You competitive motherfuckers going to start trying to beat each other to the response before SlingShot weighs in?

Why do you say it's easy?

Doing 260 for 5 minutes and trading off the front with people who actually are working together, and who actually do have an objective reference to what EXACTLY 260 watts is (as apposed to spurts of 900 interspersed with 0's)… well, come on.

Pay the fuck attention.

Cycling ain't a pain game: it's a brain game.

But the real secret is to burn zero (no, none, nada) matches.

Turns out the reason Keith found it rational to get on the wheel he was on at the end, was because the rider of that wheel had spent the entire ride begging people in that group to stop overworking the uphills and start working the downhills and flats.

Therefore by the end it must have appeared that wheel was going to work to the end.

My own performance of the day was so spectacularly pitiful, I decided that Sunday I would do the easiest ride I could, and I ended up with a Personal Best 18+ on Silence of the Lamb jockeying the same wheel… while spending a lot of time waiting for the (as yet unrecovered from surgery) Widder.

To put that in context: four years ago my dream was to break 16, and I was often 14.8.

Here's a plan for when you get your Powertap going: you, me, and Widder will grab ddoT (to repace corners and hill tops for us) in a Gang of Four who will start AFTER the A's then pass them somewhere around Dog Hill on our way to catching the Double AA's.

All we will need to do is a combined 260 watts for the Gang (and even on yesterday's worst ride of my life—and personal best—I did consistent 400+ intervals while riding stupid), so we won't even have to breathe very hard to do it, but we also ain't going to be catching Humberto off the front of the FRONT FRONT neither.

You are going to shit your little lace panties when you get your meter and find out how fucking easy 260 watt intervals are, if you don't try to do them at 970.

Further context BTW: Andreas reports once finishing just under 23 mph with a 213 watt average.

The Mission

- Park in Municipal (New Paltz) lot at corner of routes 299 and 32
- RT out of lot onto rte 299(w)
- Bear Left(BL) onto Libertyville Rd. (CTY 7)
- RT onto Guilford School House Rd. (RT then LT then RT all on GSH)
- RT onto Guilford Rd.
- RT onto 44/55 ALT: 299 all the way to 44/55
- LT onto Fordemore Rd. ALT1: LT directly onto Berme Rd. ALT2: LT
onto 209(S)
- LT onto Berme Rd.
- RT onto ? At jail
- LT onto 209(S)
- RT onto 55
- Bear Right (BR) onto 55A (BWS Rd.)
- RT onto 153
- LT onto Sugarloaf Rd.
- LT onto (Furmans) Glade Hill Rd.
- LT onto Moore Hill Rd. at top
- LT onto 55
- LT onto 209(N)
- RT onto ? Through jail
- LT onto Berme Rd.
- RT onto Fordemore Rd. ALT: Take Berme to 44/55
- RT onto 44/55
- LT onto 299 back into New Paltz ALT: Guilford/GSH/Libertyville/299

The Furmans Glade Hill climb is almost exactly like Kain Road (which hardly anybody you know has climbed), but Glade is 2 miles as apposed to Kain's meager 7 tenths.

The full ride is about 80 miles, and the last half takes a lot longer than the first half, because Chuckie needs to take a lot of puke breaks.

I also notice you have managed to schedule this while Humberto is doing that stage race in Portugal.

Pretty smart.

It starts in New Paltz goes over a couple mountains and ends up all the way up by Gapper, Mrs. Gapper (Carol), Catskills John, Download Kim, and all those motherfuckers… and that's only half-way through the ride.

So where/what are your power workouts?

Hmm. Lose weight, gain power, get faster! What fucking genius!!!

With all this knowledge, what I'd like to know is: can YOU climb the Glade?

Mid/Late July, be ready.

How much venom has the Widder been storing up?

UNLSEASHED

We are there, Asshole.

Widder! Stop spinning your lame ass web, and run out and buy me a triple.

I'm in the bathroom starting my new purging program.

HUMP REPORT

Despite how the actual effort was never particularly profound, the concentration required to hold almost 2 hours of nearly 19 mph pace with 200 watts for an entire 34.2 mile Hump 7 weeks in a row along the way to holding together the 23+ Widder's Hump while Mary finished up the completion of her two surgeries, etc was wearing me down, so I decided to come up with good excuses and back off the pace today.

Pursuant to my use of these excuses, Widder dropped me on Dog Hill and went off on her own, while I nursed my blown left glutes and all the intrinsic hip muscles which had given up early and allowed my knee and back to go on call and response barking rampages like you wouldn't believe.

By the time I got to Iron Mike's Hill (the fruit stand) I was on a 17.3 average with barely 180 watts to my name.

The front group (read: Humberto) should have already gone by me, so I was thinking about how good a position I was in to latch on if anybody did pass.

Tactically speaking, I was just about at the perfect spot, because nobody with a brain would attack low on the hill but would carry pace from a little ways back, then pop the top.

An attack too soon and the attacker risked their own blowing up, too late and a counter attack would be easy to mount. I was sittin' pretty.

I thought, "Shit, looks like I'm set for this hill… well, maybe not yet (nobody's here but), not quite until… till… right here, this is the perfect spot to hit it, so I am totally saf…"

Pow, spank, bam: and Humberto popped around with Morgan (seven times winner of the Bethel Series) on his wheel.

"Well, fuck 'em. I'll just grab onto the chase group," but looking back down the long hill I saw nobody.

The supposed chase group didn't catch me for another 5 miles (20 minutes) later, and it wasn't even the usual Double AA's, but some remainder of them riding like B-flat Minors (real sad) at best.

Actually, I noticed Keith was hanging on the back very careful like, so I figured, "I'll hook on here, follow them to the end, and when Keith attacks, I'll go with him."

Near the "S" turn Keith made the fatal error of getting on the wrong wheel himself, and by the time I saw what was happening the group had already splintered for the finish with some kid Matt 50 yards off the front of three riders who were themselves 50 yards off the fading wheel Keith had unfortunately chosen.

I just let the whole mess of them go.

What should I have done? Put the final touches on my failed parts (today's excuse) just to catch a bunch of losers who were themselves looking with envy at the person they already let get away?

At least they didn't have to be looking at Humberto and Morgan, because those two had already pulled into the parking lot 20 minutes earlier—way the fuck out of sight.

Humberto told us later that Keith actually did stay with Morgan and him over Ridgebury (when they dropped everybody else), but at the top Keith stammered, "Shouldn't we wait for them?" and Humberto explained, "No… now we work."

When Widder told him who Keith is (who was mentioned in earlier posts here due to prompting from ddoT), Humberto said, "Yeah, you could tell he wasn't just some guy who picked out a bike and started riding last week."

As for me, I thought that confirming I knew the exact spot on Iron Mike's Hill for a coup de drop (affirmed by Humberto and Morgan) was all I was going to salvage from a perfectly excused ride, but when I got home, I found a great comparison of the hardest part of Ridgebury in the data download.

Check out the graph linked at right before reading SlingShot's answer titled:

One Moment On Ridgebury

ONE MOMENT ON RIDGEBURY

The image is split, Bob's performance on the left and Mary's on the right.

You will have noticed that both riders are working hard enough to be breathing Zone 3/4, and that both are overtorquing due to the slope being too great for the gearing in use—which is made obvious by the 77 and 74 rpm cadences.

Overtorquing is true for both riders despite the fact that Mary (116 lbs) only needs to be generating 298 watts, while Bob (167 lbs) needs 427 watts for nominally the same speed at that point on the hill.

Also notice that Mary is torquing 30.8 Nm while she has previously attained 451 watts average at only 15.5 Nm, and Bob has achieved almost identical results using correct gearing in the appropriate Power to Weight area, space, sphere, milieu, or whatever you choose to call it.

Given diminishing returns would be gained by going to a triple in order to wring the last ounce of watts out of torque on this moment of Ridgebury (plus we would have to start calling the Hump a mountain bike race), and since torque defines effort while watts define speed (an absolute reference), two things can be learned from this graph.

Secondly, you may anticipate (without need of further calculation) that on this part of Ridgebury you are fucked, you have been fucked, and you always will be fucked.

Get over it!

Use him while you can.

Slowed down to wait for Widder.

I don't think I've ever heard you say that before.

Because you gave me the heads up on him, I kinda made it my business to stay close. And when he went, those of us that were lucky to be near made it our business to stay with him.

This guy could jump from the back to the front at will. In fact, he was running circles around the group, plain and simple. One thing I noticed, he was always in his big ring. While the rest of us were downshifting to get up the slopes, he would just power through.

So thanks again for the pre-ride cheat sheet.

Soon I too will join the ranks of the What are my Watts Watchers, and so I say, God help us, every one!

I shudder to think what Keith could be doing if he knew enough to stay out of his big ring, but maybe he's doing short hard strength intervals on purpose.

The moment you get your Powertap wheel from the Bicycle Doctor, I am your bitch… whatever it takes to get you up and running.

To whet your appetite, I have prepared a little graph of my performance for the first half of the ride (before I slowed to wait for Widder) while I was still more or less in contact with the group.

Aside from knowing who's who on the ride, it is also helpful to know just exactly how hard you are going at any given point in the ride.

You may remember that I have been dropping off the back of rides and doing consistent 200 watt averages in order to pace them without drafting.

Why that is possible is shown on this graph of my 178 for the first 10 miles (mostly in the group) of this most recent Thursday ride.

It will make more sense to you after you get your meter, but in the meantime: Before he gets noticed by the others and picked up by the pretend team (who were working together to kick your ass last night so maybe not so pretend after all), you might want to recruit Keith for:

This graph runs to Route 207—well after the long climb on Ridge Road. >>>

I think I finally need to show up at a Thursday ride and see what's going on for myself.

Like I said, back in the day I remember him pulling 34+ along Pumpkin Swamp Road after the Wednesday Night Time Trial, and when I looked back off his wheel… nobody was there.

Here is the basis of the lesson from page 192 of the book Smart Cycling (Baker, 1996):

"This happens all the time. Engage the leaders in conversation about this or that. Ask questions. Some riders may be too polite or unfocused about the race, slow down, actually reply, and waste energy."

Of course Dan is nowhere near the full moron he appears to be and knows quite well that watts are an absolute reference to speed in all possible situations: the person generating the most watts (per kilo) is going to be going the fastest (just basic physics), while how fast that may be at any given moment is a mere artifact of circumstance.

In any case, we hope you enjoyed your specially prepared class, and be sure to read the Baker book to find details of 7 other types of blocking plus much more.

I had planned to avoid all group rides until I could ride with a modicum of ok again, but who can resist this?

You'll get your ass dropped, and I will still be behind you. How sweet is that?

Maybe I'll bring Widder.

I quit.

Now we are taking away your permission to get dropped.

So there.

Well the book got here with a note, "… be sure to read Chapter 25 first."

I jumped to the chapter and never even got to the end of the first sentence before I was screaming, "EXACTLY… EXACTLY! That's what I've been saying."

"It should be fucking obvious, but apparently it's not."

Maybe it's only more obvious to me after Lauren pulled us off an assured trail to failure with Mary's bunions and back onto the path of guaranteed improvement.

In any case, I thought about printing the entire first couple paragraphs to get people into the book, but I decided, "Fuck you all! You only get what Lauren gave us: just get the book and read Chapter 25 first.

You really do need to give a little more than Lauren gave you (excluding the book itself), so just so nobody gets to thinking it's the fucking King James, here's the title, and read Chapter 25 (p. 168) first.

It's the god's honest truth. >>>

We had a nice group of around ten.

Bike doc suggested to me last week that I raise my seat a little, so I did.

It took some of the strain off of my quads, and I was able to run a little harder after the ride.

Happy riding!

I think he was racing mountain bikes so still knows how to spin your ass into oblivion, despite the fact he appears to be about 40 lbs heavier than in the day… but he's looking lighter on every ride now that he's back around.

Which reminds me: one of the things to disregard in the "Smart Cycling" book is the discussion about climbing cadence.

It harkens back to the time before on-bike power meters when nobody had a good objective reference, and the only point of view was, "If it feels harder, it must be more powerful."

Total fucking nonsense as it turns out.

However, height of your seat and knee angle is knowledge that has not changed much. It is also somewhat easy to observe, at least to somebody like the Bicycle Doctor who has proven it once again.

If you haven't seen it yet, get this book. >>>

Pages 191-230 outline race tactics explaining what people are doing to you on the Hump, and pages 168-190 outline paceline techniques which you should make sure everybody who rides with you knows thoroughly in order to hold the crashes down to a minimum.

ddoT shows up, kicks everybody's ass, story over.

In the meantime, Widder and I did intervals on Lower Wisner and got a handle on just how fucked up our spins have become.

I had a new personal best of 543 watts for 30 seconds, but it was more or less an accident.

I shouldn't be putting in that much effort until my knee stabilizes, but I really wanted some torque references to confirm over 500 watts can be achieved with less than 20 Nm.

I did several 500+ with less than 18, and several 400+ with just over 13, so that meant getting up close to 30 mph using force equal to lifting about a water bottle and a half from the floor onto a table.

Takes about 15 seconds to get up to speed.

After the intervals we came home and harassed each other on hills, where I got in front of Mary long enough for her to point out that I was bouncing during high cadence… time to get back to spin exercises and avoid being in a group that pulls me out of my good form.

Widder had the good forethought to give herself a baseline of a similar series of intervals before her operation.

A few weeks ago she did almost 10 over 600, but today she only did 9 and struggled to top 400.

I kept reminding her that the trauma of her surgery is still going on as the blood vessels that feed her fibroids are being decimated, and her body is fighting to restore a blood supply to her uterus.

In theory, the fibroids will continue to shrink for another year and never fully recover their pre-op size, but the uterus will make a full come back.

Uses up a shitload of energy though.

As for my 30 second PB: for my current body weight it would equal a moderate Cat 4 performance if I held it for 1 minute (Cat 3 at last winter's weight).

At the Widder's weight it would equal a domestic pro performance.

Of course neither of us can do that… yet.

I would need to rent from Lehigh and Hudson.

Looks like intervals on Wisners for us today.

Widder's back on her training program, after she felt good enough to try a spin exercise during our Hertiage Trail warmup yesterday.

She could only hit a bouncy 138 rpm, which means we don't have to go all the way back to square one, but we need some work.

Then we spent the rest of the ride going real easy, but my knee was complaining about it significantly, and on the return ride I had just settled into feeling good about how the ride was almost over when somebody in an old club jersey passed on the left.

I thought, "Oh, fuck. Do not go up there and trigger the Widder," but I should have said it out loud.

Actually it wasn't so bad… until they sat up in front of Mary to drink, and she thought, "You fuckin' had to pass me, just to sit up and drink!?"

So Mary pulled around them, and started holding a 22 pace, while the two of them had some sort of discussion or another, but after some trail traffic the guy backed off a little and motioned me to get on Widder's wheel.

My own thought at that point was, "Well, sir, if you liked the 22 pace so little, let's see how you like this," and I asked Mary if she felt like getting on my wheel.

She said sure, so I pulled past her and kicked the pace up a little.

A little while later she said (almost in a whisper), "He's gone."

And I asked, "Gone gone, or just gone?"

"Gone gone, and long gone."

By then we were sort of going, so we continued.

It wasn't until we got to Chester that I realized Mary was only pulling 22+ mph to my 26, 27+, so she probably wasn't getting any rest during my pulls and ended up working the whole time.

She confirmed saying, "That was hard."

Except the download data showed she only had a 154 watt average, so her two week old embolization is still putting a significant strain on her body despite how much incredibly better she feels due to the fibroids shrinking so much.

We also got a glimpse how both of us have lost our ability to control our chase response, so we have to get back to training rides and work on it.

Yesterday's stupid thoughtless effort (which made me feel better at the time) caused one of the trigger points on my left thigh to extend by an inch and a half this morning, so I have to put on my reading glasses to make sure I understand what is on the wall.

I almost forgot, she said she did not have a conversation with the guy, so it was apparently only him talking to Mary (who is stone cold deaf on her bike) after she started pulling her 22, and he finally had enough of her rude inattention to let me in behind her.

In the cycling industry that is commonly referred to as a: mistake.

I had promised myself no more group rides till I get back in shape, but since you are the only person who was straight up enough to mention just how far into fat ass lard loserdom I have fallen of late, I really should give you another shot at taking me out while I'm down.

On the other hand, it would be better for me to avoid overtorquing hills and missing intervals when I can't control my twitch to chase.

Notice on the graph linked at right (from the first hill last Tuesday) that the lowest point of the power is 224 watts with 14.8 Nm at 102 rpm.

In retrospect that should have put me on notice for my massive inefficiency on the Hump the following Saturday—even before my limping performance on Friday with Widder.

First off, 224 watts is way over my average which has been giving me loops just uner 19, not to mention that much torque really should be giving me over 400 watts if I was using both legs.

I figured it out this winter: such effort puts me in a degradation mode wherein trigger points start appearing in the intersection of my right vastus intermedius and vastus lateralis as they try to take up the slack in the dysfunction of whatever got whacked in and around my gluteus muscles when I broke my collar bone.

Continuing that sort of nonsense only escalates into a severe IT problem which then continues to get re-injured again and again even on my walks.

Actually that one moment is not the big problem.

It's the 27.06 Nm with a 37.81 peak for only a 364 average for the full minute which is the kicker, if we discount the spike in rpm which is actually my gears shifting themselves.

That wasn't even a good strength exercise, since my heart rate averaged 150, and it wouldn't have even had a chance to respond to an actual hard interval.

Anyway, the Widder is hovering over my shoulder, and we are on our way out to the Heritage Trail, so I'll see how things are progressing before answering you.

I don't want to just start making up excuses willy nilly.

As for the forms failure, best I could figure (since nothing got here) was you tried to put in some html formatting such as something like this: <b>, (either on purpose or inadvertantly) which would format bold type.

The Chatterbox form previously allowed such html formatting, but we were getting hit by web form spam bots which generally include such formatting.

Disabling those functions causes a forms send failure, so I don't have to look at automated nonsense coming from Al Qaeda in Asia.

I turned the functions back on (just in case you were putting in some illegal characters).

When you couldn't get through before, did you see something that looked like this? >>>

Did you ever stop and think, "Oh, I get it. Way inefficient. Look at all those watts being wasted as the flywheel shutters slower then is POW'd to overcome inertia again. That's why we have cars with up to 12 cyclinders."

I knew yesterday my right lumborums were fucked, and certain related torsional elements in my left knee were feeling the effects of extra step exercises on the 12" elevation between my bedroom and living room, but that doesn't make me feel any better about today's one legged half assed performance.

Even though that's mostly why my time sucked so fucking bad.

I did post a 2 second faster Ridgebury interval, but the rest of the ride was an almost identical performance to last week, outside of my constant overworking the uphills because BLASTER was pushing them beside me.

His shenanegans caused a momentary 720 watts on a bouncing 126 rpm cadence beginning the hill up to Cross Road (where I should have known better), then I repeated the same sort of stupidity on the hill before the Camel Farm and also on Dog Hill (where I should have continued to know better), plus I did similar nonsense on about a dozen other climbs.

After the bullcrap on Dog Hill, I could barely hold 32 watts on the downhill afterward.

Maybe the worst mistake was seeing my pace pick up on Liberty Corners and assuming it meant a good tailwind, and thinking I could make up the 3 tenths mph needed to be over 19 again (on my own), so I never made Jim pull.

Hubris. Fucking 18.74 mph 196 watt hubris.

Spend the time reviewing ddoT's earlier statement about your obviously resumed Krispy Kreme diet.

Good thing nobody's sending you and Mary chocolate covered fruit in the mail.

Last week was 19.3 at the 1-Hour mark (Rte 1 past the Y after Camel Farm), then just over 19 at the end with some last minute help from BLASTER.

SlingShot has numerous body parts fallen almost to ruin, but he is required at least to try another 20/200, because Steve at Joe-Fix-It's got his gears working right (where others failed), plus Widder will make an appearance after her 100 watt test loop on the Heritage Trail today.

Widder is excited to try out her new extended pelvic ROM of which she said today, "It is incredible how much more room I have in the saddle. I have lost about 75 percent of the last couple year's constant pain, and if I get any more improvement, I'll be taking no prisoners on rides."

At least I had my little moment in the sun after beating her PB 1-Hour by 20 feet last Saturday.

Somebody just got here by googling this. >>>

Lauren, how 'bout you crawl on over here and hold real still, so it'll be easier for me to kick you while you're down as well… assuming there's no S&M surcharge attached to that service, because (like you mentioned) things are tough all over.

I am working on getting a higher end road bike.

Don't bust my chops on this one ;)

I have spent most of my days on the phone with hospital staff and doctors - phew!

Miss a couple of days of checking over the site, and it's like having to read a novel to catch up again… a reeeeeaaaalllly long novel!

O.k. I can see I am going to have to do this in shifts!!

I don't want to hear one word about how many times I visit the site to get up to speed again ;).

Everyone go take a coffee break will ya'.

On the other hand, there is no "everyone" here, just you, me and ddoT

You gonna pull the trigger and post it, or what?

He's probably double duty editing it first.

Most of the riders were obviously over torqued on the hills.

Unless they were specifically doing strength intervals (on purpose), a number of people were seen wasting significant energy that was torqued into their pedals but never reached the road.

As he caught and passed them by the tops of hills, SlingShot was aware of their heavy breathing and how they seemed oblivious to how much faster they could be climbing—in an easier gear with faster spin.

Actually, their heavy breathing would imply they were not doing strength intervals, because those are accomplished anaerobically, so no long term heavy breathing is part of that process.

SlingShot did a quick web search this morning and found that a simple cadence counter can be purchased for less than $15, so there is no monetary excuse for not having a basic objective measurement of this most basic element of cycling performance.

