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I might be rowing against the tide on this, but I am not in support of this “let Levi ride” idea. It sounds like wining to me and honestly he should have known better if going to the Tour was important to him. As for this idea that they are being kept out (as if it were a right), they are not being invited, there is a difference… It is really up to the ASO (as well as any promoter) to determine which teams can ride. If they want to field 20 French teams, they can. Is it a good idea for the race as a worldwide promotion vehicle?, probably not.

I personally have a hard time trusting Astana as an organization despite how much “reorganizing” the have done. As for fairness (what about High Road, formally T-mobile and Rabobank, etc)? Again, ASO is a business and they can do what they want. The grand tours did not buy into the Pro Tour idea and to expect them to pick up all or any particular Pro Tour team is ridiculous.

The petition is not a bad idea, but I, for one, will not sign it. I won’t think any less of someone for signing it… I just don’t agree with the idea. What about “let Alberto ride?” Didn’t he win last year?

All in all it was good weekend. Mark, Jarret, Andrea, and I drove out to western Arkansas to do some climbing. Memphis has some good riding routes, but nothing that even comes close to climbing. The plan for the weekend was to ride Mt. Magazine (Arkanasas’s highest point) on Saturday and some route around Petit Jean State Park on Sunday. The weather was supposed to be around 50F and moderately Sunday….

Saturday: We got an early start driving out of Memphis and got to Paris, Arkansas around noon. After trying to figure out where to start and getting dressed we were wheels down around 1pm. The start it was in the mid-40’s and cloudy. It felt so cold… As we started out of Paris on AR-309, there is a big hill right outside of town testing our legs immediately. As we came up to the top of the first hill by the reservoir, the sun started to come out…. it would be short lived. The road up to Mt. Magazine from Paris gradually climbs from around 400 feet to 2700 feet (see previous post, Paris-Havana-Paris route). The temperature was fairly chilly… and there was even some residual snow up on the top falling out of the trees in the wind. The grade up to Mt. Magazine was generally moderate since the 2300 feet of net gain are over around 16-17 miles… After doing a loop around the top, we dropped down the steeper side. On the Havana side, a similar amount of elevation is lost in only about 6 miles with another 2 of pretty flat roads to Havana. The worst part of the descent was the extreme cold….

After we turned around at the Havana store, we started up the climb…. Once on the climb we all climbed at our pace to the top. I felt pretty good about my effort. I am climbing better than I have in years. I think it is a combination of maintaining off-season weight, weight-training, and good general fitness.

After coming together we dropped off the mountain starting out around 35-36F at the top down to a still seemingly cold mid-40’s… it must have been the dampness, but the last 16 miles back to the car were some of more miserable riding miles I have experienced all winter. I guess I was just under-dressed.

Here are my Polar graphs broken up to 4 files (each climb and descent are separate):

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Sunday we started out at Petit Jean state park visitor center. We rode a short loop on Red Bluff drive (which turned out to be a hard-packed dirt road) and then rode down off the plateau for about 10-11 miles and turned around to ride back up to the visitor center. This climb was a shorter one with more variation in pitch than the Magazine climb.

Polar plots:

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March is full of potential racing oppuritunities… I was going to hold off racing until mid-April, but I might do some selected racing in March. The first one is the CARVE Crosswinds Classic outside Little Rock. Since it is day-trippable (a rarity from Memphis!), I might go. The course is flat, so I hope I can stay with the P123 field for the 76 miles. I need to get used to that when I race in Mississippi and Arkansas since most are P123 (without the separate Cat III field as in TBRA).

This weekend, I am planning to do some climbing in Arkansas. The routes I am working are based on the old Tri-Peaks race routes (NRC race up until last year).

The first plan is to climb Mt. Magazine strating from Paris, Arkansas. The race route looks like this:

A nasty, nasty alternative would be to go up and over to Havana and then go back over the mountain again to Paris. Both routes are ~70 miles, but the second is twice as much climbing…

Out of Dardenelle, there is the Petit Jean loop (also from Tri-Peaks race courses). The route is already long at 70 miles and I left out Mt. Nebo.

I am slowly piecing together my TT bar setup… I now have my aluminum Vision Tech one-piece and my SRAM shifters and brake levers. Now, I just need my new Felt frame & build kit and I can convert my Kuota to a TT rig…

I haven’t posted much since there is not much to say this time of year. Last weekend was another good weekend, a 3-day one at that due to the President’s day holiday (yes, that is one of my 10 holidays at work).

Saturday was a good group ride out of the shop (RB’s). A solid crew of about 10-15 rolled out to the cat pee store and back. During the ride, I felt pretty good and took some fast pulls coming back in.

