Eric's Arcana and RiderX

During the winter, you have few choices:

• You can focus your training on keeping the couch from floating away, and watch much of your fitness vanish.
• You can ride in the cold, rain, wind, and snow
• You can do another sport
• Or you can ride inside

Riding inside is the choice of many, and it’s been a common choice for me, with my bike mounted on a Kurt Kinetic trainer. Some people say that riding on a trainer is tiring. Some people say it’s tedious. I think that is unfair. Riding on a trainer is not tiring, not tedious, but an experience that sucks the soul right out of you. Even with music, a book, or a DVD, 40 minutes is about all I can take. Even WiiSports did not lessen the suckitude. 

Plus, there’s the hassle of getting the bike on the trainer, tightening the tension adjustment, and putting up with the noise. The one thing that I hate is the NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!

Another indoor option is rollers. Rollers are pricier than trainers for a given quality level (or, perhaps, cheap rollers suck more than cheap trainers), have a reputation for being hard to ride and easy to ride off of, and being difficult to stand or sprint on successfully.

So, I thought about rollers, but for $350 plus $150 bucks for the resistance unit seems a lot considering the limitations. That’s for the Kreitler rollers, and yes, there are cheaper ones, but word is that they don’t work very well.

Last year at the Seattle bike expo, we saw a few riders demoing a new style of suspended rollers from InsideRide. And this year, I got around to ordering a set of their E-Motion rollers. Despite the price, which is in the $800 range, but just how much is too much to get your soul back?

First up was a bit of delayed gratification, as there was a 6-week backlog for the rollers. And then, due to their being shipped on FedEx (who are congenitally unable to understand the realities of home delivery) they got a nice tour on of the Puget Sound area on a truck for a few days before my generous wife picked them up for me.

Here’s what you get when you open the box.

Their unique features are:

• Inline skate wheel bumpers on the ends of the front roller (keep you from riding off the sides)
• Roller bars in front of and in back of the rear rollers (keep you from riding off the front on back)
• Rollers suspended in the main frame on rubber bungee cords

Perhaps that “keep you from” should really be “reduce the incidence of…”

You adjust the distance between the front and back rollers to fit on your bike (using the included wrench), and you’re set. They include a good set of instructions on how you should start, which worked well for me, except for the part of not clipping in. I did a couple of sessions in tennis shoes on top of my SPD-SLs, and thought that I had enough to worry about already without keeping my feet on the pedals.

As of now, I’ve probably ridden 3 hours on the rollers, It’s definitely a lot more like riding outside – the bike moves around a lot, and you need to pay more attention. It feels really weird at first, but as the instructions note, that goes away after a while. And while it is possible to stand up in a normal way, it feels really weird to have the bike oscillate forwards and backwards when you sit back down. You still have the “endless 2% hill” feeling because of the constant resistance – I had no idea how much I look forward to small undulations – but overall it’s pretty good. And quiet enough that I can keep the TV volume down, a big benefit since the guest room is underneath our bedroom and I sometimes like to ride early on the weekends.

My tip – it’s a lot easier to start if you have a horizontal surface on which to put your hand. You can start with slowly supporting yourself, and then slowly lift your hand. I found that easier than a doorway, though there are times when you’d like to have support on both sides.

So, what are the cons? Here’s my list:

• Price. Unless you’re riding a bike in the $3K range, they’re probably more than you want to spend.
• Resistance range. The resistance unit goes up really high, but even on zero, there’s a fair bit of resistance. You can reduce that by removing the belt to the resistance unit – which I did accidentally one time – but it would be nice if zero really meant zero. And I’d like the lowest to be a little lower, because riding at low intensities – such as a recovery ride – are going to have you riding fairly slowly, which gives you less stability.
• The resistance adjustment is possible to hit with your cleats, and you may end up riding on 1 when you really want to be riding on 0.
• The rollers are big and non-foldable. However, the back roller bumper is perfectly positioned to hold the unit upright when you lean it against a wall, and I happen to have a perfect slot in which to store them – as soon as I clean all the junk out of it.
• There is no first aid kit. I have some scratches on my left forearm from falling into a shelf, and bruise on my right shoulder from a tip over. Both happened when I was stopping – no issues while I was riding.