In fact, a cadence counter (which must have a magnet on the crank arm to be accurate) is in effect a great poor man's (or woman's) power meter.

If cadence ever drops below, let's say 100 (though a rider's bilateral functionality causes some variation on this), a cyclist is wasting winning force which never becomes power.

Cadence need not be a guesstimate. A cheap counter makes it a measured fact.

I was shocked at how many people thought grinding a big gear was going to help them catch the fast spinners off the front.

1) Pallet was obviously tired from something else.

2) Bike Doc was having a mechanical issue (not good for business by the way).

3) That guy Keith kicked my ass up most of the hills riding a steel framed relic.

4) And you, Slingsnot, are obviously back on the Krispy Kreme diet.

It felt great to get back on the bike after a long layoff, and that was a very fun ride.

I liked that route.

I wished I knew where the hills started and stopped before the ride though!

I'll know for next time.

1) Pallet was tired from bending his elbow… has been all year.

2) Bike Doc was probably trying to make me feel more comfortable about my own gears self-shifting on every hill, unless it was mine you heard not his.

3) You should have seen Keith back in the day when he used to hold 34 mph with me on his wheel, and everybody disappeared behind.

4) I guess I could blame Mary and her fucking two surgeries this year for the 12 lbs I put on since Florida, but… what the hell, I think I will blame her. She needs the attention.

I'll remind everybody this ride should never be done again until you forget where the hills begin and end.

FUCKING ddoT

Within a foot and a half of the parking lot somebody was already screaming at a motorist, calling them an asshole for cutting into the line of riders.

I laughed, "Oh, no… not already!"

Which made all the other riders piss in their pants, except for those who knew how to adjust their shorts and piss off their bikes, just like in the Tour de France.

With the tone set for the ride, I clicked the interval for my full ride average on one Powertap CPU and my first turn interval on the other.

That was the last interval I clicked, because like I said the tone had been set for the ride, so I had other stuff to worry about.

One thing was my plan to help ddoT with his riding technique, which was the first thing I thought about soon as he posted a query about who would be going to the Joe-Fix-It's Tuesday Night ride.

I knew he could use the help and was just the kind of person to appreciate it.

The group split before leaving the parking lot, because a whole bunch of people looked at the tornado clouds in one direction and chose to go that way, because they wanted to get in a good workout and knew the road that way was flat enough to stay out of the way of the wind.

I chose the hillier route, because I new that Steve Jinks was over in Pine Island leading his own ride, and there was not going to be some asshole pushing the pace on the hills.

Except ddoT pushed right out of the parking lot, so we had our asshole to fuck the ride up after all, and it wasn't that guy in the car, though it could have been.

I wasn't too worried about it though, because I figured the strong riders would just wait for ddoT to get tired, and then they were going to take him out… and me past him.

Still, I didn't want to miss my chance to instruct him on correct riding technique, so on the first hill (long after I missed clicking my first turn interval) I pulled up behind ddoT to get in the best position to tell him just exactly how to take the hill and how fucked up his riding style is—wasting so much power by mashing the pedals so slowly.

But I noticed he was riding perfectly correct with a high smooth cadence, pulling away from the group, and people were getting dropped.

By people, I mean me.

That fucking ddoT.

I figured to just wait it out, he certainly wasn't going to hold that advantage over this group for very long, and people would eventually get pissed-off enough to organize, attack and be done with him.

I missed hitting my interval on the second turn too, because I was so shocked to still be in front of some people after the South Street climb, I was luxuriating in the opportunity to worry about getting in good position for Fort Hill Road.

I did a good job of swooping the corner and dropping into a pace, but fucking ddoT went off the front and pushed the hill again, so I readjusted my goal.

I decided to stay in the group close enough to keep ddoT in sight, just so I could really enjoy the look of his body language when people finally had enough of his shit and dropped him like the sack of lard he is.

I'd back off before the hard hills, rush the group at the bottom, get in front, and go as easy as I could to let them pass me by the top.

At the bottom of that motherfucking steep hill on Pines Hill Road, I had come off the downhill hard past the main group, and hit the bottom just as ddoT, Palletman, and one other rider had spread across the road like they were blocking me on purpose, so I showed them where the perfectly good double yellow line was that nobody was using till I got there.

That little divergence fucked me up pretty good, but for some odd reason I was still in front of a person or two over the top.

Same thing for the Hambletonian turn, and there I knew I had to use their shutdown yacking mosey to the next hill to get on the front again, because that was likely to be my last hill with the group, but that might be the hill where they did away with ddoT, and I dearly wanted to see that.

About three quarters of the way up the climb I decided Palletman had organized a fuck-with-SlingShot (let him think he took the hill) plan behind me, because I was still on the front, but soon they all started sliding around, and I made the Bicycle Doctor laugh when he came by at the top and I said, "Well, that worked out pretty good for me."

Made myself laugh too, shocked that I had actually said that out loud and had the breath to say it.

Fucking ddoT was still off the front, so I thought, "Why not? Maybe I can make it up one more hill. This is going to be sweet: watching him go down."

So ddoT was way off the front on the next hill, and I was just trying to figure out why I was catching people near the top.

I would give you watts info, but I hadn't clicked an interval since the start, because (unlike Widder) the only thing I can think about on a turn is, "Oh, Dear. Oh, My. Now what do I have to do? This is not going to be good."

I told everybody goodbye again as we turned onto Bellvale, because that preceeds the longest climb of the ride, but at the top of the first section I was on ddoT's wheel just a little off the front, so I thought, "Maybe, just maybe, I can hold it together to be close enough to see ddoT get just what the fuck he deserves, and that should be happening pretty soon now."

Then it happened: nearing the top of the longest climb, I shuddered to see I was still on the wheel of my target, and that is a rare occurrence indeed.

In fact it is so rare that I cannot even mention who that target was, because the mere suggestion that I was staying with them on a long climb would so severely damage their reputation and self esteem that even I cannot do it.

I did, however, take that opportunity to mention the next two turns to them when it looked like they were fumbling for their cue sheet… and I startled myself by saying that in a calm totally non-breathless voice.

Suffice it to say that ddoT was already long gone down toward Laroe Road with whomever he had triggered into going with him.

If only I could get set up for the next climb, I was sure to see ddoT's come-upance, so I jumped the quick left/right and started pacing easy while the group dealt with cars.

Bob Wells was the first to go by, and he made a 100 yard gap, then ddoT was beside me casting knowing glances in my direction to the effect, "Want that rider, SlingShot? You going to go get him? Think you can do it? There he is just up ahead… why don't you try it?"

Palletman was there also, so I figure I was doing pretty good till that point, but with so much goading I really couldn't resist overdoing it for a minute or so, and that put me off the back for the rest of that climb, especially when a couple of cars got between me and the group—which really wasn't even the front group containing that asshole ddoT.

Still, I stayed close enough to see nobody was fucking Mr. Three-Sports-in-One like they should, and I got in good position to get through the next turn.

Good thing too, because I was the only one keeping my wits about me enough to make a big deal of thanking the cop who had slammed on his cruiser brakes and stopped on 17M looking like he was ready to bust the whole damn wad of us… especially me for being over the yellow line again.

While everybody was dealing with that confusion I got far enough ahead to get back on my standard program which is to go so easy any time I'm on the front that people stop wanting me to be there, but at least I got to hear a lot of loud insinuations of, "SLOWING," and ddoT himself hooked on my wheel saying first, "I'm going to use you like my Yak in the Andes," followed soon after by, "That's it? You done? Are we there yet."

So I pulled off just before the hill coming up to Mansion Road and way overestimated what it was going to cost in watts, quit, and got surprised when I started catching people again.

Then I got caught by cars again, before I started making up the distance on the group.

By the time I got to the Heritage Trail, I thought I was dead last, but the guy in the Tour de Force jersey showed up behind me and pulled me back to the stragglers, then the quasi-straggers, where I had the opportunity to explain to ddoT how he shouldn't be wasting his time back with these slow people but should pull me up to the front, which he did—until we were coming up on them so fast I thought he was going to crash into them so I backed off.

After that there was a series of similar occurances for the remainder of the trail, and I learned why people always like to drop me on rides.

Turns out that at the end of a ride I turn into a real fucking asshole, so much so that when I jumped the final light to get in the parking lot first they just let me go with good riddance.

In the parking lot I turned around in time to see that nobody ever did give ddoT his due: he was motherfucking dominant for the whole fucking ride.

I only thought for a moment when driving out of the parking lot, "Hmm… ddoT must have been really tired when he jumped off his bike at the end of the ride and went for his run."

"Everybody's already gone, and he's still not back yet. Maybe I should go out and check on him. Maybe he went delerious and jumped in the water somewhere and drowned… I hope so," and squealed my tires for home.

There was a certain pleasure in remembering that Tri people are always real easy to beat, because they are always on some program and can't be pulled off it to play hard, so I was happy to know the group had pulled him off his big picture plan a little, ultimately successful fucking ddoT.

You say you were doing real good on the ride till ddoT looked at you funny?!

BTW: Everybody read the posting below (4292).

It is not bullshit, explains why some of you have been blocked from getting on.

We are still under attack, but I've got the fuckers firing in retreat.

In effect, there is an infinite number of people who would like to see American Road Cycling shut down, so you can come up with any conspiracy theory you like, and it is likely not far from the truth.

I have shut down public access to the website and am opening up "known" IP#'s as quickly as I can, but it is a tedious and long process.

Anybody who gets missed but really wants access to the Chatter Box, etc should send an e-mail to Mary, and I will open up your IP#.

The kind of attack being experienced is the sort that will probably never go away, so ARC is now a Private Club—which means it is probably over.

To adequately fix this problem I would need to buy a whole new computer and software, and that is bad enough, but I would also need a year or so setting it up correctly.

I could also move the website to a commerical provider but that would mean a lot of advertising nonsense would be added along with censorship, so that is not a viable option.

It was good while it lasted but not worth much, and certainly not worth what would be required to keep it going.

I hate to mention that your own bank account is sufficiently open to the same fate, so be careful out there.

Temporarily, anything posted here will be toggled off of publication and toggled back on after everybody has had a chance to read this notification.

The only big problem might be for Toe Clip who comes on with a different IP# almost every time, and his static IP would be hidden from us if he sends e-mail via AOL to Mary's AOL address.

Subsequently Mr. De-facto (whom I had just been arguing turns with) yelled at Dangerous (now on the front in case of a hill) and made him turn right at my suggestion.

I was still near the front when De-facto later said, "That new guy back there just checked his cue sheet, and we are off course.

"No way," said I and looked at my own sheet, "Uh oh… guess we are."

Said De-facto, "If Doug asks, we'll just say this was a planned divergence to add miles."

But I suppose you had to be up front to hear that conversation, and if the group actually did follow the cue sheet after that, it would be the first time in club history any cue sheet was followed.

In fact the group I ended with was trying to follow the cue, but Steve Jinks and I were always off the front at turns and Steve would say, "Which way should we go?"

I'd say, "I have no idea. Sometimes we go this way, sometimes the other," and Jinks would respond, "Well… lets just go this way and blame it on you."

The others always followed without question.

Actually, the "A" pace really was fine, if you had some good reason to be going so slow, and were I not so bored I started picking my nose (and missed a turn) the Pres would have been considerably less happy to know where I was than to wonder.

It is probably because of the word "American" in the URL and on all the pages.

If you experience outages, please bear with us while we shut down the website in order to figure out how to respond.

BTW: How do you expect anybody to read this with the website shut down?

TRAGIC

I decided to show up for a classic club ride today in order to gather Powertap watts data in somewhat old-timey ride mode.

Unfortunately, there wasn't anybody in the AA group who had a clue what the route was, and the so-called leaders didn't even look at the FAST ERNA'S NEW PALTZ RIDE cue sheet until 5 miles and 4 turns into the ride.

Since they had already fucked up by listening to me on what I thought the 4th turn should be, we were way the fuck off track, and my data gathering expedition was out the window.

Also, the "leaders" had allowed such a chaotic start, I didn't want to hang around for the wreck when people started getting wasted in about an hour or so.

I dropped back 50 yards and started pacing to see how long I could keep them in site.

They were going so easy (22 mph or so) I lost my focus for a moment, and by the time I realized a next junction choice was around a bend (after crossing Boston Post Road) I hadn't given myself time to move up on them, so I missed a turn.

I spent the next 10 miles guessing which way they might go after they tossed whoever might have a cue sheet out of the ride.

By the time I got to 52 between Pine Bush and Walden, I was having a nice solo ride in the country under a progressively clearing blue sky, but I worried about Mary and decided to take my best guess which way was quickest home.

I turned right but immediately decided I was already east of Albany Post road and on my way to Walden, because the road was so chewed up and unfamiliar.

However, over the next hill I saw the familiar long swooping downhill that I knew very well, so I decided to take the next right and head home.

At the turn I noticed a familiar road name, stopped, reviewed the cue sheet, and realized I was back on course, so why not try and finish.

It's not like anybody is going to miss Widder if anything happens.

Somewhere all along The Watchtower (actually a little before), I heard a couple riders coming up behind, and soon a rider came around whose wheel was worth grabbing.

I wasn't sure if he was on the club ride, but he was going in the right direction and had on a Bryan's Bikes jersey.

In any case, just as I was about to back off and not bother him, he pointed out debris, so it seemed ok for me to stay tacked on his tire.

When he turned off the cue sheet course, I let him go but forgot my, "Thank you for the pull."

No offense was taken, because on catching me again just ouside New Paltz he was very cordial.

However, when he turned off at the deli/mart (or whatever it is), I decided he wasn't on the club ride after all, and I went straight to go to the bakery.

Except when I said goodbye, I noticed 13 club riders in the parking lot, so I pulled in thinking, "Fuck it. I'm taking this big ass draft all the way back to Montgomery."

At least that was the plan, but as soon as we started out the group split—which made me nervous, and then a guy who I was telling my plan to stay behind the last person in the group whom I thought they'd wait for, agreed and immediately attacked me on the big hill going up 208, so I got even more nervous, dropped him and spun myself back to the front before the top—just in time to wait for the regrouping.

That got me feeling pretty good about the prospects for a reasonable ride home, but there is always one asshole to fuck a ride up, and today it was Steve Jinks.

Apparently he decided he was Twin Lynn and should be fucking with me on every hill.

It chaps my shorts that I can't tell you where and when and what happened each time he attacked, because (like I said) I was off the Powertap watts clock after the first course diversion, so the data is just one big undifferentiated glob.

I fell back to relying on my pre-Powermeter process which is to knee jerk respond to any wheel that passes… again and again and again.

I can't even use the graphs to confirm my theory that after Big Bianchi beat me on that first little hill, he organized a coordinated multi-faceted attack through his little minions as Steve, Jim Tooker, and Carol Gaiman (Mrs. Gapper) took multiple turns going off the front with me in tow while I worried about the return of Bianchi for the rest of the ride.

Without my Anti-Georgenator (George says go, but Powertap says no), I was the bitch of each in turn as they traded off hammering me while taking advantage of my inability to help myself covering each and every move.

I even went so far as to pull for a couple miles on River Road, but still ended up coming into the parking lot ahead of the group with 62 miles on a 53 mile ride.

At least I managed to track down my new 5 second and 30 second personal bests those fuckers goaded me into.

Considering I spent the last 6 months carefully building my performance bit by bit (with special attention paid to not over facing knees, glutes, quads, hams, small intrisic hip and foot muscles, etc) trading in a 2 week setback for a couple minor personal bests is just a pure fucking tragedy.

b - I have found the book that finally puts into print what I have been preaching in my practice for so long!

The title will remain a secret until it arrives in your mailbox! Go right to chapter 25 and read it first! FINALLY!

And…arrrgh, back on antibiotics for the continuing saga of the never ending pneumonia that refuses to leave me alone.

50 miles on the bike yesterday felt like 400 - phew.

Mary I hope you are feeling so much better by the time this gets posted.

BTW: You seem to have missed the fact that postings are published immediately and automatically the moment you hit the POST COMMENTS button.

Be that as it may, Mary seems to be feeling better.

She got up and slow danced to some Van Morrison while I went out to get her ice cream.

What worries me is that Mary has 4 conditions layered one on top of the other.

At the base is a high pain threshold.

On top of that is a high pain tolerance.

The next to top layer is very high state of denial.

If any pain actually gets through these first three defenses, it is stopped by a brutal pride which disallows her owning up to having any pain at all.

Therefore, when she complains about pain, I hear her talking… and she has complained.

Toto is in town.

Toto is going for a personal best tomorrow in brownies.

You must have meant to post this on Twin Lynn's Home Ec. website.

As for myself, I have a stately pleasure-dome decreed.

You can't let him out alone.

After today's ride he was giving some type of seminar or something.

All the people were gathered around.

He was blathering on about beating Mary's personal best by 20 feet???

it's true.

and today is my birthday.

but you don't have to rat him out, he wrote all about it in the chatterbox............

www.I'veGotIssues.fluff.com

What's the URL to your website, so I can report on it here?

Anyway, even with the extra 36 watts I wouldn't have beat her distance if not for a tailwind over that part of the course.

She worked into a headwind.

If you add to that data the fact she effectively finished the last quarter of her Trial on one leg (due in part to her recently surgically addressed 21 uterine fribroid tumors), I am pretty sure she won't be counting it as a win for me… even though I did it on her birthday.

She did some more of her morphine today, after I asked her to take one last night when her moaning with pain and constant rolling over in bed like a hotdog on a spit was making it hard for me to sleep.

The rest of the Hump went pretty good.

I was still just over 19 mph when I got to the end of Oil City and happily turned onto Liberty Corners to head home.

I was a little upset to find another week of headwind would keep me off a 20+ pace, but I was confident a 19+ was going to be pretty easy despite my psoas had given it up around Dog Hill, followed very soon afterward by my femoris giving up the ghost, probably because my glute was gone.

I just thought, "Suck up the knee pain, and hold it together to the finish."

Of course that was before Humberto Cavalheiro passed me and BLASTER like we were standing still about half way to Pine Island.

Mind you I didn't say, "The FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP," passed us, it was just Humberto all alone, so a large puff of wind drained out of my sails at that point.

When BLASTER noticed Humberto was on his cell phone making dinner plans with Jen, he decided he could go catch him… which he couldn't, but he might have if Humberto had not hung up his phone just in time to notice Jim was about 20 feet behind him.

Unfortunately, that was just the first of BLASTER'S trouble, because about 10 minutes later when the second group (who likes to call themselves AA's but are really B's) caught us and Jim went with them to help out.

Somebody in the group explained it would be better if Jim went off and did his own ride, because they were trying to catch Humberto.

Turns out that suggestion was for the best, because my Powertap download reveals Humberto was about 3 miles ahead of that group when he passed us, so unless he stopped to take a pee break and chat up chicks at the deli, he was already on Round Hill Road at the very moment Jim got his tongue lashing.

It is unlikely that even a fresh Jim (who had been drafting me for the whole ride and who was fully strong enough to drop back a hundred yards and pace the group till he got bored) wouldn't have helped them enough to catch Humberto anyway.

Turned out good for me though, because Jim came back and was there to point out the A's were closing on us just before Hard Core Hill.

I said, "Pull me to the hill," and he was shocked ("Huh? Me pull? What hill?"), because he didn't know that the headwind had held us to just under 18.9 for the upteenth week in a row, so I decided to just bail out of my TT, so we could lay waste to the A's and finish over 19.

19.02 (196 watts), actually (with the A's nowhere close), and I didn't notice till the cool-down that my right quadratus lumborum was smarting like Mike Tyson had been popping it with body shots for 1.5 hours.

Explains the other shit falling apart starting at Dog Hill, but it doesn't explain why I keep doing this to myself.

Oh, that's right. Today was Widder's 55th birthday and my last chance to beat her before the drugs wear off.

Let's make it official. >>>

Thiniking about what could happen if people let that pinko talk get out of hand makes me shiver.

Nothing could be worse than that picture of Doug.

Forget nine of them--I'm laughing too hard just thinking about it.

I suggest you leave the powertap at home and get your scrawny butt to the gym next winter.

I do not go to the gym specifically because I am an expert in cycling physiology.

Plus, I do not want to end up looking like this. >>>

I disagree!

Take another look at the picture.

Kevin's legs are big—for a 145 lb guy!

Sure they would look funny on me, but for a guy his size, I bet the amount of muscle he has available to propel ONLY 145 lbs is twice what I have per my own weight, yet my legs look bigger.

Just my opinion.

I would also probably think Kevin's legs look big for his size, if my nose were so very far up his ass as is your own.

Unfortunately for you, all the flattery in the world is not going to help you much (meaning he is unlikely to back off the pace for you), because as soon as Kevin sees you have accused him of putting on 5 lbs (as you have), he will just get madder and faster.

Now you can fuck with somebody else.

Now take another look at this other photo (linked right) of the Powertap conference after last week's Hump.

You will note that in the middle of the group (dressed in black) is Kevin Haley, winner of big deal races and numerous Humps and probably over 24 mph on that course more than once.

How massively big do you need your legs to be?

After not riding my bike for 3 weeks the doctor added on another 2 weeks of rest and suggests a knee replacement. Again!

The 1st one was in 1973.

The sad part is no more mountain biking over the rough stuff. Instead he recommends slow easy spins on the road.

Get this book, start at the bottom of page 79, and fire up "What Not to Wear."

Unfortunately, the headwind that held our pace to 18.7 going out Round Hill never came through with its promised tailwind on Liberty Corners and Pulaski for the final 12 miles home, so the overall speed ended with another disappointing 18.75.

However, this time it was with 204 Watts, which put me in position to tack on another 12 minutes after the finish and bring my 2-Hour Personal Best Watts up to 203.

