Solo quickly learns that he's not quite ready to ride at ADT. 28 degrees at Encino seems very steep, I can't imagine what 45 is like.
This was so cool. Mucho gracias to Paul for hooking me up. Thanks for reading.
since 2006
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Solo does Encino
Solo quickly learns that he's not quite ready to ride at ADT. 28 degrees at Encino seems very steep, I can't imagine what 45 is like.
This was so cool. Mucho gracias to Paul for hooking me up. Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Watts up?
Sorry, but I can't razzle dazzle you with power numbers, gps reports, or even hrm graphs to supplement my bragging and gloating. So far this trip is pretty much instrumentation free. No bike computer, not even a watch. I'm not even sure what day it is. Not to fear, as Solobreak won't let you down, even when he's on vacation. Armand Schleck, despite weighing slightly more than his two younger brothers combined, is quite the climbing machine. Just imagine how much power it takes to move this beast up the canyon. We ran some numbers through the Cray, simply as an academic exercise. 120 kg of man, machine, and S&S couplings going up a 6% grade at 20 kph required an astounding 8000 watts of power! No wonder he's so strong in those pesky PCH headwinds.
Today since the A-man had a work date on the base at 0930 hours, he had us out on the road at the ungodly hour of dawn. I was all woolied up for the occasion, as the mercury was barely touching 55F under the clouds. We headed back up Muholland. Unlike yesterday when I made it 11 miles before a car passed, today it was like rush hour and I think there were two before we ran out of time and stopped for a nature call at the 5 mile mark. As luck would have it, no sooner did we pull down the bibs on the deserted roadside does Sharon Stone come along with her Labrador, out on their morning jog . She was cool about it, and I saw Basic Instinct, so I guess now we're even. OK, maybe it wasn't Sharon Stone, but it was a fit blond with a baseball hat and sunglasses even though it was cloudy as hell, and this was Malibu, so I'm going with it.
What goes up must come down, and since we'd just come up and made note of where the rockslide remnants were, we could safely let it rip. 25 minutes up, 10 minutes down, with about 20 switchbacks. Life is good.
Like everyone else, we're struggling to get by in the down economy, but don't you worry about old
Last but not least, here is a cool video from the Millcreek ride, featuring a cameo by yours truly, pretty funny audio track. The rest of the Amgen ATOC pics can be found here. That's it for now, off to Encino, thanks for reading.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
What can I say?
Someone has to do it...
Pro program is a go.
The lesser known Schleck brother, Armand.
Our ride to Mill Creek Summit was overtaken by the Amgen challenge ride, featuring Mr Pez, Richard Pestes, Thurlow "Bedsheets" Rogers, and some Garmin dude. Of course I jumped right in and rode this train to the summit.
All ride organizer Jerry Jayne wanted to know is "Are you Nega-Coach?"
Post ride chillin' with Ben Serotta.
I guess this guy is famous because he had a helicopter following him around on his ride. Like Pee-Wee, all he wanted was to get his stolen bike back.
More to come, 6 hours today but it was a bit chilly, didn't break 70 until noon. I had to ride the first 2 hours with my arm warmers on. Thanks for reading.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Spring Training
Ok, maybe it's not spring, but the Sox are in camp, and I've had enough cold and snow, so one more day and I'm off to Disneyland. Bummer that local hero Ted King crashed out today, but hopefully he's ok. I'm still bringing my supply of new posters the Cronoman was kind enough to print up for the occasion. The weather should improve just in time for my arrival in Solvang at the TT. Of course, I'm not too good at traveling, which means I'm not ready to leave, which means that special 3rd anniversary Nodcast that's already three days late is going to have to wait some more. 601 posts and still going, uhhhh, strong? Thanks for reading.