Over time, I hope to be able to work up to this, without too much of this.

Ff you can afford them, they’re great. If you want another opinion, go read Fatty’s review.

Last year I did a quick summary.

And here’s this year’s data:

That’s about 500 miles shorter than what I rode last year, but given that I haven’t ridden much in the past 8 weeks, that’s not surprising. This doesn’t contain any time on the trainer or the rain bike as I’m too lazy to track anything that doesn’t show up automatically on my polar HRM.

It’s interesting to note that did nearly the identical amount of climbing as last year despite having ridden about 20% fewer miles. I guess that means I rode a lot more hills (and RAMROD had something to do with it).

My plans for next year:

• Work on my core strength. I backed off on that mid-july and my back has been bothering me.
• Play some soccer. I like cycling, but I need something that’s weight bearing and team based.
• Try to get into RAMDOD again
• Think about doing STP one-day, so I don’t have to remember it as a sucky sucky day
• Lead a few rides for cascade – I want to do an organized ride up Stevens Pass, and Zoo Hill.

Today, I went on a ride. The first ride since I got hurt.

I have been on the bike since then. But, it was a very controlled ride, on my rain bike, where I found that my “leave it on the trainer” approach to maintenance didn’t do anything to make the “broken-when-they-made-it” Shimano RSX drivetrain on my 30 lb LeMond Tourmalet work better, and in fact it meant that I broke a rear spoke and my bottom bracket started creaking.

And my body hurt, so after about 45 minutes I limped back in both the mechanical and physical sense.

Redmond cycle replaced the spoke, chain, and did some tuning up, and I did some more PT, so today I went on a real ride. Sure, the bike still weighs a ton and has rims made of lead, but I did somewhere around 25 miles without overworking my body.

Deep breath.

Unclip.

Sit up.

Knee hurts.

Left shoulder hurts.

No pain on the clavicle. That’s good.

Sit for a little.

Scoot left, off the trail, take off the helmet, gloves, sunglasses.

Move around experimentally. Ouch. Is the kid okay?

****

I’ve been under the weather for a week or so – skipping the Tuesday and Thursday night rides – and I really wanted to get out on Sunday. I did shopping in the morning, and then headed out for an easy 20 or so. An easy 20 because I came really close to skipping the riding and working on a storage project.

The easiest 20 starting at my house runs down to Marymoor park, up the Sammamish River Trail to Woodinville and back. It was about 50 degrees, so I went with a light underlayer, jersey, vest, and leg warmers. Yeah, and shorts, socks, shoes, and my full-finger gloves, with arm warmers and hat in my pockets.

I took it easy on the way up, because I didn’t know how I’d feel, and because there was a headwind. Oh, and because Sunday afternoon is a high use time, so the trail is not a place to try to make time.

I got to Woodinville, took a break and stretched (my right knee is still not healed), and turned around back. The tailwind (and I have to mention that there really was a tailwind, as I swear that this trail often manages to have headwinds both ways). I’m spinning along at an easy 16-18 when I can.

About 3 miles south of Woodinville, I come up behind a jogger with a cyclist riding next to her. The cyclist is weaving around a bunch, and I’m waiting for an opportunity to pass, when she sees me and pulls ahead of the runner. I start to ease by when the jogger makes a U-turn directly across the trail right in front of me. I move left and hit the brakes and barely miss her. I ask her to PLEASE look before she cuts across the trail, and ride on.

You may wonder at this point why I didn’t say anything to her to tell her I was there before I started to pass…

My experience is that that is usually a waste of breath. If there is somebody who is moving in a predictable manner on the right side of the lane, I’ve found that it’s safer for me to pass at the far left than to say something, as saying something sometimes cause them to move out of their path. “On your left” has been particularly bad in this respect.

If I come on a group or up to riders that look unpredictable, I might say “passing”, but at that point I’m already down to their speed and I really need them to move for me to pass safely.