Just before Oil City, Humberto and the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP passed us.

Of course BLASTER was doing his duty tucked in behind me, so I said, "Go with them if you want."

By the time I said that, they were already away from us into traffic at the turn onto State Line Road, but Jim went a little ways toward catching them.

After a brief chase he held up to come back and get in behind me.

It took the next riders (in the second group, who like to call themselves Double A's but really are B's despite the group that rides two back from them calling themselves Single A's) another 15 minutes to catch us… about 5 miles later and after the turn at the Jolly Onion.

Once again, I told Jim he could go, but he said, "Not likely. I learned my lesson when Humberto and those guys passed."

I said, "This ain't the same group… watch this…"

I easily spun up to the group catching them on an uphill and Jim said, "I guess you were right."

Then we dropped off despite one of the riders on the back motioning several times for us to get on and finish with them.

I wasn't budging off my pace, because by then I knew the headwind was taking away our 20+ overall, but I might still get a 2-Hour 200+ Watts if I played my cards right, flipped around at the finish, and went back out to Mount Eve.

I dropped back from the group, owned up to the headwind, and held a 20.5 pace from Jolly Onion to the finish.

About 12 minutes after the second group passed Jim remarked, "I can't believe it. After you backed off a hundred yards, you alone have been pacing the whole group for basically the rest of the ride. They haven't moved away at all!"

Exactly.

It cost me more Watts than I wanted to spend (203), but it worked perfectly toward my new 2-Hour P.B.

They are:

"I Got Dropped"

If only I had, I could have used them.

You could always show up early and have me pull you around the Hump slow and steady with BLASTER.

Widder is taking a few more days off to make sure she doesn't open up a bloody leg gusher (like Dan Buckley did in Harriman three days after his own surgery), but I still might break the Hump 20/200 speed to power barrier.

That should rest you up real good for Bethel.

For the record, I don't feel any shame in getting beat by Humberto on a climb, or a sprint, now that he's putting in 300 miles a week.

I was getting beat by him when he didn't train—that was annoying.

KH

She is now two days off the morphine and says the pain was never as bad as every man she knows (none of the women) has hurt her on a ride.

She just made me come down and see her latest shit which was a personal best, like as if her colon is now free to pass big golden logs.

For the record, you'd better change your fucking attitude, because all the losers look to you for guidance, and if you start softening on Humberto who is going to come up with useful excuses for them?

You might try, "Fucking dipshit Humberto. He thinks he beat me; but come the next hill, I'm going to hurt him so bad he'll think he's back in Mexico!"

You know something like that.

Something that sounds good spit through a mouthful of poppers and fancy beer.

However, for the rest of them it is probably without consequence, because they all met their stated goal: to get to the bar for happy hour.

Other than that, there is no indication any of them have the slightest interest in their own performance.

As for me, I have a record of how I totally failed hitting my own goal which was: merely click intervals at every intersection as good as the Widder does—by rote almost unconsciously.

I started the ride on the front talking to the Bicycle Doctor about how Widder's surgery went while we pulled the group for the entire length of Meadow Avenue at a whopping 16.25 mph average.

Maybe I was thrown off my interval routine by spending the rest of the ride trying to figure out why my 197 watt average (3 below target) was steadily trending toward another below 19.

However, thanks to the power meter download, I chopped off that first bit of talking warmup and found I had a 20.03 (at 204 watts) onto Tuthill Road.

Then I only lost one mile for the rest of the ride, resulting in 24 miles of a 19.03 average, and that includes the first few miles on Craigville Road spent off the back of the group trying to stay out of the draft with my brakes on.

Finally, I couldn't take it anymore (23.28 mph average is way too slow for that section), so I came up their side only to get yelled at when my move blocked another rider who had the exact same plan for their own selves.

Otherwise, it was a 24 mile Time Trial on hills with a 19.03 mph avg at 203 watts and 141 bpm HR… a significant improvement in efficiency.

It would have easily been a 20+ loop if not for the 15 intersection slow downs, plus the uphill where my big-time expensive gears froze up and almost put me in the weeds till I got the cranks moving again.

Ok, so I totally fucked up on the interval clicks (and it was a motherfucker figuring out what happened and where), but I seem to be on track for shattering the Hump 20/200 speed to watts barrier.

In other words: the more expensive, the less reliable these things are.

I would suggest your next bicycle be the cheapest one you can get with a triple from Wal-Mart.

You also might like to stop writing so much about your progress, because it is getting way too personal to be of interest to anybody else.

This was for a computer that we do not use online anymore, and which has no use for the software.

I tried to cancel this automatic renewal twice (unsuccessfully), and today I was going to continue the onerous process believing I had until June 11 when the subscription runs out.

About an hour ago I found a confirmation e-mail in my inbox stating they have already charged my card.

While I am working on tracking down which one of my cards they charged in order to put a block on it, please tell any hungry lawyers whom you may know that a juicy slice of class action lawsuit pie is just sitting on the window sill cooling down for them.

No?

Oh, that's right. We can't get it through ddoT's thick skull that nobody reads this rag.

Todos os políticos sáo iguais. Sou pelo Westwood Velo. Eu ensino-te.

Interesso-me por a antiguidade. Posso ficar o resta de noite?

I am excited! Did you know most historians agree that extensive evidence exists which supports the fact that Christopher Columbus was in fact Portuguese not Spanish?

Therefore, it is well within my perogative to not only enforce a Portuguese Only policy in the Chatter Box but to go so far as to return all U.S. lands back to the Indians from whom it was stolen.

However, since everybody has recently acceeded to the truth regarding my superior cycling ability, I have chosen to be kind and grant returning to your native tongue, that adulterated and highly restricted version of devalued English all of you so much enjoy hearing yourself speak in.

Carry on.

Quantas montanhas treparam e qual a altitude de cada uma delas?

What do you think that means?

Tell her that with losing all that weight from the fibroids, she is closer to her dream of getting as skinny as Anthony (Tony to you guys), the cancer survivor!

Except for the hour the big cyclist doctor had to lean on her hip trying to staunch the bleed-out from her femoral artery, and the ensuing night spent in a panic thinking there was not going to be enough drugs in the world to stop the pain, because she kept double clicking her morphine drip (just like her computer mouse) and only succeeded in putting a block on the drip… everything went well.

Somebody was supposed to come by at 10:00 pm just to make sure she had stopped bleeding and is good to go.

Mary told me to phone her around 11:00 just to make sure the testing, pissing, and drug ingestions were complete, and she would know if she was getting out.

She was told she could be phoned at any time, but that information turned out as reliable as the information about when to find her in her room along with some nonsense about how she would be able to use her cell phone in her room.

When I phoned her room phone, I only got a busy signal, and when I back tracked to a receptionist type person (although I would hazard a person who answers the phone with a grunt should not be considered a receptionist), I found out that hospital phones are shut down in the evening.

I was told 7:30 am, Tuesday, is the first time anybody will be around who can tell me if I should come into the City to pick her up or not.

Of course, waiting that late in the morning to go into the City puts me squarely into the company of that endlessly vast herd of hopeless motherfuckers who believe it is acceptable to waste their lives in little metal humidors (mobile as they might be), so I am going to get up and leave by 5:00 in order to get there before all the other assholes come out to play.

I'll take my books on anatomy, power training and cycling in order to waste the fucking day trying to get in some sort of exercise by walking around in a little circle near one of the tiny groupings of germ infested stinking chairs left over from the 50's that people in the City seem to love.

Right now it is 1:50 am, so I'd better go to bed and figure out how to set an alarm clock, which is another worthless skill I have worked rather dilgently at not learning.

I sure am glad we don't have some piece of shit universal healthcare system like the Canadians.

Maybe a live feed of the procedure?

What about time lapse photogs of the shrinking fibroids?

Whatever you can provide. I love to see tumors die. Die motherfuckers die!!

The scarry thing is this will now increase the Widder's strength to weight ratio.

How many watts less will she have to put out now?

Sorry, no more videos, but I did track down photos from her fibroid removal and uterine ablation this winter in Florida.

Don't ya just love family albums? >>>

He is tormenting me till I cry for my binky.

Cat's out of the bag now.

Would brownies or lemon bars make Mary feel better?

Bianchi just cracked, but what makes you think that just because he cracked we are capable of analyzing the data?

Actually, whatever might alleviate Mary's promised constipation and general lack of interest in anything related to food should do the trick.

If you actually do have some way of communicating with Bianchi just select his favorite desert by his favorite desert chef.

That should make everybody happy all around.

If you need anything, please let me know.

We don't even know who the fuck you are!

Happily, fibroid tumors are the non-cancerous type.

However, they are the decidedly aggravating type, and probably account for most of Widder's temperament over the last dozen or so years (at least that is what SlingShot is hoping).

Mary has chosen the least invasive procedure available to her, so no cutting through muscle, just laproscopy.

Her doctor says she should be back on her bike in about four days, but her doctor probably has no idea what Widder means by, "I love to ride my bicycle."

Here is a video animation of the procedure. >>>

I was there when Mary received the technical details and heard her doctor say, "Well, the procedure is relatively non-invasive, but the tumors do not like being killed, so they are going to hurt like fucking Ridgebury when they die."

Mary replied, "Sounds good to me. Let's get to it."

WIDDER'S HUMP REPORT

This comes under the heading of: Why I love my power meter.

Without it I would not have a record of today's 20.61 mph average on the Widder's Hump.

Actually, that was from the top of State Line Road to the finish (the last 11.55 miles), because we had promised BLASTER an easy 16 mph pace if he came out, but I could only contain myself to Oil City before our close to the same speed but 15 watts lower than last week (due to more efficient transitions) got the better of me and pulled me off our slow and easy game plan.

I'm sure BLASTER didn't mind, because he always gets strong quickly in the spring, so with only two rides under his belt he is already staying with us to the tops of hills.

Anyway, I've got the data to show him our 20+ pace only required 187 watts average with my HR staying around 134, so what can he complain about?

After all, that is a significant drop in effort from last week (just like we promised), and I did pull him and Widder for an entire Hump.

I guess he will even have to keep quiet about my little indescretion of a 23.14 mph average for the full length of the Round Hill finale (where my HR did hit 153 at the end due to being over 26 mph), because that required only a 210 watt average effort—which was also not my fault.

By then I could only focus on my average speed while trying to stop riding one legged.

Someday, I hope to bring both legs to the same ride.

How come all of a sudden you are so skinny and fast?

Details of the program are somewhat secretive and technical in nature, but in summary: I write the stories.

I do take offense, however, from your description of our moment together.

For two reasons.

First, you could have cut down the verbiage and simply wrote that you pulled the classic SlingShot maneuver.

Trust me, the readers would know exactly what happened.

Second, you should tell the truth and admit that I got you up to 210 bpm.

Come on, baby, admit it, who gets your motor running?

Your offense has been duly noted and is not out of character.

As for your first reason, I could cut down on the verbiage, but then we wouldn't have a movie.

As for who gets my motor running: not GM.

PISSES ME OFF

Tonight's ride was so fucking chaotic, it wasn't so much of a ride as it was just a string of fractured little wretchedly aggravating moments.

Pisses me off.

All's I can remember are quick swirling instances with no context and no cohesion.

I would love to know how those moments fit in with the rest of what I've been doing with my power meter, but I can make neither head nor tails of the download data either.

My plan was to try a repeat of my heart rate anomaly of Tuesday (when I hit a 200+ bpm average for 20+ seconds three times in a row with a 228 spike), but my plan to commit a public suicide by drop failed.

All I managed was one 172 bpm spike and that only happened after I lost my mind and followed Dangerous Dan and Twin George up Hulsetown Road until we got past the steepest part, and I looked back to see the group way the fuck back down the hill.

Even then, it didn't happen until after I saw the group gone and buried and decided to rest, pulled over, and Twin Lynn passed me giving the strong impression she needed to get fucked with: so I did.

Even then, my 172 bpm spike never happened until a full minute after I came back around Lynn with a six second burst of a 142 rpm cadence.

I really only did the cadence burst just so she could see what one looks like, and what it does, but having Twin Lynn pass me does just piss me off.

Though I guess I did get to confirm that my HR spikes are likely to happen after efforts (not during), but 172 ain't nothing to call the doctor about, so I'm sorry to say I got nobody off their bike to call 911.

In any case, soon after the Lynn incident, Ryan came spinning by, which is of course unacceptable, so I thought, "You ain't pulling that 'the spinning spinner spins' shit on me, Bucko. Let me drop down two gears and see how good your spinning is coming along about 45 seconds further up this hill!"

We went back and forth like that for awhile, but I said I don't remember much, and I don't.

I do remember that when we got back to the front group, they were slowing for the stop sign and consisted mostly of women and Dangerous Dan (ok, just women), so I thought, "Fuck! All that work to wear down Ryan's ass to less than the nub it already is, and now we are going to stop, stand around, and let him rest up real good. You people's riding style just pisses me off."

Then the bad stuff started.

I made a pretty good turn onto 207 and let people get around me until Cranky went by.

Then I dropped into a pace calculated to catch them all at the top.

About half way up the climb, I saw Cranky pop and sit up about ten yards ahead.

When I passed her I asked, "What? You pretending to be done?" and she asked some inane questions like she gave a shit about Widder dropping back to ride with Bianchi even after I told her Widder went home, which is the sort of thing that requires a life lesson, so I said, "Let's go catch them," and left to do it.

About the middle of Twin Arches Road I looked back and Cranky was gone, gone, disappeared, but the front group was just ahead, so I kept gaining on them.

The ARC Staff has requested the remainder of SlingShot's rant be placed in this column for spacing.

Assuming you read the first column already, here's the rest.

Palletman was standing guard at the turn onto 208, and he wondered aloud, "Where's the rest of them?"

"Way the fuck back there somewhere."

The Widder and I call it Real Estate Hill because of the real estate agency at the top of the sharp climb at the start of Tuthill, and I got to that hill in pretty good shape, because my pace since the stop sign was a mild 19.05 at 204 watts, so I just started on my waiting pace in case somebody ever caught up.

Therefore, I had my wits about me when Twin George came by selling bits and pieces of some shortcut into Brooklyn, but I wasn't buying… just getting pissed off.

He only carried his wares about 50 feet further up the climb before he sat up hoping for other buyers.

However, George's little sales pitch didn't piss me off as much as finding Cranky on my wheel again, so I said, "See ya later Cranky" and spun up to catch the others.

Doug did me the honor of disallowing my scoot in front of him at the top and then offered a pull… which would usually piss me off also, but after my suicide failure, I was happy to get on a friendly wheel, so I had just settled in for a long winter's nap when I noticed Cranky's wheel was back.

"Bitch just doesn't get it. How many times do I have to do it? I dropped her, and she should stay dropped. Pisses me off."

So three or four times more, she would be there and I would have to slip around Doug and take over the pull, just to make sure she maintained her fucking dropped status.

Bitch wouldn't do it. In fact it got so bad that the last time I was dashing away from her, I looked back and she had morphed into Widder who was snickering and giggling about how she knew I thought she was Cranky because of how hard I was working.

Then she warned me Cranky was back and about to attack the climb up 94, but I almost didn't believe her.

When Cranky finally gave out her last gasp on the climb (which was my cue to come around) I queried, "What? You done? That's all you got? No more climbing today?"

Still, it gave me some pleasure to hear Doug come up behind and say, "Widder went back to ride with Bianchi."

"Oh. Okay. I'll go back too, because I really enjoy watching Bianchi's track bike spin his legs into a frothy meringue."

A little later my opportunity on Oxford Depot Road to stop and give club ride directions to the strongest and most beautiful hetero-couple in the world was just a bonus.

Somebody really should explain to Cranky that when she's dropped she should fucking stay that way.

Hell's bells, I'll do it myself.

Cranky, when I drop your ass, just keep it dropped. Give the fuck up and quit.

Don't even try again. No more of this: Freddy Krueger can't be killed bullshit. Lay down and die.

Just pisses me off.

Widder didn't have a chance. I could have kept going.

Shut the fuck up.

Take notice of the three large blue humps (speed) with associated red humps (heart rate) on the graph linked over here. >>>

For many years I have periodically seen a momentary 200+ bpm heart rate on my Polar but always thought, "Yeah. Right. Two hundred twenty eight. I'm sure."

But after being inspired by Toe Clip and The Dropper's racing success today, I went for a ride with the one and only express intent of getting better at clicking intervals at every intersection.

With that modest goal I was surprised to find such an odd pattern bubbling up out of my downloaded data.

Those blue humps are the downhills, where I couldn't hold my watts as my speed increases, and the red shows my heart rate catching up to the previous hill's effort, which is typical for me, because I often do not feel the effects of a climb until it is over.

What is not typical is to find numbers so far out of my norm, and in such a predictable pattern, but I haven't been watching it closely for a long time, because downloading the Polar became a pain in the ass.

Those red lines welling up in the blue humps are my heart rates from the Sugar Loaf bypass downhill, then the downhills on Gibson Hill Road.

They peak at 216, 228, 211 bpm in order, with a similar 171 (a little harder to notice) on the smaller hump just before the last big one.

The first one big one averages 210 bpm for 26 secs, the next averages 223 for 21 secs, and the last 201 for 21 secs.

They happened right out of the gate so to speak, and I basically felt not a thing.

I guess I warmed up after the first 3 miles, and the numbers went back to normal.

This is all very odd, because I have considered my max HR to be 174 since I worked like a dog to get it after a headwind interval holding a 160 bpm average for 40 min in Florida in 2003 (a week after tying my 172 record from 2000—on the hill before Cross Road with the front group hot on my wheel), not to mention how that bullshit 220 minus your age rule puts me at 161.

No wonder I always start laughing when people think they dropped me: looks like I've got some headroom not yet plummed.

Strange days indeed.

More likely you are about to drop stone cold fucking dead!

HOLD THE PRESSES!

MSNBC in a headline stated: "Obama taps Sotomayor"… and then they went for a bike ride.

For the first time, I got blown out the back of the field by Cat 4's and 5's… and it wasn't perty.

Spent a bunch of laps time trialing to get back on, but after a pathetic effort, I got yanked by the officials.

However, Dave Parker was still hanging tough and was probably in contention, but in the very last lap a couple of guys from the same team banged into each other causing a crash and forcing Dave off and into the curb.

The next day was another first.

The Setting was the Hartford Downtown Crit.

For the first time I was able to hang tough with the over 50 jet set.

These guys were no slouches, as we averaged over 25mph throughout the race. (We woulda averaged a bit more but we had to deal with opposing team blocking.)

Whenever I pick on guys my own age, I usually get my butt served up on a not-so appetizing plate, but this time I finished solidly as mid-pack fill.

And I was happy with that.

What differentiated the two races was simple: The Sommerville Crit had a 1/8 to 1/4 mile incline that connected turns 3 and 4. The repeated runs up that slope did me in. The Hartford loop was flat.

I guess that's what happens when you stay off the Hump, so I should get back with those Saturday morning beatings as it may pay off on the race circuit.

That reminds me, I hear there's a summertime comedy coming out called "Hump Day."

SlingShot, were you consulted on this movie production?

I believe it's a movie about Bill Murray getting spit on by a camel over and over, because he can't tell his torque from his elbow to get his watts straightened out against his enertia.

I was working on today's ride below, and trying to convince Widder the new book means she can start cooking for me.

She won't.

WHAT I LEARNED ON TODAY'S RIDE

I'm on Humberto's wheel as we are following Pedro south and uphill from the West Point North Gate, and I'm thinking, "That motherfucking idiot Humberto! He's in his fucking 53/11 and overtorqued like the braying jack-ass that he is. Some people never learn!"

At that very moment he pushed a little harder, so we came around Pedro, and we all made a big show of passing some guy with an Iron Man tattoo.

Maybe it didn't matter that Humberto was riding so stupidly inefficient, because those tri people are always so easy to beat, it is almost not worth doing.

Except it is fun to see if you can pull them off their program, so they pay for it during their run or swim later in the day.

Otherwise, I figured Humberto might be riding so poorly because he still hadn't regained focus after I took the first hill from him.

He came up on my right at the top and started laughing like somebody might do when a little turtle goes pissing and scooting across the road with its little legs swinging frantically in every direction.

Could be he was thinking, "Let the little feller have it, if it's so fucking important to him, I'll just take Pedro up Angola and send Tino back to pull them boys (and Widder) down Route 32 to meet up with us at the Cornwall circle."

It's a good thing he sent Tino to help us too, because without him pulling us up the hill at the light onto Quaker Avenue (where I stuck to his wheel only by spinning 114 rpm average with a 135 max for a minute seventeen of 336 watts), we would have just missed them at the circle and never seen them again.

My heart rate had hit 159 by the end of that little climb, so Tino made sure at least I can say I was on the verge of working once this summer.

Still, it might have been wiser for me not to go with Humberto and Pedro (when they caught us again after their pee break in Cornwall), because I would not have had to see Humberto working so god damn dumb, but the Widder was on her pace, and I was pretty much left to my own devices with time to kill.

Nothing much was happening with Widder anyway, because she was well below her performance of this climb last year (you might remember its famous).

She was 10 watts under, and was limping on one leg, but decided she might have enough left for a 30 minute Personal Best, so I left her alone for awhile and ran up to catch the others.

Unfortunately, my prediction about how they would all be blowing about half way up the four mile climb had turned true, and they were all regrouping to go up 9W over to Perkins, so Humberto could do some hill repeats.

I yelled at them something like, "That's all you guys got? Half a hill? I knew you'd all blow. Here comes Widder. You'd better get outa here. Have fun taking your lives in your hands out on 9W. It'll be better than what Widder had planned for you beginning in about 4 minutes exactly up the rest of this climb. Good luck to you. Have a good life. See you later."

