Graduating Seniors, Hartford, Car troubles, and Tuesday Nighter

I've been up at school this past week in order to work graduation in order to see the seniors and hang out. Hopefully get to enjoy some nice weather and ride a bit too.

I did all of that, possibly too much of all of that.

After watching the seniors graduate on sunday, I was off to hartford to race the downtown crit. It royally sucked. Maybe my saddle was a hair too low, I'm not sure what it was but I couldn't keep up. Then again, it could have been the unrelenting rain that led to total sketchiness from everyone and everything.

I couldn't close gaps since I didn't feel safe enough to be on anyone's wheel. I got pulled from the course.

Monday, I was heading home from dropping/picking up friends from the airport and my car's hood started smoking. I managed to drive it to town without the engine overheating and then let it cool down (managed to get a quick lunch with a friend during this time) and then drove it back to my place. It was smoking a bunch and the engine was overheating so I had to stop it and push it into a driveway. Crazy.

Today in the afternoon, I managed to get a tow truck to come and pick up the car. I have to call the garage today to make sure that everything's good and figure out how much it's going to cost. Ugh...

In any event, I got a ride to the tuesday nighter today and the loathing was rife in me after the dismal hartford crit.

I had a blast at the tuesday nighter and chased down a ton of breaks since we had a someone in a break.

All in all, a good day. Tomorrow will probably suck when I figure out how much the car repair is going to cost. Ugh...

Coach? Check! Training again? Check! Getting ready to race? Super Check!

Can you tell that I'm a little excited to get back in the groove after a week of finals that ruined my training schedule. That being said, all that studying was great for my grades, and I'm much more pleased that I was with them than I was last semester.

I did, however, get a coach for the summer and beyond. I'm working with Coach Aidan Charles of CCNS(http://www.charlescoaching.net/), and I'm psyched about it. I did a lactic threshold test with him and we've begun to create a training plan. That leads me to the racing topic.

I talked to Aidan, and he wanted me to race at Hartford this weekend since I haven't raced in a bit. So I'm getting my behind in gear again. I noticed that my body did much better when I trained longer and had more miles in my legs. After a 3 week block of more miles than usual, my recovery was better and I felt better riding longer. This week is going to be about 130-140 training miles and about an hour of racing. I'm excited to carry on with this.

I'm going to start racing the tuesday nighters at hartford from this week onwards. The team that I'm racing with from now, CVC (http://capitalveloclub.com/), runs the race so I should show face and help out with it.

I'm looking forward to this summer. I'm hoping for about 10-15 training hours a week, the training crit, and a race every couple of weeks. Racing with a good team, training a ton, working at the community health center in middletown, and just having a ball with everyone who's here for the summer.

I'm excited.

But for now, I must spend time with the beloved seniors who are leaving us on sunday. They will be missed.

Shoulda Known this was going to happen

It's finals week, and for some reason I thought I could keep up the mileage I've been doing lately.


WRONGGG!!!


I wanted to get up and ride at 8 today, I woke up and promptly passed out again.

Wanted to do the same tomorrow, but I know better now.

I guess I'll just call this a rest week and try to get in a long ride on sunday to make myself feel better.

I'm coming off a good hard two weeks, so this is pretty sad, but I've been mentally and physically exhausted from all the work and I don't want to be a liability out on the road.

It's going to be a long summer, so this should be a nice break :)

(I wish I was riding...)

Early Morning Post?

It's 5:45 and I've been trying to fall asleep for an hour and a half, but no such luck.

I guess I'm pulling my last all nighter as a Junior. Right before my organic chem final. Whoops?

Of course I made use of my time up! Unfortunately, I learned a few things:

First a bit of a previous lesson. My SLR saddle, god bless it's light weight, is too narrow for me. I've never had that issue before, and I was always comfortable on it, but I had a spree of saddle sores after rides. So I swapped to an older, heavier, saddle: The titanio 200. No longer made, unfortunately, as it's also a favorite of a good friend CDR/SDC

Using my current saddle on my thomson seatpost, I've realized that I can't get enough setback to be at the position that was recommended to me. This means that my two 'nice' pieces of equipment on my bike are no longer on it. Pity...

Recently, my fit was adjusted and my cleats were moved forward, my saddle back, and my stem shortened. This is a little unfortunate since I was *JUST* started to dig my old position with the longer stem and saddle slightly higher and more forward (Crit style, as some would say). However, after riding on the new position for a bit, I found that my sustainable wattage for intervals went up pretty drastically. Some of it is fitness, but some of it has to do with the fit.

As long as I don't have to drop below my current 90mm stem, I think I'll survive. Otherwise I'll be aching to get back to the way things were earlier when I was comfortable in the drops for an entire race at a time.

I suppose I could run my 120mm stem flipped up as I've been doing, but I'm hoping that the 90mm stem provides the same reach and comfort. If not, I'll have to give up style for comfort. What a bother!

Time to try getting an hour or two of sleep. I suppose toying with the bike under sleep deprived conditions was a good use of time.