2010 Road Season: Spring Break (March 15th-19th)

[Sal Atticum]

Spring Break reports!

Mario and I had a wild and wonderful trip from Grand Forks to somewhere in eastern Kansas (15 miles east of Manhattan) yesterday, leaving around 9:45 and getting here around 10 pm.  Don't you wish you were here with us?  Nobody even died.

I'll be adding photos to Flickr and commentary here for the rest of the week, then switching to the KU RACE WEEKEND report.

According to our gracious hosts (Tricia and Paul Armstrong), there is rideable terrain all over the place--there are over 700 routes on Map My Ride for Manhattan--so I don't think we'll run out of new places to ride.  I'll let everyone know what it's like when we get back from Mario's four-hour ride today (if I survive the ride and biometry homework afterward[hi Dr. Goodwin!]).

Temperatures are in the high 40s and low 50s with wind under 10 miles an hour today.

FUN FACT: Kansas is where "The Wizard of Oz" took place.

Mouseover/click on photos to see descriptions!

[Sal Atticum]

Sanders and Patty Mayonnaise will be arriving sometime tomorrow--hopefully in time for a St. Patrick's Day ride!

[Plantains]

lol! Mayonnaise!

I wish I was there with you guys!!!!!!

[Sal Atticum]

Yesterday's ride was a little chillier than expected even though we left a little after one in the afternoon.  It was Mario's easier day, which meant an hour or so of him dragging me along into the wind while I tried to warm up (my muscles, not my body).  Once we turned, the road got a little hillier so we did some back-and-forth on some small rollers to get back into that "there's something in front of me that goes up--how weird is that?" mentality.

I'm on the new Mario "eat all the time" plan, which meant carting around more food than I've even thought about on the bike before.  Coupled with the huge gloves I was wearing, I'm not sure I was entirely efficient yesterday when it came to consuming calories, but from everything I can tell it did let me finish my portion of the ride (2:24) in a far better mood than I would have otherwise.  Mario continued on to finish out his four-hour ride in just over four hours, wherein he rode some larger hills and (I can only assume) continued to kick ass in every possible way.

I threw some videos up on Flickr from my sport camera that I have set up facing backwards on my seatpost.  I'd like to set it up this way for at least one of the races this weekend just to catch the sort of footage you can get when you have a motorcycle and a cameraman.  Unfortunately, the sound recording is horrible when the camera is mounted like this because of the vibrations from the road.  It seems like this will work out if I tape the camera in place so it doesn't pivot down whenever I hit a bump (and I have the screws tightened as far as I think they ought to go).


The absolute highlight of yesterday was the apparent failure of my rear STI shifter (is that redundant?).  I could shift up fine, but, when attempting to shift down, the lever missed whatever cog was supposed to engage and didn't click unless I jimmied with it for a couple minutes.  Needless to say, I'm glad I didn't ride any more precipitous hills.  I looked online and Mario called around looking for a replacement, but nothing was to be had nearby yesterday evening except a 105 10-speed STI, which would have necessitated more work and cost than I'm willing to deal with right now.  Luckily, we tried filling the mechanism full of WD-40 last night to attempt to unclog anything that may have been in there, and it worked (whether it will keep working is a different story).

Today we wait for Sanders, then ride.  Unless Sanders doesn't get here, in which case we'll ride anyway.

[Mario]

APPROVED  

[Plantains]

Beek on my older shimano stuff sometimes during the cold rides early in the season that'd happen too... it always seemed to get better with warmth.

[Sal Atticum]

Good to know.  We'll see how it works out today.

In other news, Toaster stole the magnet off my front wheel while he was truing it.  Luckily I have my GPS unit.

[Plantains]

[Sal Atticum]

Awww, muffin!  Something you want to talk about?

[red hibiscus]

I'm on the new Mario "eat all the time" plan, which meant carting around more food than I've even thought about on the bike before. 

Mario, please keep him eating. A lot!

Use force if necessary.

[Plantains]

Awww, muffin!  Something you want to talk about?

I was referring to your goings on about not knowing how fast you're going.

[Sal Atticum]

Awww, muffin!  Something you want to talk about?

I was referring to your goings on about not knowing how fast you're going.

Not so much the how fast as the how far.  Seconded by my moral outrage against acts of thievery against my person.

[Toaster]

sorry beak, thought I put it back. It's most likely sitting next to the truing stand at the shop. To make it up to you I can give you like 10 MAGNETS!!!! (if you want). What is cool about having more magnets than stock is that every time I add a magnet to my front wheel, it makes me go WAY faster with almost no perceived increase in effort. Admittedly, it does make the bike a bit heavier, but I have noticed that even with the higher weight, I am still a ton faster on the climbs too. Let me know if you want to try it out.   

[Plantains]

Ahahaha there was this kid back home that was like a math major or something and he not only would run his comp in km's (which is fine... you just gotta do the conversion) but he had either 2 or 3 magnets (I forget) and he would always be going like 100kph and we were all like what? He's like yeah... it's a brain workout AND a physical workout.

lol. boffins.

[sanders]

recap of the last 3 days in kansaaasss,

wednesday,
 jenna and i arrived in manhattan around 4:30, meanwhile mariusz and beek on a ride, looping back around 5 to pick me up, then the 3 of us finished up the ride with a 1hr tempo (aka the mariusz especial),  and about an hour of sprint intervals. Then we had supper with the homestays and off to sleep.
"
Thursday

Woke up to a wonderful smell and thought...humm i should go check that out, low and behold your boy mariusz "thats a ma jerzy" czarnomski was making, you guessed it, chocolate chip, banana pancakes! so i had a few or 10 of those and then it was off to study and slackline in the bea..utifull kansas sunshine (about 60 degrees if i remember correct). Jenna and I went out for a ride around 3 for an hour, then looped back and went out for an easy 2hr TTT practice with mario and the beaker. Came back and mario made some pasta thing in it with mango, twas good. then jenna and i went to shutter island in manhattan, thats one f'd up movie, but good, then sleep.

Friday

Woke up to "erik we go for ride at 10 o'clock get you booty moving sunshine" or something like that with a polish accent, na mean. then found out it was for sure going to snow on saturday in ks, so we decided to check this collegiate race out in mizzou (weather not much better but not snowing). After deliberating we went for about an 1hr 20 min ride, through rolling hills, decent temp (45-50degrees F), winds from NNE about 10-15 mph, good quality ride. After we got back from the ride, we packed up ate lunch and headed out for the 5 hr drive to st. louis missouri!! Arrived at8 oclock at the budget inn (yes a very classy 65 bucks).

[Sal Atticum]

More to come in a new thread entitled "What I Did On My Last Weekend of Spring Break (and it wasn't in Cancun)."