If you’re a member of Team Performance, you should have gotten a postcard about getting double points on purchases this weekend. That means that you get 20% back instead of the normal 10%. If you aren’t a member, it only costs $20 a year so it normally pays for itself with $200 purchases but this weekend it’ll only take $100. I’m pretty sure you can sign up as part of your order and still get the double points. Even the $20 for membership counts for points. They also have some really good sale prices right now.
Double Points at Performance Bike
March 30th, 2006If you’re a member of Team Performance, you should have gotten a postcard about getting double points on purchases this weekend. That means that you get 20% back instead of the normal 10%. If you aren’t a member, it only costs $20 a year so it normally pays for itself with $200 purchases but this weekend it’ll only take $100. I’m pretty sure you can sign up as part of your order and still get the double points. Even the $20 for membership counts for points. They also have some really good sale prices right now.
Training
March 29th, 2006Last week I didn’t ride much and what I did was pretty easy. I was tired after Hell Week and felt I really needed some recovery. Friday I did a few harder efforts to see what I thought I could do on the weekend. I actually felt really good which was good since I had 2 long rides planned for the weekend.
Saturday I rode with the 10:00 Acacia Park group ride. I think we had about 60 riders. As we got close to the Link Road hill, the pace got hard as normal and gaps started opening. I had been sitting in the middle and had to bridge up a couple times to stay with the front group. I managed to hang on over the top the hill which I hadn’t been before going to Texas. I really thought I’d get popped off as people started attacking and setting up for the sprint at PPIR but I stayed in the lead group as it got smaller. I was feeling good when we were a 100 yards out and was going to go for it. I realized that lead out guys were pulling off and saw the guys that were ready to go and decided not to look silly and sat up. Part way back into town I dropped back from the lead group to ride with my friend and save some for the rest of the ride. I then rode out through Black Forest and Palmer Lake and met with the rest of the family at some friends in Monument. Early in the day the wind wasn’t bad but by the time I was riding into Palmer Lake, I had a tough headwind. I got in 109 miles with 4619 feet of climbing.
Sunday it was very wind as forecast. I rode out to Elbert and had mainly a cross-wind with a little tailwind. I originally had planned to continue north and make a loop through Castle Rock getting about a 110 miles. I had started late and with the wind slowing me, it would have been after dark when I finished. According to the weather data from Black Forest near the Palmer Divide, the wind was pretty steady around 30 mph when I crossed the Palmer Divide. I also wasn’t feeling so great. I’m very allergic to cedar and according to the chart from pollen.com, there’s a lot of cedar pollen along with elm that I’m somewhat allergic to. Anyway it wasn’t fun to be riding and I nearly turned around early in the ride but managed to get in 92 miles with 3396 feet of climbing.
Article on Mike Trevino
March 27th, 2006Mike Trevino was the RAAM Rookie of the Year in 2004. Last year he was in 2nd when he crashed and separated his shoulder. There’s an article in this month’s Men’s Vogue Magazine not that I even knew the magazine existed. (Update: Seems the magazine was ended in Oct 2008) Clicking on the cover on the right side of the web site shows the beginning of the article although I can’t make much of it out. Maybe I’ll have to go buy one. I wonder what category that would put me in?
I heard that he had quit his job so he could focus on training for RAAM this year. Recently I heard he had crashed during training and injured his elbow. Hopefully that won’t keep him out of RAAM but it would be hard to train. I would think it would be possible to ride on the trainer but I’d think he wouldn’t be able to train on the road.
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More Hell Week Pictures
March 24th, 2006Nick Martin, a local photographer in Fredericksburg, took lots of pictures of us riding at Hell Week. He gave the pictures to Nick and Nick put them on his Zoto site. I looked through them and found some good pictures of me. It’s amazing with all the pictures there are only a handful of riders that I recognize. I guess that’s because I was doing the A ride or brevets every day.