So the rest of the climb I got to do some writing, and I remembered I had better make sure to tell everybody about what I learned on today's ride.

It's about how that dumb-ass Humberto was riding so overtorqued and stupid.

Remember this: if you are ever behind Humberto and see him in the wrong fucking gear, use it as the perfect example of the absolute totally wrong way for you to be riding.

Get in an easier gear and spin a higher cadence, so you can get more power for your pushing.

Humberto (that fucked up wad of a dirt bag) is just riding in too big a gear, wasting all kinds of torque that never reaches the ground, and wobbling all around like a newbie fuck-face, because that's the only way he can get in a workout riding with losers like you.

We got e-mail this morning about a 7:30 ride from Humberto's, "So why not," was our thought.

It was a lot of fun visiting with you both as always, and Oh-ee thanks you for the water... and thinks that Spatz is really nice :)

Look what Widder did to your dog. >>>

THERE ARE NO HILLS
THERE IS NO WIND

I guess one might say it was my fault, or I myself just might say, "My bad," but understand this first.

On today's ride were Dave Freifelder (winner of the Harriman Spring Classic week before last), Humberto Cavalheiro (winner of numerous Humps and finishing up his training to ride with that Pro team in Portugal next month), and Glenn Babikian (second in last year's Sussex Series and yesterday finished with Humberto way the fuck ahead of everybody else on the Hump).

And that just names three of the dozen or so who decided 9W and the Two Bridges is just too dangerous, and I guess also too slow… as it turns out.

Anyway, some may say it was my fault, but others might say it is just the way these guys always ride.

Those who credit me with getting things slamming would say it happened at the top of the hill past the golf course where Glenn was leading and did a little extra push at the top.

I was on his wheel and remembered, "That's right. Glenn doesn't have a power meter, and I bet he would love to know what happens when you hold your effort after the top of a hill."

So I passed him saying, "Let's see what happens if we hold our effort on the downhill."

Sometime after that there was a two minute moment of 30+ mph with a 40 mixed in which might have gotten people fired up a little, and Widder reports that somebody back in the group commented, "Jesus, this is fast!"

I wasn't really pushing it, however, I was only on a 6.7 torque while my yesterday's Hump Time Trial was 9.22 for just under an hour and fifty minutes.

Still I was a little shocked when Dave Freifelder coasted past me at the first bottom, until I looked at my watts, factored in his weight being so much lesser than mine, and realized, "Hey, Dave is fucking with me. He had to push up from behind and coast right at the last minute."

I was pretty flattered. He didn't have to do that.

Widder reports that soon afterward she saw Humberto working like she's never seen him work trying to catch me when I held the same watts after the turn onto Trout Brook and Dave eased off.

By the time we got to Route 32 things had changed again behind me, and Glenn passed me on that first uphill (during my first gear snafu of the day), but I didn't respond because I didn't recognize him and also there was my gear not shifting, then self-shifting, then not shifting again.

In any case, a hill or two later the group was going a little too slow for my taste once more, so I spun up past them to Glenn in the front and mentioned (didn't shout mind you, just mentioned) that although it was an uphill he might like to put a little pace into his pedals.

So maybe it was my fault, and I shouldn't have actually pointed at his pedals, but really I just wanted to make sure they all knew I was there.

The last couple times on that ride people have decided I was dropped when I stayed a hundred yards back, and this time I wanted to make sure the pace was suitable for Widder and that everybody would be so pissed off at me they'd let me drop off the back and work on my own without harassing the Widder for dropping me.

My plan worked perfectly, and I only had a 23.11 mph average with a 145 average HR at the intersection of Otterkill and Taylor road—where I let them drift over the next hill and disappear toward Heart Attack Hill.

Or at least, I thought it had worked perfectly until I got a phone call from Widder while I was just starting the climb on Goshen Road, and she said she was dropped after blowing up on Heart Attack Hill and went off course, but she was not lost and would do the ride backwards and find the group again.

I screamed, "Dropped!? Blown up on Heart Attack! That can't be. What happened to your plan? Where was your target when you blew?"

"About a mile behind me."

"My point exactly."

On the way home in the car, she started to explain how hard she had been working and had no choice in the matter because those guys are so fucking other worldly fast and unforgiving.

Once again I had to say, "I don't want to hear a word about it until the data is in front of us, but I can pretty much tell you exactly what happened."

I told her to within a statistical exactitude of what the data later confirmed.

She said, "I shouldn't have blown. I only did a 300 watt interval on Heart Attack"

And I replied, "Bullshit! Even with your new compact chainrings you do not have the correct gearing for a reasonable 300 watts on that hill. I'll bet you were overtorquing by double what you should have been. You might have an easy 1 minute 300, but you sure as fuck don't have a 1 minute 600 watt in your ass, and that is probably the effort you were trying to crank."

The data confirmed she had done exactly that: double the torque she has been doing for her recent Wisner Intervals, so she started with her next excuse, "Well, maybe it was because I was coming into the hill…"

At that point I exploded.

"Now get this fucking straight! There are no hills, there is no wind. You only have to know about three things: 1) watts, 2) cadence, 3) torque."

If one of those looks odd, one of the others will be way the whack off your goal.

Actually, you only have to worry about two: torque, and cadence.

Really, only one: cadence.

If your cadence goes down, you will be using shitloads of extra torque that disappears into your crank arm and never sees the road!

"If you can't hold the cadence, get more appropriate gearing, Bitch!"

We reviewed her last 300 watt intervals and saw that she hit them (actually 350 plus) with half the effort used on today's Heart Attack—and at only 6 rpm's faster.

I screamed, "See that? The difference is subtle, but the results are not!"

She said, "Yeah, but look. I was 23.3 to the base of Heart Attack, that has to count for something."

"Yes it does, and you are welcome."

So maybe it was my fault after all. The math is simple, but getting Widder to listen to simple instructions seems to illude me.

HUMP REPORT

There has been a sea change at the Hump.

Just as last week, Humberto Cavalheiro appeared in the parking lot about 5 minutes ahead of the closest of the FRONT GROUP… but this time he arrived with Glenn Babikian.

Last week Humberto did a few laps shouting, "I fucked 'em. I fucked 'em all!" but this morning he and Glenn started blubbering about what a great job each had done, and how hard each had pulled, and how good it was to finish with a 23.8 mph average again, and how 24 mph will now arrive soon enough.

So there you have it: an actual team effort.

Things are different on the Hump, and the old ways are reluctant to return.

If a couple more like minded individuals hook up with these two and work toward a goal, the much vaunted 25 mph speed barrier is likely to be broken with a big bang.

Our suggestion is to make Humberto the designated finisher.

Then everybody guage their working and pulling according to what is exactly, precisely the best for Humberto to booster rocket him into the statosphere.

I think it happened once before, but ironically somebody arrived here today via this. >>>

They got them homegrown terrists.

THEY CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

I thought maybe somebody might find it useful to notice that I had pulled into the parking lot just off their huffing wheels, and I was still fresh as a daisy after completing the same ride the group fought over, but that I had Time Trialed it alone.

So I asked Ryan how hard he thought I had to work to get my 199 watts and finish with a 19 mph pace—putting me about three minutes behind the group who was working together for an hour.

Ryan was the only person there who might have a clue, because he did the Hump with me and Widder two weeks earlier and had seen first hand how that effort wouldn't even bring me out of Zone 2.

Instead of commenting on that, Ryan brought up another issue which really put that ride (and all others like it) in perspective.

He said, "19 mph? That's interesting I only have 18.6, and I finished in front of you."

Since Juan had just told me the group finished at 20 mph, I asked Palletman what his average had been, but he could only say, "I don't know. I didn't keep track."

Apparently Palletman had spent the entire ride thinking about how good he looks on a barstool… at least until he finishes his current project which seems to be finding out just how fast he can get as fat and out of shape as he possibly can.

So I asked Cranky.

Cranky lives on some other planet where she can beat the strongest rider on that ride (but only on the flat), but sometimes she can be brought back to earth for a moment if you insist on getting solid data from her, so I made her walk over and check her computer.

She came back saying, "Right now it says 19, but that is after my cool down loops around the parking lot, so probably 19.3.

There you have it: one ride, four differing results.

Which is why I always like to get home and run the figures in Excel to confirm that people rarely have a clear understanding of what went on in a ride.

I take great pains to be precise, but even I am not immune to the vageries of ride stats.

My trip computer must have been on the verge of clicking down from 19, because my final was 18.91.

Otherwise Widder and I were 19.53 just past the park coming back into Goshen, before we got hung up by the light which was still pretty good, because we had already been held up when a cop car was sitting at an intersection that I could have hammered.

Which is good as well, because I was just catching the group again and would have had to piss them off by spinning past them on the next uphill.

At least we got to see Twin George bail out of the ride and go up 94 alone after he decided going to see Nilsa would be preferable to wasting more time with people who couldn't even get away from a geezer spinning lightly.

That's the last time we had the group in our sites, but I knew they weren't very far ahead, and I refused to come off my 200 watt plan just to make a point that nobody would notice.

The funny part is that once again there were people who actually thought I got dropped, despite the three times I had to spin past them on an uphill (because they attacked at the bottom, blew-up, and sat up in front of me), and I would have had to have done it a fourth time if Doug hadn't dropped off the back to get in my way just when I was starting to build pace after a stop sign turn.

One person asked, "How long before the group started did you two go out?"

"Before you? Don't you remember me passing you right there under the overpass… as you started?"

"Oh, so you just pushed hard right away?"

"No, I just got on my easy pace right away."

It probably looked like we went out early because it took the group so long to catch us.

While I was answering that question everybody else ran off to the food trough and missed seeing Joe Straub and Glen Babikian drop by and give a blow-by of their race winnings at Sussex on Tuesday.

One would think one or two of the bar set might have had some interest in how a fat old coot could find it so easy to Time Trial and match performance of a group of 20 working together.

You'd also think somebody might be interested in why it kept looking like I was "attacking" on the hills while I was really just maintaining an easy pace.

But in-grouping tends to maintain its own status quo so that: Pokers like to remain pokers. B riders prefer to remain B riders. Loser A's choose to play musical barstools while pretending they had a workout.

I don't worry so much about my responsibility to explain it anymore.

If people aren't training with power, it is like trying to teach a musical instrument to a student who is totally deaf… and who only receives feedback about their performance from comments made by their concert audience… all of whom are also totally deaf.

I'm thinking it is not so much a case that these people can't handle the truth: they just have no interest in it.

Just as well, because if Cranky realized (after making such a big deal about wanting to see it happen then not following through) how the Widder did essentially the same speed ride as she did but only needed 135 watts to do it (plus she really could beat that strong rider on the ride)… well, if Cranky knew what those watts meant, she'd probably have to shoot herself and make a big mess.

Oh, yeah.

I won my 10 dollar bet that Cranky wouldn't follow through, and Widder's computer showed an 18.98 mph average.

How weird is this? >>>

Has ddoT got it in his head again that somebody might actually read this?

For info check out:

www.catskillmountainmultisport.com

That way you can put in a long URL, and it won't fuck up Chatterbox formatting, because it will just look like this. >>>

Everybody look up Lombard's Paradox.

That means you win the honor of hearing about my patented method to make sure the men never ever do beat you.

When you arrive for the time trial make a big deal about checking out the first significant hill.

Then run around shaking your head and talking about how hard that hill is going to be, about how surely only the strongest riders are likely to do very well on it, and how it is defintely going to be the deciding factor in the Time Trial.

Mention what great shape you are in and how strong you are feeling, so you are just, "…going to get in my big ring and attack that hill like there's no tomorrow."

When you hit that hill go extra easy.

Your prediction about the hill being the deciding factor will come true—as all the men blow up on it (trying to prove how manly they are) and suffer the consequences of their self inflicted wound for the rest of the trial.

That takes care of the men.

The women will be a little harder to beat.

It's like saying, "My feet hurt," when there are 26 bones, 31 joints, and 20 intrinsic muscles in each, not to mention the connections to the peroneals, flexors, tibialis's, gastrocnemius, and soleus.

Just what is it that hurts, and in which foot, and why?

Paying attention to the glutes is helpful, but paying attention to what is happening with the obturators, gemellus, piriformis, and quadratus femoris muscles while constantly feeling for what a spike in torque does to them really pays off.

I have spent this morning walking around looking for subtle pains, defining which muscle groups they are, and figuring out where, when, and what stressed them during the rides of the last three days.

Being able to walk up and down stairs, get out of bed without back pain, step up onto the 12 inch step between our bedroom and living room without a nail gun firing into my knee, and being able to stand on either foot for as long as I want, all that just seems to be icing on the c..., whoops.

Did anybody even show up?

For this week's Power Meter Seminar BLASTER showed up totally fat-ass and out of shape after 7 months of not touching his bicycle.

Everybody is likely to think that is just a joke except for those who saw him.

Apparently there is supposed to be some sort of recession nonsense going on, but I can tell you for sure that not a single person has been laid off at a beer refinery on account of Jim.

Anyway, he was all whiney and shit about how he wasn't going to be able to stay with us after we told him it was going to be 18+ for sure, and if things went well over 19, but really I would be holding a 20 mph effort.

On 88 near Pine Island we saw a slower cyclist riding the other direction and Jim spouted, "Maybe I'd be able to turn around and ride with him," and Mary chirped, "Come on Jim! You're doing fine. You are right here with us."

I added, "What the fuck do you want Jim? Our average is 18.5 right now, and we are getting ready for the tailwind and the easy part. We are going to be over 19 easy. Plus you won't shut up, so you can't be hurting all that much."

Unfortunately, the tailwind never happened, and I knew 19 was out of the question when I caught Widder half-wheeling me to stay echeloned out of the headwind.

So we only ended with 18.73 mph with only 196 watts (same as last week for 18.78), but I kind of fucked our pace (and my watts) when I realized near the camel farm my CPU was showing me time of day, not Interval time, so I spent that whole section dicking around with my meter trying to get it straightened around.

I guess the good news is that now Jim has been added to Ryan as the only two human beings to see this happen and marvel at how fast you can go so easily if you pay attention.

Last week Ryan said, "I usually go out with the Killer B's, and (when we do the Hump) by the time we are done I'm cross-eyed tired and can't barely see the finish line coming. Today I never even broke a sweat…," and this week I pointed out to Jim, "You have to admit that was the easiest near 19 you've ever done, plus you usually spend your whole first month or two in the spring nearer to 16."

"Agreed."

Mary pointed out I wasted lots of time clicking my Intervals, because she can now click hers without looking then only glancing down after to confirm the timer has reset.

Great advice coming from somebody who did a 1-hour TT at 19.3 mph average with only 174 watts on the same course, so I wanted to practice that technique today while incorporating some other things I noticed happening.

I went out on the Heritage Trail to double check that 200 watts should be faster than I've been doing it and see if I couldn't put a better lense on what group of muscles is failing when, and how, and why, etc.

I did the whole trail (Chester to Goshen, Monroe, Chester) with 203 watts for a 19.3 mph average, and get this: my average torque was significantly lower than my 196/18.73 for last week's Hump.

So that was a 19.3 loop with a lot of trail traffic munging things up.

We sure as fuck don't know who the fuck they are and neither do you, so shut the fuck up.

We already figured he had, since we had set him up for it.

This time we told the whole parking lot, just in case anybody ever needs to know something, they'll know who to ask.

This time we didn't even have to use enhanced interrogation techniques, which for us means asking politely, "Please, tell us. Pretty please with sugar on it?

Must be the brownies that makes that work.

Otherwise, it is now 9:44 pm, and the only humans to come here since you posted is Turtle Boy and Doug, so I assume they've already e-mailed you about some other ride.

I'm sure you know there's a Joe-Fix-It's ride.

Depending on the rain, I'll probably be going out somewhere sometime in the afternoon, but if that's your only option I guess the answer is no: there is nobody worth riding with riding anywhere tomorrow.

In any case, you could always decide you are the ride leader and post a time and place just to see who shows up.

I hope you are doing better.

I just wanted to let you know that we almost had a big accident on the Hump today!

These 15 horses got loose from the stable and mixed themselves with a group of riders.

The guys are all okay, but 2 of the horses got hurt really bad when Dan Sullivan ran them over with his bike.

The horses have chain link cuts all over their bodies.

After all that, Dan Sullivan took the win only to be disqualified after we found out he crossed the finish line riding one of the horses.

Hope you feel better. See you out there soon!!!!!!

Humberto

Nobody is allowed to be funnier than me around here... at least without pretending to be me.

HUMP REPORT

"I fucked 'em all!" yelped Humberto Cavalheiro swooping into the parking lot a full 2 minutes before the nearest Double AA rider off the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP and ending this morning's Hump in typical Turtle Boy fashion.

POWER METER SEMINAR

ARC Staff is proud to announce a planned seminar in the correct use of power meters to be held on the Hump course on Saturday, May 16, 2009 beginning at 8:00 am.

This schooling will be conducted by world renowned champion watter SlingShot who will attempt to pull the entire group for an entire Hump holding at least a 200 watt average which (depending on road crossings, stop turns, automobile traffic, and excellence in transitioning hilltops) will result in a nominal 20 mph, give or take.

Two weeks ago the Watts were 192 with a 17.70 mph average, and last week it was 196 watts at 18.83.

SlingShot now has two CPU's in order to more carefully track average watts, so this week could be 19+, but bring a book to read during the ride, because you are likely to post a personal best time, but the effort will be so smooth and easy you are likely to be bored shitless like Ryan was last week.

All who have an interest in watching a refined steady state attack on this known 34.2 mile course are welcome to join in—so long as they keep their mouths shut and take care (if they cannot overcome their urge to pass Mr. Fugett at any point in the ride) to maintain a clear distance in front of him so that the sanctity of his gathered data is not compromised.

In attendance will be Widder who will be in charge of Records Keeping and Interval Setting duties.

BLASTER has also threatened to make an appearance again.

Attendees will be dropped off at the finish line in time to watch the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP come in, which will probably be led by Turtle Boy Humberto Cavalheiro, if he isn't too hung over from gorging on massive quantities of Portuguese food in Spring Valley the evening prior.

While this opportunity is free and open to the public (as always), the event itself is subject to cancelation due to rain, caprice, or Bob's whim, whichever comes first.

After all, he is far more concerned about getting better than he is about being known for it.

Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

You might want to start keeping this shit to yourself.

BTW: You forgot to drop Ryan off at the finish line last week to watch the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP come in, despite his overture pulling to the side after he kicked your asses in the sprint.

196 Watts
100 rpm cadence
136 bpm HR
  18 mph

I think I'm getting smoother.

Just think what I could've done if the Hump wasn't tomorrow!

Your summary should read: "Just think how good I could do the Hump tomorrow if I hadn't done this stupid ass shit today!"

The power you lose is now going into your wheel and making you faster.

You are already too much of a man, and we ain't helpin' you with nothin'.

Previously I would lower the gears to ease the pedal pain on the legs.

Now I just use the gear that is easist to pedal. A subtle difference for sure but one that has helped me transverse some pretty wicked rocky stuff.

Thanks for proving that all knowledge is related.

When the mere threat of rain spooks everybody out of a ride, you don't need data to prove they are all a bunch of pussies!

Basically, I like to stay as hard as possible.

She rested today, getting ready to try intervals with a 120 cadence, so I went out by myself on the old Wednesday night club ride loop around Sugar Loaf.

My goal was to stay around 160 watts (about a pound and a half pressure) while working on hilltop transitions.

The extra CPU really allowed me to stay closer to my goal, not overwork, and hold my effort down.

I found out I should probably rectify a previous comment.

I mentioned before that I had to go click, 1, 2, 3, click, 1, 2, 3 over the tops of hills, but the truth is closer to click, 1, click 1, click 1.

Also keeping focused on slight drop-offs in grade and responding before you've lost pace with the watt drop is quite a challenge… rather violent and chaotic.

Anyway, I ended with a 184 watt average (closer to 2.2 lb effort considering my inefficiency) for a 16.8 mph loop with an average HR of 129 bpm.

I got carried away on about the third uphill and hit a 166 HR, but backed off as soon as I started feeling I'd gone over my 3 lb limit, so no harm done.

Like I said, the extra CPU allows me to work closer to my goal, but it doesn't make me do it.

I'm still incorrigible about resetting my goal upwards mid-ride.

I sure hope to hit the Hump again soon.

I heard a nasty rumor that Tri Bike Mike D. bought himself a new Cervelo RS.

I'm hoping it will be a Huffy.

All I need is to find somebody who can make sure the stock cassette that comes with it will work with my Powertap and put it on for me.

How about a visual?

I just wish we had some convenient way of making sure Big Bianchi sees it too, because he is working on a 20 mph loop himself and would find it instructive, despite the fact he is using a turn of the century web browser that won't show him the rollover text hint.

Anyway, here it is. >>>

My Powertap measures strain as torque and reports it in Newton-meters (metric) while calculating the watts that are generated based on cadence.

The wattage derived has proven to be an extremely perfect analog for speeds achieved as a function of the degree of success for my execution of pedaling efficiency, so watts is what I watch while riding.

Last Saturday I time trialed the Hump and my watts average was 196 which is very close to the 200 watts you asked about.

Of course, the watts generated cannot be felt, so watts cannot be used to judge how "hard" it felt, only torque can be felt as hard or easy.

I performed well enough to complete those 196 watts with an average torque of 8.96 Newton Meters.

It takes 10 Newton-meters to lift 2.2 lbs about 3 feet straight up off the ground.

Therefore, the effort I required pushing the pedals in order to complete a full Hump (solo, no drafting) at just under 19 mph was equivalent to me laying down on my back (supported high) and pressing less than a 3 lb ankle weight from my butt to full-length leg a bunch of times in a row, or for 1 hour 49 minutes to be exact.

