Thinking of next year already?

Just gonna leave this here.....

Ugh, I know. I am not sure if I'll be able to even do the tri I'm signed up for.

Well from the looks of what you've done with running there should be no problem there and obv the bike is a non-issue. Just get in that pool!

When is the race?

Just to put it in perspective based on what you did this weekend, the Ironman bike leg is 110 miles. Kinda makes me feel a bit sick!

Yeah I just don't know when to find time. I did find out though that there is a group that does open water swim practices at the lake the triathalon is at (they also do brick exercises)

June.

Sure and all I have to do first is swim 2.5 miles, ride my 110 miles, and then run a marathon! Piece of cake.

More or less my usual local loop. Took a slight detour to break up the into-the-wind segments because the wind was quite brutal. Phone gave out half way so I didn't get to listen to audio books the whole time

Lap 3 was going soooo well (averaging over 21mph for much of it) and then I turned smack into the wind.

http://app.strava.com/activities/47279511#
Time: 1:13
Distance: 22.2 mi
Avg Power: 203 (233)
Avg HR: didn't have HRM on, who cares
Avg Speed: 17.6 mph

Easy ride with some folks from the austin cycling association. My usual sat/sun rides have dried up - the guy who runs them has been having back problems I think, it might be the end of those rides more or less. Dude is in his 60s at least and this may keep him down for a while, I guess we'll see. He had a heart attack (on a ride!) last year though, and bounced back so who knows.

Anyway, it was pretty relaxed - I didn't have my bike computer on me but I used my phone:
http://app.strava.com/activities/47503210#

Pretty windy, nice temps (55-65 whole ride)

Oh there was one really awesome moment on the ride that was fun. We had our stop at the half way point and then started heading back. One of the guys just *took off* when we got to a long straight stretch, on a tri-bike, down in the aero bars into the wind. He gained a good bit on us, maybe 1/4 to a 1/3 of a mile, I could still see him but he was far up there. We were coming up to a re-group point so I decided to try to catch him.

I was already riding into the wind at a pretty good pace but I shifted up two gears and put the hammer down, poured everything I had into it, and caught him. It was awesome. I think I surprised him when I pulled up next to him.

If you look at the strava map you can see it on the "performance" tab, right around mile 35.5. I go from an average of like 18 to about 22-23 for about a mile and then drop back down when I catch him and we enter the edge of the town we were going to stop in.

Had a similar experience today when I got passed by a guy wearing a pointy helmet and riding on his aero bars. He must have been about 60 so I thought "**** this I'm not letting him get away". I powered back to him and hung on to his back wheel for a grand total of about 30 seconds. Goddam old-timers.

Are the roads you ride on as straight as they look? American maps always look weird to me because everything's so straight and 'planned'. Maps in the UK are all over the place with random winding roads everywhere.

which one?

I hate these helmets so much. They're such a shorthand way of saying HI I AM DOUCHEBAG.

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Yeah, probably. And it's not quite so much "planned" as it is "these roads didn't exist until like 1960". A lot of british roads, I gather, were placed over roads that had existed for centuries in one form or another. And generally your stuff is closer together than ours. Last saturday I rode 65 miles through 3 different towns and if you exclude the parts where I live, those towns totalled up to probably less than 10k people.

The Lake Pflugerville sprint triathalon.

So this afternoon I mowed the lawn and decided it was time to tear down the "playscape" in the back yard. It's been like 2 years since the boy has bothered with it, it was getting increasingly decrepit, it's a pain to mow around, it breeds wasps and ants, etc. So I tear that down while the wife and boy are taking a walk and she comes back and is like "holy crap, that was fast" and she gets a little misty eyed thinking about when he was little(r).

We go to this asian buffet place for dinner and I am ravenous. It was recently renamed and redecorated and is trying to foist itself off as an upscale japanese place, but also all you can eat. It is exactly the same place it was before.

I am so starving that I can barely make it back to the table before I start eating. I destroy lives and scare waiters. Before I've even polished off a plate a distinguished older japanese dude and his wife come in and sit down and I'm like, ****, this guy wanted to come to a japanese place (lol) and have a nice dinner and he's going to have to watch a greasy american tear into piles of crawfish and short ribs.

But no, he comes back with an enormous heap of snow crab legs and noisily cracks and sucks on those with an intensity that awes even me. This guy and I are best friends and we don't even know each other, we could/should go to every buffet in town and eat everything without even looking up. We'll nod to each other when it's over, put on our hats and walk off in different directions. Rain begins to fall lightly.