Friday, February 13, 2009
The Edge
Well, that wasn't the lamest discussion we've ever had. Here's more: we all hear about how it's better to be undertrained than overtrained. And we know for most masters it's not exactly a case of chronic overtraining as it is temporarily overreaching. But what I've been observing amongst some of the training bloggers fits what I'll call trying to get ahead. Sort of like doing all your chores early Saturday morning so that you can fuck off all weekend. More precisely, doing as much training as they think they can handle, and then doing a little bit more. It's natural to fear something getting in the way of your next workout, so putting the miles "in the bank" gives a sense of security. We've all done it. You don't want to do that though. I know I'm a broken record here, but finishing every interval, every workout, every block feeling like you could have done more will bring better, more sustainable progress. You're never "done." Always consider the next workout and how great it's going to be. When you're in the phases where a big push is required, there should be no surprises. In other words, some workouts and training periods will of course be quite difficult and you will push to your limits, but you should be able to anticipate when you're going to be cooked and need recovery. You have to have confidence in your training, past, present, and future. The correct dose of the correct training at the correct time.
Personally I've had to adjust a lot over the past few years. I have a lot of training experience, but I have ZERO experience being 48 years old. The learning process keeps going as I change. So does the training and recovery. Not necessarily worse or less, but different.
Not to end on a dark note, but last night I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that one day, the last bike ride of my life will come. Everyone remembers their first ride on a bike right? Your last ride could come any day, and maybe you'll never get a chance to remember it. You could be riding down the street one second and be dead the next. Or you could train and enjoy riding right into the latest stages of a long life and natural progression toward your ultimate and unavoidable demise. In that case you'd probably be riding less and less and then one day maybe you would not be able to ride again at all and that would be that. I wonder how many great riders have to live on for years remembering their last ride, or if they just forget about the last one and remember the good ones. Enjoy every minute you are able to be on your bike. It's wicked cool. Thanks for reading.
Personally I've had to adjust a lot over the past few years. I have a lot of training experience, but I have ZERO experience being 48 years old. The learning process keeps going as I change. So does the training and recovery. Not necessarily worse or less, but different.
Not to end on a dark note, but last night I was thinking about this and it occurred to me that one day, the last bike ride of my life will come. Everyone remembers their first ride on a bike right? Your last ride could come any day, and maybe you'll never get a chance to remember it. You could be riding down the street one second and be dead the next. Or you could train and enjoy riding right into the latest stages of a long life and natural progression toward your ultimate and unavoidable demise. In that case you'd probably be riding less and less and then one day maybe you would not be able to ride again at all and that would be that. I wonder how many great riders have to live on for years remembering their last ride, or if they just forget about the last one and remember the good ones. Enjoy every minute you are able to be on your bike. It's wicked cool. Thanks for reading.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Recovery
I probably shouldn't be attempting to write this right now, but here goes. It's pre-season build up time for all the cyclo-bloggers, and we're being treated to all sorts of impressive details regarding the training accomplishments of our heroes. Reading these accounts, I'm left wondering if the subjects put as much thought into recovery and improvement as they do filling up the training log. It would be nice to get a discussion going here, and I'm somewhat pressed for time this morning, so I'm going to throw out some ideas and turn this over to my faithful readers to do their worst. That seems a lot easier than trying to put all this together into a coherent essay, which you may have noticed does not happen around here very often anymore.
Start with Friel's recent "Basic Training Assumptions" post. Joe's original Training Bible had some good basic stuff and was well-written for the typical amateur athlete, but his new testaments drift around quite a bit it seems, over-influenced by whatever the last seminar he attended was. We all know how difficult it is to continually come up with new material that is any good... But you still have to read what he has to say.
Then we have American Blogging Idol Gewilli's query on foregoing recovery days in favor of split workouts. Interestingly, G-String also advocates a "drag race start" force workout similar to Coggan (I don't have time to find the link, but it's probably listed here somewhere). My mentorissimo Michel Ferrari describes an interesting hybrid approach you should also read up on. Last but not least, we have PE.720 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You may not think of this school first when it comes to collegiate athletic powerhouses, but they have made respectable showings on their bikes at collegiate nats, and their rowers are no slouches when it comes to VO2 max. Besides that, they have The Beaver Cheer, and that's got to be worth something. Anyway, somewhere in the coursework the strength coach advises taking a full 72 hours between hard weight sessions. Chew on that for a bit little beaver.
