It's great to ride...

It's been so great to get some miles in recently. My daughter is with her mother for a little camping trip, so I've had the past few days "free" to ride. I had a nice ride at home after work on Thursday and then on Friday I was feeling good so I rode hard at lunch and then did another hard ride from the office after work. Today I did one of the smaller but faster local group rides and had a good time. My legs were very tired from the double day on Friday, so it took a long time for them to warm up and they were missing a little bit of the snap- especially on the one challenging climb for the ride. After things regrouped a bit, I got my legs back- more or less- and settled into the group.

The last portion of the ride culminates in a series of easy rollers that set up the final sprint. It's a sprint that I know like the back of my hand and have a history of doing well in- it just suits my style of sprinting. The group stayed relatively intact and then about a mile or so from the sprint, a small group broke things up and I chased onto the group and sat on as best I could- which was not all that easy. Things came slightly back together just before the sprint and I found myself taking a pull in a spot I didn't want to, so I took a short pull and worked my way back into the shelter of the pack. It was right about then that the first attacks in the sprint happened and I had to back out of the group and move from the right side of the road and out to the left into the sprinting group. It took some effort, but I made it in and then launched my sprint. Things looked really good and I thought I had it for sure- and I think I would've- until my chain dropped off to the outside of the big ring as I was trying to get my 11t wound up. Sadly, that is why SRAM is now making a new, stiffer version of the big ring used on the Red group. I have the new ring to test out, but have lazily not installed it yet.

Still, even with the slight mechanical, I had a great ride and was really pleased that I was able to recover from the hard efforts earlier and have the legs to sprint well. I'm still just inching my way back to being stronger, but each little step like this sure feels good. Hopefully I'll have better sprinting legs at the track on Tuesday night. Would be nice to finish one of the races with a "podium" or a win.

Tomorrow is hopefully gonna be a nice long day of 100+ miles and further building of base fitness and endurance. The legs are super tired right now, but after a rest I hope they recover. Had a nice big meal of pasta with chicken sausage for dinner, so hopefully I'll have enough carbs and proteins to endure the day tomorrow.

Hope you are having your own epic weekend- with or without your bike.

Tim

Working my way back

It seems like almost a hundred years since my crash last April and all the recovery from the injuries. Over the past several months I have hit many obstacles and setbacks- mostly in the form of work and lots of travel. My body itself has been healing much better than I ever dreamed. The knee doesn't bother me at all when I ride- if anything, the other knee bothers me. The right arm still doesn't fully straighten, but I am beginning to learn how to cope with it. The neck, fractured in three places along with the fracture of my skull, is still stiff and sore when I ride much of the time, but I contribute that to so much muscle/ strength loss from wearing the neck brace for 2 months. The thumb... with that ugly reattached tip... is nearly completely healed now. It isn't a pretty thumb or nail, but it is closer to "normal" and fully functional again.

The night of the crash on April 29th, I was feeling super strong. Not the best I've ever felt, but certainly the strongest I've felt in several years. I could feel that a win was coming and I was excited. Also, on the night of the crash, I weighed a more respectable 205 lbs. By the time I left the hospital the second time in mid May, I had dropped to 184lbs. Just last month, in December, I had ballooned up to just over 225lbs. After a visit to my doctor for a blood test found that my cholesterol is too high- like it probably has been for the past 6 years- I decided that all of the waiting for a break in my schedule was going to have to be thrown out and I was going to ride again and at least give myself an even better shot at a longer life. I'm still watching my diet and taking my Prevachol, but I have gotten back on the bike as well. In the past 4 weeks or so, I've really only missed 3-4 days of riding. Granted, much of this riding ranges from a simple spin on the rollers with my fixed gear for an hour to 2 hour rides on the weekends... but it's a far cry from almost NO riding over the previous 4 months.

Today, according to MapMyRide.com, I managed to get out for 68.64 miles ridden in about 4hrs 20min along the coast and up and down the numerous hills along the way. It's not exactly like doing a scorching team training ride or group ride, but for me it is a big day. When I reached what would have been the half way point for a 35-40 mile ride, I decided that I still felt pretty good and just kept rolling. Again... it's not like I was blasting along at race pace or anything, but I was riding for longer than I had set out to ride. I had hoped to ride for 4-5 hours today, but the realist buried way, way, way down deep in me thought it impossible. I'm as tired as I can be right now, but I am extremely happy about my ride. And, if my legs arenot so totally cooked that I can't walk in the morning, I'm going out again for a much shorter 1-2 hrs to get the kinks out.

My "official" team picture, taken about 2 weeks before the crash on 4/29.

My retake of the picture today, after my ride- not exactly April's fitness, but improving.

The thumb... still a little misshapen, but FAR better than it looked a few months ago.

It's a long way to go before I am in race shape again, but I am closer now than I was in December- and frankly, that's a damned good feeling.

I hope you had a great day of riding too.

Tim

Her maiden voyage...

Today, the Masidaughter was feeling much better. Her fever has been gone since about Saturday afternoon and all that time confined to being indoors with Daddy was too much for her (and Daddy), so we headed out the door and got her a new helmet and gloves from my good friends at Adams Avenue. Once home, I finally got Kate's new Adams Trail-A-Bike built and ready to ride! My good friends (and distributor of Masi in Canada) at Norco helped me acquire the new bike for my li'l punkin'.

She was happy!

And so was Daddy.

She liked going fast once she got used to the feeling of riding without training wheels... though some might state that I should still have training wheels... but those people should hush...

We rode around the neighborhood for just about an hour to help her get used to the feeling of riding with me. It is my hope that this will serve as an introduction to the sense of balance of riding on two (three, actually) wheels. Then she'll have an easier time riding her own bike without training wheels and she'll have the added benefit of having the understanding of riding among cars and won't have that as a fear... I hope.

Regardless, it was fun and it made my heart beat a little faster... and not just from the added workout of lugging her weight and the trail-a-bike weight around. My son had one when he was much younger too, so it was trip down happy memory lane.

Ride on!

Tim