I’ve looked at the new offerings from SRAM and Shimano, but it isn’t the direction I want to go. No, I’m pretty sure that the next groupset is going to be Campagnolo Chorus 11. I played around with Fred’s bike, which is equipped with Chorus 11 and was really impressed with the feel of the shifters.

In the cycling world, this is akin to making the switch from PC to Mac. Shimano and SRAM both make great groupsets, but Campagnolo fans are dedicated enough that it nearly approaches religion. I’m probably buying into some of that, but I also like to think that I’m making a decision based on function. We’ll see if I stick to that assumption after I switch.

The real question is, why upgrade at all when my current groupset works fine? Well that’s the other interesting piece, as I have no intention of letting the current stuff go to waste. It will be going on a new cyclocross frame built by local builder Cysco Cycles. I haven’t ordered the frame yet, but here’s a picture of one of the bikes that Richie Moore (of Cysco) took to the North American Handmade Bike Show recently (NAHBS) recently.

Tell me that isn’t sick.

Wind stalls,
pedals flow.

An evening ride begins.

Breath tightens,
muscles burn.

Senses heighten,
pedals turn.

Writing verses on the wing.

Creatures rise,
temperatures fall.

Nightbirds chastise,
backroads call.

Spinning circles into Spring.

Everyone says that when two or more road cyclists get together it instantly becomes a race, which is usually a true statement. One of the things I really like about the team I am on (Harpeth) is that it isn’t always true. Take today for instance. The planned workout for tonight was to do at least an hour of endurance paced riding, but to sprint into and out of each corner for 3-5 seconds to work on burst speed and cornering ability. We did this for 40 minutes or so, staying true to the workout, and then regrouped for some team focused drills.

Right about the time that an uncoordinated group would start attacking each other, turning the night into an unofficial parking lot criterium, we were working on leading each other out for sprinting. Brad talked us through the steps: pull hard up to the corner, take the tight line, then peel off towards the inside so the next guy can sprint out of the corner. When executed correctly, it sets the next rider up to fly out of the corner like he’s been fired from a gun. With enough riders in the leadout, you can control the corners coming into the last turn and shotgun the last rider over the finish line. It was great.

Even though it was a highly controlled workout, and was only an hour long, it still ended up with the highest TSS of any single workout so far this week (tomorrow’s ride will top it, I’m sure). By Monday, my CTL should be just over 70, which will be the highest point it has been since I started measuring it in October.

I ended the evening at Mellow Mushroom in Franklin with Jonathan, Gabrielle, Fred, and Chris drinking beers and talking about shop plans. It was the perfect way to end the work week, and kick off a weekend of riding weather the likes of which we haven’t seen in weeks here in Middle Tennessee.

The lack of good weather days for road riding is definitely getting to me, but worst case scenario I still have my rollers and Todd’s classes that get some leg-moving time in. The thing that is really getting to me is the lack of mountain biking. Sure we had the Snake Creek Gap race recently, so you would think I would have had enough of the singletrack lifestyle for a while, but all that did is make me want more riding (and less mud).

Between the cold and the near constant precipitation, every trail in the area is useless right now. Montgomery Bell is actually closed. Everything else is constant freeze/thaw cycle, which means I could theoretically ride before the sun was up, but if you happened to still be on the trail once the ground reached warmed a little you would be riding in wet muck (and destroying the trail).

I want a long day on a dry trail with the sun coming through the trees, and the temperature warm enough that I don’t have to dress for an arctic expedition.

I want my water bottles to still contain liquid after an hour of riding, not slush.

I want short sleeve jerseys and shorts instead of wool socks, booties, shorts, leg warmers, windproof tights, base layer, jersey, arm warmers, windproof jacket, helmet liner, and insulated gloves.

The cold, demoralizing weather has also made it hard to stick to a training plan. Corner sprints last Friday? No chance, it was snowing. I can get time in on the rollers, but that soul-sucking contraption is tolerable for an hour of tempo at best. My CTL has risen very very slowly (if at all) over the past several weeks due to missed or shortened workouts. I have another FTP test scheduled in a week and a half, and I’m not looking forward to the results.

I used to pride myself on being from the Great White North (okay, just Iowa) and being able to handle the cold. Not any more. My transition to southerner started with greens and pulled pork, continued with a reluctant acceptance of people who say “y’all”, and has apparently been finalized with a hatred of the cold.