So how do you know if you're recovered? What is recovery anyway? How come I never read much about it on your blog? Is it not important to you? If you're planning to say "I know I'm recovered because I can bounce back to x power or whatever after two days, so I must be ready to train again" then how do you know that this isn't just the level that you've adapted too? In other words, how does that help you get better? In laying out an aggressive training plan, are you actually getting faster or just adapting yourself to higher volume? I'd submit that endurance is the easiest component of "fitness" to adapt to. Observe that tens of thousands of people complete marathons and/or ride centuries, even race iron distance triathlons, and then contrast that to how many people get really fast. Pouring on volume and building endurance is relatively straightforward, but does it give the subject a false sense of improvement? Sure, you build some strength along the way, and probably lose some fat, so you get a bit faster, but is it the productivity you're looking for?
Be cautious when evaluating the training plans put forth by all the self-proclaimed coaching experts (besides me that is). When asked why they hire a coach, most of the wannabee athletes I know list "being held accountable" as their number one reason for not going it alone. Coaches know this, and since you've admitting to not being capable of self-motivation, they're naturally going to lay out an over-ambitious plan because in all likelihood you're going to miss the proposed target, or at least that's what you've suggested in your self-eval.
Solobreak adds a few other things about training: 1) Everyone is different. For some reason this gets lost. 2) So-called "training" is just adaptive stress, so whatever you do equips you to do just that. 3) Recovery is just like training. You can give it names like macrocycle and microcycle or what have you, but just as you have to recover from each interval, you have to recover from each training session, each training block, each training season, and so on. How do you judge this, or do you? Going back to point #2, how do you know that you're not just recovering enough to take up where you left off? If you recover quickly and are always able to maintain training volumes, how do you know that this is a case of adequate recovery and not that your workouts simply were not intense enough to force the kind of adaptive improvements you seek? Are you sure that you wouldn't do better with more recovery, less volume, and more intense workouts? Thank for reading.
Start with Friel's recent "Basic Training Assumptions" post. Joe's original Training Bible had some good basic stuff and was well-written for the typical amateur athlete, but his new testaments drift around quite a bit it seems, over-influenced by whatever the last seminar he attended was. We all know how difficult it is to continually come up with new material that is any good... But you still have to read what he has to say.
Then we have American Blogging Idol Gewilli's query on foregoing recovery days in favor of split workouts. Interestingly, G-String also advocates a "drag race start" force workout similar to Coggan (I don't have time to find the link, but it's probably listed here somewhere). My mentorissimo Michel Ferrari describes an interesting hybrid approach you should also read up on. Last but not least, we have PE.720 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You may not think of this school first when it comes to collegiate athletic powerhouses, but they have made respectable showings on their bikes at collegiate nats, and their rowers are no slouches when it comes to VO2 max. Besides that, they have The Beaver Cheer, and that's got to be worth something. Anyway, somewhere in the coursework the strength coach advises taking a full 72 hours between hard weight sessions. Chew on that for a bit little beaver.
So how do you know if you're recovered? What is recovery anyway? How come I never read much about it on your blog? Is it not important to you? If you're planning to say "I know I'm recovered because I can bounce back to x power or whatever after two days, so I must be ready to train again" then how do you know that this isn't just the level that you've adapted too? In other words, how does that help you get better? In laying out an aggressive training plan, are you actually getting faster or just adapting yourself to higher volume? I'd submit that endurance is the easiest component of "fitness" to adapt to. Observe that tens of thousands of people complete marathons and/or ride centuries, even race iron distance triathlons, and then contrast that to how many people get really fast. Pouring on volume and building endurance is relatively straightforward, but does it give the subject a false sense of improvement? Sure, you build some strength along the way, and probably lose some fat, so you get a bit faster, but is it the productivity you're looking for?
