2015 race schedule

It's January and earlier today I was out riding in pouring, near-freezing, foggy rain at 8pm on Cornell on a Tuesday evening.  That is just not my idea of fun.  I'm lazy damnit and I just don't think I want to continue forever with these bike racing training antics, but I signed up for another year, so I better say before it's too late that I won't be taking 2015 racing seriously at all. 

Listed below are the pros of bike racing:

• Normal people think I'm some sort of superhero, which is kinda cool because I like being respected.
• Back when I started 4 years ago it was my excuse for not drinking so heavily so frequently (actually I didn't drink anything for over a year)
• I get to challenge myself and fight to persevere
• Winning does feel good

But the cons of racing are many!!

• Costs lots and lots of money
• Takes up hours of time every day
• It sucks when you or your team don't win for a long period of time
• Training during the winter in the Pacific Northwest is mostly unfun
• I have competing desires such as
• Trying to keep up a good relationship with my girlfriend
• Trying to have any other friends at all
• Working on computer programming ideas I have
• My real-life job which I make vastly more money every week than I do during the entire bike racing season
• Side jobs that also make more money than bike racing
• Community service projects

The big thing is that I currently train 7 days a week and have very little time for anything else.  I'm not going to completely stop riding a bike, I'll likely still commute every once in a while and definitely get out on the weekends and even hit up some PIRs here and there and even some other races that I typically enjoy.  I just feel like the amount I gain from devoting a huge part of my life to racing isn't enough to justify that expenditure.

So, with that, I present to you my 2015 racing schedule:

February:

Worst Day of the Year Ride or maybe the FHR

March-May:

Nothing, except maybe a PIR on a sunny day if I feel like it.

June or July or whenever this thing is:

Krivoklatsko Peklo which is a bicycle race in my dad's hometime in the Czech Republic.  At some point in my life I need to do this race.

August:

Eugene Celebration because I just really like this race.

September:

Mt. Ashland Hill Climb because I like to visit my grandparents in Ashland.

Quiet Before the Storm

I've been kinda quiet on this blog lately. However, I've been focusing on my training. I've had a big January and February of training and will still be hitting it hard this March.

Weightlifting:

I've been in the weightroom every week at least twice a week. I made quite a bit of progress over last year's peak lifts. This year I peaked in the squat at 325 pounds and leg pressed 777.5. I even maxed out the leg curl machine!

325 pounds in the squat.

777.5 pounds leg pressed.

Maxed out the leg curl machine at 265 pounds.

So was I the strongest guy in the weightroom? Heck No! Maybe 2nd strongest...

I believe this is over 1,000 pounds.

Riding:

I've been riding a lot as well. Actually it depends on who you compare me to when I say I ride a lot. Compared to the normal person, yes I ride a ton. However, I regularly see my racing buddies post these 90, 100 mile rides on Strava. I've only done two 80+ mile rides this year. I have been doing intervals though. We'll see what happens in the race.

Another factor with biking a lot is keeping good care of the bike. I haven't done a direct financial comparison to last year's riding. I have had two rear derailuer hanger failures where one caused the rear derailuer to snap in half. And I recently broke a spoke which led Veloshop to conclude that the wheel's rim was shot anyways, but at least that's not my carbon fiber wheel breaking.

I have definitely been better about cleaning my bike this year. Getting the shaft from Portland Plaza and being forced to use the bike locker across the street may have been a good thing after all. The locker is in a covered parking garage, so it is dry and it is always lit up and snobby rich people probably wouldn't be yelling at me as much when I lube my chain without a cardboard mat or something. I've got a solid routine for taking all my biking clothes and some post-ride food which I then consume while cleaning my bike afterwards.

Eating:

And it's that time of year again where I'm focused on what I'm eating. You won't find me consuming beer, but you will find me eating tons of Dave's Killer Bread. I discovered that I can buy 4 (imperfect) loaves for about $10 over at the Dave's Killer Breadquarters out in Milwaukie which makes for a nice bike ride about once every two weeks.

However, I think last year I was doing a little better about eating enough greens and veggies. I feel like I ate more mega-salads back then. But on the plus side, this year I'm doing better about eating enough during and after my rides. I'm taking Emergen-C and Zinc a few times a week and so far it seems to be holding off any illnesses. People have also always been asking me "are you vegan, are you vegan? huh? huh?" Well, not quite. I have eliminated dairy from my diet and am trying hard to also kick my lunchmeat habit, but the salmon most definitely is going to stay in my sandwiches and elsewhere.

This is actually just one serving of spinach.

Sleeping:

I have really realized that this is actually a super-important aspect of training. Not getting enough sleep seriously affects me. However, it seems to affect me mentally the most. I can really notice it at work because I'll be agitated and working slower than normal and then with people I'll become antisocial or just not have anything useful to say. It's a little more subtle when racing because your blood is already gushing through your system keeping you awake, but not enough sleep can mess with my head so that I don't have a good game plan going in and then it may do other weird things such as complicating my assessment of available energy to expel for a certain duration. Anyways, 8 hours is the absolute minimum on weekdays and 9 is the minimum on weekends, but I frequently miss both. Room for improvement and reason to rush writing this blog post so I can get to bed.

