One Week Left

I'm sitting here in my dormatory room, thinking about my training for this week. Next weekend is the start of the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) season at Rutgers, with the season opener time trial. I am really determined to place top 9 in the time trial of my category, despite my incident with a car last fall. I think on Saturday I will only be able to do the Time Trial in the morning since my sister's high school basketball team is in the State's playoff (Pennsylvania) and the first round is that same day. I plan to do the time trial as early as possible (my category's start is at 8:00 AM) and then head either back here to school or home to go see my sister's game. It all depends what time and where the game is, I may even be able to do the Criterium later in the day at 11:15 AM if my sister's game is at night in a local area to here or home. It all depends, and I'll find out early this week. Then I'll figure out if I can do the circuit race on Sunday.

Anyways, back on topic... I am trying to forget about the fact that I was off my bike for 12 weeks and lost a lot of fitness and gained weight as a result after my car/bike crash. I bought a workout video recently involving a medicine ball to help with building my core, chest and arms, as well as legs. Well, I might have said the whole body but my main focus with this video is to lose weight and tone up to how I used to be. So far I've lost like 3 lbs and about an inch off my hip and chest and I've only started 5 days ago.

I just got a new computer for my bike, with Cadence and rear-wheel sensor which is very sweet cause now I can train better when on the trainer in my dorm or our bike room on campus. Very very sweet. My last computer went dead on me and so I was forced to buy a new one. This was on a clearance sale or something, cause it was cheaper than my previous computer and has more features. Cateye Astrale 8 is what I got, and it's pretty cool.

My training for this week... I'm going out for an hour and a half or so tomorrow, monday I'll do a light ride outdoors and then my time trial training indoors on a trainer, rest tuesday, wednesday go outside for 2-3 hours doing some sprints and climbing, thursday light ride outdoors and TT training indoors, rest friday (possible light spinning on the trainer mid-day), and then Rutgers on Saturday. Anyone have any suggestion to make this better? Let me know.

Well, I'm gonna get my mind off of cycling momentarily by playing some Xbox with a buddy of mine, and then head to bed. Tomorrow, I'll be eating lunch around 12ish, and then going straight out for my ride around 1ish.

Picture, finally

Finally, as promised, a picture of my bike. because the width of these posts, the picture doesn't look as good when it's smaller, as I tried previously to post a picture in a post. So, instead of putting it in a post, I put it at the bottom of this page (scroll down) where it is a larger picture, so it is easier to see details of the bike.

I cleaned the bike after putting an hour on it in my dorm with the trainer, to get it picture perfect. Speaking of training, if any of you haven't tried a CTS video (Carmichael Training System) you have to get one. It is very motivating to use, which is better than just watching TV while pedaling. I got the VHS version of Chris Carmichael's Time Trial training video, and it is very good. I bought it cheap on eBay, and am using it to train for the Rutgers Season Opener Time Trial event. Anyways, enough said for tonight, I am very tired as I just got back from the weightroom, which I did the hour ride on the trainer prior to that. Let me know what you think of my new ride!

until next time...

Where my shoes at?!

two weekends in a row, I managed to forget my cycling shoes at school when I go home for the weekends. And what luck, today is a BEAUTIFUL day for a ride. I'm so mad!!! I may just end up buying a second, better pair of shoes to use as my racing shoes and leave the ones I have now home for those weekends I come home and forget my shoes at school. Still mad...

I know I know I know, I keep saying I'm going to post a picture... well, two weeks ago I was out for a morning ride and it was a day after a rainy/snowy day, so the roads were all pretty dirty, causing my bike to be like a truck that went off-roading... I don't want to take a picture of it while it is dirty, and although I have cleaned the easy-to-reach parts, I haven't cleaned the whole bike that you would still see some dirty spots in the picture. Yes, I know, I should have cleaned it back then because the dirt and all can affect my bike's performance, but I was just so busy with school (and lazy at other points) to clean it. I promise though, I will clean my bike this week and post a picture. Another thing, they're building a new dorm hall close to the one I'm in, which sucks because there's dirt and dust everywhere that everyday I ride I'd have to clean my bike... anyone have an easy solution to keep the bike clean without having to give it a full clean-up job after every ride? let me know! thanks for reading