Be cautious when evaluating the training plans put forth by all the self-proclaimed coaching experts (besides me that is). When asked why they hire a coach, most of the wannabee athletes I know list "being held accountable" as their number one reason for not going it alone. Coaches know this, and since you've admitting to not being capable of self-motivation, they're naturally going to lay out an over-ambitious plan because in all likelihood you're going to miss the proposed target, or at least that's what you've suggested in your self-eval.
Solobreak adds a few other things about training: 1) Everyone is different. For some reason this gets lost. 2) So-called "training" is just adaptive stress, so whatever you do equips you to do just that. 3) Recovery is just like training. You can give it names like macrocycle and microcycle or what have you, but just as you have to recover from each interval, you have to recover from each training session, each training block, each training season, and so on. How do you judge this, or do you? Going back to point #2, how do you know that you're not just recovering enough to take up where you left off? If you recover quickly and are always able to maintain training volumes, how do you know that this is a case of adequate recovery and not that your workouts simply were not intense enough to force the kind of adaptive improvements you seek? Are you sure that you wouldn't do better with more recovery, less volume, and more intense workouts? Thank for reading.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Product Review Day
Yes, I realize that to some of you pink hats it may look like I'm stealing this theme from RMM, but the regulars know that solobreak has been rockin' the product review almost since the beginning. No video right now though, maybe after the solobreak studio remodeling is finished. OK, so allez we go.
Trek Polar Fleece Helmet Liner
This thing is so good that it made me give up my beloved helmet ear warmers I've been wearing since way back when the ill-defined trails of Borderland rolled beneath the wheels of my '86 Rockhopper and its 26x1.5 Tricross tires. What's so good about it? It fits. Over the head and ears, and down the back far enough so that the helmet locking device sits right up against it. All I have to do is give the adjuster a turn or so and everything fits into place. It's warm. Better than the wool hat/earmuff (huh-huh) combination. Too warm? I don't think so. For a race, yes, but for a normal road ride it would have to be pushing 45 before I'd take it off, and at that point you'd survive with just the helmet. This gets 5 powermeters. Why powermeters? Well, everyone knows that the powermeter is simply the greatest, most marvelous creation ever to come from the minds and hands of humankind, so what would be a more fitting product for all others to be judged against?
Kurt Kinetic Rock and Roll Trainer
I've had this for a year now, and I still like it. My last trainer was a Blackburn Fan Trackstand, and this was a big upgrade. Not at all portable, and it takes up a ton of floor space, but it's pretty quiet, well-made, and provides far more resistance than the Blackburn. The rocking feature is not as "loose" as I expected it to be, but it is adjustable and should get looser as the elastnomer breaks in. You get a noticeable bouncing up and down if your pedaling is choppy, very natural like on the road. Much better than an ordinary trainer. Only other con is that if your feet are big, it's possible to have a clearance problem between your heel and the wheel clamp. Short chainstays and long cranks would contribute to this problem. I had to be standing and flexing my foot in an unnatural direction for it to happen. Kurt offered to replace the entire trainer with the newer (green) model free of charge, as apparently they made a design change to address this issue. I felt that was unnecessary so I kept the one I have. 4.5 powermeters.
PowerBar Electolyte Drink Mix
I got a shitload of free samples of this stuff at the Lexington Battle Green 5k. Natural Berry flavor. It has sugar, about a half dozen of the usual chemicals, and beet juice listed as ingredients. One sample is 20 calories worth and is supposed to make just 16 ounces of drink, but I used it in a full 27 oz bottle. I am not going to claim that it had any magical powers but it tasted really good and I was pretty bummed when the bottle was empty and I had to revert to bottle #2 which I'd filled with plain water. 4.0 powermeters.
