Base building: Fast

Well, to be honest ,I realize base building fast is a contradictive statement. I've been base building since before Christmas with the Chile/Argentina trip. But just to make sure the progress continued, 9 hours of riding magically popped into my weekend. Nice weather, great company, and fun to be out on a bike with gears on the open roads rather than a singlespeed in the city.

How exactly does one base build fast? I've devised a rather dumb method: arrange group rides, predominantly stacked with riders who are unquestionably faster than me Dallas, Jon, Mical, Gerry and Chris all came out for the base miles. I'm very impressed that Chris is a man of his word "I don't ride unless it's above zero" is something I recall hearing a while back. Now that it's above zero, he's out like clockwork. Instead of doing the smart thing and riding with equipment as least as fast as everyone else, I do the Rocky Balboa move and make it hard: ride something a little heavier and slower (apparently I don't have Rocky's charismatic ability to overcome all difficulty). You actually have to be a much better rider to make that work!

This isn't an "excuse" post, I kept up for the most part (Read: they waited). Dallas is just plain fast, and the scary thing is he's really not much heavier than I am anymore... geez, and I thought my power to weight ratio was inferior last year. Any roadies listening out there? Dallas is light this year, and he'll lose another pound once he shaves his legs and chest. Look out Cat 4 and Cat 3. Jon keeps an extra 17,000 calories of carbs in his hollow left leg apparently. "I didn't really eat much breakfast" I hear at the start, yet he's able to ride tempo for 4 hours without fading...

Here's where it gets a little silly. Jon doesn't mind riding the slushy, icy mess of Calgary's streets on a set of Mavic Ksyrium SL wheels with road racing tires. Plus I can still see the sticker on the frame of his Dean that says "super light". My Strong has a "Strong" sticker, "super light" is conspicuously absent. He should probably also get "super light" tatooed somewhere prominent while he's at it. It's hard to follow the investment banking mantra and use more lighter, faster, trendier and more expensive equipment to help me stay with the group, when my logic dictates snow and ice and racing slicks don't mix. This isn't the weather for my new Cervelo!

I spent a little time looking down at the rubber in front of me, and being a numbers guy I began to ponder (mild digression here, for the most part I avoided wheelsucking as much as possible). The Continental TravelContact touring tires I have are 640g of punture resistent engineering each, that's twice as much weight as any respectable 23mm tire. The TravelAll tubes 35-40mm tubes I have are thick, I swear they're thicker than some race specific tires I've seen, plus there's just more material there for a larger tire. And my un-aero Open Pro 32 spoke wheels I think are 1750g. I estimate that over my normal road riding wheelset, which would be equivalent to Jon's setup, thats over 1kg of additional wheelweight.

Hmm... I'm actually not really trying to make excuses here, I'm just trying to see if I ran out of energy for any respectable reason or if I just need to really ramp up my training more. If not, I might be in trouble... maybe if I keep organizing rides they'll still ride with me? I hope I don't have to pay the Germans out of my next bonus for a set of LightWeight wheels and start wearing a timetrail helmet just to keep up!

Seems the real answer is bring road wheels out next weekend, cause math doesn't tell the whole story. The real measure is when the rubber hits the road. To me it feels like spring is just around the corner, and I'm excited! Pushing the big tires around, riding into the massive west wind were great spring training. And nothing feels better than blowing the better part of a $20 at Cinnamon Spoon on all the calories your body can handle.