You can also see my Texas Hellweek pictures (nothing new since I first posted them)
I’m late putting up this list but here’s a list of other blogger’s that were at Hell Week.
– Annie
– Eclectchick
– Sascha
– The S.S Blog
– Recreational Reading
Somewhere on the LBJ Ramble.
Waiting to start the 200k brevet.
Rolling out at the start of the 200k brevet.
Time trialing up to catch Nick and Paul on the 200k brevet after hanging back and debating whether to go that hard.
Riding with Nick and Paul on the 200k brevet. My mountain biking is showing in how I have my knee out to make an upcoming turn.
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Jonathan Boyer to Race RAAM this Year
March 23rd, 2006I had seen somewhere that the new Enduro category had Jonathan Boyer thinking about doing RAAM again this year. Last week he was added to the roster so now it’s more than a rumor.
He is the only rider to race in both the Tour de France and RAAM. He won RAAM in 1985 which was the only time he did the race. He is now 51 but I expect he will still be very fast. When he’s been asked to compare the Tour de France and RAAM, he has said there is no way to compare them.
Now if Lance Armstrong would do RAAM. He has said he’s interested but doesn’t want to spend that much time training now that he’s retired. He’s competitive enough that I think there’s a good chance he’ll show up in the next couple of years.
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New Headband
March 20th, 2006
After raving about the Halo headbands that E-Caps/Hammer Nutrition carries in a post a couple weeks ago, you may have noticed I was wearing something different at Hell Week. There was a guy at the check-in for Hell Week selling the Sweat Gutr headbands. Over the eyes they have a lip just like a rain gutter to cause the sweat to flow to the side of the head. They looked like they might really work but I needed to test one out to be convinced. With the temperatures in 80s and more humidity than I’m used to, Hell Week seemed the perfect place to test it.
The first day I put it on and started riding. It was noticeable that it was cooler since only a very small strip of skin is covered instead the much wider strip of a normal sweatband. My helmet sits pretty low on my forehead so I did have a little problem getting my sunglasses, headband, and helmet spaced correctly. Once I got everything positioned, it worked very well. On Thursday it was around 80 and very humid at least compared to what I’m used to. My aero bars were wet and slimy as were my bottles. My gloves were soaked from sweating and I still never needed to take off my sunglasses. Even in better conditions, I end up taking my sunglasses off with the Halo headbands.
Ok, so I have a couple minor issues with the Sweat Gutr headbands. The band is attached to the cardboard packaging with large zip ties that are hard to cut off. It would be much easier if it was attached with twist ties or at least smaller zip ties. The second thing is that it had a freshly minted chemical smell that I kept getting pretty good whiffs of the first couple days. The smell pretty much went away after a couple days and wasn’t noticeable anymore.
Not only did it work great, but it was more comfortable because you can easily adjust how tight it is. It’s a great product and I expect you’ll see me wearing one during RAAM.
5/17/06 Update: Sweat Gutr sent me a new Sweat Gutr. They changed the packaging and made a slight change over the ears to make it fit better.
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Hell Week Picture Page
March 20th, 2006The weather today is a bit of a shock after being in warm Texas at Hell Week. It’s been snowing off and on with the windchill in the single digits.
I now have pictures of Hell Week posted on my website. There’s an article in the Austin paper today about Hell Week.
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Hell Week Day 8 – Rain
March 19th, 2006After the 300k it was fairly late when I got to bed by the time I rode to the campground, showered, and went to town to get something to eat. I set my alarm for 7 Saturday morning so I could get up and ride in for the A ride. Soon after 6 I woke up to hear rain on the tent. It shouldn’t have been any big deal but the tent is old. I know my brother and I used it on an expedition in Alaska in 1989 but don’t remember how long we’d had it. Soon after the rain started, I felt water dripping on me. The fly needs to be recoated but it has a few patches. The zipper on the door keeps giving me problems and it was replaced several years ago. There’s a rip in the door that is patched with duct tape and the floor is ripped from my pack getting thrown around in a violent wind storm in the Grand Canyon. It may be time to retire the poor thing.