On Sunday, I decided to bag the Outdoor’s ride since it was still sort of raining when I would have had to leave. Instead, I rode out from Germantown with Andrea down towards Mississippi. It was really, really windy (20+ mph southerly wind). Her plan had her doing 20 minute LT intervals… That wasn’t on my plan, so I hung back and did some sprint work (standing starts and rolling sprints). On her 2nd (and last) interval, I decided to try out an effort… after about 8-10 minutes, my HR was only 163-164 (my LT is about 173-174). So I sat up…

Monday’s ride was an easy ride except for blasting up the Memp-Arlington hill eastbound to Canada road. I liked so much, I did it again.

The last thing is my weight is stabilizing at 166-168 pounds (morning weight). Last year at this time, I was nearly 190# and didn’t get down to < 175# until after Memorial Day weekend.

I fitted my Cannondale cross bike with road tires for the summer / trainer bike. This morning I rode it on the rollers for 10 minutes… very unstable, but I was able to do it (I am just learning rollers this winter). It must have to do with the ‘cross geometry…?

Still waiting on my new Felt frame. I can’t wait to build it up!

Another good weekend weather wise… Got out for two moderately long rides to start bringing my endurance up. Saturday, a solid core of Memphis Velo riders road out to the cat pee store and back from RB’s. Taking out stops for a flat and a later incident (see below), the ride was fairly fast, but I felt good. A few miles from getting back to Arlington, I made a couple of hard efforts and was happy with the results. It was a good check on where I am headed. It is going to a good season. Sunday was the usual Outdoor’s ride riding out from Germantown and back with Andrea. The Outdoor’s ride was a calm in that as nice rotating paceline ate up the miles to the Forest store. Normally, that ride can be pretty cut-throat.

Unfortunately, at the end of the ride on Saturday a couple of us had a front row seat for one of our own getting taken out by a dog. Frogge was riding with the group down Anderton Spring (residential road) when a pair of dogs came out of a driveway/yard and came over to us. Frogge was the unlucky one as one of them ran right into his front wheel after he tried to evade. He went down pretty hard and fast. Fortunately the damage was pretty limited and he will have to deal with some healing on his arm (fracture). The season is still out there. The trend seems to be more dogs on the loose this early season out on routes out in NE Shelby County. Maybe it is just a bunch of new dogs this winter that are being let outside and haven’t yet been run over by a car.

Still waiting on my Felt frame to come in… in the meantime, I picked up another fish scale to do some weighing. Here is what I found:

• Kuota Kebel [SRAM Force] with Bontrager Race Lite Wheels (17.4 #)
• Trek 5200 [Ult 9] with Rolf Sestrires (18.4#)
• Ridley Crossbow [DA 9] with Velomax Vistas/Mud2′ (21.6#)
• Cannodale [105 9sp] with 105/Mavic wheels (22.6#)

Putting the race wheels (Zero 038) on my Kebel takes off over a pound of weight. I was surprised by the weight of my Crossbow since I thought that it was so much lighter than my Cannondale… I guess 1 pound is a lot, but I thought it was more. Both bikes’ complete wheel sets weigh almost 7 lbs with tires and cassette. The frame of the Crossbow like the Cannondale is aluminum and is not especially light.

The way I weighed them I got frame/component weights (after taking wheels off):

• Kuota Kebel/Force: 11.5#
• Trek 5200 / Ult 9: 13.1#
• Ridley Crossbow / DA 9: 14.6#
• Cannondale / 105 9: 15.7#

At some point I will do some work with the wheels to give some real world weights, but it looks like most of my wheels are not that impressive. I like knowing this stuff, but really it doesn’t make that much of a difference in the end, but a lighter bike just feels so fast…

After getting home from work, Memphis has been and continues to be in the middle a tornado watch / warning. As one of the larger cells passed through the area, I sat down under the stairs in my garage and worked on my TT bars and waited….

So far, so good and I think the worst has past. I haven’t lost power (yet?) and decided to blog my TT shifter installation. All I need is for my frame and build kit to arrive (mid-Feb?) and then I will convert my Kuota to a TT bike…

Here is a quick overview (WMC TV5). Today it was in the mid-70’s and now a cold front is moving through creating some pretty extreme weather. This is the sort of stuff that climate change doubters can’t explain, but are all too quick to say something when there is a winter day in the 20’s. Averages and temperature differentials….

As an alumni of Michigan Tech, I get these newsletters about what’s going on… today it was more interesting than normal. As part of the annual winter carnival, some artists are doing a stunt where they are freezing a old Chevy Nova into a block of ice. Anyway, here is the link to the blog…

The Frozen Car Project