Week 1 and done

I know I said 50 miles a week, but I put in a hard 47 miles.

Ride 1: BuRP 15 miles
Ride 2: SMP 12 miles
Ride 3: Trainer town, 20.x miles

Trainer miles aren't that hard, but I must have been tired because I only averaged 15mph on the trainer.  Or maybe I'm just weak.  Probably weak.

Saturday I was able to squeeze in a couple hour MTB ride out at Shawnee Mission Park.  It was fantastic.  I remembered why I thought SMP was so rocky, because it is.  It doesn't have a lot of larger rock features that the more tech trails at BuRP have, it's just relentless rocks that you have to power through.  I just kept turning my pedals over and it seemed to work pretty good.

I can't believe how much technical skill I've lost since I used to race MTB.  I was thinking about that while I was riding, and the thought that maybe I am remembering my skill more favorably than it actually was occurred to me.  I smirked to myself, and thought, "yea, that's probably it".

I'm sure not fast, but my fitness is very meh right now, and my skill is at about the same level.  I'm loving riding though.  I always have, and always will.

I was thinking of a ratio to ascribe to off-road riding and running mileage.  Both are clearly more difficult than road cycling, at least as far as getting miles in.  I thought a 2:1 ratio for MTB mileage, and perhaps a 4:1 ratio for running.  That's probably a bit conservative, because I know how trashed I'd be after a 25-mile MTB ride is way more painful than a 50-mile road ride.  I think I'd be crawling at the end of a 12.5 mile run!

Nevertheless, I thought I'd get on the trainer last night, and try and use my new Toshiba Thrive to stream YouTube over HDMI to my trainer TV.  I quickly remembered that since the TV is old, it only has a DVI connection.  DVI is video only, so then I tried running a headphone to RCA y-cable to the audio inputs, but the Thrive wouldn't send the video down HDMI-DVI and then the audio out the headphone jack.  So I scrapped the whole thing, and set up a little table in front of my bike, put the Thrive on it, and then listened to it over headphones.  It worked pretty good, although disappointed to watch on a 10" screen vs a 50" screen.  (www.whitewhine.com).

I watched the NBC 2010 Ironman World Championship, which is 1:30, and I was ready to be off that basement-torture device by then.  I just did a steady grind, 80rpm cadence, and thought that was a decent session.  Between now and the end of March is nothing but base miles.  No specific interval sessions, but that doesn't mean I can't ride up hills hard or whatever to break up the monotony.  I can't imagine using the 34T front ring everywhere I go.  Ack.

I went ahead and swapped my road stem back on to get my Blue bike out of cross mode, and still need to swap on the 50T front ring.  I think I'll race out at the Dam again, and at the Tour of KC and Lawrence.  Otherwise, probably a few MTB races and then cross again.  At least that's what I'm thinking.  We'll see how things go.  I think some 3 hour "enduro" races would be fun too.  Maybe even a trail run race would be cool.  Or the Lawrence off-road duathlon.  Yea, I got a few ideas.