So, anyway, I have a bit of a jolt of adrenalin, and I keep riding south, on into Redmond. This part is typically more busy, so I drop down to an honest 15 MPH. As I approach the underpass at NE 90th st, I move left a bit (since it’s dark underneath), I see single image of the front triangle of a small bike, and WHAM, I’m on the ground.

…

“Are you okay?”

The voice is young, and when I turn and look I guess that she’s about 8.  

“I’m not sure yet”

I look up to see another cyclist on his cell phone talking to the Redmond emergency dispatchers. An adult comes to my side, and I ask “is the kid okay?” The woman says that he has a bloody nose but he looks otherwise uninjured, and tells me that the kid’s mom is on her way.  

The EMTs show up about 7 minutes later. I thank the rider who called and the other people who stopped and move father off to the side.

“Do you know where you are?”

I understand the question – he wants to know if I am oriented – but the needlessly precise part of my mind says “Is this redmond, or is this king county here?”. I look both ways down the trail, and settle on “Redmond”, which makes him happy. I tell him my shoulder hurts, and he’s a bit surprised to find out that my collarbone is not broken (I was pleasantly surprised to find that out myself). They do a quick exam of my other body parts – my gloves look unscathed, as does my helmet.

At this point, I’m starting to shiver – partly because the adrenalin is wearing off, and partly because I’m dressed to ride, not to stand around sweaty in the shade. I look over and see the boy – he’s about 11 years old, lots of blood on his face, but he looks okay. His mom approaches me, introduces herself, and offers to take me to where my car is.

She goes to get in her car, the EMTs send me to the jump seat and put my bike in the back doors. They drive out to 90th, drop me off, and the boy’s mother takes me home. She apologizes, tells me that she tells her son to make sure to look, and I tell her that I have a 13 year old and sometimes they need a more intense experience to internalize that sort of advice.

We get back to my house, she gives me her number and I take the bike and hoist it up to the spot on the wall where it lives with my right arm.

That was a mistake….

*****

So, what’s the damage?

Well, physically, I did a number on my shoulder, but I don’t think I broke anything (going to the Dr this morning to be sure). Left knee is swolen but doesn’t hurt too much. Abrasians on both elbows, both sides, and some rather nice brusing on my butt. I think I have a bit of a bruise on the left side of my head, but I’m not sure because I had a migraine after I got home and it’s hard to tell the two apart.

As for the bike…

Well, the fork is rather convincingly disconnected from the frame. The front brakes are misaligned but I don’t know if anything’s bent or broken. A quick look at the rest of the frame didn’t show anything obvious, but I may have missed something. It’s going to go into the Trek dealer for the full test because you don’t mess with damage in carbon fiber frames.

The front wheel seemed undamaged when I looked at it.

That’s my first crash. I’m happy that it was so minor.

The Carmichael Field Test can be used to get a decent estimate of your lactate threshold, and then used to set your training ranges. The course consists of two 3 mile time trials with a recovery period between them.

WARNING: There’s a lot of pain to be had here, ‘specially if you do it right. But I found the zones I got from the test to be very useful, and well correlated with my “seat of the pants” estimate of LTH

The steps are as follows:

1. Find a 3 mile course. Ideally, it will have good pavement, no hills, and no turns or stops. Good luck on that part – my guess is that you will have a bit of trouble doing that. So, if you can avoid big hills and any stops, that will work well. My course is an out and back.
2. Ideally, you have a HR monitor that can give you an average for a session. If not, you can kinda/sorta approximate with a direct reading one.
3. Make sure you are well rested.
4. Don’t eat anything within 2 hours of the test, but have 16 oz of a good sports drink about 45 minutes before the test.
5. Warm up thoroughly. You need something more than 10-20 minutes – whatever it takes you to get nicely warmed up. For me, that’s about 30 minutes. You also need 2-3 very high intensity efforts of a minute or so to get yourself ready. If you don’t do this, you will find that it takes you half of the first effort to get warmed up.
6. Begin from a standing start in a reasonable gear.
7. Don’t start too quickly. You should take about a minute to get up to perhaps 90% effort, and then ramp up slowly after that until you get to max effort
8. Your cadence should be 90-95RPM, and you should have a steady breathing pace.
9. Your speed should be one at which you can barely maintain it for the entire time period.
10. Force the pace

At the end of the 3 miles, collect the time and the average heart rate for the first effort. Recover for 10 minutes at low intensity, and then repeat.

