New Flo Disc

Since my crash at Revenge of the Disc #2 last year, I've been riding on a damaged disc and knew I couldn't use it any longer when the crack started getting bigger.

Knowing another Flo wheel order was coming up I thought I'd take my chances for a disc. I emailed the owners to see how many "Clydesdale" discs they would have in this order and they let me know they had 17 of those and 100 total discs.


I figured since I'd be going for the Clydesdale version (28 spoke instead of 24) I had a fighting chance to get one in this order since most would be going for the non-clyde version


The day came to order, I logged on for the "Race for Wheels" and was able to secure a new disc. They are very aero wheels and for the price ... unbeatable.

No less than one week later ... the disc was at my door. A couple minutes later, tire on it, cassette on it and on the bike it went for a "Tour de Neighborhood".

I can't wait to race it next weekend :)

Jack Frost 2014 ... The race season starts again

Let the race season for 2014 start!!!

So, this year, given that I've missed 35 days of riding over the last 3 months ... I was really considering skipping this race. I knew my fitness wasn't great, my weight was a good 6+ pounds over where I was last season and I was without a rear disc wheel.

With that said, the weather turned out to be excellent with temps in the low 50's, no rain and almost "Zero" wind, so I figured I'd go out and see what I could do, just for the fun of it.

I didn't put a ton of work into the warm up and had some good miles earlier in the week ... but nothing really "Prep Worthy" for the race. Overall, my legs felt OK though heading out to the start line.

Being the first race of the year, I of course got excited at the start and went out too hard hitting around 30 mph by the end of the first straight and my HR in the high 160's almost 170 BPM. Thankfully, I caught it early and backed off a little until the next tight turn not far away from there.

From there, I had a good run on the outbound section of the course catching slower riders ... but gaining no ground on my 30 second man ... being the winner of the TT cup last season, I was the last one off in the 40+ Masters group.

I went very cautiously through the three tighter corners and the turn around, not wanting to screw up my season in the first race ... and I'm sure I lost more than a few seconds through those corners.

On the way back, I still felt pretty good ... but looking at my HR data, I had a 5 minute section where I can see I didn't push it hard enough with my HR dropping down to the low 150 BPM range, but picking up over the last 2-3 miles of the race.

In the end, I had a good sprint to the line and broke 28 minutes ... barely ... with a time of 27:59.2 which is my third fastest time on the course (and only missed my second fastest by a few seconds) ... but was 34 seconds slower than last season.

I'm in weight loss mode since our "Snowpocalypse" took place in early February where I weighed in at 216 pounds. As it stands I'm down to 203 - 204 pounds right now and want to be low 190's by the end of March in time for the next TT ... As the Raven Flies. I know I can put power on by then, but I really need to shed some weight, so that's my focus now.

Next week is training camp ... if all goes well, I'll have a solid 320+ mile week of training and really get things back on track. Should be a great weekend, just hoping the weather holds out :)