I had been looking forward to this race since my DNF four weeks ago in January. After an early dinner and a good, if fitful night’s sleep, Jonathan and I were geared up by 7:30am and headed to the “Snake Pit” at the Trade Center. We got signed in, and planned on sitting in the warm car until the shuttles started to load. After loading our bikes onto the trailers, we returned to the car to find it locked. With the keys inside. Along with our water bottles, helmets, and camelbaks.

Fearing a repeat of January’s RV hydraulics debacle that put us on the race course almost an hour after most riders had started, I went into quiet panic mode. Luckily, 30 minutes later we had the car unlocked (thanks to the towing company owned by the father of one of the race volunteers) and were seated in one of the shuttles to the race start. Panic mode was quickly replaced by pre-race jitters.

In years past, the shuttle to the race start has been provided by old, used up school buses driven by crazed blue-hairs with no reason left to live. After we signed up for this year’s race, Fred told us about a past year when the combined weight of 50 adults (as opposed to 50 4th graders) overwhelmed the brakes of one of the shuttle buses as they were driving down a mountain road. The driver was passing cars in the oncoming lane on a curvy, poorly paved road, all the while cackling madly. This year the buses have been replaced by more modern transportation and slightly less deranged drivers.

Since Snake Creek Gap is a time trial event, everyone started individually with around a 30 second gap between riders. You ride up to the line, a race official counts you down, and you are off. I left around 9:30am. I settled into an easy pace and let Jonathan try to chase a group of money class riders who caught up after starting just behind us. Two miles later I reached “Dry Creek”, which was anything but. The water was upper thigh deep and moving swiftly. Jonathan was waiting at the banks of the creek because he wanted to see my reaction to this first obstacle. With no other options, we shouldered our bikes, slogged through it, and quickly got underway; hoping that movement would keep us warmer than stopping to change into dry socks.

If the high creek wasn’t an obvious indicator of the rain that North Georgia had received in the past week, the mud was. Soon after beginning the first climb, I started to get chainsuck every few minutes. Every time the trail would pitch up, I would hear the chain threaten to bind against the chainstay. I quickly lost Jonathan, and settled into a rhythm of climb, stop, swear, walk. The downhills posed no problem, and the trail offered a surprising level of traction in the mud, so I tried to regain a little time whenever the trail pointed down.

By around 12:30 I crossed the road and entered the parking lot of the halfway point. I was still feeling good, but knew that I had 17 more long miles to go. I stayed at the aid station just long enough to mix another bottle of Hammer Perpetuem, and headed back onto the trail. There were several people with damaged bikes who were forced to bail out by this point. Between missing derailleurs, broken chains, flat tires, and used up brake pads, 27 of the 108 riders who started the 34 mile route weren’t able to finish.

The trail from the 17 mile Aid Station immediately pitches up into a long climb to the top of the ridge. Just like before, my chain would suck into the chainstay every time I applied additional torque. If I listened closely enough, I could pick up the warning sounds and backpedal quickly to clear the chain before my bike stopped cold. Even with this setback, the top of the ridge came faster than I remembered it from the January race.

At the bottom of a long downhill, I decided to finally change into a pair of dry socks. Another rider rolled to a stop on the trail next to me and spoke into a radio “Last rider on the 34 down here near the creek before the fire road Sag”. He meant me. We rode to the base of the fire road climb, where chainsuck stopped my bike right in the middle of a creek crossing. Dry socks now wet.

The fire road climb to the last aid station was muddy and longer than I remembered from January. Trace (my new riding buddy) and I sprayed our chains down with chain lube again to try to free up some of the grime that was contributing to my chainsuck problem. It was just before 3pm at this point, but there were only 8 miles to go, and only 6 miles left before the pavement descent back to the start.

It’s a bit misleading to say “6 miles left” as if it is a short distance. Anyone who has completed this ride can attest that this particular 6 miles is the hardest part of the entire 34 miles, and likely the hardest part of the entire 100+ mile Pinhoti Trail in Georgia. Almost immediately after turning from the aid station back onto singletrack, the rock gardens start. And don’t stop.

“I don’t have any strength left to finesse my way through this. ” I said to Trace, who responded “There’s no finessing this stuff, you just have to power through it. Momentum is your friend.” Good advice, but momentum was getting harder and harder to maintain.

The additional torque required to clean these rock gardens, in addition to the 30 odd miles I had already ridden that day was quickly taking it’s toll. Every time I would shift my weight, or apply power to ride through a pile of volleyball sized rocks, my quads would threaten to cramp. Many of the rocky sections were too technical for the level of fatigue I was experiencing, but dismounting didn’t make things any easier. Each dismount meant walking through the cramping while pushing a 25 lb bike. After pushing my bike up an incredibly steep section that locals refer to as “The Wall” (maxing out at 34% grade), Trace said “I have good news and bad news. Good news is we’re done climbing. Bad news is the most technical section is between here and the radio towers”.