Of course, I didn't have to push up and down but merely spun a little circle, so really it was somewhat easier than described.

There you have it.

A 200 watt effort is a little less hard than pushing a 3 lb ankle weight around in little circles for awhile, and you can get about a 19 mph average by doing it—even if your performance sucks a big donkey dick.

I hope that helps.

Most of of the connections showed a submittal was attempted, but each was blocked.

That means somebody somewhere tried a coordinated and automated attack on American Road Cycling only to get their asses handed to them.

1st Place: Dave Freifelder, in whatever division

4th Place: Kevin Haley, in whatever division

No divisions, no speeds, no times, no blow by.

What the fuck is wrong with you people?

All over the United States, in fact all over the world, there are rides like the Hump which happen with the same intensity and regularity as the Hump itself.

In all those rides are found a few very strong national level competitors who continue their chase to finish line glory without so much as a mention by any big-time or local media.

Even members of the local clubs which sponsor rides around these extremely competitive events are mostly unaware of what is going on right there in their own back yard.

Additionally cyclists who search their TV listings in vain for bike race excitement hardly recognize the great athletic events that happen every week, right under their noses, right beside their own recreational rides.

Among those ongoing really fast, really hard, really competitive rides one will always find a handful of true athletes who are strongly committed through their love of cycling to achieve great things in the sport… and they do.

They do so through well considered training programs and progressive improvement over years and decades of diligent work.

Every so often, the best of those athletes gather together to test their progress among like minded individuals from all over the U.S., in fact from all over the world.

In cycling sport, it is a rather rare occurrence to find actual road races, and not much less rare for a long loop criterium which mimics such as the classics of legend.

One of the true masterpieces of this type of competition is the Harriman Spring Classic.

It is balls to the wall as good as anything you will ever see on your Television, and it includes every division, including women and juniors.

Those who cycle and live close to Harriman can even go over on their bikes (to a circuit they often ride) and watch the best of the best battling it out within an arm's reach.

You can stand holding onto the bicycle that brought you there and check out a large peloton at 50+ mph on the final few hundred yards of that fast downhill directly toward the hairpin curve at the bottom of Lake Welsh Road ready to be whipped into a switchback and immediately onto the hardest uphill of the course.

A group so tightly woven that if one goes down, they are all going down.

In fact, that is is just what SlingShot found himself beside today when he started yelling, "JEESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!! You motherfuckers slow the fuck down. That is way too fucking dangerous. Somebody remind me I never, ever, never want to do that!"

And that was on the exact spot he himself has routinely tried to break the 50 mph mark for the last 10 years, but something about 47+ at the crosswind bridge always whitens his knuckles around his brake levers, and he fails.

There are also at least two dozen other prime viewing areas spread all around the course with easy access to great struggles… struggles you can get close enough to be sprayed with sweat and sports drink.

So the point is this: today in that very setting two of our Hump regulars, Dave Freifelder and Kevin Haley posted a 1st and 4th respectively.

We wouldn't even have known about the race if Humberto Cavalheiro (who dropped a chain to the point he had to get off to get it back on in the race) had not told us about it.

Widder couldn't even find information about it on regedit beforehand.

The race wasn't even published in the Chatter Box until after it started, because the notice was submitted in stealth mode for editing, and SlingShot went to a ride instead of checking the morning input.

Then when we went to verify the results and find more information about the incredible number of foreign accents heard all over the park during the race, the only thing we could find online just reinforced our understanding that not only are the locals oblivious to the Hump, so to are the national level events which are spawned by the Hump (and other rides like it) just as uninteresting to the world at large.

Here's the Google search, barely a full page of returns, of which only three are about this race. >>>

HARRIMAN SPRING CLASSIC RACE RESULTS

1st Place: Dave Freifelder, in whatever division

4th Place: Kevin Haley, in whatever division

Or at least that is what we have been told.

We were over there on our bikes going the opposite direction and got to see Joe Straub on the front getting yelled at for not pulling just exactly the way the person behind him wished that he would.

Later I was by myself and got to see a very large group (the Masters maybe), just after the turn off Seven Lakes and after that first bear of a hill on the final lap, and they were all coasting!

Oddly, as they went by I noticed on the very back, coasting just far enough to the left to launch his final attack while sucking the very last little bit of draft out of the group was Kevin Haley, and he was telling the guy beside him how to ride more correctly.

Since you've been putting in all these practice rides and major mileage in Florida, and all your NY rides so far are supposedly way under your functional threshold (which you say is minimally at 230-260), why don't you just put down the hammer and ride a fucking ride already?

People think practice makes perfect, but it doesn't… no way, no how, not now, not ever.

Only perfect practice makes perfect, because if you practice your mistakes, be assured that you will get really good at making them.

I've got a world of technical matters to work on which have absolutely nothing to do with strength, bike fanciness, or machismo.

I sure ain't about to waste time htting my pedals with torque that never reaches the ground.

Since I'm already beating entire groups of riders on my own with no effort, there's no hurry.

I'll bring my skills up to speed first, before I pour power into them.

You might recall the sub-title of the book is: "The slow way to get really fast," not, "The best way to get really slow and stupid."

TRAIN WRECK II

I believe Ryan is referring to Saturday's Hump.

He went out with Widder and me, to see if I actually would pull for the entire 34.2 mile Hump like I bragged I would.

After the finish line (which he took from us handily by the way), Ryan spurted, "That was definitely the easiest Hump of my life. I usually go out with the Killer B's, and (when we do the Hump) by the time we are done I'm cross-eyed tired and can't barely see the finish line coming. Today I never even broke a sweat, but what really bakes my noodle is that we finished at basically the same speed as the Killer B's always do."

I guess it got him thinking more when I mentioned, "That's right. An old fat man who pays a little attention to ride details can go just as fast on his own as that whole group of young knuckleheads working together and taking turns at the front."

It's just simple physics.

Oddly, the ride was another personal worst performance on my part.

My goal was 200 watts, but I overworked the first half, lost my lower-back by Dog Hill then had to coddle my watts all the way home, so I only ended with 196.

However, it was even worse than it appears.

I absolutely positively still cannot tame my "work the hills and ease off on the downhills" conditioned response, so I saw a 216 average first time I checked somewhere around Lime Kiln Road.

I knew I would pay for that 216 later, and I did.

You will remember Andreas reported finishing the Hump just under 23 mph with a 213 average, but since I am only checking my average periodically, I can let things get out of hand.

Worse yet, I began talking about slope vs. cadence vs. torque vs. power on the hardest part of Ridgebury, and accidentally put in 30 seconds at 293 watts, which was actually torqued at a 30.85 average with a 40.36 max Newton meters.

If I had the correct gearing I would have been going a lot faster with a lot less effort.

You might remember my one Florida interval of 421 watts with an average max Newton meters of 13.87/22.48 compared to this most recent 293 at 30.85/40.36.

My little indescretion on Ridgebury probably went a long way toward making sure that much later, when Widder pointed out I was sitting to the right, and not using my left leg, and my subsequent adjustment left and engagement revealed a growing pain in my right lumborums— it was time to baby things up a bit.

In any case, I finished the 34.2 mile Hump pulling the whole way in 1:49 even.

That's an 18.83 mph average on one leg with Ryan spending the whole time wondering if a ride was about to begin.

Of course, it wasn't nearly as easy for him as for Mary (skinny ass little bitch) who turned in a 128 watt average, which is to say, "She did the whole thing with warmup watts."

I have another Powertap CPU ordered, so I can start monitoring average watts at the same time I'm watching my current watts, but I guess it's a good thing I didn't know how far I was under my goal watts, and how close to a 19+ finish.

I would have just overworked the end, and might have started breathing hard... which was definitely not part of the plan.

You are not to use them to go picking fights on Ridgebury.

If your car gets waxed in the meantime, all the better.

POWER METER SEMINAR

ARC Staff is proud to announce a planned seminar in the correct use of power meters to be held on the Hump course on Saturday, May 9, 2009 beginning at 8:00 am.

This schooling will be conducted by world renowned champion watter SlingShot who will attempt to pull the entire group for an entire Hump holding at least a 200 watt average which (depending on road crossings, stop turns, automobile traffic, and excellence in transitioning hilltops) will result in a nominal 20 mph, give or take.

All who have an interest in watching a refined steady state attack on this known 34.2 mile course are welcome to join in—so long as they keep their mouths shut and take care (if they cannot overcome their urge to pass Mr. Fugett at any point in the ride), to maintain a clear distance in front of him so that the sanctity of his gathered data is not compromised.

In attendance will be Widder who will be in charge of Records Keeping and Interval Setting duties.

BLASTER has also threatened to make an appearance.

Attendees will be dropped off at the finish line in time to watch the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP come in, which will probably be led by Turtle Boy Humberto Cavalheiro, if he isn't too hung over from gorging on massive quantities of Portuguese food in Spring Valley the evening prior.

While this opportunity is free and open to the public (as always), the event itself is subject to cancelation due to rain, caprice, or Bob's whim, whichever comes first.

After all, he is far more concerned about getting better than he is about being known for it.

Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

To become the first ARC International Viewer, UV182 beat out several others who have been here twice but not yet met the threshold.

I'll bet even money that UV182 never finds the Chatter Box.

Why not suck it up, and give us the blow by?

OK… TRAIN WRECK

So I showed up for Thursday's ride all happy in my assuredness that I have this watts thing under control.

After all, American Road Cycling enjoys two readerships. One is a local group that comes to the Chatter Box, and the other group is National/International and comes here looking for information regarding power meter training.

The two groups never run into each other, but I have to be especially careful with information given to the International group, because I have accidentally put myself in a position where American Road Cycling is often seen as the main representative of American road cycling as a whole, if not America itself.

I have to know my stuff.

Therefore, I know exactly (give or take) just how many watts I can hold, for how long, and how many mph that will give me (in theory) over a varied terrain.

The plan was for an easy 200 watt loop which I (loudly) boasted would result in just over an 18 mph average, with me finishing rather fresh, and the group working together only finishing a few minutes in front of me.

I figured that by starting out on my wattage right away, I would get in front of the group early on Meadow Ave, be caught by the stop sign, and get a chance to practice staying on my program while ignoring riders putting their wheels in front of me.

Unfortunately, the Kid on this ride didn't get the memo, so he got around me a little early with the rest of the group in tow.

Almost immediately on passing me they slowed on the brief little climb up to the stop sign (as if just getting in front of me was all they had planned), and my pace was in jeapordy, so I went around their left and got behind the Kid and Twin Lynn at the stop.

Otherwise, before the kid got to me, I had been holding a rather conservative 219 average.

I could have been doing better (closer to 200), but I was only using one CPU, and the Powertap doesn't show current and average watts on the same screen, so I was doing it by feel, and it is extra hard to stay nice and easy at the beginning of a ride, especially with riders passing.

Long story short, by the time I got around the group, my watts average had gone up to 243, which I didn't see at the time and was pretty much the beginning of my undoing.

The second problem I encountered was the fast downhill on Johnson Road. Fortunately, I was in good position at the front and unimpeded, but I knew immediately that I was still losing watts that could not be recovered.

I got a little spooked by that, so I didn't notice another rise in my wattage as I followed the group after they got around me again.

There was a little hold up making sure Widder got across the road at the intersection of Craigville, but then I was back on track.

Sadly, the group was only a couple hundred yards ahead, so try as I might, they would not stop being my target.

I did manage to back off the gas a little (but it was so easy to be creeping up on them) and the data shows I still overworked all the way to Coleman Road where I was almost on their wheels again before the turn.

That is where I did my first check of my watts average, and where I realized I had already fucked myself, and fucked myself good.

I gulped when I saw my average was 225 watts, and I didn't see it at the time, but my average speed was 20.23.

That speed explains how we were creeping back up on the group so easily.

A quick context is in order here. What does 225 watts mean?

Andreas once reported finishing the Hump just under 23 mph with 213 watts average, but that surely included drafting.

Also, Joe Straub reported to us when we first got back from Florida that he was doing his workouts averaging 220.

That's what 225 watts mean.

I didn't notice the effort, because my HR was still low.

I guess the final nail in my coffin was the steep downhill on Coleman where I couldn't buy a watt, and that put me into a panic, overcompensate, panic, overcompensate routine which would plague me for the rest of the TT.

It was probably one of the worst performances of my life, and if I brought that level of play to a band rehersal, the director would have had me drummed out.

The only break in my panic, lose it, panic routine was hearing the Widder periodically whining behind me, "You do know I have 20 fibroids in my belly, don't you? You do know they hurt like the dickens if I get in my drops? You do know your right ankle is popping up, and you are overworking most of these hills… don't you?"

Around the time we had gotten back around to Rte. 94, I had pretty much given up on the 200, and I guessed from the extreme inefficiency of the ride that I wasn't going to be anywhere near an 18 mph average.

By the time I got to the top of the hardest part of Oxford Road I thought, "Well… nice try. Fuck it. Maybe next time. Better see what the damage is."

I clicked over to average watts and was sickened to see that I was holding 201.

"Shit, turd, can't give up just yet."

I checked again a few more times and that put me on Greycourt Ave with no purpose for the necessary mad dash to the finish.

Mary hadn't reset her average when we started, and I didn't have my CPU set to show it, so I had to wait to get home and download the data to see how slow I'd gone.

Ok, so I ended up with averages of 201 watts, 100 rpm cadence, a 147 bpm HR, and an 18.34 mph average speed, thus confirming every one of my predictions with the group working together only finishing a few minutes in front of me… it was still the worst performance of my life.

The technical skills required for these scary-as-shit downhills, quick precise gear changes, focus on form to keep my left knee in line and engaged, not getting my helmet bounced down over my eyes on the rough road, blown off course by sidewinds, spooked into the grass by motorists, chased by that dog, held up by deer moseying across the road (like it was theirs, not mine)… assures this kind of ride requires a skill set that is still way over my pay grade.

Maybe things will get a little easier once my bike gets back from the shop, and I don't have to shift three times then tweak the chain off a cassette space with each and every gear change.

There.

And you thought this poor craftsman wasn't going to be able to blame his tools.

Do you really think they wrote that stuff? Do you really think they ever read this crap? Do you really think that is air you are breathing?

Well, ok. Maybe Cranky drops by once in awhile and skims a couple posts, but really!

So what if the both of them actually did take the time to write that stuff and come to your aid, as they obviously did?

Who cares?

Not me.

The problem is, I believe Jinks heard me tell you how to do it, so I'm still not sure.

This could be his post.

I heard you showed up for the Trailside Ride tonight all full of yourself bragging about how you were going to ITT the course all on your own and pull Widder for the whole ride.

Could it be your little boast about 200 watts (and how it was going to result in a little over 18 mph) didn't quite work out the way you figured?

My own association with this website has been on tenter hooks since way back when I was President of the local club.

You have no idea the number of times I found myself unable to justify in the slightest how I treated you like were almost human.

This is too much.

Toe Clip certainly deserves better than he got.

Please never mention my name to anybody ever again.

Toe Clip got just what he deserved for his stupid ass question, and you yourself have never had a single thing going for you outside quick access to Mother Bianchi's brownies.

Plus you have been totally fucking worthless on all accounts since you got hooked up with that tart Francesca.

I will gladly oblige your request to forget I know you.

If you don't know the answer to something, just say, "I don't know."

Toe Clip has always been a fast and true friend of ARC, and there is no reason for you to treat him that way.

We did the old Wednesday night ride around Sugar Loaf today including some intervals on Wisner.

I used the new process with my new gearing of never letting my cadence go below 100 or so, and a warmup on the hills in NY finally felt just like a warmup on the flat in FL.

The hard part was shifting up smoothly over the hilltops—1, 2, 3, click, 1, 2, 3, click, 1, 2, 3, click, etc.

And guess what?

The speed was also the same, just like the flat in FL!

JACKPOT

Widder's MRI results are back, and she has hit the fibroid lottery.

She has been researching fibroids for four years, and in all that time has only seen one instance of anybody having more than a few.

Turns out Widder has 20, which all told equal the size of a 16 week fetus, and (if you include the one removed in Florida last winter) gives her the absolute record number she has ever seen.

She beat that other woman by only 1 firbroid, but says, "A win is a win!"

June 1st, she is having the whole mess embolized.

She has chosen that course over a hysterectomy, because her further research showed that removing the uterus is tantamount to removing the strong solid exercise ball that every cycling movement is tethered to and supported by.

Time for some 300 watt intervals out on Wisner Road.

I'm new at this, and even I knew that.

Just about everybody else knows it too, especially since all the top Pros have moved to triples after Lance decided a 110 cadence is best for him in the Alps (something about his EPO to Clean ratio).

What with all your testing, I figured you would come up with something broader, more intrinsic and elemental, something that would be applicable over a large range of cycling situations, especially since you were just on Humberto's wheel long enough to hear Widder struggling on that hill.

But if you can't wait, here it is:

Any ride that ends up in a restaurant/bar is a social event, not a workout.

Since you know your cadence determine the watts, merely convert that to hp (see earlier post), then determine the actual hp, or torque.

The vette is ~ 6.5 hp/lb.

Enjoy the math and keep pedaling.

Apparently at some point nearing a speed of light cadence, apples are actually equal to oranges.

However, that doesn't stop me from hating to do math under all circumstances, so I'll just keep letting my Powertap handle the arithmetic for me.

In any case, in the context of power metering the way it is currently implemented for modeling cycling performance: if you were the engine, torque is what you would feel pushing back against your legs, and horse power would be what your bicycle puts down on the road.

If you handle your spin correctly you can get significantly more horse power for the torque you aren't wasting.

However, most people are so confused from being equipped with the wrong gearing, and with believing their perceived effort or mph has anything to do with their actual effort, they haven't got a chance at catching on to how easy a 23+ pace really is.

Got any suggestions?

Of course "comfortably" is a vague term, but bike computers with a cadence counter are pretty cheap, and you can do a few simple exercises to increase your pedaling speed dramatically.

In 1997 I spent the whole summer just focusing on bringing my leg speed up.

I ignored everything else, and let my Heart Rate be what it wanted to be, let my mph speed be what it wanted to be, kept my effort low, just so long as my legs were always comfortably moving just a little faster.

At the start of the summer I worked hard to bring my natural cadence up to 65 rpm, and it still felt too fast, but by the end of the summer 95 was comfortable, and if I went down to 88 I felt like I was mashing too hard.

I always knew that I could hold onto the group a lot easier with a high cadence, but only saw how incredibly helpful a fast spin is after I inherited Mary's power meter and looked at the difference in measured power.

The summary of all my testing is that I can basically use my cadence alone as my performance monitor.

If my cadence is high, my efficiency is pretty good, and I am doing about as good as I can.

If my cadence ever drops below 90 rpm, there is a massive drop in power.

Other than that, it is just a matter of constantly pushing a larger gear with acceptable cadence.

However, there is a strong coordination aspect to be worked out.

A good exercise comes from "Smart Cycling" by Arnie Baker.

Start at 60 bpm and hold it for 1 minute, then increase by 10 bpm every minute up to 120 and spin out.

These are light exercises for active recovery day workouts.

You might do your own variations on the basic exercise.

Widder could not spin so slow as 60 (harder to hold than you might think), so we started her at 80.

She also didn't have the patience for 1 minute intervals, so we started with 15 seconds and moved up to 30 as she got better at it.

Two years ago, Widder found it hard to burst to 105 rpm, but after a little work she could hold 120 easily, and her current best is a burst to 173 plus a 159 average for 33 seconds.

Arnie Baker mentions that top track sprinters can hold 250 rpm for brief amounts of time.

The hardest part is getting used to the fact that a high cadence feels easier but is a lot more powerful, in other words it is faster and easier.

In fact, it's not really my knee so much as my glute won't engage to keep my knee in line.

It appears to be the result of Humberto playing pitter patter on my ass like Mike Tyson drumming on a military speed bag for an hour yesterday.

ACCOMPLI

Finally: a ride that hurt me and made me start to breathe hard.

All it took was staying on Humberto's wheel to the top of two hills that I should never have been with him on.

However, I met a significant goal just before that, and confirmed my new gears (though not perfect) are going to work out just fine.

I've got the charts, but maybe just the facts will do.

We did the Big Lollipop, and I spent the first 4 miles (down Smith Clove, over Trout Brook, and up 32) my usual 20 yards back marveling at how easy it has become to pace behind a group, while Widder hung in with them shouting, "Don't wait for him. He's back there because he wants to be. Go as fast as you want. He'll still be right there."

Their 21.62 average to Mountaindale cost me only a 134 HR average, with a 162 watts… that is to say, nothing, and if they had picked up the pace for me, I would have been able to coast up behind them earlier on the final hill.

Apparently, they were riding with the old SlingShot (not the new improved version), because after the two little hills on Taylor Road everybody made a big deal about me being there after holding the lead rider's wheel over the tops.

I guess it is just hard for people to catch on that there has been a change in the Matrix, because even that effort only cost me 291 watts for a minute seventeen with a 144 bpm, so nothing really.

However, the prize I was waiting for was the double dip climb on Jackson Road.

Many of you may remember last week's Lollipop when Widder left the group far below as she went off with a front rider.

I guess I could have stayed with her then, but I knew my new gears were coming, and my goal was to do it without a lot of effort, so I just dropped back after Palletman cracked and Cranky began to struggle and only stayed in contact with the group.

Today was my day of days, so I did whatever it took to be on Widder's wheel at the top, which allowed me to be close enough to hear Humberto and crew give her immense grief about working so hard… probably kept their attention off me, so good!

Still, that climb only cost me 222 watts for 2:22 with a 132 HR, and my new gears allowed me to do it with almost nary an overtorque even at the hardest parts.

