J is for jersey

I started cycling in earnest in 1973. But I was strictly a tee shirt cyclist. I never owned a cycling jersey until 2003 when my brother-in-law gave me one as a retirement gift. So when I did my first CrossRoads tour, I had two jerseys and I did not bring the gift jersey with me. I wore running jerseys every day, saving the CrossRoads jersey for team days. Now I have a whole drawer-full of cycling jerseys. The photo is the 2014 special edition jersey for staff. Note that Team CrossRoads is on the side of the jersey. 

2013 is now in the books. I pedaled 5,041 miles this year. It was a bit more than the last two years but far short of the 7,500 miles of 2010. The longest ride was back in March at 66 miles when I rode in Arizona with friends. I cycled on 202 days for an average of 25 miles per outing. Long rides are no longer my thing as I no longer have to prepare for the long days of a tour. The fastest daily average was 23.1 mph, when a strong tailwind pushed me to the first SAG on the way to Guymon. 

The sun sets on 2013.  Happy 2014 to everyone!

Rumbling, stumbling, bumbling

Chris Berman of ESPN made this term famous in his football highlights show. Commentators have also applied the term to our president's conferences (whatever happened to his famous speaking ability, anyway?).  The term also applies to my running in the soft sand here at the beach. I was never good in the soft sand during high school. My school was six blocks from the ocean and the cross country team did many of their workouts there. But I am enjoying the heck out of myself. I even felt like a real runner for a few hundred yards the other day. 

Beautiful sunrises every morning. 

I is for indoor cycling

I was waiting until it snowed in Denver to do this topic. Then the title would have been ice and indoor cycling. But, I am now in Mexico and have been doing spin class with the resort. Pepe has been the trainer for 12 years and I have been doing the class with him since 2005. It is a chance to get a great workout while on vacation. 

I will now be elsewhere in Mexico for two weeks. I plan to get in lots of swimming, walking, kayaking, core, and some running. Salud!

G and H is for good habits

How do you develop good habits?  I think that you have to set a goal and then set up little steps or goals to reach the big goal. It will take time. Along the way, mis-steps can be avoided. 

I will have to think some more about what is next in developing themes for this little alphabet blog. So it may be awhile before I write again. I will also be on vacation soon. My vacation was one of the reasons for developing a cross training habit. I do not to lose fitness while away from the bike. 

The first photo is from today's ride. It was in the mid 40s and cloudy. Never was cold, even into the headwind. The second photo was from the weekend. I went past the football stadium both days. It is amazing that hundreds are already tailgating five hours before the game started. 

F is for friends

It is a beautiful weekend here in Colorado. I was pedaling up the dam today when a fellow pulled alongside and we started to talk about how wonderful a sport cycling is. I told him I have met so many good friends over the past few years. One of them is Jim Heller. We met on my first CrossRoads tour in 2005.  We had lunch together in Los Angeles and a fast friendship started. We rode together on most days. Jim and I have stayed in touch over the years, meeting in Indiana for the hilly hundred ride, riding down the west coast in 2010, meeting in Kansas while I have been on the staff, and going to baseball games in Denver. 

Sports brings us together. Paul is a friend of 50 years. We competed against each other in grade school basketball, ran together in high school cross country and track, roomed together during college summers while body surfing and playing volleyball, and now golf and run together. Paul coached a girl's cross country team to its third consecutive Colorado state championship yesterday. Congratulations to Paul and his teams!

The photo is of Jim Heller and me during his visit this summer. Long live great friendships!

E is for eat well

This is the last of my desired goals when I thought about it two weeks ago. Actually, it has long been a goal. Everyone knows that nutrition is important but few put it into practice each and every day. My goal is fewer sweets and more fruits and vegetables. I also need to kick the caffeine habit which I get through diet coke. I do not drink it much, but it really interferes with my sleep patterns. 

Yesterday's workout was a two mile run, a one-half mile swim, and a 2.5 mile walk. Today's photo is from the walk taken just four miles from the house. I feel really fortunate to live in Colorado. 

D is for descending

The bike skill that I am most lacking in is descending. I am generally OK if the road is open. I have never enjoyed descents but developed a near phobia after two high-speed wobbles in 2011. So, I am working to overcome this fear. It will be a little difficult in coming months as the cold weather intensifies the chill factor on a descent. I definitely do not want to shiver and lose bike control. 