Genisoy Potato Bakes - Parmesan and Roasted Garlic Flavor
I picked these out because I was lost in the supermarket and looking for something salty and crunchy, perhaps more tasty than a rice cake. And of course, being a weight-obsessed male cyclist I was reading nutrition labels in search of something without the calories of Yogurt and Green Onion Kettle Chips. With me, it's pretty much a given that I'm going to knock off the entire bag of whatever I buy in one sitting, and even for a normal fat programmer, 1500 at a whack is a touch excessive. But just try finding snack foods with much less that that at Roche Brothers. Anyhow, forget the whole Genisoy label, I didn't even notice that until the bag was half gone. These claim 110 calories a serving, and the bag is just 3.5 servings, so 385 for the whole bag. Sodium is 270 mg per serving, so not too horrible there either. Yes, we so-called endurance athletes need to keep our sodium intake up sometimes, but overdoing before an event is a guaranteed way to bring on pre-race bloat, thus wiping out all the benefits of the past months binging and purging. So what about the taste? Good enough to satisfy the crunchy and salty craving. No grease though, so you're out of luck there. Truth be told, I made the bag last two sittings, so they weren't good enough to be "addictive." 3.25 powermeters.
MacBook 2.0 something something something
I got this computer last January from the Apple store as a refurb for $999. It was only supposed to come with 1 GB of ram but it had 2 GB when I got it. It also looked brand new, not refurb. I needed a new laptop and even though Apple stuff is generally more expensive than commodity PC equivalents, this was pretty nice hardware for that money back then. Plus since OSX runs on top of Unix, you can be greppin' like a mofo right out of the box, but still not have to struggle with missing codecs when you want to watch a video. You can make it play nice with the Polar if you want to put in the effort, or even run Windows on it if you don't mind throwing money at the problem. I never bothered to do that, as my day job requires that I keep a Windows box running here anyway. MS even provides a free remote desktop client and it works like a charm. This is only the second laptop I've owned, but the trackpad is way cool and once you get used to two finger scrolling you'll never want to live without it. One con about this thing is the case has very sharp edges, kind of nasty to rest your wrists on. One of the reasons I bought this was to make a special second anniversary nodcast. Astute readers may realize that we're coming up on the 3rd anniversary of this crappy blog and no such 2nd anniversary epic has ever made it to the server. Well, I'd heard that IMovie was all intuitive and shit, but, no, it wasn't. This year I've resorted to RTFM and we'll see how that goes. Of course, the machine is now a year old and I did not purchase any extended warranty. No problem, because of no problems, but then the other night I was watching 30 Rock on hulu and poof! down she goes. WTF? Started right back up, so I guess the CPU overheated and went into self preservation mode. Since then all is well, but who knows.
Thanks for reading.
Trek Polar Fleece Helmet Liner
This thing is so good that it made me give up my beloved helmet ear warmers I've been wearing since way back when the ill-defined trails of Borderland rolled beneath the wheels of my '86 Rockhopper and its 26x1.5 Tricross tires. What's so good about it? It fits. Over the head and ears, and down the back far enough so that the helmet locking device sits right up against it. All I have to do is give the adjuster a turn or so and everything fits into place. It's warm. Better than the wool hat/earmuff (huh-huh) combination. Too warm? I don't think so. For a race, yes, but for a normal road ride it would have to be pushing 45 before I'd take it off, and at that point you'd survive with just the helmet. This gets 5 powermeters. Why powermeters? Well, everyone knows that the powermeter is simply the greatest, most marvelous creation ever to come from the minds and hands of humankind, so what would be a more fitting product for all others to be judged against?
Kurt Kinetic Rock and Roll Trainer
I've had this for a year now, and I still like it. My last trainer was a Blackburn Fan Trackstand, and this was a big upgrade. Not at all portable, and it takes up a ton of floor space, but it's pretty quiet, well-made, and provides far more resistance than the Blackburn. The rocking feature is not as "loose" as I expected it to be, but it is adjustable and should get looser as the elastnomer breaks in. You get a noticeable bouncing up and down if your pedaling is choppy, very natural like on the road. Much better than an ordinary trainer. Only other con is that if your feet are big, it's possible to have a clearance problem between your heel and the wheel clamp. Short chainstays and long cranks would contribute to this problem. I had to be standing and flexing my foot in an unnatural direction for it to happen. Kurt offered to replace the entire trainer with the newer (green) model free of charge, as apparently they made a design change to address this issue. I felt that was unnecessary so I kept the one I have. 4.5 powermeters.