The final episode, where I started to breathe hard, was on the two hills after Route 94 where Widder got mugged by Dangerous a few weeks ago.

Of course, she'll never go for that again and was beside me as I hung on for dear life to Humberto's wheel.

Humberto is in the middle of his training to rejoin the Portuguese Pro Team (that he got the second place with in that big stage race in Portugal earlier this spring) for their June second bite at immortality, so the Turtle Boy has a slight tendency to do stuff once in awhile and all at once.

That worked out perfectly for me, because holding onto his wheel I had a 15 second burst of 431 with a 488 max, which wouldn't have been so bad if it had not been followed about a minute and a half later by a 447/501.

My heart rate was still only 142/152 for the whole three minutes, but I already knew HR can be pretty retarded when you want to know how you are doing RIGHT NOW, so what I really learned was that in such a situation my new gears are just about as good as it's going to get.

I did have to do it with almost twice the torque I would need on the flat, but my cadence was 105 then 111 for both, so "twice the torque" remains a Power to Weight problem here, not a gearing issue.

Gives me a little hope for when I start working harder on the hardest part of Ridgebury.

So now that I've got all my data gathered, confirmed my gearing is good as it's going to get, and found that group rides remain more of an amusement than a help, I can go back to solo rides.

We'll show up again in the Fall, after Widder gets those grapefruit hard (and large) fibroids off her psoas and out of her belly.

In the meantime, "Widder, go out and get us some snacks!"

Besides, anybody that really has an interest can show up for your pre-Hump ITT's.

You also might like to add that by you, "finally starting to breathe hard," you meant exactly that.

You were starting to breathe hard but realized Widder had already started well before you on that first 'Berto hill, and you were over the top before you got going on huffing it yourself.

Also congratulate yourself on finally getting dropped (dropped) on 207 when you noticed that Humberto had taken over at the front, and you knew he was going to be turning up the heat until way past the turn around in Gardener (25 miles later), so why not ease up and start writing.

Gave you plenty of time to ponder how quickly Turtle Boy's two instances of hard jump managed to put your hip-knee-back problem right back where it was before you spent three months in Florida getting them all fixed up.

Fuck him.

You are aware that using a Powertap to blow the lid off a bullshit ride is exactly what got Floyd busted for drugs, aren't you?

Sorry, dreamers, but I'd better say this one more time.

If you are at all serious about your performance (maybe even more importantly if you aren't) listen up: "The world's absolute cheapest road bike with a power meter is infinitely better for your self improvement than even the world's most expensive fancy vanity road bike without one."

If nothing else, a power meter is an umbrella against the constant rain of bullshit.

Even the Cranky group outdid that!

Time to start using more GU! Try downing three at a time. Then test Heart Rate.

Next time you might like to include each person's average heart rate, their average torque, and if they kept enough distance between them to make it a time trial for each member, or if it was a group effort where they could take turns doing such as Widder's 129 watt average on my wheel today from 88 to the finish line… you know some real information about the ride other than the standard, "That was hard (therefore fast)!"

I hooked up with that group after my turn-around back out to pick up my extra mileage and challenged the lead rider on the final little up-bump before the S turn but realized that I was half wheeling in front of them with only a 145 watt pace (after just doing 2 hours at 192 with a final 4 minutes at 210 just to make sure I had my 2-hour record), so I decided if they weren't going to play I would just drop off the back and let them pretend to sprint.

When I questioned that front rider in the parking lot afterward, they only said, "We were tired, and it was an uphill."

You probably think I'm making the whole thing up, but I believe Cranky might have seen it happen despite how wasted she looked at that point… despite all the drafting.

I will tell you in private who that front rider was so you can confirm the whole story with them, but people tend to really hate public revelations of actual ride data, so we'll leave him anonymous for now.

In the meantime, you will note my quick 414 burst to jump ahead of the front rider when the group passed me.

It is displayed on this chart including the whole 1 minute hill.

I think my heart rate almost moved toward the middle of it. >>>

MASSIVE

I could not live with myself if I did not say this.

If you are at all serious about your performance (maybe even more importantly if you aren't) listen up: "The world's absolute cheapest road bike with a power meter is infinitely better for your self improvement than even the world's most expensive fancy vanity road bike without one."

I have been pretty sure about this for awhile (and was even going to buy the cheapest road bike with a triple I could get from Wal-Mart and beg somebody to help me put my Powertap on it to prove it) but after my ITT on today's Hump it came to my attention somebody is actually reading this stuff, so I had better state this plain and honest truth right right the fuck now.

Read paragraph 2 again (ten more times), and we can move on.

Ok, now that I have proven to myself what I needed to on the Hump, I just might go back to being the same old insufferable asshole who rushes the group, attacks every hill, gets beaten back into oblivion only to come back up swinging again, and again, like I used to be.

Here's why.

Today I beat my previous baseline Hump ITT by 2 minutes and 10 seconds on the way to another personal best 2-hour performance, but that's not the big thing.

I did it with an average HR that was 8 BPM lower (plus an 8 BPM lower max) than my previous trial, but that's not the big thing either.

I did it with 3 more watts average (though one momentary spike was larger by 34), but that's not the big thing neither.

The really, really big thing is that I did it all with a lower average torque!!!

Get it?

Torque is an absolute measurement of effort, and watts are an absolute measurement of the results of that effort, and watts are also (happily) an absolute expression of speed.

But watts as a measurement of speed stand alone without the vague influences of wind, uphill, downhill, HR, mph, moon in the seventh house, Jupiter aligns with Mars, my main competitor had a bad piece of bacon this morning, and all the rest of the astrology everbody without benefit of a power meter tries to use as a guage on their performance.

Maybe torque is a mystery to you, so do this.

Go get a torque wrench from your local toolbox and put some nut on some bolt somewhere.

Notice how the torque number is always the exact same number (amount of "hard") for the same amount of force applied.

Also note that torque wrenches are calibrated in a way to make sure mechanics who are on steroids and meth don't wring your lug nots off your car wheel so you crash at the next big downhill turn.

Torque wrenches are useful, because humans often push a lot harder than they think they are, or than they should, especially when using tools that provide significant mechanical advantage such as a bicycle.

You use a torque wrench to monitor your effort just like you would want to on the Hump, but on the Hump you should use a power meter instead and save your wrench to throw in Humberto's wheel near the finish line, but that's an aside.

After today's ride I feel extra, extra sorry for any serious cyclist who is not training with a power meter, because I could never have developed the procedures I came up with today to improve my performance, nor could I have known how much better I performed using any of the other criteria such as mph, HR, or such as, "I can leg-press such and such weight."

Here are the bare bones specifics:

I pulled Mary for the entire Hump averaging 17.7 mph for 34.2 miles with an average HR of 136 and a 146 max.

Plus, after I ran back out past the S turn to get in another 5 minutes to bring my 2-hour PB up to 192 watts, I ran across some clueless knucklehead giving a sound verbal thrashing to Tom Folkl about how he wasn't echeloning correctly, like Tom don't know echeloning, but that's also another story.

Anyhoo, next test will be to go over 200 watts for 2-hours which will be easy, since I did a pretty easy over 50 minutes in Florida at 225 then a 30 minute 238 a month later, and all those improvements came from technique rather than strength or aerobic training, because until my equipment and technique are correct I'm not going to waste time on working hard.

No need to push it, because I've got lots to learn about hitting a hill correctly, and not shutting down at the top like everybody around here likes to do.

My current process is to never look at my average watts during the ride, periodically check current watts relative to current cadence, temper anything above a momentary burst above 260 or so, but remember to re-engage my left leg if my watts drop below 180, not to mention allow certain indescrections in the 300+ range so long as cadence never drops below about 106.

That little bit about holding the current watts on a loose reign is something I picked up on the last several group rides, where I allowed power to go overboard and found that my seeing 400+ for a few moments is not going to baste my ass like everybody wishes it would.

Well, that's enough, but somebody said they were following this and would gladly show up for Hump Time Trials, so I got enthused again about writing this down.

POWER METER SEMINAR

ARC Staff is proud to announce a planned seminar in the correct use of power meters to be held on the Hump course on Saturday, May 2, 2009 beginning at 8:00 am.

This schooling will be conducted by champion watter SlingShot who will pull the entire group for an entire Hump holding at least a 180 watt average which (depending on road crossings, stop turns, automobile traffic, and excellence in transitioning hilltops) will result in a nominal 20 mph, give or take.

All who have an interest in watching a refined steady state attack on this known 34.2 mile course are welcome to join in—so long as they keep their mouths shut and take care (if they cannot overcome their urge to pass Mr. Fugett at any point in the ride), to maintain a clear distance in front of him so that the sanctity of his gathered data is not compromised.

In attendance will be Widder who will be in charge of Records Keeping and Interval Setting duties.

Attendees will be dropped off at the finish line in time to watch the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP come in, which will probably be led by Turtle Boy Humberto Cavalheiro, if he isn't too hung over from gorging on massive quantities of Portuguese food in Spring Valley the evening prior.

While this opportunity is free and open to the public (as always), the event itself is subject to cancelation due to rain, caprice, or Bob's whim, whichever comes first.

After all, he is far more concerned about getting better than he is about being known for it.

Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

Without correct gearing the best course of action would be merely to follow Bob Roll's suggestion regarding the truth of mountain bike races in which he used to compete.

His quote (from: Bobke II), "Everybody could just get on the scale before the race, and the lightest one is the winner. That's the way it always worked out."

I still have 23 pounds on the likely winner.

In any case, I would love to compete on Purgatory, but only with results recorded by power meters and body weight, not by mere circumstance and team blocking.

BTW: Somebody has tested SRM's on a trainer along with a Powertap at the same time on the same bicycle and found that SRM's record 20 watts higher, so be careful whose data you use.

Which unit do you have?

Back then I always used it to harass people when I passed them near the tops of hills by saying, "How's that 23 (or 25) working out for you?"

In fact I even had it hooked up with my own special modification which gave me an 11-27, because I wanted an extra little kick on the downhill.

Recently Dura-Ace is now available in an 11-27, so it is just another instance of me being ahead of the curve.

It wasn't until I inherited Mary's Powertap this winter after she upgraded, and I did three months testing long haul intervals on the flats, then got back to NY to realize hills were doing more to me than just being hills.

Lots of stuff got answered after I hit the hill to Cross Road, looked down thinking, "Make sure you stay under 200, whoops 289… HEY, WAIT A MINUTE… this feels more like 400!"

That was my watershed moment.

I did some testing afterwards and noticed that evertime I went under 90 rpm, my power to torque ratio went to shit in a fuck basket.

Numerous Internet searches afterwards, I found that the term "Power to Torque" wasn't even being used.

Everybody knows about Power to Weight, but overworking your watts doesn't even come up.

Long story short, I know of three hills on the Hump (at least) that really require mountain bike gearing to negotiate them efficiently, so I set out to get a Triple, in fact a true Granny, but it took three weeks just to get Compact gearing of 12-27 with a 50 x 34 chainring.

They are not really enough, but after the first few tests with them, I know I have a world of work just getting smooth transitions on the hilltops, so I can put the Triple off till my skill set improves.

And before anybody gets all man's man gear happy, there are reports that the top Pros are now using Triples in the big races… real data gives real insight.

I was writing about the test process when I ran across the comparison shown on the links from post #4138 (HOLY MOLY!) below, and those who have looked at it are likely flabbergasted by what they show.

Apparently Palletman has slipped into Cranky Skimming Mode, because he hasn't seen those charts, and last night he chided me for allowing gaps, so he has no idea that I purposely keep back and in the wind so I don't get bad power and torque information due to drafting.

He also seemed totally unaware of the reason for my high cadence, despite how easy it was for me to spin up to the group on uphills, where drafting doesn't skew the data.

In any case, the new gears have been incredible. Just last night I made it over 7 sections which I would have been dropped on before, and my HR never went over 159.

In fact, I did start breathing hard for a moment on Farmingdale, and figured I'd be dropped, but caught the group well before the turn onto 94—where my data shows my actual HR peak happened.

Good thing I have my data download, or I would never have suspected that little section of 94 was where the 159 HR happened, because I was just riding comfortably by then.

That was just how long it took me to warm back up again after Palletman flatted soon as we came off Meadow Ave.

The software even shows where my power jumped for a moment after I got yelled at for not pulling through when Lynn motioned to get off near the top of Oxford Road.

The data also explains why I missed the signal to pull through.

For about a mile prior to me getting yelled at, we were going so easy, I thought we were just waiting for the group to catch us (after some hold-up on the turn), and it was the furthest thing from my mind that there might be people on my wheel working, or that what Lynn was doing could be considered a pull.

Like I said, I was writing about all this, but I realize that even Palletman is skimming (and Kevin hasn't even seen the graphs linked at #4138), so I should just back off reporting until Widder gets done with her fibroid surgery and back in the game—which is what everybody wants to read about.

We went into the City today to get an MRI of whatever it is that has been in her belly fucking things up, and it was worse than expected.

Scary for sure.

Here's the photo of what they found in her uterus. >>>

Those who don't understand power, try to go faster by clicking up a couple gears harder and mashing harder, but those who understand power actually do go faster by clicking down a couple gears easier and spinning a little faster.

HOLY MOLY!

The graphs linked at right show my new gears doing best they can to stop me from having to overtorque on Demerest compared to an interval from last winter on the Suncoast Trail in Florida.

This is the sort of stuff people should have to pay shitloads of money to see, and stuff that the top Pro Riders would never want you to see.

It shows an instance of getting twice (2x) the power (speed) from half (.5) the effort.

The Demerest interval is 268 watts while the Suncoast Trail is 421 watts.

The gold line shows the watts, the purple line shows the effort (or torque), and the blue line is speed.

Speed varies so much with circumstance, it is the worst possible measurement of performance.

The closest measurement of how fast a bicycle will be moving (therefore who will win any race or any part of it) is the watts compared to body weight.

However, the best measurement of how "hard" any given watts will feel to the rider is measured as torque.

That is to say, the more torque the sooner a rider will blow-up.

Lets say somebody has something like a lawn service truck. They would never put it in 4th gear to pull something up a hill, but most of the local riders think that is just exactly how they should climb on their bicycles.

Mountain bikes are geared the way they are for a reason, but around here people often ride mountain bike type slopes with road geared racing bikes.

The two graphs at right are split to two separate links for those who cannot view the rollovers.

Unlikely that could possibly be the sort of stuff to put you out of a ride, despite his comment afterwards about dropping the "old guy."

During the warmup Mary decided her fibroids etc were causing too much of a stink for her to do the ride, so I lost my recording secretary.

We have done so much work making her ride results more specific, she is on auto-pilot for hitting intervals at every turn, but I have always relied on her intervals to find my own.

Therefore, I decided to forget the ITT and start by going out behind the ride to check if my new gears are much help.

There is a big improvement in how easy it is to run up behind the group.

Ironically, it is now easier to do that on the uphills, but how much of that is because of my massive weight loss, and how much is because of the new gearing is anybody's guess.

Suffice it to say that I charged a few hills (never allowing the person pulling to notice my presence), and when somebody started pulling with some sort of serious intent on Stony Ford, I was well rested enough to think, "Ahah. The ride begins."

Unfortunately the rider only pulled for 45 seconds then sat up, and Palletman (who was on their wheel) went seven times left, seven times right and sat up himself.

I was on Palletman's wheel and thought, "I've been down this road before, and I ain't goin' back."

I pulled off, looked back and saw the group had almost been dropped, but they were coming up fast.

Still I had enough time to mention to the Bicycle Doctor as he passed plugged onto the back, "It's getting too hinky up front. See you later."

At that point my average was 19.1 with only a 177 watt average, and an average 144 HR.

That is to say things could have been described as rather easy.

After I bailed out of the ride, I paced behind them (at a safe distance); and, for that section, I brought my average up to 19.17 with only 4 more heart beats but 4 watts less (more efficient, less surge/coast, surge/coast).

I watched them turn onto Van Amburg, decided to let them go and not run headlong into the truck coming my way, then spent the rest of the ride checking torque/power on hills.

The results show that hills such as the climb up 416 are perfect for the new gears, while only the last twenty yards of Hill Road required overtorquing.

I am still amazed at how programmed I am to overwork uphills.

I will have to spiff up my gear changes in order to stop my reflex dropping of watts on every flat to downhill.

Good thing I grabbed a cue sheet, so I could find the significant events despite the lack of Widder, but too bad I couldn't help myself from peaking at 760 watts when I ran up beside the group before the downhill on Hill Road.

I am a bad boy.

I am assiduous with my floor exercises, which I now know have the profoundest effect on my cycling performance, but sometimes in one of the prone positions I fall asleep.

When that happens what should I do?

I think I'll go over to the Joe-Fix-It's ride and pace back and forth through the group while doing a 180 watt ITT.

On Sunday's ride, I had a 19.64 mph avg with 155 watts up to the point Cranky took a moment to save Palletman from diving headlong into a ravine and we timed out to discuss it.

My watts were a little lower than ITT due to some drafting, so depending on how correct my gearing is today, how well I execute (and what happens at cross streets), I should put in an easy 20 mph average more or less.

Remember that exercise from the Flight Check that I showed you before yesterday's ride?

Here is the follow-up review.

Remember how the first step with absolutely zero pressure on your pedals revealed dysfunction, and I pointed out during the next step (under light pedal pressure) how easily the dysfunction is masked?

The master class would be transitional exercises to bring the same haptic sense from the zero pressure dysfunction on over to the under pressure exercise, and therefore into your riding form.

In the meantime, you can use the two exercises as a Flight Check prior to each ride.

I once saw a cyclist go down during a ride, and when they stood up to walk it off, I saw that their left gluteus medius had stopped firing.

That is the kind of unnoticed injury that can play a large part in future back pain.

You will also remember that one of the problems we found during your startup exercises appeared to be a function of tight hamstrings which could also play a role in back pain.

Doing even these two simplest of simple exercises before every ride can give you a solid baseline for understanding current function while providing a doorway into improving function

I'm sure you know this.

Nobody reads these posts!

I just stayed 50 or 60 feet off the back of the group—far enough to get the full wind and not have to surge/coast, surge/coast so much.

At least that was how it started.

Pretty soon I knew I'd just better keep as close to the back and out of the wind best I could, because Doug Allen, Dan Sullivan, and Dan McMealy (who had all chosen this ride over a slower one from Big V) ended up taking turns pulling the group so hard (each running massive long haul intervals) so that I was doing all I could just to hang on the back, fully out of the wind but still drawing 400 to 500 hundred watts like there was no tomorrow.

Dangerous said, "Look, I could have gone to some ride with short little uphill spurts, but I figured, 'Why not get in an actual workout where I can pull just as hard as I want and for a much longer time?'"

I was out till 2:30 in the morning whorin' and boozin' in the city.

Tomorrow the two of them are going over to the ride from Big V at 9:00 (Guymard Turnpike, etc), and try to get the rest of those losers to work.

They have everybody convinced that 300 watts on a hill is a lot harder than 300 watts on the flat, sort of a reverse placebo kinda thing.

If you think it's hard, it is hard.

One starts from Humberto's house at 9:00 am (he wont' be there) and follows the Big Lollipop course with a New Paltz addendum.

In attendance will be Paris, Grant Salter and several of their friends, with maybe Cranky, Toe Clip, and Palletman.

It will be 70 miles more or less, so the slow people are all going over to the Big V and find some short hills they can pretend to be strong on.

Here's the closest cue sheet, but at least the directions to Turtle Boy's is correct.

However, we did see you in the parking lot after, and I must say, you looked to be in a lot better shape than all your whining would imply.

Apparently, whining is a little known training secret, and you spent the winter perfecting it. You are probably so worn out from it, I'll bet you don't even remember posting this.

You know, the one ride every spring when you get to ride with Patrick before he gets in a few miles to make up for your Florida miles, and you never see him again.

In fact, most of the people on the ride never even saw the other people on it.

Basically, the ride never even happened… so that's pretty much a record in ride disintegration.

I started with Mary as a warmup, then went out with the Trailside Ride with Palletman, Twin Lynn and Twin George, and Patrick.

Palletman flatted immediately.

Lynn bailed out taking George with her before the Meadow Ave stop sign at 94, where Patrick and I stood for a minute or two before following them back to the Heritage Trail.

On the way back I stopped to watch Palletman finish up with his tube replacement, then tried to get him interested in chasing Patrick, Lynn, and George up to Monroe, but his tire was too fucked to chance it.

Just as I was getting to the parking lot in Monroe, Patrick came by going back down, so I turned and went with him.

We rode mano a mano all the way to Goshen, and my data download shows a 25 minute 206 watt interval.

That means Patrick held a nominal 21 mph pace for about a half hour which probably explains why he decided it was the best solo workout he has ever had.

However, since we were working into a ferociously cold headwind (of which I made sure Patrick got his fair share by hanging back far enough for the slight sideways wind glance to pass over my shoulder and onto his chest) the actual pace ended up being 18.02, so it's a good thing I had my power meter running, or Patrick might have done all that work for nothing.

Along the way, we saw Brian Dunleavy and two riders from the Joe-Fix-It's ride coming up the trail as we were going down, and I saw them again on my return to Chester.

When I got back to Chester, Mary was waiting with the truck, but Jack showed up while she was walking Spatz, so he said, "What? It's too cold and windy for anybody to be out but you?"

No. There were lots of people on the ride. It's just that the ride never happened, and I was the only one left.

About that time Mary Lou showed up ready for her final leg home into the wind, and I had also seen Tony Soto and Kelley when I was standing with Palletman.

On the way home Mary and I saw Big Bianchi, and there are rumors Turtle Boy did 20 somewhere out on his own.

