February 2016 – Heidi Rides Bikes

Well, I guess I can say I’m just about 1 month into official training. January 11th might’ve been a bit late to really start a training plan, but it’s been working out (and I was doing “training” in November and December as well, in all reality). I’m just finishing up TrainerRoad’s Sweet Spot Base, using a combo of High Volume 1 and 2 to work around my work schedule. Ideally this should be 12 weeks, but I’ll squeeze it into 7. I extended the end-of-base an extra week to accommodate a sort of a taper, if you will, leading up to USAC Fat Bike Nationals on February 27th.

In absolutely EXCITING news, I was able to mountain bike, on my “skinny” tires, on dry trails this week at Lake Pueblo State Park! I pulled off a 47 mile, nearly 6 hour day on Friday, chasing around Colorado hammerheads. I was hesitant to do that long of a ride, as well, I don’t ride that long… surprisingly, I found my hurdles to it be mostly mental. Yes I was sore and tired and I walked some very steep pitches, but I survived with decent pep left in my legs! I followed up on Saturday with 32 miles in about 4 hours, riding solo for about an hour before meeting up with my teammate Heidi 1.0 and her husband. All in all, great training and it was a great physical and mental boost to be getting sunburnt and hearing the dirt underneath my tires. I did find myself to walk a lot of technical features that shouldn’t be an issue for me, but it’s early enough that I am not going to stress too much about that.

You know, I’m not sure what was up with my face, but I was having a blast in the sun!

Otherwise, training has been a lot of intervals. Last November I purchased a Tacx Vortex Smart trainer, hoping it would solve all my problems I fought with using a “dumb trainer” and TrainerRoad… mainly that being not having the right gear ratio to produce the correct prescribed power without wonky cadences. The Tacx ended up being an absolute headache, and it was plagued with many issues. I finally sent it back end of January and purchased a Wahoo Kickr Snap instead. Wow, what a difference! I have had issues with TrainerRoad’s Power Match feature, which utilizes my power meter to control the trainer resistance. It is slow to respond, and when doing 2 minute long VO2 max intervals, I really don’t have a minute to wait for the resistance to be applied correctly. So for now I’ve decided to use the Wahoo as my power source. Yes, it might be off 10 or so watts, but in the grand scheme of things 10 watts does not make that much of a difference. Whew… stupid technology!

When I did test on January 11th I tested out at an FTP of 217 watts… holy crap. That is usually what I see at the end of spring/early summer months! It has been tough adjusting to the new FTP, but I’m chugging along!

For road stuff… well, when the weather allows I have been getting out! Gravel, road… whatever I can get with this winter-like winter we’ve been having! I made it to another women’s Oval Ride, and am planning on going again this weekend. I’m learning the longer miles and hours aren’t as scary as I once thought they were, both on the road and on dirt!

Both of my attempts at the Oval Ride have been on days with wet roads, leaving me looking more like a cyclocross racer than a roadie on a serious training group ride!

I was able to get out in the sun with my friend Gretchen for a nice, relaxed 50 miles!

For the next two weeks it’s a lot of “calmer” tempo and endurance trainer workouts, tapering off some intensity for fat bike nats. Tomorrow I’m fat biking and demoing some sweet carbon Salsa goodies, and the Oval is on board for Saturday. I’m going to try to squeeze in another day on the fat bike before heading to Utah to race. So we’ll see… I remember how well my taper worked leading up to the LT100, and luckily nationals falls in between training plans, so hopefully all goes well! I had the brilliant idea of racing both my master’s age group and the pro category, back to back with less than an hour in between, so yeah, I’ll need all the help I can get!

Up next will be the 8-week long Short Power Build phase of the training program. Lots of billat work and VO2 max, and suffering! I haven’t quite tweaked the plan to allow for my team’s training camp in Fruita in April, but I’ll deal with that soon enough. What I usually do is put my work days on my Training Peaks calendar, and then add all the 6o to 75 minute intervals from the plan into the week, preferably on work days, as that is the best time for me to do intervals indoors on the trainer (which is something I may be doing long after I typically give up the trainer since it’s the easiest way for me to accomplish training with my sort of work situation). I save days off from work for rest days (funny that I spend days off, off the bike!) and longer rides. It requires some thinking, but it went okay I think during the base phase so I hope to keep it up. Who knows, I’m training lost and scared at this point!

