
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My issue was a bad tape job and the sealant went under the spoke holes and coated the tops of the nipples. Rim is still fine (anodized) but the nipples which apparently may be not anodized were completely corroded.
 
Way back at such time after the invention of math and before the cronut, a time when men wore pantaloons and cravats and top-hats, some dude named Pareto observed the general principle that for many situations 80% of the effects come from 20% of the inputs. Since then, modern humans wearing more practical attire have proven this principle to be true for lots of things from business to ecology to bike racing.

If there is one hard fact of bike racing it is the more training you put in, the faster you get. The logical extension of this is just to train a metric-shit-ton, which makes you faster, which makes you want to get even faster, which puts you on the path to becoming an insufferable social misanthrope.

But that’s not what mediocre people do. The way to be really mediocre is to forget about the big volume and focus on that fraction of things that give the greatest effect. While it's generally true that the more you train the faster you get, the incremental effect of training diminishes with each additional hour you ride.

5 Hours A Week

Another appropriate name for this blog could have been “How to be a somewhat competitive cyclist on 5 hours a week.” The truth is I hope to be slightly better than mediocre but I’m not going to ride more than 5 hours a week so there is really only so much I can do.

A typical week for me goes something like this:
  • Commute by bike 2-3 days a week (35-40 minutes each way).
  • Ride slowly on the way in.
  • Do some sort of intensity on the way home.
  • Ride once or twice on the weekend for an hour or so.
Of those 5 hours, maybe 1 hour is actual high intensity riding. The 80/20 principle at work. That 1 hour of actual high intensity could be a couple 3 minute hill climb intervals, a 12 min tempo set, or “For Sale” sign sprints (10 second sprint evey time you see a “for sale” sign). I think I've done one actual structured interval workout since March. Fitness seems ok for now…looking forward to seeing how the season shakes out.

Mediocre Training Tip: Multitask. Pannier-Intervals (PannierVals) are a highly effective way to do mediocre training.
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@Mountain Bike Mike: Satisfaction. I’ll let you know how that goes this season once I get to see where my actual fitness stands but for now my mind is in a good place.

Jersey Shore – Sometimes I wonder if I’ll make it my whole life without ever visiting the shore. Probably not but I’ve made it this far. I remember listening to a This American Life episode about a guy who had a summer job at an amusement park in Wildwood in the 1980s. I’d love to go back and experience the 80’s, but as a 35 year old time traveler, not as an 8 year old.

Wed Worlds - I did another WW workout last night. Lando was there. He is a fast human. Also, there were some dudes flying racing drones around the park wearing VR masks. I thought for sure somebody was going to have their jugular cut by one of those little flying lawnmowers. That the nice thing about the park we use. With the exeption of one angry neighbor who seems to have given up, nobody GAF what we do there as long as we play by the rules of "not an organized event".

Office Breakroom Still Life: #bethedonette
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Kerig cups and a regular coffee maker...is that a twisted joke you are playing on the employees? :)
 
Delish said:
Mediocre Training Tip: Multitask. Pannier-Intervals (PannierVals) are a highly effective way to do mediocre training.
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What is that pannier you got on there? I've been looking around for something that's wide .. like at least 8".
 
soundz said:
What is that pannier you got on there? I've been looking around for something that's wide .. like at least 8".
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Thule Pack 'n Pedal Shield Pannier - Small

Its a nice size for commuting with lunch, shoes, clothes. Waterproof & has nice reflective ink. I considered the Ortleib hi viz ones (front/small). The small panniers which are usually designated as fronts work on the back just as well.

 
It's been an up and down sort of week.

The Dog
About four years ago our dog (10 years old at the time) was out walking and her back end just stopped working. She collapsed and couldn't stand up. Shortly thereafter, she started regurgitating clear mucus all over the house constantly (like 50 times a day) and couldn't keep any food down. We took her to Animal Emergency & Referral in Fairfield and the on-call Vet (happens to be the same one that @JimN's wife works for) made a very good diagnosis of megaesophagus caused by mysethena gravis. Basically her nerves could not longer tell her muscles what to do and her esophagus was paralyzed so she could not swallow. For a while we had to feed her in a special chair upright but eventually we found the right combo of (very expensive) drugs which gave her a few more years of quality life.

The chair:
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A few years later and several near misses, we finally had to say goodbye. I'm really sad but ultimately, if I was ever in her position and I had the option, I'd want somebody to pull the plug on me or do it myself. Anyway, I prefer to remember the better days. She was an amazing athlete and adventurer, a total asshole to other dogs but loved children, she had a preternatural ability to spot rising trout but could not resist the urge to jump in after them which made her the worst fishing buddy imaginable, and we will miss her.
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The Riding:
I finally got my Scalpel back together after sending the Lefty to Mendon. Feels like new again. For all the crap they get for being unreliable, I put 900 miles on that thing without ever really touching it.

Do you take the last one?

In my office (and probably yours too), a 10 lbs bag of candy will disappear in minutes but the last one will sit in the bowl. for. days. Nobody EVER takes the last one because it's rude.
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I realize people are trying to be polite and I can respect that. However, I think it is a far worse offense to take the second to last one than the last one and here's why: Nobody ever takes the last one so by taking the second to last one you are essentially taking the last one, and everybody knows its rude to take the last one.
Except me. I'm a last one taker. I'll never take the second to last one tho.

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Godspeed Parker...She really was a great dog. You two did an amazing job getting her back to good health again.

If it was my office I would just throw all of the candy away on sight...leave sign..."if you are going to bring in food that makes me fat...at least make it ice cream"
 
Candy at the office, I'll take the last one, as would anyone else I work with. It's usually not a problem though, because when there are only 5-6 left, I just take them all at once.

Sharing appetizers at dinner with friends, I won't take the last one. But when the waiter comes around to take the plates away, I'll dive in there and take the last of everything before they take it away if nobody else does.
 
JimN said:
Candy at the office, I'll take the last one, as would anyone else I work with. It's usually not a problem though, because when there are only 5-6 left, I just take them all at once.

Sharing appetizers at dinner with friends, I won't take the last one. But when the waiter comes around to take the plates away, I'll dive in there and take the last of everything before they take it away if nobody else does.
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100% on both...
 
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