Cool down at the end.

After you’ve done this a few times, you’ll get better at holding a max effort for the whole time.

One you get this, you can set your zones, based on the “average average” of the HR. Include the whole effort, including the part at the beginning.

Okay, so to take myself as an example. My average HR from the field test was 164 BPM. And I’m an old dude, so I use the right column.

My recovery HR is 72-115 BPM.

Endurance sets a limit rather than a range – it’s basically anywhere underneath the limit. So, my limit is 164 * 0.86 = 141. For tempo it’s 164 * 0.96 = 158 BPM. For both of those, you add 4 BPM to get the upper limit of the range (Carmichael say 2-4 BPM, but my experience is that I can hold a 4BPM range fairly easy but it’s a lot harder to keep it within 2BPM). That gives me the following ranges:

Recovery: 72-115 BPM
Endurance: 141-145 BPM
Tempo: 158-162 BPM

I’ll talk about what these are in the future…

Phatty wrote a post about the recent Floyd Landis verdict, and I thought I’d expand a bit on his theme.

Doping and cycling is a complex subject. I’m not naive enough to think that cyclists don’t dope.

But the question is not whether Floyd doped. The question is whether he can be judged to have doped under the applicable rules. In other words, the question is not one of right or wrong. The question is one of legality.

From my perpective, just as the athletes have rules that they are expected to follow, the officials also have rules that they need to follow.

And, in this case, they didn’t do it. I think that unless the officials follow the rules, they don’t have a case.

Question: 

Popliteus is:

1. The last european book craze
2. The right-hand-man of Alexander the Great
3. The cause of pain and anguish for RiderX

Back in June I was on a ride in Issaquah, on a road that features two things:

1) A “bypass the light” right lane (of 3) that can only go straight at a light

2) A bike lane that stops very soon before that point.

So, I was out riding, and got stuck at that light, with a very impatient car behind me (which, I presume, was occupied by an impatient car, and not possessed in a real-life version of Christine). The light change, I stood up, and go ready to do a bit of a sprint, and then realized that I was about 4 gears higher than I wanted to be. So, in a bit of adolescent bravado that I tell myself I am no longer prone to but, let’s be fair, still shows up now and then, I decide to just go for it.

Which, over the span of the next 15 seconds or so, resulted in two things. First, a fairly pathetic acceleration rate, and second, a strange feeling behind my right knee.

Which I didn’t really think much of – I finished the ride and went home.

A week or so later, the strange feeling had resolved itself, and I was out on a group ride, stood up to sprint up a short hill, and now the leg was hurting a bunch.

Which led to an up and down journey, where I would alternatively take it easy and heal, and then do something stupid, eventually culminating in RAMROD, where the knee and my lack of training perfectly meshed together for it to hurt a lot.

But, then I knew I had to be more serious about healing whatever was wrong, so I did the ice thing, I did the stretching thing, I did the ibuoprofen thing. I went out and rode some steeps before the Summits of Bothel and felt okay, and then SOB was cold and wet and we skipped it.

The only ride I cared about was the mountain populaire (held on Sept 9th), where I hoped to do better than last year. And by “do better”, I mean climb a little faster and not feel so wiped at the end.

So, last Thursday I decided to ride a little harder to make sure I was up to the Sunday ride, and while the knee felt a little weird, it didn’t hurt. And then, near the end of the ride, I decided to chase another rider as he sprinted up a short hill. Which told me what I need to know.

I skipped the populaire and went on a flat 30 miler around the lake Sunday, during which my knee was pretty achy.

Which led me into see a PT on Monday, where I had lots of tests done, the painful area poked and prodded, and learned a new word. I have a problem with my Poplieus, a short muscle on the back of the knee.

 After a couple of weeks of stretching and healing, we’ll start on PT.

 Better aerobic capacity

better efficiency

faster cadence (less tiring)

LT as a higher percentage of HR

Better buffering of LT.