Any endurance athlete can relate to the “dark place” that you sometimes find yourself in during an event. It is that point where the body or mind may each be willing (protesting, but willing), but the combination of physical fatigue and mental exhaustion starts to become overwhelming. In this last 6 miles, I spent a lot of time in that dark place, and it was no additional comfort to hear Trace’s GPS beep every time he stopped to let me rest. The last thing I needed was a reminder of how slow I was moving from a local who rides this trail regularly.

Even with my slow progress we continued to press forward. Ride for a bit on a smooth section, dismount when I would fail to muster support from “friend momentum” to carry me through. Eventually the radio towers came into view at the top of the last rise. The trail smoothed out, and I could hear the generators at the base of the towers humming as we rode out of the forest onto a gravel road.

With all of the fatigue and cramping replaced by elation that I had actually finished this race, we rocketed down the gravel road to the trailhead. Once back on pavement I tucked in tight and held on for the 40 mph descent down the mountain to the Trade Center. Even though the parking lot was mostly empty I sprinted for the finish line and crossed it under power, 6 hours and 32 minutes after I started.

Jonathan, who finished the race in 6 hrs, 14 minutes adds this comment:

I was absolutely miserable for 30 of the 34 miles with feet frozen and soaked. Soon the numbness from toes and feet started to creep into my legs turning them into ice cycles attached to ice cubes. There was no amount of miles, spinning, cranking or hard peddling to counter the cold and keep my legs from this incurable cold exhaustion. There was no strength left in my legs. The wet cold simply zapped them into worthless scrap. My new TiMax functioned flawlessly and the race was no match for it. This race was a test of mind over matter. Not fun, enjoyable or fondly remembered. Although, we will be back in March…

- Jonathan

More information about the Pinhoti Trail system, the Snake Creek Gap Time Trial series, and this year’s results can be found at the Northwest Georgia SORBA (Southern Offroad Bicycle Association) website at http://www.nwgasorba.org/the_snake.html

Instead of doing the tempo intervals at a cadence of 95-100 rpm like the last four weeks, Todd instructed us to do the first five minutes at 80 rpm to focus on leg strength, and the second five minutes at 110 rpm to work on leg speed. It was obvious from perceived exertion that the leg speed portion of the intervals were much harder than the strength portion. The 80 rpm segments were easy and relaxed, where the 110 rpm segments required focus and really made me feel the effort. Keep in mind that the CompuTrainers were set to keep the wattage required the same regardless of the cadence being used.

The perceived exertion wasn’t the only difference visible. Looking at the heart rate info from the workout, it is clearly visible which part of the workout I was in at any time. As leg speed went up so did heart rate, even if the wattage stayed the same.

I’ve read a lot about how low leg speed focuses on muscle strength while higher leg speed focuses on aerobic strength. I’ll admit that this is a fairly intuitive connection, but to have a workout demonstrate the point so clearly was good. It’s one thing to read it and it’s one thing to have your muscles learn it.

As much as this cost, it’s painfully obvious that new tires for my car will cost less per mile than any of the other vehicles I own (human powered or not). It’s good that the Civic no longer drives like the Hyundai Accent I rented last week while in Round Rock, but it would be just as good to still have that cash for a single speed cyclocross bike.

Not that I race cyclocross (yet) but I’ve been wanting a single speed for training rides, and I might as well get one that uses big, fat, expensive tires that only last a few thousand miles while I’m at it.

Completely non-related to this post, but today on Make I saw this patent application for a coffin built into an auger. They’re always trying to find new ways to screw us.

With that in mind, I will probably be riding my road bike indoors this weekend, as temps in Nashville are not going to be nearly as accomodating as this. Neither Saturday or Sunday have a high above freezing, and Saturday may bring additional ice and snowfall. The last thing I need before attempting Snake Creek again is to expose myself to sub-freezing temps and risk getting sick.

So weather. I like what you have planned here. Don’t change a thing.

The plan for the day was an endurance pace on flat to rolling hills for the first hour, then an hour of endurance mixed with tempo (in Brad’s words, halfway between easy endurance, and god-awful threshold) over a hillier route, then another hour of endurance as we rode back the shop. Most of this plan went well.

We rode out Del Rio in a double paceline, talking and taking things easy. A quick turn onto the broken pavement of Old Natchez Trace broke the formation up as everyone worked to avoid the worst of the potholes. After the short gravel section on Temple, we regrouped and headed towards the Natchez Trace Parkway. Some of the faster guys pushed the pace a bit on the first climb coming up from Hwy 100, but most of us were still staying together this early in the ride.