Life:

Another thing I ought to write about is Life. And this is Life as defined by Daniel Harm in his equation about training progress as follows:

(Training + Recovery + Nutrition) / Life = Progress.

As a bike racer, I don't have a "life" as most normal people may think of. I don't go out to bars, I don't watch tv or many movies and if I'm hanging out with friends its to serve a purpose in addition to just hanging out. As opposed to last year where I was pretty much a complete loner since moving to Portland and then throughout the racing season, this year I've added some Life to the equation but in ways that'll not only benefit me, but my new friends as well.

Ugly Christmas Sweater Party

The most important of these Life items I've done is joining a home community through my church. Every Thursday we get together to discuss the Sunday sermon and eat dinner. It's so awesome to be sharing the journey of walking with Christ with other people and the fact that there is food there makes it logistically easier as well. There are some times when I want to hangout too late though, like at this Ugly Christmas Sweater party I stayed until after 11pm cutting into my sleep. Sometimes even just 20 minutes of hanging out with good friends in person is all that is needed to have more than 0 Life but not conflict with recovery.

First Race (for me) Next Sunday

And so racing is about to begin. I decided not to go do the FHR or Eatonville but instead do the first Banana Belt as my first race. And the way I'm feeling is a bit tired, slightly nervous and well I was feeling excited, but I need to get over a little sleep debt I have to get back to that point of being excited. Come this Sunday it's the first time I get to see how well I perform against others and doing good at that is worthy of a whole 'nother blog post in itself. Now off to bed to sleep.

Mid week update

Thought I'd give a mid week update here and a summary of some interesting rides I've done. Right now, I'm sick with I don't know what and it is sucking the life out of me. I didn't go into work and played Open TTD most of today. Something hit me yesterday and I haven't been able to fight it off yet. Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be all right.

With that I'll reminisce about some cool rides I've done lately. With many of my rides, they are often into areas and roads where I've never been before.

A Long Ride

Two Saturdays ago I had a long ride scheduled for me: 4.5 hours - the longest yet this season. Here is a link to the data from that ride so you can follow along. I decided to go exploring southwest of Beaverton and climb over Bald Mountain and then do an interval near Newberg/Yamhill. I started climbing up Holly Hill rd since on the map it looked more interesting and curvy than going straight up Bald Mountain road. The road was very low traffic which was nice, but then suddenly at maybe 2/3rds up the climb, I see a sign that says "Pavement Ends".

I think "aw crap, I'll just trudge through it, it's probably not that far to the top." It was gravel and slightly muddy gravel, but the bike was handling it very well considering I was riding my Kysrium Elites with Michelin 23c tires. It was maybe 3 miles of gravel, very steep at times until I finally got to Bald Mountain road which was paved.

After this, I bombed down to the Newberg area down some exciting twists and turns. At the bottom I chilled out a bit and started a 1 hr interval in z3 and was really flying towards the end where I had the wind on my back. At the end of this, I was going north on Dopp rd, but it too turned into gravel (at about mile 45). I had had enough gravel already this ride, so I turned around and headed back on a road I knew was paved.

After this I pretty much zoned out in a long journey back to civilization (aka the closest MAX station so I could take the train home). I ran out of food completely at 4hrs. I had 2 water bottles with HEED and 3 CLIF Bars. I stopped by a grocery store to pick up some Gatorade and then headed to the MAX station. Done and done.

Trail Ride in the Dark

Last week on Wednesday I decided to start my ride from the office. Here's the data. Today was an easy day for me, so I usually take this time to go explore some areas of Portland since I don't have to worry about keeping speed. Also, going on trails at night is also good since there isn't much traffic. This combination of riding slow and at night enables me to go on trails more often since I don't have to worry about nailing some kid at 20mph or being that creepy bicyclist who doesn't ring his bell or yell on your left when passing an attractive and vulnerable female just trying to go for a run while not being bothered by the world.

Anyways, I decided to go explore this trail or series of paths from Beaverton along this creek towards Tigard. I got lost or rather didn't know where the next turn was numerous times on this ride so I was checking my handy dandy phone to see where I was and where the trail began again - it wasn't obvious -- especially in the dark. The trail was actually quite long and fun when I got to it. It went through a bunch of wetlands. At one point the trail was flooded about a foot deep, but I decided to go through it since going around would've entailed crossing a delightful 5 lane arterial. I made my way all the way to Tigard and then to Lake Oswego where I picked up the Terwilliger Trail and then Blvd. All in all a pretty fun ride.

Mt Tabor

And finally, this past Sunday, I rode up Mount Tabor for the first time. Like a lot of things in Portland, it is just so cool how special places like this mountain are sort of randomly located in an otherwise flat city and so close together. Portland's terrain and how it was all built upon makes me all happy inside. I had to use someone else's picture for this since my camera had some problems.