Thanks to a bit of phone consulting courtesy of Fox, I was able to install my new SRAM Force brake calipers this evening without too much trouble. They look sweet on the bike and are significantly lighter than the 105 calipers they replaced. My Rival compact crankset should arrive either Wednesday or Thursday and, based on what I read on the Park Tool website, the installation doesn't look too difficult. Speaking of difficult, I had some issues with my front derailleur shifting to the big ring yesterday (yeah, I must admit to spending some time in the little ring...) and my intial attempt to fix the problem did nothing except make it worse (adjusting the height and rotational angle without releasing the tension on the inner wire is darn near impossible). However, after consulting the Park Tool website, and after about 45 minutes of trial & error, I was able to dial it in to the point where it now shifts better than ever.
As far as riding goes, I did 40 minutes on the trainer this morning with one good 20 minute effort at 162 average bpm. Pretty weak I know... I still haven't figured out how some of you can throw down 2-3 hours on the trainer. That is just plain crazy.
I stopped by Contender this afternoon to buy some cable cutters and checked out Ryan's snow beast. All I can say is those wheels are HUGE. Reed was talking about snow skating which sounded fun. Maybe I need to try a bit harder to find a reason to like snow. Anybody know if you can rent that stuff? Might be worth a try...
2 comments:
I'm not a coach nor an exceptional rider, but I like riding indoors, so here's my advice.
The key to surviving trainer time is to keep it structured, e.g. 20 min warm-up (includes 1 min jumps), then 3 min medium intensity, then 3 min harder intensity, 3 min hardest, and back to medium, etc.. Do 3 times without resting, then rest 12 min and that's 1hr. Now you're ready to repeat it again, that's 1.5 hrs. I even structure my 10 min warm-down by riding at 115 RPM's and lowering RPM's by 5 every minute down to 70 and I'm done.
I couldn't ride steady indoors just to put in miles, that's inhumane. Yesterday I did 1.75 hr including 1hr tempo ride. This time the slight burn and visualizations made it interesting.
Concentrate on riding and visualizations, not on music or television. Always approach the trainer with a plan in mind. "What do I want to accomplish today? A tempo ride? Intervals? A fitness test? One legged?" Know what will make you be satisfied with your ride and do it.
That is some sweet advice - thanks for sharing! I may have to try some of it tomorrow morning...
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