My first challenge was on Saturday. As Larry and I rounded a corner to begin a descent, a substantial crosswind hit us and was moving us on the road. I thought "let's see how the new bike handles in this wind."  I went down into the drops for better control (totally against my instincts) and let it go. After the ride, I checked the Garmin and saw that I reached 38 mph, my highest speed of the year. The bike held a perfect line. This will go a long way to developing my confidence. 

After a few freezes, most of the flowers in the garden are now toast. The hummingbirds that feast on these agastache flowers left about five weeks ago.  I will miss the flowers and the hummingbirds. 

C is also for cadence

Another one of my goals during the winter is to increase my cadence. I bought a cadence monitor last month. It was quite revealing to see how slow my cadence actually is. I looked up some drills and they are quite difficult to achieve. But all the advice says to keep working at it. And I will. One of the things I have discovered is how fatiguing it was to the leg muscles to increase cadence. I have adjusted to that part. 

The photo is of the South Platte River along the bike path this week. The stream flow is still quite high, more than a month after the flooding. The creek feeding the lake out of the mountains is still high for this time of the year too. 

C is also for core

Another of my training goals for this winter is to strengthen my core. Trainers have stressed the importance of a strong core for a long time. Even though I knew this, putting it into practice has been another story. Let's face it, crunches are boring. A new book came out earlier this year. It is titled "Tom Danielson's Core Advantage."  I have always liked Tommy D's interviews on television. He is funny and honest. I bought the book in February but used the exercises infrequently. I've learned that a strong core is  so much more than crunches. For the past few weeks, I have gotten back into the exercises and feel so much more balanced as a result. So here's to a strong core for everyone. 

The photo is of me and Tommy D.

C is for cross-training

The time of the year has come when cycling outdoors can be an iffy proposition.  In fact, we had the first accumulation of snow this morning.  It will still be pleasant enough to cycle this afternoon, but I will instead do a little running.  I started a few weeks ago in anticipation of what everyone says will be a hard winter.  Swimming will also be part of the workout routine.  A run, followed by a swim.  That is the plan.

The picture shows my favorite place to run.  It is a large regional park with a grass circuit of 1.5 miles.  I prefer to train on soft surfaces as it is easier on the joints.  Of course, the park will be frozen over by late November and also covered in goose poop.  I am not the only one who likes this park!

B is also for bodywork

Bodywork includes chiropractic and massage. I have been getting regular massages since 2005. They really help with the recovery process. Today's massage was one of the best. I am not sure why my muscles were so receptive to the massage. Maybe it was because I was barely off the bike before I had to go to the appointment. 

Chiropractic work is fairly new for me. We were vacationing in Southern California in February when I experienced numbness in my hand. I had hurt my shoulder in the weight room just before going on vacation. I walked into a local office, told the receptionist my problem, and she told me I had come to the right place. The doctor was a specialist in extremity problems, allegedly the only within sixty miles. A few snaps, pops, and cracks later and I was feeling much better. I had four sessions during eight days. I asked for a reference back home. The doctor looked at his computer and gave me two names. I filed them away not knowing if I would use them.

My neck was bothering me for a few weeks while cycling. After a particularly agonizing ride, I finally made the connection to my rear end accident. Doh!  My neck was sore the night of the accident and was then Ok for awhile. Out came the references and I had an appointment the next afternoon. This doc is actually a light touch guy, so no cracking was involved. The diagnostics were terrific. I had about 12 spots along my spine that needed adjustment. And now I feel terrific. The message is do not discount chiropractic work as a solution to the body's aches and pains. 

The tree in the photo is the only one in this field. I have always enjoyed looking at it as I ride by. The gently up sloping hill with the sky in the background make for some spectacular vistas. I occasionally see elk and deer in the field. 

B is for bicycle

 I was rear-ended in August with my bike on the back of the car. There was minimal damage to the car but the carbon fiber frame of the bike was cracked. A total loss. Fortunately, the other driver's insurance provided full replacement value for the bike.

I had been riding Specialized bikes since 2005. Larry encouraged me to look at the Trek Domane. I tested new bikes from each company and went with the Trek. I have the Domane 5.9 which includes Di2 Ultegra electronic shifting. It is a dream ride. I have never been very comfortable on descents. This bike handles descending quite well. The shifting is very smooth. I wondered why people would go the electronic route and now I know. 

