Fun weekend of riding

I had a good week of riding, getting on the bike (trainer mostly) every day except Friday. On Saturday I rode 48 relatively chill miles: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2432720

I started out on the Saturday 7am hammerfest ride, but saw one of my teammates pull off and stop. He was pretty sick (maybe food poisoning or virus). I felt pretty good, but was actually looking for an excuse to take it easier than keeping up (trying to keep up) with the fast guys, since I was racing the next day. I don't think I have the experience and hard miles in my legs to do well in tough rides on back to back days. We'll see this season!

I did the same ride last Saturday, but I drove to the start instead of riding to the start. It was tough, but short at 34 miles. Riding up Beach Drive through Rock Creek Park to the start and back afterward added 14 miles. Take a look at the map on the above link and you'll see the winding (flat) route through Rock Creek Park. What's cool is that on the way back about 75% of that route is closed to cars so there was no traffic except for runners and other cyclists enjoying the unseasonably warm weather.

I woke up feeling sick on Sunday morning. I felt "off" the night before and it got worse in the morning. I couldn't finish my oatmeal and my stomach was bothering me. I had this fear that I quickly got what my teammate had the day before. Probably unlikely?

What was cool is that my Mom came out to watch the race! It was her first one and it was great that the weather was nice. I warmed up and felt decent then about missed the 9:30am start when I went to use the bathroom at 9:25am.

I was able to set up my Garmin to automatically record a lap each time I crossed the start/finish line so I could compare laps. It is a cool function. There are a few different options, but I set it up so that the "lap point" is wherever I initially hit "start" to start recording data. It worked perfectly.

The main stats from the race were: 20.32 miles, 50:19, 24.2 mph average, 168 bpm heartrate average, 185 max. As you could imagine, the last lap was the fastest at 26.9 mph and my heartrate average 178 for that 3 minute and 2 second lap.

Here is the link to the ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2432754 Once you open up the link click on the tabs below to see the different data values and then the "splits" tab in the upper right to see all the laps.

Overall the race went well. I did better than I thought based on how I felt in the morning and riding 48 miles the day before. I was actually contemplating not racing because of my stomach, but I'm really glad I did. I didn't put in a solo attack like last time, but I was able to hang a lot closer to the front in the last quarter mile or so rush to the line in the last lap. I kind of faded at the end in the previous race. I'm not sure what place I finished in, probably in the top 20 or 25.

I'm hoping to go in a break or solo next week, the last practice race before a race break over the 3/22 weekend and then the start of the season at Jeff Cup on 3/29.

This is a short video of our race: http://www.vimeo.com/3527528 You can kind of see me at around 20-25 seconds over on the far right side of the frame. I've got a red & white jersey on with white and black Garmin shorts and charcoal helmet. One of my teammates (not in a team jersey) crashed at the end and the video shows it. He was in the white jersey. I don't know who was at fault, but it looks like the pink guy went a little too far to his right and came back onto the course into the guy in the white jersery (Mike).

After the race I had Cezanne drop me off in a predetermined spot that I picked out, so I could ride my bike to Annapolis. It worked out perfectly. It was about 20 miles and took me a little over an hour. Cezanne and I had lunch with my Mom and then we left to head back to Alexandria for my Retul fitting. Busy day. Here is the Annapolis ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/2433180

It was beautiful. The temperature was perfect and the country roads through Davidsonville were great roads with infrequent traffic. The above pic is of those Davidonsville roads from when I rode there in the fall. I didn't stop this time to take a pic. They are great roads, just need to be smart about looking back and checking for the occassional car, especially going around a sharp right hand turn.

I didn't get any pics from the Retul fitting, but I have to say I was a little bit underwhelmed. I was the 7th of 8 fittings that day, so I'm sure the guy was a little worn out. The "zin" tool wasn't working, but he promised to get it working then contact everyone to do it free of charge. The zin uses the system to give pinpoint measurements of all the major points on the bike so you can replicate your position if you get a new bike or change equipment. The zin part was the least important though. The important part was the marking devices on my wrist, elbow, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle and ball of my foot that recorded all my angles through 15 second pedaling capture periods. The 3D movement and relationship of all those markings provides the basis for analysis.

The end result is that my saddle was raised about 4-5mm and then brought forward a bit to compensate for the fact that as you move the seatpost up the saddle moves back slightly relative to the bottom bracket. Mom, I hope you're reading this, it probably makes zero sense :)

That was the only adjustment! Which isn't a bad thing. It kind of confirmed some stuff for me. I thought that I might need to stretch out and lean forward more (maybe a longer stem or less spacers), but he said that my hip angle was good and actually just a few degrees more leaned over than the middle of the optimal range, but I was still in the optimal range.

He showed me on the computer readout how my knee angle changed (into the optimal range) when he raised the saddle and he also showed how my knee had less lateral movement as well when we raised the saddle. He said that that was a natural thing because now that the leg extension was in the optimum range, my knee wasn't looking for more room (which it found laterally by slightly kicking out) at the top of my pedal stroke.

He's going to be emailing everyone all their angles and readouts from the fitting at some point this week.

Overall I think it was a good thing, a slight adjustment and verification that I was doing things about right.

Long post, wish I had more pictures!