Last night I hit the sack well before 10 p.m. and so naturally I was awake before the 5:45 a.m. alarm went off. As I lay in bed there was this little debate going on in my head. One side was saying, "Go on out and meet the Monday group on the levee. It'll probably be an easy ride anyway." The other side was saying, "Listen to your legs. They are telling you they are tired. A day off the bike will be good for you." I went back and forth for a good fifteen minutes before the opposing sides agreed on a compromise. So I slipped out of the house early while it was still relatively cool. The game plan called for an hour on the bike alone and absolutely no numbers on the speedometer above 18 mph. Rather than head for the levee where I was bound to meet up with someone who wanted to ride faster, I aimed the old Cervelo for Audubon Park. This is where I used to do most of my morning rides back in the 80's and into the 90's before it got to be too dangerous to ride fast there. I recognized some of the same early morning regulars who I used to see back then. The old judge who had had a mild stroke some 15 or 20 years ago was still out there jogging slowly and unevenly with one arm bent and the other straight. The first lap or two were quiet, and then around 7 a.m. a lot more people appeared. A big guy on a Trek "comfort bike" passed me easily. But I stuck to the plan, taking a long route back home through Carrollton. It was good. At some point last weekend the bike computer's odometer rolled over 55,000 miles. The Cervelo is about 5 years old this month, so that makes the "annual mileage" math pretty easy. I don't think I've kept up a training diary for almost that long, though. If I haven't figured out what works and what doesn't by now, I'm way past where a training diary is going to help!
My abbreviated ride got me back to the house early. Apparently my brain has been working on the Peugeot city bike bottom bracket problem while I've been sleeping because during my ride this morning I realized that I had a couple of Campi square-taper axles around somewhere and that I should at least check to see if one of them will work. So when I got home I scrounged around and came up with a slightly pitted one that had come from my old Cinelli at some point. I stuck it into the Peugeot bottom bracked at voila! It will work. I dug out my old Nervar Star crankset with its permanently attached Campi Super Record pedals and again, it will work. I'll need some spacers so I can remove the big chainring from the Nervar, leaving the existing 44t one, which should work out pretty well. I bought this crankset to replace the steel cottered one that came on the Atala 10-speed that I got when I was a senior in high school. The old Simplex plastic derailleur is quite bad off, so it will go, but I have a nifty old 1980's Campi Record one from The Wife's old Atala (which broke after a few years of hauling The Daughter around in a baby seat) that will polish up nicely. I may even take the old rear wheel down to the LBS to remove the antique Maillard freewheel, for which I don't have a tool, and replace it with an old Regina 5-speed straight block, which I *think" I may still have lying around in a box somewhere. Once I polish up all that old non-anodized aluminum with Mother's Metal Polish, this is going to look pretty nice. New alloy rims and spokes are on my list, but they will probably have to wait a while.
After carefully scouting out the new RR course for the Tour de La, and also checking out the new start/finish for the Crit, I guess I'll be working on finishing up the 2006 Race Bible this week. We'll be running the Crit in the reverse (clockwise) direction this year with the finish stretch on the section that, last year, was between turns one and two. It's not as nice as our usual location with all the oak trees, but there should be ample shade from awnings along the street and course-wise it should work out fine.
5 comments:
55,000 miles?!?!?!?! Are for real with that? That's crazy. Very impressive. I do between 5-8k a year, and I often think that's more than enough. Wow.
Since you're updating the TDL race bible...a correction to the results pages.....I got SECOND in that citizen race back in 1994, not THIRD as I am listed. I have the second place trophy here at my house and that should be proof enough. Please...I'll probably never get my name in that honored part of the race bible again and it'd be nice to have my only entry be correct.
Yeah, I'm whining.......sniff!
Well, most of those miles are from group training rides rather than solo rides, so they're not worth as much!
Well Alan, I'll try and remember to fix that!
I love you, man......YOU'RE THE BEST!
I take back all those awful things other people have said about you....although I think you've only done 54,997 miles. Because of Y2K, bike computers can't go up to 55,000 unless they're Macs.
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