In other news…

NEW KIT DAY! How fabulous are our Naked Women’s Racing kits this year?! HELLO PINK! Loving them so far, and so happy to learn that the Castelli bibs are comfy over long hours on the mountain bike!

Sponsor Love: Goodies from Honey Stinger! Loving the grapefruit Chews so far!

(More) Sponsor Love: My ESI Grips came! Yes, I’m going to be matchy matchy with my team kits and grips this season!

So there’s my bit-o-update on training and what not! I can’t believe I’m racing a national championship in less than two weeks… time flies, and there’s just not enough of it in my life!

Over the years I’ve been sporting all sorts of looks on the ends of my handlebars… usually several different ones a season! Grips are, well, a VERY important part of your bike, but I think sometimes we can all overlook them in the grand scheme of things.

It shouldn’t be a surprise anymore that I choose bike stuff based on color. Hell, that’s why I bought my first mountain bike – it was pink! If I’m suffering on something, I at least want it to be visually appealing 😀 So usually my grips were chosen based on color. OK, that worked… except as I progressed and refined my riding style and learned that color aside, the shape of a grip can determine how comfortable it is. I started out with ergonomically shaped grips. Which are great… but I rolled my wrists under while climbing. Yes, I know, it’s “bad.” I’ve had a spectator at the XC National Championships even comment on it during my race. But it’s how I ride. It’s how I climb. Have you tried doing that on ergo grips? Yep, doesn’t work so well, and I ended up in wrestling matches with my grips instead of focusing on climbs.

Climbing up Middle Aspen like it was nothing at LMBS #4 (Photo by Dewey Gallegos) — My typical wrist rolling on steep climbs (Photo by Dewey Gallegos)

OK, next step after I ditched the ergo grips for stock grips, which I promptly wore out in months. Normal round grips that are colorful for 2015. Purple and teal, my faves! Until I rode in wet conditions, mud, or sweaty hands. Slip would go my hands, even with gloves on. Hmmm. Also in 2015 I stepped up my hours on the bikes (road and mountain), which lead to some pretty bad ulnar nerve damage. When I would sleep my ring and pinky fingers were curl up and I couldn’t straighten them, that’s how bad! Though a combination of factors were at play (increased hours, switching to non-padded gloves), the hard plastic grips I were using had to go, especially before some of the longer endurance MTB races came up. I had seen ESI Grips while watching World Cup replays, and was curious about these squishy colorful grips. My “super awesome pro” friend Suzie had a pair on her single speed that I stole for a test ride, and instantly I was hooked on ESI!

And so began the love affair with these colorful silicone tubes made right here in the good ol’ US of A. The ESI Chunky silicone grips conform to your hand enough to provide some extra padding and also comfort, and is also grippy when wet or sweaty. I won’t lie, it took me days to slid a pair on my hardtail millimeter by millimeter (single speed and full suspension bikes went much easier… alloy vs. carbon bars maybe?), but the effort was worth all the grunting in the bike room with Windex! Soon my Epic was rocking the bright pink, my Fate the aqua blue, and the single speed Superfly neon green. Finally I was styling AND comfortable! I finished out 2015 riding in style, and finally learned the importance of not overlooking the small, but important details on my mountain bike that affect handling and comfort.

Pink on my bars, pink on my head... just how it should be! — Pink on my bars, pink on my head… just how it should be!

The discarded grip pile will not be added to anymore, and I couldn’t be happier! I’m also super excited to announce that ESI Grips will be supporting my 2016 mountain bike race season. But that doesn’t mean I’m just saying nice things for the sake of the sponsorship – I was using, and was going to continue using, ESI Grips regardless! There’s a reason why you find them on handlebars everywhere from World Cup podiums to local weeknight “world championships” – they’re a great product that simply works!

Month: February 2016

Exiting the sweet spot…

The Grip Dilemma & ESI Grips Love