Showing posts with label power test. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power test. Show all posts

Monday, February 23, 2009

My Birthday -Antique Show - Power Test

Happy Birthday to ME

TipTop Kitchen and Cocktails
.
If you have never been, go there, eat, drink, be marry if you ever make it t
o Columbus.




What my wife bought me for my birthday - a kickass Garmin for my car. Now I can get to every bike race this year without question. It even bluetooth connects to my phone. I can make calls through it, look up my address book, texts, etc. It's sweet. My wife is the BWE (Best Wife Ever). I have been using the Austrailian female voice which is pretty hot and gives great
direction, if you know what I mean. It does turn by turn street directions, has a countdown of time to your destination if you program in where you are headed. It also has a feature to tune your stereo on a frequency, that provides the audio from the GPS or your cell phone to be heard through your car audio system. Cool!
Saturday, we crawled out of bed, late - headed to our fine Ohio State Fair Grounds for the Scotts Antique Market. It's quite a spread, around this huge metal building with dealers upon dealers in every nook of the concrete slab. Ffor sure many of these dealers have raised their prices considerably in the last year. Jen and I went last year about this time and the stuff is not getting
cheaper.



Caught this 'post it' stuck on this Godzilla - It was a nice thing to see on our way out the door. Couldn't resist getting a photo.








Sunday, was my 2nd Power/Watts test of the year. OWWWeeee. It's hard to say which one hurt more, the first one or this one. I think this one, certainly made me go find that happy place while I was killing it for 20 minutes as hard as I could go. I watched the time tick off second by second. I set little goals like just get 3 more minutes, then, just get to 2:45. I had some music cranked up pretty loud in my hurt cave and the 2005 Tour De France Time trial on the TeeVee'. I was sweating a ton, 'my biggest fan' was set on high, but didn't seem to do much justice to the toxins rolling out of holes in my skin I didn't know existed, except in July. I did manage to up my watts by about 10% over the 20 minute hurt fest.

My friend Ben, Saturday was trying to get me to
come workout with him and some friends at a local bike shop. I tried to explain to him, I didn't want to turn myself inside out (like this) in front of a bunch of people > at 8 a.m. F that. Well, however, it was not -4 degrees outside this day, it was a bone chilling 23 with a fairly brisk wind. No way was I going outside to do this test. It has been one of the coldest winters here I can remember for sometime. It hit -4 just a few weeks ago. Sick. My head is going to pop off soon, if the weather doesn't break the 40's.







4 weeks till Asheville, North Carolina Training Camp!







Took my wheels to the shop for a trueing session. Getting some road tires put on my Planet x carbons. Will be interesting to see how they roll outside when the weather turns. My Mavic SL's were in need of some major love and my DT Swiss 240 mountain bike wheels hadn't been touched since they were built. Not sure if they were out of true even a bit.



Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Power and Watts Test - Dual Suspension MTB


What do theses squiggle lines represent you ask....well it's part of a power-watts test I did on Sunday. It turned out to be total about an hour on the bike and the results were impressive to me, at least. I was happy with the outcome - and data. I would say it was similar to doing a cross race - but in my basement and no barriers. Lots of sweating, grunting, and wobble legs post-workout.
It was worth putting in the effort - I think in a few weeks/months the test maybe repeated to see any improvements. Now I have a baseline and something to work from. If the friggin weather here would be nice(r), I might be able to get outside this weekend and ride. I hope to get some needed outdoor hours in this weekend and the following weekend. This is a cool site - for some bike ride mapping.

Looked at a few dual suspension mtb bikes in my research the last few weeks. The Yeti AS-R, the Specialized Epic (S-works), the Blue Ryno Carbon, for now. I put in for the time off work for the American MTB Classic - Hope to register soon to get that taken care of....6/7 months and counting.
Road racing season is still 2 months or more away.