That means either I won the ride by attrition or by mileage, because I had 28 plus (more than anybody else), so it's too bad for me it was a ride (not a race) and the largest one that never happened, and really too bad for Bianchi who was so disconnected from whatever never happened that he didn't even get his mileage read into the record.

Someday all those people should get together for one.

She came sniffing around the bait a couple times, but only ended up weasling on out without taking a bite.

Of course, I get the part about how one of their TV ads is a direct rip-off of your and Widder's life story (what with the self employed art studio and mouth fulls of sheet rock spackle, etc), and I sort of got it when you when you went nuts shouting, "Yeah, that's our life alright, but we sure as fuck never met in an online fucking chat room..."

However, what I do not get is why you get so upset about the whole idea of meeting somebody on the Internet.

For every Big Bianchi who lucks into a Francesca, there’s a Francesca who gets stuck with a Big Bianchi.

Pedro actually got 9th Cat 5 in that Battenkill-Roubaix race, but a name snafu left him out in the cold.

Now he put in a bid for a $3 million dollar job in Manhatten and looks like he got it.

So he says he's done with cycling, because he has to be working.

Really! He starts cycling and within a year gets 9th in a big deal race, and now he's quitting cycling and saying we'll never see him again, because he, "…has to work on a job."

What the fuck's up with that?!

My Senior year in High School, I was the Captain of the Gymnastics Team.

Now don't get excited.

It wasn't really a "team," we just put together little shows for the basketball half-times, and everybody who knew anything had graduated, and I was the only one who had done it more than once, so I was the Captain.

In fact, we didn't even call it gymnastics. We called it tumbling… sometimes mats, sometimes vaulting horse, sometimes trampoline.

Basically, we just played endless games of HORSE on the trampoline.

Somebody would do a trick, the next person would add something, and the next and so on, till somebody missed and got a letter.

For half-times we would all just take turns doing our most successful HORSE series.

My claim to fame was a 2.5 forward flip, which was only beaten by somebody (not on the team) who used to do a 3 and 3/4's during lunch hour matches in the gym—where we used to jump off the folded up bleachers to get some height on the trampoline.

Success never included form, precision, or anything like that.

Either you could do it, or you couldn't.

My 2.5 was considered successful if I didn't bounce off onto the floor in the middle of it, so I was successful about 8 out of 10 times.

Kids probably wouldn't be allowed to come back into the school gym during lunch hour and use equipment unsupervised like that these days, because kids don't get to do much of anything anymore.

They are always so high on drugs, it would be too dangerous.

Anyway, after one Thursday practice the coach came to me and asked, "Are you guys planning on going on during half-time this week?"

I replied, "I don't think we are ready yet."

He said, "Ready? If you wait till you are ready, you will never go on. See you Friday night."

Toe Clip, get your ass over to that Bear Mt. Spring Event.

Widder pulled the whole ride, and SlingShot took the last hill.

Heads up.

Somebody with an IBM IP# just got here and looked at a bunch of old stuff from the home page.

Looks like that pink slip vending machine replacement Cranky is just about ready to go.

Think I'll hit the Heritage Trail for a warmup then swing on over to the Joe-Fix-It's for the 5:30 ride. >>>

They used the calculator a few times, read the Powertap quick study for six minutes, used the calculator a couple more times, then put it in their favorites.

We consider that a success.

Also there is the little matter of the number of form bots that apparently attack forms (blocked from their submittals) and how that might ultimately be the end of this website, because SlingShot is a lazy-ass motherfucker who hates wasting time online.

FLASH ON THE ECONOMY

IBM just posted earnings which beat Street estimates.

Buy IBM stock right now... today!

It should read, "We were DROPPED by the Double AA Group early on the ride."

At the end of last year (on that very section except turning left up the hill), Kevin pushed the pace then almost fell off his bike when he finally turned around to make sure everybody was dropped.

Quietly on his wheel was the only survivor, The Black Widow, to whom he commented in astonishment, "You aren't even breathing hard!"

She only replied, "Why should I?"

You probably think that's a made-up joke, but Kevin will remember.

Ask him.

I heard there's a movement to put together enough money to hire Kevin onto that team.

As a minor point of interest, it is the hardest one day race in the United States. >>>

And Joe Straub recently won a race in Ohio.

I was born and raised in Ohio, and I can tell you, far away doesn't begin to cover it.

And Kevin Haley won a big-time race somewhere far away!

CRANKY VIRGIN TOSSED
INTO THE WATTS VOLCANO

We had the ride figured out, but Cranky came along and fucked the whole thing up.

That's ok. We got her back.

We were just going to go out early on the back of the Double AA's, then drop back and ride with Bianchi in order to get a watts check on his 20+ Hump Time Trial to Deserve the Bike on his Wall progress.

Of course we got a reading on the Double AA's while we were at it, but that is an aside.

Suffice it to say, we stayed a little behind them out past the "S" turn, and they were holding only a 19.33 mph avg by the stop sign, so if we were doing an actual ITT we would have already been fucked, but my watts were only 159, so I can't complain.

However, at the stop sign I saw some changes in body language and knew we were going to get another reading, so I dropped off the back a little further in order to get a non-drafting watts check.

Still, I stayed with them up to the stop sign and only overtorqued from the beginning of that little climb.

That gave me a 3 minute 247 interval which is very close to my semi-working 1-hour effort.

Less happily, we stayed even further off the back but paced them all the way to Cross Road with only 180 watts, or in other words nap-time watts.

But that wasn't our plan, so we let them go, and I pulled Mary to Ridgebury for a test climb.

Somewhere before Tetz, Mary said somebody was on her wheel, but I just held my pace as the new guy, Mike, got periodically brushed off the back.

The Cranky fiasco happened after the turn onto Ridgebury, the Widder was off on her interval, and Mike was a hundred or so yards ahead just finishing the 2nd half of the two part (9% to 7%) harder grade.

I was thinking, "He's new. Maybe I should have told him. I'll catch him by the top and tell him then."

So just at the hardest part of Ridgebury I heard a click, and it was Cranky on my left, to which I responded, "That ain't fucking happening," surged, dropped her, and settled back into pace.

When she refused to learn and showed up again, I said, "Ok… I'll just draft you," but when we were getting close to the top, and she still hadn't closed the gap to Mike, I said, "You'd better go catch that motherfucker," and I went off and did it for her.

About a half mile later, we caught Mary who was spinning lightly waiting for us after she had just come within 55 seconds of the best ever recorded time (for anybody: man, woman, or child) on Ridgebury.

I said to Cranky, "So where's Bianchi and the rest of your ride?" "We dropped 'em all, way back somewhere."

A little disappointing, but we had Cranky out on her own, so I figured, "May as well toss her to the watts gods."

The main lesson was to be on Dog Hill, and it pretty much was.

Oh yeah, there might have been a minor lesson when we were looking up the Hill Before the Camel Farm and saw Mike (whom we now call Zirra Light) trigger Widder near the top, so that Widder dropped two gears easier, tensed into a little spin bundle, came quickly up his ass, zagged to his left, passed him, and sat up to talk him through the rest of the hill—over her shoulder while drinking her water.

My only comment to Cranky: "He has no idea who he is fucking with, and now we are going to bear the brunt."

Anyway, the plan on Dog Hill was for Mary to pace along side Cranky and give her numbers for whatever manner she wanted to take the hill.

I made sure it would be a typical Cranky performance by taunting her all the way there, and letting her pull as much as she liked.

Suffice it to say, it was a real learning experience.

Cranky overworked the bottom, then overtorqued the top, far as we can see.

She had a 420 watt average on the first step with a 465 watt peak. Then she was blown but tried again on the second (probably tried harder), but only had a 187 watt average with a 252 watt max.

If she had split the difference, eased up on the first one, maintained through the second one, and smoothed her efficiency, she could have done the whole thing under 230 and finished it just as fast, or kept her 252 (easier) and finished it faster than she did.

Sound familiar?

It was a microcosm of standard Hump process.

Blow yourself up early, then pretend you are putting power into the pedals for the rest of the ride.

You may recall that last year we ended by allowing the front groups to catch us on Pulaski coming home past the Jolly Onion, where I pulled Mary up past them again and again on the hills to let her see how blown they were.

Anyway, keeping in mind that 465 watts is basically the best anybody (man), anywhere, has ever done for 1-hour, here's Cranky's graph. >>>

Get your ass over to the Hump. I'm not smacking down nobody till I get appropriate gears.

I have had it with your shit, SlingShot!

Might as well have been running, with a devil suit on, and a bare ass to boot.

Please keep it a secret until I get my new Wal-mart bike.

I probably don't have to reiterate the problems with Power to Torque Ratio, since the concept has been over-done here, even though the rest of the world seems totally oblivious to it (in fact the term does not yet exist), so here's the unadorned chart. >>>

The other was after Black Meadow when Bianchi started complaining about his right calf cramping up, and I told him Widder was in the car behind us at Kain Road, and we should pretend to go up it.

When we turned up Kain, Bianchi's calf started sparking and flaming just before his Achilles tendon made a big bubbling sound and popped out of his mouth like a second tongue.

Also, watching his track bike spinning his fucking legs off on the big downhills was pretty cool too.

CRANKY RETIRES FROM CYCLING

I already harassed Twin Lynn to tears on the same ride two weeks ago, so it was Mary's turn at bat.

I would take a shot at making Cranky want to shoot herself.

The only stipulation was that Mary would be free to fuck with Twin Lynn as much as she liked (for a diversion), just so long as she made sure to be with the group at the end of the ride for the beginning of the sprint.

Widder is disallowed from end of ride sprints.

They are too dangerous, and Mary has to make the paintings which buy us fancy bikes.

In any case, things were going along fine. I was on Cranky's wheel and took the opportunity to call out watt numbers to help her understand how much she was overworking.

For quick context you may recall that the world's best 1-hour is about a 465 watt average, and a big deal was made out of somebody doing a 360 watt average the last 1.5 hours of some big deal race.

You may also be aware that 300 watts is a 25 mph pace, 400 is 27, 500 is 30, 600 is 32, so when I started reading numbers for Cranky's climbs as 389, 437, over 500, etc, you might also wonder if she might not have thought, "Where the fuck do I think I'm going? Even the world's best men can't hold this effort very long, especially since I am way overtorqued with the wrong gearing, and my effort is actually greater than the numbers are showing?"

She might have thought something like that. Maybe not.

But the real turning point might have come after Doug saw Cranky was in trouble and slowed up to pull her back to the group, and finally asked, "You guys ok?"

And I replied, "I'm fine, but Cranky is so far gone she's totally gone, gone, done and finished."

That wasn't the end though.

What seemed to be the real eye opener for her, was after Doug cranked it up to get about 100 yards in front of us, where we paced him for quite some time until I finally chirped, "Oh, Doug. We are right back here. Would you like us to come up there and pull you back?"

After Cranky's little laugh, I said, "We can't really let him know we paced him this easy for this long, because he's one of those sensitive guys who would likely quit riding if he knew how easily I always pace him after he leaves me 'for dead'."

That's when you could see the realization spill across her stunned silent face, "Oh, my god. Has it come to this? I'm riding in the back with SlingShot!"

Later in the parking lot she ended up rolling around behind some car, whimpering, and begging for somebody to shoot her, or at least buy her bicycle because she's done with cycling.

At that point I took off with Big Bianchi to ride him home, because he showed up at the end of the ride on his track bike, and when he said he came from home, I couldn't resist adding another 15 miles to my already two tiered 35.

I'm glad I did it too, because going up the hill on Black Meadow, Bianchi stood the whole way and gave me the hardest interval I have had since getting back from Florida.

Another 100 feet and I would have actually started breathing hard.

Anyhoo, Widder accomplished her task, was with the group at the end, finished sixth (without participating in the sprint) meaning a lot of people finished behind her, and she summed it up with, "My meter says that ride was a 19.12 mph average, and well, it was stupidly easy."

I could only reply, "I told you it would be. Just wait till you get your 11-30 cassette."

Tomorrow I am going to go over the data and try to figure out if my 714 watts for 5 second Personal Best happened on the Bank Street dessert with Cranky, or the Black Meadow climb with Bianchi.

I'm pretty excited, because the two times I tried to break 700 for 5 in Florida, I blew my chain off the big ring and thought, "That's it. A 700 plus is not going to be that hard to do, but I'm not going to push any more power until I get a reliable bike."

So getting the number in the wrong gear by accident without trying was a bonus.

Now you are vying to become Big Bianchi's step-dad?

Isn't that near where you and Widder winter?

The local club's Sunday ride comes up from the library in St. Petersburg, goes over both birdges, then down Gulf Boulevard right past our rental.

Actually, we got interested because Mary kept saying, "I know that person, we see them riding (or running) in Fort De Soto all the time," and then, "..look we know him too!"

We love tri-athletes, because they are always so easy to beat.

They are always thinking something like, "I have to save myself for my run (or swim)," while we're thinking, "After I kick this guy's ass, I'm going home and take a nap."

Of course, the really good ones can't be shaken off their program… just beat.

She just completed her 22 mile run this past Sunday in prep for the Pittsburgh Marathon.

Now it is time to lower the mileage (Taper!).

B-- you are simply amazing!

Looks like that rain just showed up out of nowhere on the radar and should be here just in time for the ride start.

Think I'll stay home.

They only took a second to put it in their favorites.

Somebody got here yesterday by way of a Google search for: Celebrity road cyclists.

We were number seven down on page 1 of the returns.

Go see where they landed. >>>

Maybe I'll go over and be the only one to show up at Joe-Fix-It's for the 5:30 ride again.

Maybe this time I can beat everybody who doesn't show up.

All them guys are just getting twitchy.

Can't blame 'em much.

Maybe G's wife is on the taper.

I almost completed a whole 'nother morning without a binge twinge.

Thanks for all the help.

I took off .4 lb!

Plus it has the hardest hill in Orange County… from Chester to Monroe: 4 miles without a break!

Of course you need a power meter in order to make use of it.

You go out on the steepest part of any other ride you do and check how many watts it takes.

Then you hit the Heritage Trail, and do repeats of the whole four miles holding your watts just a little higher than the hardest part of any of your other rides.

No breaks, no coasting, no bullshit surges, just very fine control of an absolutely precise training pace.

Long flats (or near flats) are by far the hardest hills… unless you have the wrong gearing for actual hills (which appears to be the case with most of the macho knuckleheads around here), then real hills only take more torque in order to get less result while placing the advantage toward the scrawny little pussy-men.

You know, a lot of the local guys think that when the hammer comes down in a race, people jumped into their big ring and stomped on it, when in fact just the opposite is more likely.

Actually, everbody dropped two gears easier and spun faster.

Dropping and spinning increases power by about 10%, give or take.

Now don't piss me off and make me get a triple like all the top competitors in Europe.

I like wasting effort on hills. It makes me feel strong and manly, and I like that better than being fast.

I ran like hell. Came home, and took a nap.

I believe you missed something in your response section to post #4063.

You stated that Andreas would "chart better," because he is lighter than you and Glenn.

At that moment (the three of you riding together on any given slope), Andreas would chart exactly the same as you and Glenn.

He would just be turning a lot fewer watts (working a lot less) unless he was uber-inefficient.

That is the exact reason one can use the Power to Weight table in order to gage performance relative to a wide range of variable real world situations.

SLINGSHOT VENTS

I am so fucking pissed off I can't stand myself.

It's my own fault, but I really thought that this morning after yesterday's major success gathering field data, confirming proof of concept, and generally not looking like the total fool that I am, I was really hoping I could feel almost good about myself.

Then I got on the bathroom scale.

Despite the last several days of riding even if it was snowing, even if I was toasted, even if I shouldn't, then a semi-hard ride with people I have no business riding with, I put on .6 lb, and realized I am back in one of my half lb a day upward spirals.

Fuck me.

Even more so than my yesterday's getting caught by traffic at three cross streets, and last Thursday's dozen or more cross streets, and Saturday's Hump, "I'm overtorqued and really should have a triple," realization.

I have now lost half of the distance I had recovered on my 10 lb gain from the last week in Florida and drive home, and this is the very day after I saw without doubt that I still have another 15 lbs to go, if I ever hope to live without dying on any given ride.

Like I said, "FUCK ME."

I am a little soothed by the morning logs that show more and more people from all over the world are finding the correct pages on American Road Cycling using logical searches for information about watts, speed, and power training.

We are on page 1 of Google returns for most all of them.

I am so soothed by that, I have come up with a weight loss exercise that is very revealing and helpful.

You may like it too. Here it is.

Get a stop-watch or a watch with a second hand. Now… hold your breath and watch the clock.

Notice how easy it is to hold your breath for the first 30 seconds or so, but (depending on your training) you will also notice that at about the 1 minute and 30 second mark, you are going to breath… no matter how much fucking determination you have.

Weight loss is exactly the same.

The details of calories per lb of body weight (15.033), and what you need to eat to maintain your own body weight(read the fucking labels moron) is extremely simple (like holding your breath), but one little fuck-up and you are going to be breathing (eating) like the fucking air (food) is somehow important to you.

You are likely to be eating in gasps.

That is exactly what happened to me after yesterday's ride, and I am even reluctant to mention it, because I do not wish to trigger the innocent by the mere mention of the word "food" here.

In fact, I routinely click TV channels away from food commercials, because I noticed a couple years ago that when they first come on I am unaffected, in fact full of myself with the superior knowledge that I don't need to eat that pizza (no matter how much pepperoni), but after patting myself on the back a few times, I relax and by the end of the commercial that is the only thing I can think about.

Sometimes it takes several weeks or months for me to finally give in to that one commercial. I think people make money putting those ads together and selling space for them. It seems to me they would.

That is also part of why I never, ever, never stop for coffee with the group after a ride.

The other part is because I hate being around people, but I have "good" stuff to eat at home, and a uniform and repeatable routine that allows me to eat (breath) regularly and not get caught in a food gasping bachnal.

Yesterday we were worried about Humberto not making it back in time to go slaughter his Easter giraffe (or whatever it was), so we stayed in the parking lot after the ride to make sure he didn't need a ride home.

Well, the parking lot is adjacent to the food mart.

Fuck me.

What does it all mean?

It happens every time.

Dangerous was afraid he would be getting some sort of special punishment, and Paris just assumes that means you are never doing the Hump again, because he cannot remember a Hump where you did not drop him in the parking lot.

Plus they will have extra money to spend, since they won't have to pay to get off your mailing list like everybody else does.

They will never be invited again to a recovery ride, which is the only rides they can do with the guys.

Any other rides they just get dropped…

So fuck you Paris, fuck you Dangerous.

DANGEROUS DAN
SUCKER PUNCHES AND DROPS
HUMBERTO CAVALHEIRO

That was some ride!

I knew the guys off the FRONT of the FRONT FRONT GROUP were fast, but I never knew just how fast until today, when they set a new record for splintering a ride.

The ride broke into a faster ride and a slower ride within a quarter mile of the start!

Which of the rides was which is still being debated, but while the ride Officials are hashishing it out, here are the ride details.

At the "Y" of Jessup and Union Corners, Humberto was doing a fine job of leading the group up Union Corners, when Paris decided she didn't like the wind, and yelled for a, "LEFT TURN… LEFT TURN!!!"

Of course everybody payed no attention whatsoever, because after all it was Humberto's ride, until Mary got spooked about the climb and turned to get a jump on it.

Paris took that opportunity to make a big show of following, and that gave the critical mass needed for everybody else to follow.

As we ascended the climb, we could see Humberto, Pedro and Dangerous split off the "Y" below us, and everybody yelled until it looked like Humberto saw and was turning around.

By the time those of us in back saw Dangerous had not turned around, Andreas and Glenn had already been triggered by Mary's jump on the hill, so there was no way to call them off the climb.

I just kept my head down doing what I could to save myself, and I didn't get involved.

It wasn't until later, on one of the power climbs after all the other power climbs and just before the beginning of more and more power climbs, when I was glued to Andreas's wheel (while he and Glenn were engaged in one of their little tugs of war) that I finally understood what had happened.

I thought, "These guys fighting like this is hurting nobody but myself… I'm just glad Humberto's not here. Looks like I just might survive this."

So there you have it.

For those who don't know already, if you ever go on a ride with Humberto, it is best to get rid of him as soon as you can, because eventually that's going to happen anyway, and you will be plenty hurt by the time he decides he can't piddle around with you anymore and leaves you for dead.

Later we ran into Dangerous Dan way up in the Ozarks of Warwick, and he was quite adament that nobody should ever believe, intimate, (nor certainly not mention to Humberto), that he had dropped him.

In fact he got to hopping around and whimpering like a little girl for the rest of the ride, begging us all not to say a word.

You see, if Humberto ever heard a rumor that Dangerous had dropped him, it would mean a summer of pure hell for Dan, and that summer would be this one right now coming up.

So everbody, do Dan a favor.

Do not walk straight up to Humberto and say, "What's this I heard about Dangerous Dan sucker punches and drops Humberto Cavalheiro?"

I have done my part.

If I may, I will write in the first person as if I am you.

Here we go.

Early in the ride I saw that Andreas was palpating his left knee just below the joint along with the inferior IT band.

A half dozen or so power climbs later, his left leg gave up the ghost, and I saw it as a hopeful opportunity (maybe I could stay in the ride) to record some data, so I held onto his wheel like it was the last day of the Tour de France, and I had my lifetime chance of taking my one and only stage.

By doing this I confirmed so much of what I surmised would be true, this afternoon I feel like an unmitigated genius, but that could be just because I am.

