Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Recovery Ride

Sunday whilst riding I came upon a couple of gentlemen discussing the demands of racing at the Sport level (Cat2 in the Modern USAC caste system). I got out my soap box (I carry it in my left jersey pocket), and began to extol my vast training knowledge on them.
"Recovery rides are bullshit" I exclaimed. "With only 6 hours a week to train (that's the commitment they were considering) you've got to make every second count, you've got plenty of time to recovery with your everyday life".
Well, as I headed out for my afterwork ride yesterday, I began to yawn. I was beat. I didn't want to ride, I wanted to sit in the cafe drinking coffee, "renting" bike magazines.
But I was wearing good socks, and it would be senseless not to ride with such a nice pair of socks on, so I headed out.
Once you get riding it's always better, right?
To use the interweb vernacular, Meh.
When I got off my bike for a run up, by the top I was practically walking, barely able to swing my leg over the saddle.
Pulled the plug at less than an hour.
After dealing with the clogged drain from Lillian dropping a bar of soap down the shower, and making sure homework was done (they better not have been lying!), I was asleep by 8:30 PM. That's early for even me.
Today was going to be a mountain bike ride (yeah!), but I woke to my head being spackled shut with an endless supply of gooze (boo!).
So maybe I'll share the love and go get that coffee today instead?

To try and dress like all the cool kids, I swapped my v-brakes for wide profile cantilevers.
They take more hand strength, something I'm lacking, at least for rear braking here in the States where we put our levers on the correct side of the bars, and they hit my calves when standing on the pedals in the 3/9 o'clock position. For the life of me I can't see how they would provide better mud clearance than v-brakes.
I'm going back to "V's"
I know which side of the argument I'm siding. Discs for cross. I hope there is a long drawn out controversy too. That way I'll be riding with superior stopping power, driving deeper into corners and barriers, while traditionalist (I wish I hadn't already used "whilst", because "whilst" would have gone really nice with "traditionalist") try and scrub speed with their archaic 19th (yes I meant 19th) century stoppers.

Hugs and Kisses,

Charlie

2 comments:

Mookie said...

As long as there is some semblance of structure to the ride and you're not wallowing in no-man's land. If you end up "racing" a 25-30 mile route 4x/week, you will reach a plateau and not get any faster. Been there, done that.

But there's a fine line between actually enjoying riding and puking from intervals. Ok, maybe it's not so fine.

Todd H. said...

I'm still not totally sold on disc brakes on a cross bike... but I think I'm getting closer to the "sure, why not?" side of the argument.