USA Cycling Adds New Cat 5 to Cyclocross

via cxhairs.com:

1E6: Category 5 established for men in cyclo-cross and upgrade system changed to resemble the road more. There will be voluntary upgrades and mandatory upgrades based on points. Cat 5 to Cat 4 upgrade by experience only.

More here: http://www.cxhairs.com/2013/01/23/cat-5-in-cross-its-here/

This presents interesting problems for race promoters to sort out:

• the race day would potentially get longer with an extra field, thus more costly (officials, EMT, site fees)
• rolling the new 5's in with the 4's might mean an unmanageable number of racers on the course
• dealing with yet ANOTHER disparity between men's and women's races (no Cat 5 has been established for women)

Lucky that the announcement came about as far away from the start of the cross season as it could so that promoters can figure out what they will have to do.

Food

My on-the-go, on-the-road job as a photographer provides many benefits to the bike riding/racing portion of my life but the variability/unpredictability also leads to many, MANY poor choices when I find myself out longer than expected and oh SO hungry.

Why doesn't Whole Foods have a goddam salad bar drive through?

Anyway, I'm sitting here in what used to be a haunt where I have often gorged on all sorts of obscenities, patting myself on the back for ordering a tomato/cucumber salad instead of the other, less honorable choices on the menu.

On Winter Base Miles

What is it about putting in long miles on icy cold winter days that makes them so satisfying? Is it the unhurried pace? Knowing that you are doing something even most other cyclists would look at you a bit crookedly for?

Fenders. A kind gesture not only for you but also for your buddies.

Up A Notch.

Did a 20 minute FTP test today (self administered via TrainerRoad on my Kurt Kinetic Road trainer). Bumped FTP up to 249 watts from 242 and LTHR to 158 bpm from 152.

Of course, the question is: could I have gone harder? Here's the tale of the tape:

I can honestly say that I don't know. You can see how I ramped it up a bit there towards the end, but it was agony. I do know it was a good thing nobody was home at the time, I was making quite a racket between breathing hard and gasping loudly.

Starting The Year Out Right: New Year's Day Ride

Now, I'm no hard man like some others I know who commute long miles all winter long, regardless of the weather. But occasionally, I overcome my tendency towards la dolce vita and do what I otherwise would think is a little nuts.

And so, with surprisingly very little prodding (or sleep), I took a mostly easy-paced ride with Gary yesterday. Temp was in the low 30's F, wind seemed to be out of the southwest at 10-15mph giving a nice wind chill of about 19ºF.

Filling in the (HUGE) Gaps - 2012 Wrap Up

Been quite a while since I threw anything up here so I figured I'd give a go at slapping together, in (few) words and (lots of) pictures, a rough summary of what I've done since April. I'm piecing this together through a combination of a review of my cycling log and the photos taken.