Rochester Flyershttp://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/Copyright Rochester FlyerssNewsAlbert and I started our relationship about 13 years ago. Over that time I'm sure we've covered thousands of miles together on the bike. Add to that times we've taken plane rides together, road trips, and times we just hung around. ... Yup, Albert and I have a history together. When I lived in Hawaii, Albert took a trip with me to Big Bear, California to see if I could find work at a (now extinct) mountain bike accessory company. Albert then came along when I moved my small family to Rochester. Albert has gone with us on trips back to Hawaii. Albert even went with us to Florida. Meet Albert: Yeah ... Albert is my old Timbuk2 bag. I Custom ordered Albert when I was working at Island Triathlon. Albert (a Bolo) replaced a Dee-Dog bag I purchased a little earlier, because I needed more space for junk. To be completely honest, this post about Albert was inspired by recent Dirt Rag blog postings about bags. Albert wasn't always named Albert. At first he was just "my bag." When we moved to Rochester, but, before I started working at the bike shop, I worked for a temp agency doing light industrial work. (Hah! Industrial true, but not what I'd call light. It was hard work, plus I would have to put in some 12-14 hr days starting at 5am!) While working there, the uniform I had to wear was from an ex-employee the place had, and the name tag that was on it was? ... Albert. When I quit there to work at the bike shop, I took the name badge off the uniform and sewed it on the bag. From that day on, it has been Albert. Albert has always been my commuter friend. Carrying shoes, clothes, books, computers, papers and really anything I need. Albert only complains when I really load him up. I've carried 12 paks of drink, and then some. I've even put my kids in him. No I havn't put 40lbs of gravel in him. But only because I've never had the need to. But here's a typical day's load for Albert. It includes my heart rate monitor case, iPod, pants, arm & knee warmers, cool weather gloves, a skull cap, waterproof helmet cover, blinky light, cell phone, u-lock, safety pins, footbag, food, coffee and a Gideons New Testament-Psalms-Proverbs (Gideons Bible). Some days there's more cycling and/or work clothes, shoes, rain gear and other stuff. But Albert's fine with all that. Here's to Albert, my friend and companion.Thu, 15 May 2008 14:20:18 +0000http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/my-most-consistant-riding-companion/http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/my-most-consistant-riding-companion/Posts have become less frequent over the last month or so. There's a couple of reasons. I've been pretty busy at work lately. That's the big one. More work means less time to post. Simple right. Well the other reason is that I'm riding more. Finding time to ride is tough. In order to spend as much time as I can with the fam, work, and still be able to enjoy other aspects of life (yes, there is more to life than cycling. Not much, but there is). In order to achieve this I schedule my riding in ways to take up the least amount of 'other' time. This means dawn patrol rides where I wake up at 5-5:30 to get out for a ride before work, and lunch time rides. Some days I attempt to do both. Morning and lunch rides are great, 'cept they are fairly short. Relatively short. Most road races are about 40-60 miles in length. At 20 mph that's 2-3 hours. If all I did was lunch and morning rides, my longest rides in training would be an hour and 15 minutes. So my endurance would not be that great for even these events. But then throw in an Almanzo, or a century ride and I'd be toast. So the plan is to do the group ride thing a couple times a month. There's a couple to choose from in Rochester. Monday and Wednesday evenings there are RASC rides. These rides have an easy and a moderate pace groups that vary in length. These are great especially if you are new to group riding or just want an easy spin and be social. VeloRochester has ongoing scheduled group rides on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. I think Tuesdays are supposed to be fast paced on a route that changes each month. Wednesdays are supposed to be slightly slower and the route is decided at ride time. Both rides regroup, though Tuesdays only for the first half of the ride. VeloRochester and RASC both have weekend rides, though thier message boards are used to coordinate those. I've heard that there's also a ride that goes out of Erik's bike shop. But I haven't gotten info on (or ridden with them) yet. But really, I get my distance riding in on the weekends. If I can get out early enough (rarely) I can get up to 75 miles in on Saturday (though I haven't done it yet) and depending on Sundays schedule I may even get in another 50. So what's this all lead up to? Well, I guess a check in of my training load. To refresh, I'm using TrImp (training impulse) to quantify my training workload by heart rate zones. I set a schedule with a goal TrImp score for each week and attempt to do that goal. TrImp scores are a combination of intensity (how hard I worked my heart rate) and duration (how long I was out training). On the above chart (click it for a big version) we are currently in the last week (#7 with no score). What's interesting is that we can see weeks that I overshot the goal because we had some nice days in winter and I was able to get out for a decent ride, as well as see weeks where real life or illness got in the way of training. But as a whole I've been on track. But this doesn't show how fit or strong I am. but I think thats a topic for another post later. Some extra notes: if you use the search box you can find more posts I've written about TrImp. I need to send my Garmin Edge cyclocomputer in to see if it's covered under warranty which probabbly means I wont be able to keep track of my training data for a couple of weeks when that happens. So I guess I'll wait till after Almanzo to send it in. And finally I feel fitter on the bike than I have in a couple of years. Weather it's true or if any racing results will come of it is yet to be seen. But it's a good