I got up and really couldn’t get motivated to ride in the rain. I checked the weather radar and it showed rain scattered around the area. I drove in to town and was at the hotel when the A ride should have started. By then it was just a light drizzle. A few riders trickled out in ones and twos. If I had ridden, I would probably been by myself. I already had in 872 miles for the week so I didn’t feel any big need to ride. It takes a lot of training for RAAM but over doing it can can be a set back. I decided getting cold and wet could push me over the edge. It turned out that it dried out and drizzled off and on a bit like during the 300k so it wouldn’t have been a bad day to ride.
I was able to change my flight home from Sunday to Saturday evening. After doing very little all day, I realized just how tied I really was. There were 2 very happy little girls to see me when I got in at the airport in Colorado Springs. Julie was also very happy for me to be home. This week is the longest we’ve been apart since we got married. This morning the girls spent most of the morning climbing all over me and showing me things.
Update: Texas Hell Week photos and posts for each day.
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Hell Week Day 7 – 300k Brevet
March 17th, 2006
I like to say that a ride isn’t long if it can be started and finished in daylight. Today’s ride started before daylight and finished after it got dark so it qualifies as a long ride. Sixteen people showed up for the 300k brevet. I actually thought there might not be that many. Starting so early in the morning we saw lots of deer. For a while there was a rider ahead of me and I couldn’t see anyone behind me. Finally I saw a rider catching up when I got off and walked through a water crossing. On Monday when I did the 200k brevet, some of the riders on the A ride broke bones so I wasn’t taking any chances. All I need to put an end to my RAAM effort is to break a bone. I saw the rider behind me start falling but he didn’t totally go down.
It turned out that the rider coming up was Fred Boethling from Boulder who is also doing RAAM solo this year. He will be oldest solo finisher ever if he makes it. He did it last year on a two man team. We rode pretty easy and chatted about RAAM and whatever else we felt like.
It was a cool, overcast day and I never took my arm and knee warmers off. We had periods of light drizzle but it never got too bad. After the first checkpoint, we were in the lead and it was that way all the way to the finish except when we got caught briefly by 4 other riders. We had just started rolling down the road after a bathroom break when they caught us. We jumped on the back and rode with them for a little ways. They were hard core randonneurs and apparently we weren’t good enough for them. We didn’t have big butt bags, carry our maps in holders on our bars, and didn’t have hub generators. They weren’t friendly and after a couple miles they stopped for a bathroom break. The rest of the ride they would show up at stops just as we were leaving.
Fred and I ended up with an official time of 13:54 which isn’t fast but we enjoyed the ride and weren’t out to set any speed records. I actually felt good the whole ride. I was worried that I’d start feeling all the miles of the week. I got 194.8 miles with 6722 feet of climbing and the on bike average was 15.6 mph.
Update: Texas Hell Week photos and posts for each day.
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Hell Week Day 6 – Fred’s Ride
March 16th, 2006
Apparently most people were hammered from yesterday’s Death ride since less than 20 showed up for the A ride. Today’s ride was a typical hill country ride with a bunch of rollers. It was warmer today than the last couple days and it was humid. We had seen the first part of the ride when we drove to Bandera. I got in a nice group that included Annie. I stumbled on to her blog a couple months ago and a few days ago she left a comment saying she was here at Hell Week. We stopped a while in Medina for lunch and I had a big burger since all I could think about today was food. The way back was on nice quiet roads through pretty country side. Just for fun there was a 22% hill thrown in.
I tried not taking too many pulls so I could recover from yesterday since I’m doing a 300k tomorrow. I felt like I rode pretty easy and my heart rate average was only 130 but I still averaged 18.2 mph on the bike. I got in 100.6 miles and 3835 feet of climbing.
Update: Texas Hell Week photos and posts for each day.
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