Another ACA group ride. I am thinking of trying an "A" pace ride or a non-ACA ride sometimes, the B/C rides are too slow. Sometimes that's fine, often it's frustrating. It would be nice to get pushed a bit more.

http://app.strava.com/activities/47698707
Time: 1:56
Distance: 31.5 mi
Avg Power: 160 (190)
Avg HR: ?
Avg Speed: 16.2 mph

I came to a weird realization today. There is a set of rides that lead from a set location in austin, that I got to every now and again. Probably rode out of there 5-6 times. It took me until now to realize that 2 of the riders are married and a 3rd is the dad of the woman in the couple. I honestly would never have guessed.

Meant to ride to work today but I needed to go to the eye doctor so I rode after work instead. It's totes sweet though, I will have legit prescription sunglasses in a week or so, no more of this sunglasses with eyeglass inserts in them, which blow.

So today was hot, by early spring standards, about 85-88F when I got home. Was kinda dreading that but it was super windy so I never actually felt hot although I did sweat like crazy. I felt good and strong and was really looking forward to riding. 30 miles is really just cake these days, I didn't eat anything or stop and rest at all, etc.

Time: 1:49
Distance: 30 mi
Avg Power: 176 (202)
Avg HR: 140
Avg Speed: 16.6 mph

Ahaha I was browsing around in strava. A guy I work with does some bike racing and I knew his son, who is 19-20ish does also. Strava randomly recommended I check out the son's page so I go in there.

He's banging out 250-350 mile weeks like it's nothing. ****in kids.

And because this is texas, yesterday was sunny at 88 and today is raining and 48. Probably won't be able to ride today at all unless it clears up some, which it isn't looking like it will. I probably won't be able to get in 250 miles this week but will still have a tough weekend.

Blah. Kinda cold, very windy. Still setting personal records on the regular so I guess it's OK.

http://app.strava.com/activities/48227982
Time: 1:37
Distance: 27.5 mi
Avg Power: 183 (212)
Avg HR: 143
Avg Speed: 16.8 mph

Raced home from work so I could change and get going, I only had about 2.5-3 hours before it got dark and I hate getting caught out in the dark. Went fine, pretty happy with the pace, really thought I'd break 18 mph but there were a few climbs on the way back that slowed me down pretty good.

Was *so hungry* when I got home, since it was about 8pm so I was not only late for dinner but had just finished 1500 kcal of exercise. Went to the store and loaded up the cart, for a minute I almost thought I had left my wallet at home and was seriously going to rage if I had, but I had it and I was fine. I started eating on the way home.

http://app.strava.com/activities/48379614
Time: 2:18
Distance: 40.7 mi
Avg Power: 190
Avg HR: 139
Avg Speed: 17.7 mph

Now I only need to ride 150 mile this weekend!

Hi fish! good job staying with this! Keep it up imo

Thinking about riding to Lockhart tomorrow, eating BBQ and then riding back. I found a route that looks safe enough and it comes out to almost exactly 100 miles (99.9)

My knee hurts, probably won't ride at all today. If it feels OK tomorrow I'll do as much as I can.

Good solid weekend ride, in a B-pace group. Felt very comfortable with the pace, I could probably do an A-pace ride. Will probably try one sometime soon. Knee felt fine.

Time: 3:31
Distance: 60 mi
Avg Power: 174 (213)
Avg HR: 138
Avg Speed: 17.1 mph

Haven't rode at all since sunday. Bike is in the shop, I get it back tomorrow. Might do one little ride around the neighborhood to make sure it's all ok.

I ordered some actual prescription sunglasses and I may get those before this weekend also, which would be nice. I have a set now that is sunglasses with a glasses insert inside. They look awful, they're not close enough to my face to block wind really well, and they have terrible peripheral vision.

MS150 is this weekend, taking off friday and monday just because. I plan to do the max, which is about 180 miles. I used to think that was basically impossible. When I first heard of the MS150 I thought for sure I was misunderstanding, no way people were riding from houston to austin. That's kind of a pain to drive.

Took the bike out for a shakedown ride since I got it back from the shop today. Everything looks pretty good, it's shifting better than it has since it was new, probably. They also cleaned the **** out of it which makes me feel bad for how dirty it gets.

Everything feels good, I'm leaving tomorrow afternoon for Houston. I think I'm going to try out this android app that reports your position to a google map at regular intervals, and people can check out where you are. Thought it might be fun. If it works OK I'll use it on the Tour du Rouge in may. I'll probably post the link in here.