This makes five bikes for me since 2001. Bike one was a bad fit and was replaced after four years. Bike two had a large dent in the seat tube and replaced after two years (I still have this bike and use it when the primary bike is at the shop).  Bike three was always unstable on descents and I felt endangered on it. I used it for four years. Bike four was the one in the rear-end accident and replaced after two years. 

For comparison purposes, I have used just four cars as my primary car since 1969!  I think that at my age I may only have one more car purchase to make in my lifetime. 

Alphabet

One of my friends asked me on Saturday what my training goals were now that the season was over. Racing season that is. I did five races over the past two months. Without really training for racing them. That proved to be particularly difficult, especially the first one, an iconic hill climb that attracts nearly 500 racers. I thought I would die. It seemed so much tougher than the same race two years ago. It was much hotter and I ended up only 15 seconds slower. I was 50 seconds faster during the next hill climb race than two years ago. My speed during three time trials got progressively faster. So I felt good about my relative short racing season. But I digressed, so back to the subject of the post. 

I told my friend that my goal was the same as the past fifty years--to stay fit. Upon thinking about it later, I had already set specific goals for the winter. The first letter of a few of them start off our alphabet. So I will try to write about the goals. I thought about them during today's ride. They will not all be training related, but they will be cycling related. There will be repeats for a particular letter too. 

So here goes and I might as well start with two letters:

AB stands for aerobic base. Some call this aspect foundational training. Anything that must be strong must have a solid base. I have read many books and articles on base training. One that has resonated is the Maffetone method. You can google it or go to your library. He advocates low heart rate training. He says that by sticking to his method, one will go longer and eventually faster. It incorporates a maximum heart that one should never go over. One has to be patient with this. So I set my heart rate monitor for a warning sound when I hit this heart rate. I exceeded it a couple of times today. Hills at altitude raise the heart rate so I have to learn to slow down. 

I will also include a photo for each post. Fall is my favorite time of the year. We are often blessed with totally sunny days. The photo shows one of them with trees beginning to turn colors. The lake is Chatfield reservoir. I go near it on most days and never tire of it. 

Spring or winter?

On Monday, it was 68 degrees for the high temperature at the house.  Upon rising this morning (Tuesday), it was 20 degrees and snowing.  Enough of this "springtime in the Rockies" as the local saying goes.  No opening day for the spring time trial season on Wednesday with a forecast high temperature of 30 degrees and a near-zero wind chill.

What do I think of winter at this point?

You know it is spring when ...

the birds are singing.  Robins are singing well before dawn searching for a mate.  Meadowlarks (my favorite bird tune) call to each other as I pass them by.  Are they warning each other about the funny looking dude on a bike?  Or are they looking for a mate too?  I heard several blue jays raising a ruckus in the yard two days ago.  I walked outside and saw six in one of our pine trees.  What were they so concerned about?  I looked down and a hawk was having a blue jay for lunch.  It was a lot like Puddy Cat though as there were only feathers laying about by that time.

It is also spring when the number cyclists I see out and about skyrockets.  Today was a warm day and I  saw more than a hundred riders.  Contrast that to Tuesday when the weekend's foot of snow was down to six or so inches.  Only two other riders that day during my 25 miles.

Daffodils are ready to pop out.  Perhaps tomorrow for Easter!  Of course, spring means spring cleanup around the yard and gardens of the house.  There is lots to do pruning last year's perennials and raking out the leaves thatwe  let lay in the garden through the winter.  Robin talked tonight about hiring someone next year to do it.  Only because her knees were talking to her.  My legs were talking to me too today but that was after a hard set of interval training and then straight into the yardwork.  Take a break next time, Tommy D!

I did some spring training in California and Arizona.  Three weeks of warmer cycling suited me just fine.  Although, I still needed tights and long sleeves in the early morning on the coast AND in the SoCal desert.  If it would only be so cool when I am in Indio in six weeks.  I met some former CR riders and it was good to catch up with them.  Also my buddy Joe from high school who may join me for the first few miles of the CR ride.

Another sign of spring--six more weeks until the next batch of CrossRoads cyclists takes off from the Manhattan Beach pier.  Robin and I will be there to support them during the next 48 days to Boston.  It is hard to believe that it has been eight years since I took off from the pier for the first time.

Tom Massoth and I in Newport Beach (above).

Jim, Ira, and I near Marina Del Rey.

  Near Camelback Mountain in Scottsdale.

From our friends' home in La Quinta, just four miles from where we lay over in Indio.  Could it look any moredifferent from what we think of as Indio?