Murrieta

One of these days, I'll have to write up a little review of the Cannondale system six bike I tried to get used to over the past four months. In a nutshell, the caveman review would not be so good...

I never got that bike where I needed it to be position wise, and I had kind of forgotten that bottom brackets are not supposed to creak and groan with every pedal stroke.

Last wednesday, I pedalled the old pinarello for the first time since November. It felt like I had ridden it just the other day - kinda like a comfortable pair of old slippers - ya know, the slippers your dog has abused... the one's that look kind of funky, or smell funky, yeah, the one's that are molded to your feet and have some distinctive signs of personality and uniqueness...

yeah, that's what the pinarello is like for me - felt good on the bike for the first time in awhile.

Here was my training week:

M - off
T - off
W - 45 minutes with 14 minutes above 5.2 W/kg
th - off
F - 30 minutes with openers
Sat - tour de murrieta crit (1:15)
Sun - tour de murritea circuit race (2 hrs)

that's a pretty typical week for me - I usually do one more day during the week where I get 20 minutes in the 5-5.5 w/kg range.

I still am having the leg problems - not so bad on saturday, though, I had to modulate effort to avoid what I feel as if are calf cramps.

Sunday I felt good, and was doing my best to cover important moves in the circuit race - followed three distinct ones that I remember in the last 30 k or so? Covered one with Mark Scott, one with Thurlow - countered that one with a dig of my own. I spent another chunk of fun tickets covering a big dig by Pat Caro. You can pretty much see those efforts in the srm screen capture above (the circuit race is the upper plot, the crit is the lower). Whaddya know, "the move" that finally succeeded included Thurlow, Scott, Noble, and Caro...

I really had to modulate my left leg on some of those efforts - I am getting pretty good at bringing the effort right up to the point just before my left calf just wants to curl up into a little, knotted, painful ball...

The finale was a pretty good demonstration of how sprinting is not really all about being able to put out gobs of power. I had full-on double calf cramps during the last 150 meters (basically from the moment I started pedaling out of the last corner before the finish) and was unable to stand or make maximal power. Because of pretty good positioning, I was able to sneak into the top 10 in the field sprint.

Here are the weekends results:

http://www.scnca.org/schedule2008.asp?category=Masters+35%2B&event=Tour+de+Murrieta+Stage+1&rank=0

http://www.scnca.org/schedule2008.asp?category=Masters+35%2B&event=Tour+de+Murrieta+Stage+2&rank=0

and the overall:

http://www.scnca.org/schedule2008.asp?category=Masters+35%2B&event=Tour+de+Murrieta+GC&rank=2

I'll give the legs another go with a midweek crit here in Del Mar (shhhh... don't tell my boss I'm leavin' a wee-bit early! LOL!) tomorrow and then we'll see about a really hard weekend of training/racing in the run up to the San Dimas Stage Race for the end of the month!

see ya out there,