Training Log Archive: veinbuster

Healthy wind chill out there today, but I may defer my winter gear testing until there is more snow.

Day 3 soloflex
Very strong dips, pull-ups average

J wanted to see if the knee she smashed into concrete was ready to ride to work so I went along with her. Too bad she waited until after breakfast because the leading edge of the rain started before we got out of the driveway. The Santa Clause parade was staging on her commute route, so we detoured that - some nice floats and lots of happy people in spite of the rain.

We shortened the ride a bit and made it back just before the rain got unpleasantly heavy. She declared another week would be best before riding in prior to spending the day on her feet.

I thought I would try to outsmart the traffic by taking the river path and then jumping on Main which just opened north of Green Lane after a a very long construction. My hope was that traffic wouldn't have started using the new road yet.

It turns out the road is still under construction and there was a fair bit of south bound traffic, but little heading north. The road will be nice when it is finished with 4 lanes for cars and nice wide bike lanes on each side including over the giant bridge they built over the river at the new water treatment plant. The bridge has nice big viewing areas, but it wasn't yet obvious how to get down to the river trail.

It looks like several thousand homes will be built along this road, but for now it is a decent way to get out of town. I had one long steep downhill at 8% that gave me a top speed of 67km/hr - no traffic let me take everything gravity offered. This has potential to be a good Greenspeed route.

I turned south on Woodbine to try and find the place Mrs. is selling her Beads For Cancer next weekend, but I think she got the wrong street. I'll try Leslie St. another time - which is where I expected the place to be. Queensville is pretty small. Then over to Warden, where at 29km I met my first cyclist of the day. One more was about a kilometre back.

I felt a bit sluggish, as I had earlier in the week, but realized it is likely related to invoking my strictest diet after a lot of rich vacation food - about 2.5kg lighter over 4 days and back to the high end of my preferred weight range.

Day 2 soloflex and free weights

The plan was to take the long way to the bike shop to drop the bike off to have the rear suspension looked at. I suspected a leak somewhere in the system based on needing to add pressure before every ride and still having it soft enough to use most of the travel dropping curb height.

On the way it struck me that the problem might actually be my suspension pump. I was unsuccessful a while ago increasing the pressure in the seat dropper on the fattie and had observed the gauge dropping rapidly from 150psi on this suspension. I mentioned this as a possibility at the shop and used their suspension pump. It did show a slow drop of in pressure while attached, but not nearly to the degree I remembered at home. More importantly, the suspension wasn't nearly as soft...so I rode back home and will see how it fairs over the next few days.

The shop can't service my suspension with the Brain and would just pull it off and send it to Specialized - so I don't feel quite so lame not feeling like I could fix it myself.

I was to impatient to wait for the rain to clear and went out during what looked like a decent pause. It started to drizzle again at 5km but barely enough to keep the trail wet. At the north end, I got quite excited to see the trail run right up to a completed boardwalk. Sadly, the last 5-10m at the river were unfinished. Without a construction crew there, I think there is a safe way through. They appeared to be finalizing both a bridge for the trail across the river and passage under the road way bridge along the west side of the river.

There was a new bit of path opened up on the east side of the river at Davis Drive, which will give a bit more variety for the Greenspeed next year. At the south end of the Newmarket portion of the trail a heavy gravel section has been paved over to Yonge St. This is a plus for the Greenspeed, but I kind of liked the variety of the gravel on the mountain bike and for the fattie in the winter.

Rain picked up at 20km and remained steady but on the light side to 30km, so I headed home.

Day 1 soloflex and free weights

I expected to have time for a good workout in the hotel gym, but just before I went down an alarm went off somewhere down the river and then repeated about 10 minutes later. It reminded Mrs. of alarms we've heard at Three Mile Island, so she wanted to high tail it out of there.