Day 84

I can't decide if I'm losing motivation to ride at night in the cold and rain, or if I'm just being good about putting school first.  In any case, I just finished up doing my studying for the day, at 11:45pm.  I was planning to ride after finishing, but now I'm planning to get some sleep so I can wake up early and study.  I guess it's good that I'm focused on school, but kind of disappointing  that I'm not riding much these days. 

Day 83

Just finished up my organic chem homework, now moving on to math that I need to finish for tomorrow, and it's already 11:30pm.  No ride tonight, hopefully tomorrow.  At least the snow's gone.

Day 82

No ride today... spent the day running errands and finishing a report for biology, now it's time to go to work.  Really hoping to get in at least an hour outside tomorrow!

Day 81

School from 6am to 7pm, then work til 430am... no time to ride today... hoping to get in a good ride tomorrow if the rain keeps up and all the snow is gone

Day 80

My new solution to lots of school, snow, and ice: indoor trainer in small doses.  I don't have the time (let alone the patience) to spend hours on the trainer, but I figured that some short rides each day would be better than no rides at all.  So I did 16.8km in 20.1min, for an avg speed of 48.6km/h.  I love adding these ridiculous speeds!  I feel so fast when I ride indoors! 

Day 79

No ride Wednesday, just a ton of school work.  That's getting to be an old excuse, I'm tired of it!  At least I'm not missing out on nice sunny days anymore... lots of snow and ice out there, so probably just as well that I'm not slipping around on it.

Day 78

20.09km in 27.21min, avg speed of 49.7km/h.  That's my fastest ride yet.  I think the secret was riding indoors, who knew?!  Anyway, subzero temps meant that despite the sun, the icy shadows weren't worth the risk, so I finally used my trainer.  Just not the same, but I did manage to do a little physics reading while I was at it...

Day 77

Most of campus was still covered in snow yesterday, so I didn't ride.  I had lots of school work to do and decided it wasn't worth risking my skin on the icy roads.

Day 76

Yup, you guessed it, no ride tonight!  I wanted to go out this afternoon, but there was still a fair bit of snow in the shade, so I decided against it.  Below freezing tonight, and I just went out to confirm that it's icy... so probably not a good night for a midnight ride.  The forecast is for sun tomorrow, so hopefully the remaining snow is melted away and it's not too icy to go out tomorrow night.  Otherwise I might have to ride the trainer.

Day 75

Too much snow on the ground today for a safe ride outside.  Might try the trainer, but it seems like a pretty good excuse to get caught on some school work and hope for better conditions tomorrow.

Day 74

I'm almost tempted to stop counting these damn days when I'm stuck doing school work instead of riding!  Sure felt good to get out last night though, even if it wasn't for long.  Hoping there isn't any snow tonight...

Day 73

Finally cold enough for the swim cap.  Sometimes I can't believe more people don't wear them on a ride, they practically work like a thermos for your head and take up almost no room under the helmet.  Apart from that, tonight was the first snowfall I've seen for the year, and I discovered a few equipment shortfalls while I was out tonight.  So, it turns out that my jacket and gloves are much less water resistant in the snow... within 10 minutes I had puddles in my gloves!  Also, no front fender wasn't so bad in the rain, but filling my shoes with slush was a little less comfortable.   I meant to go for about an hour, and although my swim cap kept my core nice and toasty, my feet and hands were getting pretty numb (my guess is that numb hands at least doubled my braking distance, on top of whatever effect the snow had).  My glasses also seem to fog up much more in the snow and that meant that I couldn't really see anything.  So after about 20 minutes, I decided I'd pushed my luck long enough, having not run into anything yet, even though I did have a few close calls.  And since I had to slow down a bit because I couldn't really see anything, I decided to turn back once the snow was starting to stick.    So in the end I went 14.24km in 36:39, for an average speed of 23.4km/h. 

I thought I might try another picture, since there aren't any up of snow yet...

Day 72

Yup, you guessed it, no ride on Wednesday either.  Not great, but it feels kind of good to know that I'm doing the best I can... even if that means doing the best I can in school takes priority over doing the best I can on my bike.

Day 71

I've spent the last couple of hours debating the long term benefits of going for a ride tonight versus studying for my organic chem midterm... I had been thinking all day that I'd ride around 11pm, expecting my brain to be worn out from studying almost non-stop since 7am, but here I am at ride time with plenty of energy.  So I've decided to stay in and keep working away.  I don't like to take more than one day off my bike in a row, and usually insist on two days of no biking to be the max.  I think at three the loss in fitness becomes significant, and I hate the idea of backtracking.  On the other hand, I keep thinking I'll discover some key mechanism in that extra hour of studying that I might have otherwise missed, and that it'll make a big difference on my midterm.  The trouble is, I didn't do very well on my first midterm in this course, so I don't have any margin for error, and if I don't pick up my grade, I'll have to deal with that low grade for as long as I'm in school/applying to other schools.  So that's that, and now I feel like I've convinced myself that studying's the right call...

