First Test Ride

Happily the workday went by quickly today. Traffic was cooperative too, so I got to Hains Point promptly. Wanted to do the full deal so I even wore my skin suit. Gotta do something about the front wheel - still having issues with the valve extender leaking too much air, but I got it up to an acceptable pressure.

I guess I was a bit hyped about the new bike, at first my heart rate was running high, especially when I got down on the aerobars. So I watched the speed and gearing to stay in Zone 2 for my warm up laps. I'm still getting used to the new numbers from last week's VO2max test.

Don't have the cadence sensor working yet, but I think I know why it's not, so I'll get that taken care of before Sunday. Since I don't quite have the resources to add a power meter yet, I compete looking at heart rate, speed and cadence, so I know what I'm getting in return for my efforts.

Then it was time to see what there was to see. I did a couple of one minute efforts, one on each side. On the channel side it was 50 seconds to go from 15 to 25. On the airport side it was 45 seconds to go from 15.6 to 27.7. After opening up my legs, my Heart Rate was a lot more cooperative.

I took care to make sure I didn't get tangled up with the sprint bunch. It was a good sized group and they tend to ride stupid too much of the time. One of the worst habits racers seem to have is cutting over in front of folks they've passed quickly. Not too bright. It'll scare rookies and some of us who are on a training schedule could be about to jump....

Then I moved up to a 2.5 minute effort and then a pair of longer efforts, one 5.5 minutes long and the final effort 6 minutes long. Even when I was cranking out 25mph and sitting on my target HR of 180, I didn't feel like I was killing myself. Ramped up some extra at the end of the last effort..first had to slow down to deal with auto traffic and cyclist/runner/walker traffic. Once I cleared the Tourmobile, I ramped it back up to finish strong...jumped up 5.5 mph in 15 seconds....seated.

The bike is sooo smooth and repsonsive. The bars are really comfortable. But I think we may want to take another spacer out from under the stem....we'll see. And there's nothing like the sound of a Zipp disc.

What has to go is the saddle. Definitely need one with a cut out to relieve the pressure being put on some rather sensitive tissues. I'll put the old jett on for Sunday and go from there.

There are a couple of women who may give me competition on Sunday. Barb Grabowski si good, but I think I'm better. But it's early in the season so f she does beat me, I'm ok with that. My goals are later in the season... Nationals in July and the MABRA championship in August.