PowerBar Electolyte Drink Mix
I got a shitload of free samples of this stuff at the Lexington Battle Green 5k. Natural Berry flavor. It has sugar, about a half dozen of the usual chemicals, and beet juice listed as ingredients. One sample is 20 calories worth and is supposed to make just 16 ounces of drink, but I used it in a full 27 oz bottle. I am not going to claim that it had any magical powers but it tasted really good and I was pretty bummed when the bottle was empty and I had to revert to bottle #2 which I'd filled with plain water. 4.0 powermeters.
Genisoy Potato Bakes - Parmesan and Roasted Garlic Flavor
I picked these out because I was lost in the supermarket and looking for something salty and crunchy, perhaps more tasty than a rice cake. And of course, being a weight-obsessed male cyclist I was reading nutrition labels in search of something without the calories of Yogurt and Green Onion Kettle Chips. With me, it's pretty much a given that I'm going to knock off the entire bag of whatever I buy in one sitting, and even for a normal fat programmer, 1500 at a whack is a touch excessive. But just try finding snack foods with much less that that at Roche Brothers. Anyhow, forget the whole Genisoy label, I didn't even notice that until the bag was half gone. These claim 110 calories a serving, and the bag is just 3.5 servings, so 385 for the whole bag. Sodium is 270 mg per serving, so not too horrible there either. Yes, we so-called endurance athletes need to keep our sodium intake up sometimes, but overdoing before an event is a guaranteed way to bring on pre-race bloat, thus wiping out all the benefits of the past months binging and purging. So what about the taste? Good enough to satisfy the crunchy and salty craving. No grease though, so you're out of luck there. Truth be told, I made the bag last two sittings, so they weren't good enough to be "addictive." 3.25 powermeters.
MacBook 2.0 something something something
I got this computer last January from the Apple store as a refurb for $999. It was only supposed to come with 1 GB of ram but it had 2 GB when I got it. It also looked brand new, not refurb. I needed a new laptop and even though Apple stuff is generally more expensive than commodity PC equivalents, this was pretty nice hardware for that money back then. Plus since OSX runs on top of Unix, you can be greppin' like a mofo right out of the box, but still not have to struggle with missing codecs when you want to watch a video. You can make it play nice with the Polar if you want to put in the effort, or even run Windows on it if you don't mind throwing money at the problem. I never bothered to do that, as my day job requires that I keep a Windows box running here anyway. MS even provides a free remote desktop client and it works like a charm. This is only the second laptop I've owned, but the trackpad is way cool and once you get used to two finger scrolling you'll never want to live without it. One con about this thing is the case has very sharp edges, kind of nasty to rest your wrists on. One of the reasons I bought this was to make a special second anniversary nodcast. Astute readers may realize that we're coming up on the 3rd anniversary of this crappy blog and no such 2nd anniversary epic has ever made it to the server. Well, I'd heard that IMovie was all intuitive and shit, but, no, it wasn't. This year I've resorted to RTFM and we'll see how that goes. Of course, the machine is now a year old and I did not purchase any extended warranty. No problem, because of no problems, but then the other night I was watching 30 Rock on hulu and poof! down she goes. WTF? Started right back up, so I guess the CPU overheated and went into self preservation mode. Since then all is well, but who knows.
Thanks for reading.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Nega-Sell
Where I work we have a published "Code of Ethical Conduct." While not an especially large company, we have a few thousand employees and I'm sure many employers this size maintain similar guidelines about what is viewed as OK and what might get an employee in trouble. The usual stuff is covered, conflicts of interest, insider trading, etc, but we also have a strict policy against "negative selling." Pointing out facts about competitive products and services is OK, but shit-talking about them is not, and the matter is not taken lightly. The senior officers believe that our work is good enough to stand on its merits; therefore marketing and sales are to focus on what is good about us and not what is bad about somebody else. Hmmm.