Brad coaxed me into keeping the chain in the big chainring up the climbs to work on leg strength, which I did for the next few miles. Our goal for this ride was mostly endurance paced riding, and I knew that Brad, Les, and a few others with a good sense of discipline would stick to that game plan regardless of what the speedsters chose to do. I tried to do a little of both. Stick with the front group as much as possible while not letting my heart rate and wattage blow up in any single effort.

At a certain point (after the big bridge over 96, but not to Hwy 46) I noticed that our group no longer contained Brad and Les. When we ride as a team we try to remain aware of where everyone is so we stay together as much as possible. I made the group aware that we were missing some riders, and Jay had us soft pedal for a few minutes as he dropped back to find them. When we regrouped a few miles later Brad ribbed us a little about the pace,  “I was following the workout, what were you guys doing?”

So much for discipline. Still, Mark reported that his max heart rate during the ride was only 169, so based on his threshold he was following the workout. He’s just got an aerobic engine that a lot of us don’t.

At the Hwy 46 exit, James Martinez and a few of the newer D-Squad members elected to head back towards Franklin, while the rest of us proceeded to the small town of Fly. The section of the Trace between Leiper’s Fork and Fly is mostly flat with a few long hills of an easy grade. Les (our team mentor/coach) discussed using this stretch to practice chase simulations later in the Spring. We have done this a few times in the past and chasing (or being chased, for that matter) is a great motivator for working at a higher pace, and working together smoothly with your group.

I sat back with Brad as we approached the turnoff to Hwy 7.  He was starting to run out of gas and I knew that we could ride a higher pace if we shared the load of cutting through the wind which had picked up considerably. We turned onto Hwy 7 together and headed downhill into a headwind that had roadside flags standing straight out from the poles. We pedaled down the hill at 200+ watts, barely breaking 18mph, where we would normally be closing in on 40mph on a clear day. A cold mist was also falling, heavy enough to dampen everything and make the temperature feel like it had dropped by ten or more degrees.

The rest of the team was waiting at the Fly General Store, and it was obvious that no one was excited about the 20 miles we still had to ride to get back to the shop. As we downed some food and liquids under the porch, it started to rain in earnest. You could see the reluctance on everyone’s face as conditions worsened. Jay said, “If it were ten degrees warmer I wouldn’t give it a second thought… but this is potentially dangerous.” No one wanted to go back out. It was then that Jonathan mentions, “I live only a mile or so down the road, and I have two pickup trucks that we could use to ferry ourselves back to the shop.” Instantly all but one of us hard, determined cyclists decided to take Jonathan’s offer. Mitch, now nicknamed “The Belgian Boult” decided to ride the remaining 15 miles home.

We rode the longest “mile or so” in the world down Leiper’s Creek Rd to Jonathan’s house in a worsening cold rain. There was no good position in the group to avoid it. Up front and you were first into the wind. Mid-pack and you got a face full of salty road spray that soaked you to the bone in seconds. Finally I saw Jonathan’s mailbox in the distance and moved to the front so no one would miss it. I was so glad to get off of the main road and headed for cover that I sprinted up the soft gravel driveway. Mountain bike skills can come in handy on the road

After dripping a gallon of muddy water on the kitchen floor, and trying in vain to warm up around the gas burners on the stove, we loaded up the trucks and headed back to Franklin. Wet, cold, defeated, but surviving to ride another day. Thanks Jonathan, we owe you one.

Oh yeah. The “Belgian Boult” got picked up as we headed through Leiper’s Fork. He’s officially 10 miles harder than any of us.

I saw this post on Make Magazine’s Blog while sittingn Portland Brew with Daryl and Carolyn from the Mid TN SORBA (southern offroad bicycle association). We met today to discuss rebuilding the www.sorbamidtn.org website in Wordpress.

The Make Magazine article states that the scientists had attempted to calibrate the fusion reactor using a stationary neutron emitter, but it wasn’t accurate enough, hence the toy train, which increased the accuracy ten fold! This is genius at work. The ability to go fr0m high level technological work (calibrating a fusion reactor) to a decidedly low-brow solution (toy train). Sometimes the simplest solution is indeed the best.

Frequently when I find myself stuck looking for a solution to a difficult problem, I need an outside perspective to help crystallize the solution. I wonder if something similar happened here.

Read the original article here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/01/toy_train_used_to_calibrate_fusion.html