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Taper Week Review |
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Written by Jason Mahokey
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Monday, 08 May 2006 |
Started off my taper week for the 12 Hours of Lodi Farms with a great road ride on the roads near my house. I figured I'll put one harder 2 hour ride in and then spend the rest of the week doing trainer sessions to control my efforts and not over do it prior to the race.
Monday's road ride was one those great road rides that makes me think of watching the Tour or Giro seeing the climbers up out of the saddle on the long climbs or the peloton cruising along through corn field and wild flowers. Of course any thoughts of watching cycling on TV makes me think of legendary cycling commentators Phil Ligget and Paul Sherwen.
Sometimes for me their voices are IMPOSSIBLE to get out of my head on a road ride. It's quite maddening, really. They just can't be stopped though. I try to hum, sing, think about baseball, etc. Nothing works! Every good climb I've ever done at some point I hear Phil's voice saying "he's dancing on the pedals!". Of course about the time I get myself caught up in feeling that good a car passes screams at me to get off the road and I snap back to reality.
The bad climb are where Paul comes in. I hear his voice talking about being "on the rivets", "in difficulty" or worse yet... "HE'S POPPED!!"
I guess there are worse voices to have in one's head. I mean I don't think that Phil and Paul are gonna make me go all Jeffrey Dahmer. At least I hope not.
Later in the week El Santo had to go to my buddy Tom's to get it's shifting sorted. I did all that I could do, which isn't much. It's all good now though. Apparently during the race at French Creek I bashed a nut on the deraileur that bent it in a way that would not allow the rear derailleur to have full range of motion to get up to he 32 tooth cog. Nice to know that I'm not a total moron and all the adjustments I made could never have worked. I just never thought to look at where it had bent.
Tom go it all straigtened out in no time and rebuilt my rear Shimano XT hub too. Went through hell two weeks ago at the race, better safe than sorry. Nice to be friends with a freaking master bike mechanic. Dude could work for the pros, I'm not even joking. Thanks Tom!
The rest of the week was filled with dad duties, packing and trainer time. I got all my lights charged up, directions to Fredericksburg, VA in order, gear packed and the Dos Niner and El Santo all gussied up for the race.
Before I knew it it was Saturday a.m. and JoErin, Brennan and I were ready to roll down to Virginia to one of my favorite races of the year.
Look for my full race report and recap later in the week.
Later.
Jason
"The Soiled Chamois" |
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