Day 70

No ride for me Monday, just school from 7am to 11pm.

Day 69

I'd like to dedicate this day of my training blog to Marty Anderton, who changed my life for the better when he insisted I stop calling this a diary.  Since then I've been able to confirm at least 3 people following this BLOG.  That would be Richie, Chris, and Marty himself.  I'd also like to dedicate this day to Marty because I took the day off riding, and also because I even cleaned my bike a little (in an effort to figure out how to replace a battery on my hub, so it's still really not clean, sorry Marty).

Day 68

Really busy studying all day, but managed to sneak out for a quick burn over to UBC and back.  Felt great to stretch the legs, but also sort of a tease... Only did 16.47km in 35:20, avg speed of 28.2km/h

Day 67

No ride Friday.  School from 10am to 730pm, then had to complete a couple of assignments before midnight... hoping to get out today.

Day 66

No ride Thursday, just school work all day, again.

Day 65

Beautiful weather today, but I was stuck in class all day.  Managed to squeeze in an hour in the gym between classes though.

Day 64

No training today.  Just school, school, school.  And some mini eggs!  Can't believe they're already in stores... great news!

Day 63

Had a nice ride last night.  My power meter's battery is dead, so I figured it was a good time to pick up the pace a bit.  Not sure which is better for staying warm, slowing down and avoiding the windchill, or speeding up and burning more calories.  I kept the speed up last night and didn't get cold, so for now I'm siding with working harder keeps you warmer.  We lose about 75% of the calories we burn to heat because we aren't very efficient.  So that was about 800 calories of heat warming me last night... more than enough to make up for the cold.  Too bad it doesn't warm the air I'm breathing too!  28.38km in 57.8min, avg speed 29.8km/h. 

Day 62

No ride Sunday!  Again!  This is getting very frustrating for me, but I need to put school first...

Day 61

No ride yesterday.  I took another rest day in order to prepare for a math midterm. 

Day 60

Rest day=school/studying all day, then working all night. 

Day 59

Spent one hour in the gym today.  This week was my last week of easing into my strength workouts, so next week I start lifting heavy weights... we'll see how much that sacks me for my rides.  Even with just a moderate gym session on Tuesday, my legs were feeling pretty heavy last night.  There's a lot of controversy about whether lifting weights is good for cycling, so this might not work... The reasons against it are two-fold: strength training usually leads to weight gain (bad for cycling) and strength training is not specific to cycling, so doing a hard workout on the bike would be even better.  We'll just have to wait and see what happens weight-wise, but I'm hoping to see benefits from working out the stability muscles that don't get used in cycling.  So, in this way I think there's certainly a loss of specificity, but that it's a good thing.  Cycling seems to keep your muscles working in a particular plane, thus neglecting/no using stability muscles.  But, at least based on my limited anatomy knowledge, I think that having weak stability muscles will likely trigger an innate reflex that prevents the main cycling muscles from getting as strong as possible (some sort of golgi tendon reflex type of thing).  So by using strength training to beef up the supporting muscles, I'll be able to convince my body that it's ok to let the other muscles get stronger... or at least that's how I'm picturing it in my head! 

Day 58

It's getting kind of cold on clear nights... I think it was about 7 degrees at midnight.  Having several layers and a jacket on makes me feel like I'm dragging a parachute... kind of annoying.  I usually get past this feeling by focusing on my power, so that I know I'm still working at a certain level even if I'm going slower than usual.  But my power meter seems to be running low on batteries, so I didn't have it this time out and I swear it made me feel like I was going way slower!  25.39km in 58:22 for an avg speed of 26.1

Day 57

No ride tonight, spent an hour in the gym this afternoon.  Studying calculus now... really wishing I were going for a ride!

Day 56

Typical midnight ride.  28.42km in 1:05:40, avg speed 26km/h.  You may have noticed my avg speed has dropped off since my testing last week.  I found my zones were a little high given some loss of fitness after the summer, so I've adjusted them and that's slowed me down a bit.  Otherwise, it was a really nice clear night, full of stars.  On another note, I've given up on taking pictures with my camera phone at night.  There doesn't seem to be much point in repeatedly posting the same black blurs.