Sunday, April 20, 2008

Training by feel, priorities and the lucky bed, oats, tech tip, and PEI




Be careful what you wish for with this animal training model because the Powertap is in the garage in Wisconsin again. Please reps let me know if you ever need equipment tested, because I seem to be surprising hard on it. I did this week’s “train my weaknesses” workouts by feel, sprint accelerations and those standing climbing intervals, after which my legs were so wrecked I set a world record in showering speed (shower jersey here – the one jersey Alex Wrubelski doesn’t have). On Friday I experienced some horror when in the first hour of a recovery ride I averaged 10.1mph, no joke, getting passed by commuters on full mountain bikes with nubby tires. I was wisely reminded about priorities, namely that I am looking ahead to Joe Martin, Battenkill a stop along the way. So now that the legs rallied and I had some good luck at Battenkill, the same applies: look ahead to Joe Martin. I will also note that I stayed in yet another mansion for host housing. I wonder what my hosts would think about my Spartan New Haven apartment! I slept in the same twin bed as last year’s winner Heather Labance – go figure. One of these days I will do a tribute to oats and the many strange oat concoctions I have been introduced to through bike racing: raw oats with milk, walnuts, raisins, and an apple sliced with a julienne mincer; oats with cheddar cheese and maple syrup; oats with egg whites; oats with whole eggs; oats with apricots; oats with yogurt; or my own one-time unintentional disaster I did not have the heart to throw away: oats with raisins and cumin. And a tech tip: really I am a big fan of the third-eye chain watcher – get one! Not to mention the drivetrain set-up of 34-50 compact with SRAM 11-26 cassette (works fine with Shimano drivetrain). Finally, zip me an email asap if you might be interested in racing PEI in early June with my team. Awesome race though Gilbert Blithe is fictional. Pictured: Rice Mansion Inn; post-race with Zoe, host Christine, and Andrea; Elisa and Rebecca.

3 comments:

Rebecca said...

Congrats again on Battenkill! You are too humble in your blog.

Unknown said...

Must try oats with chunky peanut butter, raisins, cinnamon, and a healthy dose of honey!

Anna Milkowski said...

Rebecca, um, that is because from the VeloNews journal you would think I had won World Championships! Hope you strategerized successfully at Wells. Such a great training resource.

Lance - that is is essentially my oat mix except I tend toward maple syrup (then consume mass quantities of honey on the bike), though my stay in Asheville with teammate Laura prompted me to try agave nectar. Now THAT is so organically trendy I might need to offset with some pure white sugar!