feeling.Wed, 14 May 2008 11:05:48 +0000http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/training-year-to-date/http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/training-year-to-date/In 10 days I'll be on a journey. Maybe I'll discover myself on this journey. More than likely, I'll discover pain. I really don't know the last time I rode 100 (one hundred) miles in a day. I beleive it may have been the Honolulu Century Ride in 1995. Now I'm doing one on gravel, using a fixed wheel bike. A fixedgear bike! No coasting. No making it easier on climbs. Single speed. Sound dumb to you? Trueth be told, when I think about it, it really does seem pretty stupid. But I'm still doing it. The goal is to finish. Well I guess that's the main goal. Secondary is the fact that it's a race and I want to win. See, you don't enter a race without racing to win. At least that's the way I look at it. Of course I'm not going to go out and attack on the first hill and ride solo for the rest of the ride. That's just being stupid. Well, actually maybe it's not. There will be no way for anyone behind to know how far ahead a leader is except by sight. So if you can break away and be strong enough to get out of sight fast enough, anyone else may not bother to chase and really only race for second place. This would entail putting in a huge effort at the beginning for maybe 45 minutes to an hour, then keeping a steady pace without loseing time the rest of the race. It could work. More realistic is the stay in a decent group without letting any leader or group get out of sight at least till the halfway point. Then slowly ramping up the pace a little bit at a time to shed some riders. And keeping the hardest effort for the final 20 miles or so. How it really works out is anyones guess. The pack could just split completely apart before the halfway mark, and it would then be like how I remember some of the old mountain bike races. Just picking off riders as you pass, and attempt to keep others from passing you. The drawback is that you'll be battling the wind alone, and that would suck. Even if you ride with a slower rider for a while, as long as they take some pulls, you get a break from the wind that will keep you fresher for longer. I don't quite know my water stratagy yet. Do I carry all I need from the start? Or do I stop at convience stores and fill up along the way. Water is pretty heavy, yet I don't want to run out. Seems like everyone ran out at some point in 2007. I'm pretty conservative when it comes to tools and spares (comes from mountain bike racing where you need to do it all your self), so I'll have the recomended 2 spare tubes, pump, co2 cartridges, allen wrenches, patch kit, tire boot made from a section of old tire, chain tool, extra bits of chain and a 15 mm wrench for the track nuts. That should cover it. I still havn't figured out the food situation yet either. Probably PBJ sammaches, dried fruit, home made energy gel, bananas, oatmeal bars and maybe some brownies. Bike setup will be orange fixed. I got a 28c Turbo/S tire on the rear. I think that'll be cushy enough. I may add something under the bar tape up front, and even though I don't like to ride with gloves, I think I will for this. Just for the extra padding. I'm still really hoping for dry conditions. I may not even ride if it's raining at the start. Or I may start and pull off at 20 miles or so if the tires start to sink or pack up. Looks like I'm just about ready. Are You?Thu, 08 May 2008 12:45:11 +0000http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/rides-races-events/countdown-to-almanzo-100/http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/rides-races-events/countdown-to-almanzo-100/Fat Cyclist has been blogging for a while. Usually humorous his posts reflect what most riders experience in riding. But lately things have changed. His wife Susan has been battleing cancer, but now it seems the cancer has moved into the brain. The only real option is to go through radiation therapy and even with that, the cancer will return. The only treatment option we have open to us now, the oncologist said, is radiation therapy. And after that’s done, Susan will be better for a few months, but then the tumors will come back, and the brain can’t take another dose of radiation like that. So, absent a miracle, Susan only has months to live.I can only begin to understand the emotions that they are going through. The fact that they have kids only make the story that much more sad. So Eldon (the Fat Cyclist) and his family are also in my thoughts and prayers lately. And these things really put into perspective life, work, play and cycling. Hug the kids more, snuggle with the wife more, because we really don't know what tomorrow will bring. Wed, 07 May 2008 12:07:35 +0000http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/another-cyclistblogger-in-my-thoughts-and-prayers/http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/another-cyclistblogger-in-my-thoughts-and-prayers/"Wear your damn helmet!" In case you didn't know Tim Jackson (aka: Masi Guy) crashed pretty hard racing in the velodrome. Looks like he's pretty happy he was wearing a helmet. Confession time, I didn't wear mine this morning to work. This is cause I left it at work last night. See at quitting time, I decided to call the limo to take me home due to lightnining ripping accross the sky, and the deluge of rain pouring from the heavens. Of course I packed everything in my bag and forgot to pick up my helmet off my desk. ... sigh ... This morning I got up at silly o'thirty in the morning to get in some dawn patrol before work. I even started rolling down the street, then thought "Something's not right. Hey I don't have my helmet on." I immediatly turned around and went home to search. I didn't find it cause it's at work. But it's not a bad thing. In fact the best thing was; that this gave me the excuse to crawl back into bed and get some extra snuggles before having to get ready for the day. But anyway I'm hoping and praying for a speedy recovery for Tim.Wed, 07 May 2008 09:02:03 +0000http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/masi-guy-says/http://ww2.rochesterflyers.com/blog/masi-guy-says/