Of course I knew I was overtorqued, but still my watts show I completed these:

00) sec: avg / max watts

01) 33: 380 / 506
02) 10: 346 / 488
03) 50: 239 / 407
04) 05: 424 / 446
05) 09: 429 / 528
06) 09: 329 / 423
07) 14: 375 / 467
08) 42: 300 / 467
09) 06: 323 / 460
10) 14: 488 / 631
11) 10: 331 / 451
12) 05: 355 / 544
13) 11: 458 / 513
14) 30: 304 / 479
15) 10: 355 / 426
16) 20: 300 / 501
17) 26: 378 / 588
18) 16: 426 / 532
19) 15: 410 / 487
20) 13: 385 / 592

And that was just a few that I pulled from the first hour, but you get the picture.

Here's more of the picture:

In general these were with Andreas Runggatscher (winner of numerous Humps) and Glenn Babikian (second in the less prestigious last year's Sussex Race Series with lots of help from The Dropper Dave Parker) tusseling each other's hairs for supremacy.

For those who do not have a watt meter, here are more or less conversions from watts to mph:

300 = 25
400 = 27
500 = 30
600 = 32

I weigh 156, Glenn weighs 200, so compared to my watts (with efficient effort) he needs:

Me  -> Glenn
300 -> 385
400 -> 513
500 -> 641
600 -> 769

You can reverse the direction of those numbers for Andreas, because he is 16 lbs my junior.

Think about how much more Glenn has to work than Andreas.

I've been there (Glenn's weight and more), but I'm not nearly as strong as Glenn (never have been, never will be), so that's why you never saw me writing much about these guys before.

I just wouldn't have been there after a couple hills like these, and if that fucker Humberto had been there to trigger them further, I wouldn't have been there today.

Ironically, the best of today's numbers would only hit the chart at Cat 2 for Men—if we did them for at least 1 minute, and they would only hit the lowest for Untrained Women at 5 seconds.

Actually, Andreas would chart better, because he is an anorexic of only 140 lbs.

Of course, this is all assumes efficient gearing, spin, and cadence, which I clearly had none of (being overtorqued like a motherfucker), and I cannot speak for the others, because I had my own troubles and couldn't see a thing beyond my own wretched details.

However, it pretty much shows they were having a very easy day, and I was very lucky to be there.

Oh yeah, here's a hint for anybody like the new guy, Clemson.

At the beginning of a ride, those in the know understand that sitting on the back and trying to talk to SlingShot is totally fruitless.

When you ask him something like, "Where did you winter in Florida? How is the cycling?," the only thing SlingShot thinks is, "Florida? Rides? Me? You'd just better be thinking about today's ride, and right now, because I am about to get my ass kicked, and if you ain't careful you're goin' down with me."

Clemson learned soon enough, and hopefully he will forgive those guys (and Mary) enough to come back again.

Somebody told me that he is on the verge of going Pro or Semi-Pro, because two cycling teams are vying to put together a sponsorship and woo him over.

Currently, he is single-handedly holding one of those teams together by pure brute force of will and good intention.

Should he even be considered in any of your discussions about your amateurish little Hump projects?

We just keep hoping that one of those teams doesn't come up with a Powertap for him.

That would have tragic results. Maybe not for them, but for us.

Plus Rudy Napolitano told us, "Who?"

And Widder already does have a fast Hump.

A couple years ago she pulled off a 21.5 four weeks in a row, and just last year a 21.3 mostly on her own.

In any case, as far as we know Kevin has never beaten her in a 7 minute power fest (as has Humberto—barely), nor even a one hour time trial.

Brush up on your physics, go back to square one, begin reading again, and this time concentrate and don't skim.

I could direct you to the book Cycling Performance Simplified (which has become all the rage on the Internet worldwide), but you really have to know something to understand it.

There is also a note that it could be a bot IP#.

Now sling Shot, how hard to you need to spin a generator to light a 60 watt light bulb bright enough for the Widder to paint by?

I believe that would equal 376,730 watts, but if you took that spiffy Vette up on Ridgebury and lugged the engine to the degree all those numbskull cyclists lug their own engines, it would quickly become much less of a collector's item… just like their worn out legs.

As for Widder's lightbulb, it rarely goes off, but I spend most of my time trying to get her to figure out how to spin her own generator.

That was all rather nice, but didn't you guys get dropped on Thursday's ride?

They knew for sure it was then or never, because she had already easily paced them up all the "hard hills," and she hadn't even begun to sweat.

The Goldilocks Hills would have worn them ragged while barely phasing Widder

When Mary looked back around after trying to find me, it was too late for her (especially since she couldn't see me and started waiting), and I was still standing at the third (way, way caught) traffic crossing, so by the fourth time I got caught, I had just seen her turn onto 207, but it took me another 38 minutes to catch her (Goldilocks Hills and all), and by then, well... I did get some useful numbers recorded.

"Watts are totally outside the realm of human perception. They cannot be seen, heard, or felt. As far as humans are concerned watts do not exist at all."

"On the other hand, torque is readily percieved."

Maybe that is why there is so much confusion about the correct use of power meters, trip computers, heart rate monitors, and stop-watches among people who are trying to ride faster.

Riders have absolutely zero connection to watts except through their power meter display.

However, with torque, maybe you can't state the exact number, but you absolutely know when you are pushing your pedals hard, extra hard, or easy.

Unfortunately, torque (even more so than mph and BPM) has aboslutely nothing at all to do with speed, while watts are an exact and immediate equivalent to pace.

In fact, watts are a more precise current measurement of pace than are mph—both average and especially current.

That is to say: if you are in a race to a finish line, and you know that somebody else might get there in a given amount of time, and you are wondering if you yourself are on a pace that will put you there faster than them, watts tell you at each and every moment exactly how you are doing, while torque (you feel) and mph (you read) are telling you nothing.

You cannot know watts (no way, no how, not now, not ever), but your torque (which you may know intimately) is possibly lying to you about your watts.

Unhappily, your body reacts to torque, not watts, so you may very easily be torquing yourself off a finish line while contentedly watching your watts and thinking, "This is good. I'm on target."

The other day beside the Heritage Trail, Joe Straub said, "I try to hold a consistent 220 watts," at which point Mary and I looked at each other and thought, "What? A mere 220 watts? I thought Joe was strong? Fuck, SlingShot did a 45 minute 230 watt interval in Florida, and he never even broke into a sneezing fit!"

However, after Thursday's ride with Humberto and Dan, I spent Friday tracking down an anomaly in my numbers.

My 19.1 average to Gardener seemed to be too easy for the speed, while the 197 a little high for the speed.

I had attributed it to Gardener being significantly downhill from Humberto's (which I have always believed), but we went out and made a cue sheet and checked altitudes at the same time.

It is only a drop of a couple hunder feet which is to say it is like coming down from the top of Ridgebury to Route 12, but over a distance 17 miles, not just a little over 1 mile. Something wasn't computing.

Therefore, I went out yesterday, and kept my CPU in current watts mode, and only checked average once in a while.

Guess what folks?

I know I have said it before, but this time I really mean it: it is incredibally easy to be putting way too fucking much effort into your pedal stroke… especially if you are on a hill without the correct gearing.

That describes the standard Hump scenario. People with innapropriate gear ratios, pushing way too hard, blowing themselves (and friends) up in micro-bursts, and calling it a "hard ride."

Today I repeated last week's Hump effort with my new knowledge and an eye on current (as apposed to average) watts, and found that I myself am so totally trained to overwork the hills, I have never noticed that I typcially put in a 500 watt effort (torque) for a 300 watt result (hill interval) and wonder why it is almost impossible to hit 140 watts on the flat afterwards (way below my easy 180 appropriately spun).

No wonder Joe Straub thinks (like all the rest of you) that 220 watts (a 21.7 mph pace) is a hard ride.

Under the current local riding philosopy: it is.

Since you came up with it on your own, you had better trademark the term, because it is possibly the single most important aspect of cycling performance, and nobody has even heard of it yet.

BTW: Congratulations on making whatever the fuck it is that you are talking about "...more intuitive."

Also we have access to Internet weather maps, so knew enough to take The Widder's Hump out extra early in order to avoid it.

The getting pulled back is never on purpose either.

Miss us? That reminds me.

Previously you asked for a rate card for power training fees, and I have it completed.

As an introductory offer, lessons are being provided at $1500.00 dollars per series, which is to be tendered at the beginning of the first lesson.

Payment may be in the form of a receipt for a PowerTap system either purchased in whole or in part from any source other than ARC, to be flashed under SlingShot's eyes on the first day, or you may show him the unit itself on your training bicycle.

The astute student may find one cheaper than retail on E-bay or any number of online cycling equipment services, and/or have it installed on a wheel of their choice by a local bike shop, and thus save money on their entry fees.

However, stealing a unit in order to avoid fees all together is strictly frowned upon.

Wireless (like your Internet connection) is preferred, because SlingShot can pace behind you and watch your numbers on his own CPU as he trains you in the ways of the Watts world.

On completion of the course you will retain the PowerTap Hub and CPU for your own use and ownership, but your ass will remain property of SlingShot.

In other words: status quo.

Besides, I need the miles to mitigate the cottage cheese in my ass.

Count me and Widder in.

"What if: your functional Watts threshold is lower than your functional HR threshold?"

Think about it.

Maybe we should protect such who may be so unwary by posting a disclaimer, "Not for the squeamish."

All this stuff is made up?

I mean: pink bicycle, little girl, c'mon!

SlingShot, how was today's ride?

Yesterday I was afraid it was going to snow, but today I didn't have to worry about that, because it was already snowing when I left the house.

Fortunately it soon started raining at the same time, or I wouldn't have known what to do.

Perfect weather for being on the trail, because until the return trip back past the parking lot in Monroe (where a dog dragger with her pink bicycle'd daughter got in my way and laid waste to my mph avg) the Heritage Trail was totally empty except for a woodchuck, a couple squirrels, and a Joe Straub.

Happily all the animals were going in the opposite direction.

I decided to hit my 180 watt target early, and not build to it like yesterday, so I could control my tendency to push past my own pace, and in that way I ended with only a 197 watt average for a 58:03 loop.

Chester to Goshen to Monroe and back.

That's an 18.8 mph avg with 141 (150 max) HR.

My power graph shows my HR max happened just as I realized it was Joe Straub smiling at me going the other way.

I don't know just exactly what my problem is, but it seems to be significant.

Someday I plan to pick a watt and stay under it.

You were right all along.

Despite everything Anthony says about you, you seem to be a very nice person.

Also despite Mary's best efforts to be a "bad ass," she seems very nice also.

Mary agrees.

I see you are back home.

Kristin might be interested in seeing this. >>>

I looked around me and realized there was nobody else there to take over, so I became the de facto leader.

I guess I did pretty good, because by the end of the ride I had posted the best time by far out of all the riders.

Nobody was even close.

From the sign just off South Street all the way up to the Goshen Airplane park and back to the sign, I posted a 186 watt average for 59:33 making it an 18.21 mile loop with an 18.34 mph average… and all that with a 135 HR average only peaking at 147 bpm—which appears to have happened on the approach to Private Pie on the way back when I got a little out of control worried about going under 185 watts so close to the finish after I had so slowly and carefully brought it up from 130 watts over the entire loop.

So to summarize: that's the full Heritage Trail with an 18.34 mph average and a HR of only 135 along with only the slightest case of frost bite on eight of my fingers.

That continues my streak of never having breathed hard on a ride since we got back from Florida.

Now go get ready for the Joe-Fix-It's ride at 5:30.

Before I could even check to see if it was working, it got hit by a forms spam bot or something from Amsterdam, and I remembered why it was gone.

In any case, I went through the hell of updating the form, made myself fat and stupid, fucked up my back, and now everything is almost normal.

Well, they just came back looking for "bicycle weight calculators," and 2 seconds later they bookmarked the Watts to Speed page then used the Power To Weight Calculator 3 times.

Fortunately the Chatterbox is a rather unlikely page for them to find.

Also, due to our spring mailing her website is lit up like American Road Cycling, so we are somewhat relieved.

All with only slight quivering of the thighs.

Only the shadow knows the watts.

As always a good time was had by all.

Yep, just as I remembered, right there in section something or another, one of the indented headings reads:

No mention whatsoever of quivering thighs is ever to be published on the American Road Cycling website.

Tony was interested, because he has been training with watts for seven years, but not on the road, so I was reading numbers to him whenever he asked.

On the first hill out of town, I pointed out that I was already pacing 326 watts, had peaked at 416, and the guy pulling at the front had (at least) 20 lbs on me so must be doing significantly more.

My heart rate for that section was about 125 and wouldn't spike (only) to 138 for another 20 seconds, so if I had been watching that, I wouldn't know anything was happening, but I saw the power numbers and knew exactly what to expect.

I believe I said, "Remember these numbers and this first hill, because later on when that guy blows and starts complaining about his cramped legs, you can look back and understand why."

It is one thing to show up for a ride way the fuck out of shape, and it is another to decide you want to do a workout like it's the middle of the summer, but it is totally another thing altogether to allow yourself to trigger the Widder and have your ass handed to you on Iron Forge Road as an appetizer, then finished off for good on the steepest part of Cascade Road.

Some people never learn, but then it's not really their fault.

I myself knew everybody overworks the Hump, but couldn't imagine how really outlandishly over they are doing it until I looked at my own charts from yesterday's Time Trial.

Take a look at the chart linked below (post #3987) with the low level flatlined HR that Toe Clip so sagaciously mentioned in post #3989.

That was on a solo pace which the second group working together failed to catch.

In summary, today Anthony and I knew full well the importance of hanging back while the Widder was handing out her spanking, at least until she went home to open the studio.

Didn't help us all that much though, because after Widder left, we eventually got kicked out of the ride for talking.

At least Anthony got to see first hand the truth in what I blurted out before the ride when I was explaining the overtorqued chart and realized he understood.

I shouted, "Anthony! You get it! You would not believe how many people think I have lost my mind."

When he witnessed me getting yelled at for "having theories," I believe he did finally get it.

Not bad.

That was however, a very interesting looking graph with plotted numbers all over the place with a roller coaster here, a roller coaster there, except for one set.

The heart rate plotted seems to be flatlined. How come?

BTW, was that you who sent out those bogus acceptance notifications from NYU? If so, why?

The HR you see is only 3 beats below my average for the entire 2 hours, and it really didn't vary much at all during the whole ride.

Why would anybody work hard, if they can go just as fast (actually faster) by working easier? Doesn't make any sense to me.

We only sent out the bogus NYU notifications in order to impress upon people that if they are waiting for outside affirmation that they are worthwhile individuals, they are wasting their time.

When I stepped out of the bathroom the twinge up my right side outer obliques confirmed things were not the best.

During my flight check I had final confirmation when my left knee squawked on the last stand/sit test.

The last final confirmation was how quickly my lower back started squeaking after the test ride started.

Things weren't great, but it was my first chance to check wattage on the Hump after a winter on the flats in Florida.

Also, there was a massive steady wind with 40 mph gusts, and those gusts were coming from just about the worst direction when they weren't swirling from every direction, but I really needed to get in a Hump, so nothing was going to stop it… not even the slight rain and threat of ice during the car ride over.

The 12.63 mph average (that should have been closer to 20 mph) for the first 2 miles was not surprising given the steady hard headwind, and I just kept thinking, "Great, we just left Florida and 80° sun to get away from this wind, and now we've got it here with almost snow conditions."

However, I was still too curious about what an easy 180 watt Hump loop would give me in mph to pack it in just yet.

Soon my worst fears were realized.

I knew it on the hill going up to the stop sign on Big Island Road, but the graph from the hill before Cross Road shows it much better.

You will see the blue line is speed. The yellow line is watts. The purple line is torque. Green is cadence, and red is heart rate.

You will also notice the high watts per torque on the approach to the hill while cadence is over 90 rpm, but when the hill grets serious my cadence drops along with the speed, while the torque goes through the roof.

I knew it while it was happening, and there wasn't much that could be done about it, but the severity of the problem wasn't apparent until I saw the graph afterwards.

I knew immediately I was quickly falling back into the bad Hump behavior of overworking uphills, and easing off downhills, because even before my left leg gave out (well before Ridgebury), I saw that I was gaining watts on the uphills and losing them on the downhills.

I decided to just finish the loop and see if 180 would really be as doable as I expected.

After the turn back (to go northeast on Route 88), the northwest almost tailwind did provide a 21.65 average for my 187 watts from the Jolly Onion to the finish line, despite the buffeting side winds that caused Mary to get dropped out of fear a couple of times and caused me to lose 3 watts for that section.

At the finish I was still holding 189 watts average overall with 1 hour 57 minutes on my timer, that would be a personal best 2 hours, so I didn't let up until two stop signs and a side street later in order to get the time in.

To see that those signs and turnaround dropped me back off 190 three times after I got it back up again was a little upsetting.

The 17.18 mph average overall wasn't so bad considering the insane swirling front, side, cross, and headwinds… especially since the front group only did about 19 working together, and we managed to increase the gap between us and the second group which found us already back in the truck getting reheated when they came in.

I say we, even though I pulled for the whole ride, because Widder stayed on my wheel (124 watts for her) and helped monitor my form breaks and kept me going.

In any case, I made my goal of 180 (in fact 9 watts over), and it was pretty easy considering (144 HR average with a 154 max), not to mention I posted a new 2 hour PB—one that I will easily beat next time out.

Here's the cross road graph. >>>

Plus mention to notice the high watts per torque on the approach to the hill.

Cadence is over 90 rpm, but when the hill gets serious cadence drops along with the speed, but the torque goes through the roof.

You might also add that the answer to all this is the same you would suggest to Widder: a granny gear!

Except you are too hopeful that increasing to the 260 watts required for the 23+ Widder's Hump when you move into working mode will mitigate the wide variation of torque to watts needed on the uphills, and give you a little more control for the downhills.

Anyway, you are not yet ready to suffer the indignation of a triple.

While he was here, I wrangled some numbers out of him.

He has been using a power enabled indoor trainer for about 7 years, so he knows he can do 300+ watts for 1 minute.

That is a 4.48 Power to Weight ratio, so for me to match him I must do 331.1 watts.

All of you may remember that I was doing intervals like that in Florida this winter, so when Anthony gets here tomorrow, I will gladly oblige in making him feel right at home by doing 1 minute repeats of 332 watts all day long.

I am sure Chuckie will appreciate the gesture, because he never has figured out how to reset his average on his trainer, so he has to watch his current and make a judgement call which may or may not be totally correct.

We are about to find out just exactly what he can do.

Kristin is the person who saved Anthony for posterity, not that she meant any harm. >>>

Meanwhile the OtHG, completed a traditional ride with the added bonus of the Blair Witch Trail.

For those not in the know: that trail has laid dormant for a few years for obvious reasons for those who are in the know.

I will be pulling and Widder's drafting, so a very easy 100 for her behind my almost working (at most) Zone 3, 180 watt average.

Lucky girl is already about a quarter of the way through her morning floor exercises.

After Tuesday's and Thursday's group rides, everything looks ok for the hills, but I need to see how well I can focus, and what is required on all the turns to bring my watt average back up, and how over-torqued my fat ass will be on the hills, and how close to 20 mph a 180 watt avg will actually give me.

If the wind were favorable (which it won't be), I would basically guarantee 20, while how over-torqued (poorly geared) I am on the steeper hills will determine how good I feel about holding the 180.

A 180 will be significantly more power overall than used for the group rides (which were somewhat slower than 20), but significantly easier without all the surging and coasting.

In any case, the two group rides were not all that hard anyway. I was plenty uncomfortable but never once breathing hard, and I finished with the front groups.

Except for how bad they are for one's performance, I love the spring rides.

"Tired of listening about my running? Let me talk about my swimming. Tired of listening about my swimming? I'll tell you about my cycling. Tired of hearing about my cycling? In the gym I've been..."

FG fucked up the order on purpose?

Yes, you are in fact who you are, but as you may well have noticed, SlingShot did not check his e-mail till this morning and had already fucked up and went hard… well, not hard, but not easy, well, pretty easy, but in a hard way, well…

In any case, he'll see you Sunday.

The only thing he accomplished was making that evil Twin George's sister sigh once.

I heard he took off 4 lbs on the ride.

What's he want from us? To come over and slap the doughnuts out of his hand?

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THOSE PEOPLE?!

The Bicycle Doctor and his nasty ass crew, Palletman and his brother, Twin Lynn without her brother, and then there's the Widder.

Those assholes call that fun? I don't need that shit. I want to feel like a human in the morning.

I'm not ever going back.

In case you are confused, that ARC Membership List is total fucking bullshit... mostly.

Think I'll drop on over to that local club's Trailside Pub Ride, led by Palletman, 5:30 today at the Chester Train Station.

I updated the time on the rides page. >>>

People can click on the INFO link for details and location map.

We have some Turkeys here on our property that you would love to meet :)

BTW: You should be giving SlingShot grief about laterally rotating at the hip while standing stoop shouldered at the snack bar.

-Michele Schmoopie

Only UV160 followed the correct order starting on #3951 working up through #3955.

Everybody else (including Palletman) went backwards and probably missed the point and rollover texts.

Sorry to bother you again, but what made you so fat again?

You see, on our way home from Florida, Palletman phoned and left a message on our home phone.

Mary had me listen to it while I was driving.

Now, a cynic would believe he delayed his "warning" till I would be just exactly at my weakest state, and his "heads-up" was meant only to trigger my bad behavior.

However, I know Palletman and his character very well, so I can attest that when he left the message (almost cooing), to tell me how important it was for me to avoid, "…even that first candy bar for the road, no matter how bored I might be…," I can state for the record that he most assuredly had my best interests at heart, despite the timing.

I have prepared a photo essay which starts here. >>>

Who the fuck are you to talk?

I'm just interested, but could you please tell me how Palletman got his name?

Palletman was just over here today, and I do believe he got his name because it takes a forklift and pallet to move him around, but that is just my observation.

Unless some macho person decides to breakout.