Friday, May 9, 2008

Ugh

Training is coming along really slowly. I have not had a lot of time for daily riding. Maybe 2-3 times per week at the very most. At least I will be able to get out today for an hour and a half or so, but then have to go to work til 5. Maybe I'll try getting in a short ride around dinner time and maybe I can con Sarah into coming along with. There's so much to do around the house with the weather being warm its been difficult to find time for everything.

On a better note, I went to Extreme on Monday and had Karrie take a look at my fit as I was having problems with pain on the right side of my neck and my right elbow. After 3 1/2 hours on the training we finally fixed the problems. 1.) My stem was in a definite sprinting position where I was reaching far away (120 stem changed to 100 stem) causing neck problems 2.) a washer was missing from the left part of my saddle where it is attached to the seat post which may have caused the saddle to wear oddly --- the right side of my saddle was essentially bent down more than the left side causing an unevenness in the right half of my body. 3.) Right shifter was down just a tad versus the left and contributing to the right half unevenness.

As I have only ridden with the new fit on two short rides so far, I cannot totally judge how it is overall, but it feels a lot better not having a twinge in my elbow and a creak in my neck when riding. I also felt that I have more energy in this position as I am not wasting it trying to hold myself up from being stretched out to far over the bars.

Time for me to stretch and get ready for a ride. I'll try to report back here more often as I am slacking!

Till Next Time,

Patrick

1 comment:

Evan Fader said...

Glad to see you got that fit. A properly fit bike makes a huge difference, especially when you are going to do long miles. I was reading in your blog about how you were going to do a 3 hour base ride in Zone 3/4. If we are using the same zones, that is not a base ride. You should be able to ride up to 5 hours in a base zone, maybe not go all that fast but none the less your heart should be able to handle it. There are many ways to determine base zone, no matter how you find it, it is always a zone were you are breathing heavy but can maintain that conversation with your riding buddy. Zone 3/4 is a tempo ride and will do very much in gaining strength and power, but it comes at a heavy cost, meaning you need to recover from them. I don't intro it into my training until I have at least a month of long (4+ Hours) rides under the belt. You should have the base there before going and riding at the tempo pace. Being that we are already into the race season that is going to be very hard. I would either do base miles, (long slow, easy miles) or very high max VO2 intervals. Hope you come up with a plan. You can email me if you want help.

Anyway I hope the fit helps get you on the bike more. Hope everything is well.