I've read some blogs that made me think about this lately, but this post has been brewing for a long time. Then last week I was browsing one of the forums over on Velocipede Salon and there was some talk about yet another carbon fork recall from one of the large, mass produced bicycle companies. VS is frequented by numerous hand-built bike people who are justifiably proud of their own products and work. However, the follow up posts included some bashing of the larger companies, carbon in general, and products sourced from China in particular, one comment downright racist in nature. Negative selling.
There's another blogger whose name I need not mention who likes to refer to the food other people eat as "crap." He'll go on ad nauseum about how his daily meal preparations using only the finest ingredients and the greatest of care yield the best nutrition and taste possible. Fine. Don't talk shit about what other people eat. It's just plain rude. Maybe they enjoy that food. That's their right and choice. Why is it necessary to try to take away from that enjoyment?
Many nice, friendly bloggers provide us with prose extolling the virtues of their particular favorite fork of the cycling codebase. Maybe it's the "down to Earth comradery of the cx scene" or the "sweetness of singletrack" or what have you, if Mr Zen has to then turn to disparaging remarks about some other type of bike or bicyclist in order to make his point, well, to me he's not making his point. Negative selling.
This might appear to be at odds with the Nega-Coach philosophies, but that's just the name. Improvement through critical review differs significantly from negative differentiation. And like everything else I blog about, the presence of these words in no way implies that I'm immune to these diseases. That's kind of how improvement through critical review works: be honest with yourself about whatever it is, but don't just wallow in your imperfections, try to improve. Kaizen.
Go ahead and share your positive experiences about your bike or your riding or the muddy friends that you've made. Just spare me the BS about how everyone who is not just like you is not just like you. I'm glad you love your bike, your town, your friends, your riding and racing scene. I love mine too. If you have to trash it to make yourself feel better about yours, then maybe you should consider why. Thanks for reading.
I've read some blogs that made me think about this lately, but this post has been brewing for a long time. Then last week I was browsing one of the forums over on Velocipede Salon and there was some talk about yet another carbon fork recall from one of the large, mass produced bicycle companies. VS is frequented by numerous hand-built bike people who are justifiably proud of their own products and work. However, the follow up posts included some bashing of the larger companies, carbon in general, and products sourced from China in particular, one comment downright racist in nature. Negative selling.
There's another blogger whose name I need not mention who likes to refer to the food other people eat as "crap." He'll go on ad nauseum about how his daily meal preparations using only the finest ingredients and the greatest of care yield the best nutrition and taste possible. Fine. Don't talk shit about what other people eat. It's just plain rude. Maybe they enjoy that food. That's their right and choice. Why is it necessary to try to take away from that enjoyment?
Many nice, friendly bloggers provide us with prose extolling the virtues of their particular favorite fork of the cycling codebase. Maybe it's the "down to Earth comradery of the cx scene" or the "sweetness of singletrack" or what have you, if Mr Zen has to then turn to disparaging remarks about some other type of bike or bicyclist in order to make his point, well, to me he's not making his point. Negative selling.
This might appear to be at odds with the Nega-Coach philosophies, but that's just the name. Improvement through critical review differs significantly from negative differentiation. And like everything else I blog about, the presence of these words in no way implies that I'm immune to these diseases. That's kind of how improvement through critical review works: be honest with yourself about whatever it is, but don't just wallow in your imperfections, try to improve. Kaizen.
Go ahead and share your positive experiences about your bike or your riding or the muddy friends that you've made. Just spare me the BS about how everyone who is not just like you is not just like you. I'm glad you love your bike, your town, your friends, your riding and racing scene. I love mine too. If you have to trash it to make yourself feel better about yours, then maybe you should consider why. Thanks for reading.
Monday, February 2, 2009
The January Effect
I've got nothing else for you, so, presenting my lame January numbers:
Running: 2 hours
Bike and trainer: 12 hours
Gym: 15 hours
Calories consumed: 92,000
Weight: -1 kg
Thanks for reading.
Running: 2 hours
Bike and trainer: 12 hours
Gym: 15 hours
Calories consumed: 92,000
Weight: -1 kg
Thanks for reading.
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