This weekend was the MS150. A short (?) trip report follows. First the stats:

http://app.strava.com/activities/50006381
Time: 5:56
Distance: 102 mi
Avg Power: 178 (200)
Avg HR: 151
Avg Speed: 17.8 mph (don't believe strava's avg speed there, it is lies)

http://app.strava.com/activities/50006326
Time: 3:47
Distance: 70 mi (strava says 66, I had the bike computer off for half of the 2nd to last segment)
Avg Power: 141 (170)
Avg HR: 132
Avg Speed: 17.4 mph (this I think is close to correct)

Some funny observations:
* I saw a dude get on the bus to houston with his fixie and loled a little bit. I saw him on the course today, in jean shorts and a t-shirt. Dude definitely trying to make some kind of statement I guess.

* I saw so much funny apparel - like people who got wrangled into this ride but had never done much riding before maybe. I saw a dude yesterday in jeans and a sweatshirt. It must have been awful.

* Both days started cold and lots of people dressed warm (so did I). Most people shed the layers by lunch or earlier but man, some of these people stayed dressed in winter gear all day, as it climbed to 70 degrees+. It looked miserable.

* I saw the usual collection of stunt bikes - an "elliptigo" which is an elliptical machine running sort of a scooter, a commuter unicycle (these things have enormous tires, like maybe 40"), a tandem recumbent, a bicycle powered by hands only (dude had braces on his legs, probably a severe injury or disability). Not all of these people made it, I suspect.

* I don't understand the mindset of some people. A lot of the time cyclists are taking the whole lane (which is fine). There is room for 3-4 virtual bike lanes in one lane. If there is no one to your right, and you are going no faster than traffic around you, move to the right. If you don't do that, but someone comes up behind you, and says "passing on the left" or something like that, come on, get over. Don't make them go around you.

* I saw several wrecks, one of them today I saw just after it happened. Dude was still on the ground, no EMS there yet, just people standing around protecting him and making phone calls. Did not look good. Most of the ones I saw looked ok, broken arms/collarbones. One looked like maybe he was hit or run off the road by a car. I saw SO MANY near crashes or very minor ones (where the person got up OK right away). I guess with 15,000-20,000 bikes it's bound to happen

So first off, I busted my ASS for the first 50 miles of day 1. I sort of mosied the first bit, because it's so crowded, and then I caught up with someone on my team that I recognized, grabbed on to her wheel, and rode it all the way to the lunch stop. We averaged about 21-22 mph for that stretch and my HR was in the 160s for a lot of it (I'm usually in the high 140s). It was fun but also a little humbling - she wasn't even working that hard.

After lunch we proceeded as normal except that the woman I was following dropped me right away in the hills. Another guy from the team stuck with me for a while but then begged off and slowed down. The terrain got much more hilly, I got tired and slowed down. My front derailleur also went out of whack and I was basically stuck in my low front gear for the last 10 miles, which was mostly OK because it was pretty hilly.

2nd day we took off in a group and I hung with them until the first stop - most of them did not stop but I did to have someone fix my bike, which they did. I hopped back on and caught up to most of those guys before the 2nd stop, which I skipped. I ended up passing them, though, so I got to lunch before all but a few on my team (who were barelling through, no stops, going pretty fast. Those guys finished the whole damn thing very early). (Heh, actually according to the strava page I got to lunch at like 9am) I ate lunch and was getting ready to go when I saw that I had a flat. So I bought a tube and replaced it and by the time I was done a few team mates had shown up so I sat down with them and was going to leave with them when they were done. Then more showed up... we ended up at lunch for like an hour. We left as a group from there and stuck together the rest of the day, accreting (sp?) team members as we went on, until we had a group of 15 or so. We hit all the stops and stayed at them for kind of long periods, hoping to pick up more team members. This made me kind of antsy but what can you do, it's kind of part of joining a team for one of these things. We did wait at the last stop FOREVER because the guy running the team wanted us to get photos riding into the finish line together as a team.

When we got back to austin beer was handed out and then there was a lot of cat-herding trying to get us all to the photo op location. We finally got that done, had some more beer and pizza, and then I went home.

Overall I feel great, not really tired at all, today's ride was very easy because of the relaxed pace and yesterday's was not too bad, although I had the typical sorenesses by the end (bottoms of my feet, neck/shoulders, and my ass got pounded - I have bruises)

Awesome TR, sounds like an epic ride.

I know what you mean about the waiting around. We had tons of stops on our big ride this weekend because we were coordinating three separate groups, so as well as the general waiting around for the slower riders there were plenty of technical issues. Took us about 2 hours to do the first 20 miles!

Love the image I get of all the people who've signed up for it and have no idea what they've actually signed up for.