Monday, a day after the race in Blunt park, I did a quick spin on the Scott road bike. For years it was setup for indoor riding, but I am planning to race it up Mt Burke and Mt Greylock and wanted to test the outdoor setup. Turned out that the shifting was not ideal, it kept skipping. When John and Pamela happened to walk by the next day they thought the derailleur hanger had been bent, so I ordered a new one.
On Tuesday did another ez road ride down rt 116 and then via Whately and West Whately back home. When I went to take a photo of the valley in Whately turned out my neighbor TJ was playing with his band the peppers. They played some solid rock and roll.
Due to tropical storm Ida the NCC cyclocross practice was canceled. Instead I did a cross oriented over-on-under workout on Zwift, I did this once before. When the grade is greater then 0% than ride at Vo2Max, at 0% ride at functional threshold and when the grade is negative, soft pedal. This mimics the efforts of a cross race well. I managed to do 2 intervals of 20 minutes with a TSS of almost a 100.
On Thursday had planned to do one of the last NCC Thursday night rides, however a late meeting prevented me to be there on time. Instead I did a cyclocross ride through the woods with lots of up and downs hard efforts.
With Labor day weekend we went to Burke. I had left Friday morning and arrived at noon. With most folks at work offline and a canceled meeting went out for a Fat bike ride with Mike, Erin and Mason on the Kingdom trails.
After a last Friday meeting, drove out to Sara, who now lives in East Burke, for a bike fit. The Honey cross bike, I had bought a year before, was never properly fitted and I felt I never got the power output I was used to on my other bikes. In the end we moved the saddle forward and up a little. Rotated the handle bars down and brought the handle bars back. Still had a bit of reach which can be fixed with a steeper stem.
Earlier that week I had ordered a one-by 40t chainring and an ultegra clutch derailleur after consulting with Shane and John. With that setup I hope to reduce dropped chains and limit drive train mechanicals.
Saturday morning early Jutta and I raced up Mt Burke. I felt good and hoped to break my PR from 3 years before. The first section before the Wall, I was able to keep a wattage of around 280 watts, but the Wall did a number on my legs and wore me out. With the grade of 15-20% the low cadence tired the legs and I got overheated a little. After that I could maintain a power output of only 260 watts. At the top I felt a little defeated, however coming home turned out I was only 3 seconds short of my pr. Not too shabby.
After pancakes Paula, Sandra, Jason, Carolyn, Kristine and Andrea went for a 26 mile route towards the CCC road. Just after leaving, I realized we were missing the ridge on Burke Greene road on the route, so we made a little detour, which made the route a little longer, 31 miles. The group seperated after the detour and Sandra, Paula and I continued our route to the CCC route. But before we arrived there we had a quick stop for maple creamees. The CCC road turned out to be freshly grated and was very ridable. We then finished up the ride with the beautiful descend into West Burke.
On Sunday John, Pamela and I went for a 40+ mile ride which included a great loop along the King George rd and then rode the CCC route and School rd in the opposite direction of what I rode the day before. Including getting a Maple Creamee.
That afternoon I went for a mountain bike ride on my Fat bike with John and Mike. It was fun but went too fast trying to keep up and I crashed pretty bad on Sky Dive. I fell on a log and into a tree trunk and bruised a rib and had a cuts and bruises on my right chest. Fortunately I did not break something. We did ride back to the Bike Barn but the more the adrenaline wore off the more painfull the roots became. Bummer to end the weekend on a low. But lesson (re)learned... Don't go fast on trails you don't know.
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