Thursday, November 6, 2008

Back in the Saddle

After 6 months off the bike, made it to the Tuesday and Thursday rides this week. For Tuesday's ride, I did absolutely no prep to the bike. I took off the number from April's Team Time Trial, pumped up the tires and took off. The ride went OK...everyone else was extremely fast. I kept a good pace on the first loop, rode easy for awhile, then picked up the pace for another quick interval. It will be awhile before I'll be able to keep up with this intense of a ride.

For today's ride, I made one slight modification to the bike. I swapped out the stem. My guess is that I was able to shave off 1-2 grams of bike weight on the stem. I'm convinced this made a difference as my 3 climbs up Camp Smith went extremely well. I wasn't too far back, and was able to ride consistently through all 3 climbs. This 1g savings made all the difference, I'm sure of it.

It's good to see that my legs and lungs remain relatively strong after 6 months off. One thing that didn't maintain its fitness is the taint. It's going to take some time to make that stronger.

1 comment:

Jon said...

There are some good stretches you can do for the taint. Place one ankle behind each ear and stretch your neck forward and down, hold for 15-20 seconds.

I have no doubt that the stem made all the difference today. Great buy.