My POJ

I recently picked up a truck from a friend, who has been having some financial difficulties, and I was trying to figure out what to do with it. My first thought was to fix it up and let my middle daughter drive it. That thought was quickly nixed because the truck doesn’t have air bags and I wanted something a little safer for her to drive during her first few years of vehicular mayhem. So, I thought, it would be great to have a second vehicle at work so when I ride to work I would still have a vehicle to do errands in at lunch time, or have the ability to pick up kids from school in an emergency, and it would be kind of nice to just have a second vehicle. The University has a nice safe underground parking lot that is patrolled by security 24x7 and I can just park the truck there and use it when I need it. Sounds like a great solution to my bike commuter woes, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. The plan is to drive it in on Monday (with the bike in the back) park it for the week and drive it home on Friday (with the bike in the back).

The truck is lovingly referred to as the POJ – that’s Piece of Junk, or as I less decorously refer to it as my POC – piece of crap. My son was around when it was named so it’s officially the POJ truck.

The truck itself is fairly solid now and is actually kind of fun to drive. It’s been getting about 23 mpg in the city, which is much better than my F150. Unfortunately, I have more money in it than I paid for it. Mind you, all the work has been done by me and my son, so the money is in new and used parts, no labor.

Here’s a list of things that I have done to it.
Replace the gas tank - The old tank leaked whenever it had more than a quarter of a tank.
Replace the fuel filler hose – It would leak more gas on to the ground that got into the tank
Major Tune up – It almost flunked emissions – the tune up really helped
Replace the turn signal switch ( brake lights, and turn signals wouldn’t work with the old switch)
Oil change - normal stuff
Transmission oil change – Wow, it was bad, surprised it even shifted
New Battery – it died, when I was driving it home, I had to push the darn truck into the Checkers parking lot, my son was not impressed.
Replace all 5 tires – bad rubber = bad stopping power and drivability.
Replaced about half the lug nuts so they would be the same size, just incase I did get a flat.
Replaced one of the windshield wiper arms – the old one was zip tied together!
Replaced all shock absorbers - only one was actually working – I was getting sea sick driving the truck because it was bouncing so much!
Put a working stereo in it, I need my jams.
Replaced the steering wheel - the old was totally trashed, how do you trash a steering wheel?
Had to find a spare tire carrier at the junk yard to replace the rusted contraption that was under the truck

Replaced the air filter box – I had to get one from someplace in Louisiana
Pounded out the door and fenders so the drivers side door would open
Put bolts in said fender so it wouldn’t fall off.
Aligned the hood so it would open and close
Replaced about 7 light bulbs, including both headlights (still have three to replace but they are non critical)
Buffed out the truck so I wouldn’t get oxidized paint on me whenever I brushed up against it
Cleaned up the trash form the inside of the Cab
Replaced the shifter knob, how do you shift without a shift knob?
Fixed the doors so they actually open from the inside – great design idea.
The minor fixes go on an on.

On the bright side though, it has good brakes!

There you have, it my solution to not having a vehicle at work when I commute by bike. Now I don’t have an excuse not to ride everyday this summer.

Slow Start

This season, like many others has really been off to a slow start, if it’s not one thing it’s another! Every year I say I’m going to get a great start on the season and almost every year something comes up.

This year I had a Hernia operation, and while the operation and recovery aren’t necessary that bad the pre-operation slowdown was horrible. It’s been exactly two months since the discovery of “Ernie” (as he has been affectingly nick named) and I’m just now getting back into the swing of things. Next week I’ll start on my normal training load.

This weekends easy bricks were pretty tough on me and the scar formally known as Ernie. I’ve had this persistent muscle pain/spasm in my side since the surgery and on the bike ride it decided to start acting up. Wow, that was rough. Guess I did a little too much too soon. Oh well what’s a triathlete to do?

Funny thing: Before the surgery the Doc said he wouldn’t put any restrictions on me after two weeks of the surgery. He said it wouldn’t do any good anyway, “triathletes are always pushing their bodies to the limit”. Funny guy, he’s a runner…

My Much Neglected Blog

Well, lets see, what has happened since I last posted something/anything.

Duke City Marathon. What can I say about the marathon? It was just training for IMAZ. I wasn’t even sure If I was capable of finishing the marathon but I actually felt pretty good. The goal was to go nice and easy so it ended up being around 4:10. This years race was actually pretty well run! I swore I would never do it again after they ran out of water several years in a row but they got their act together, Water at the aid stations and there were also people there to hand out water! So, I might do it again next year.

I finished IMAZ with a PR of over an hour!! That was really cool! It seems all the commuting on the bike over the summer really paid off. Oh, and I got my Asthma under control so that helped. Of course, maybe it was the new top-o-the-line wet suit that helped, Or maybe the cool weather. It might have been Stitch that pushed me on during the marathon. Hummm, maybe it was everything finally came together. Yep that’s it.

Pic of the prerace dinner an the Ironhouse bikeroom.

Several months of doing nothing but fun runs, coffee rides, yoga, and weight lifting. Okay, so maybe not doing “nothing”, but not really training either.

Egg Nog Jog, fun little 4 mile race on New Years Day and we had a Outlaw get together after the race

Sandia Snow Shoe Race. Wow that race is hard but a lot of fun! Oh and I got chicked big time by Mo.

I got my .35 nanoseconds of fame on house hunters, MG’s episode finally got aired and they had a couple of shots of the Outlaws riding.

I almost have Lornas bike built, it’s been a long process of collecting parts

The Bike

The Bike:

Now that the brunt of the training has passed I thought I would post a little blurb on my bike and the configuration I’ve chosen for IMAZ.

I’ve spend the last few years getting this bike just the way I want it. The bike was originally purchased for IMFL in ’04 but that race just never happened. Life sometimes gets in the way of the best laid plans. This will be IM number three for the bike, that is assuming I finish! (knock on wood). Over the years the bike has been almost entirely rebuilt with the only original equipment being the headset, brakes/levers, and shifters.

The bike is a 2004 Quintana Roo Caliente, Tangerine with flames, I think it’s one of the best looking paint schemes to come out. The only other person I know in New Mexico that has the same bike is my friend and fellow Outlaw “the Pocket Assassin”.

So, I thought I would list the components on the bike and give some details about why I chose the particular component.

The bike frame:
49 cm Quintana Roo Caliente, 50 cm top tube length. You’ll notice on the picture that the set tube extends way past the top tube. This is a horrible design for adjustability, effectively this makes the frame a 52 cm frame, which isn’t a good thing I really liked this frame because it has a combination of carbon stays, carbon fork and carbon steerer tube. It has barrel adjusters for on the fly tuning, and it came in my size with 650 wheels. Finding a small bike is pretty challenging, especially 4 years ago, and I really lucked out finding a bike that I liked.

From the bottom up:

Tires: Michelin 650 Pro2 race Clinchers – Great tires, light, rolls well, lots of grip and pretty puncture resistant. I’m also running two ounces of Stans in each wheel to fend off those nasty goatheads. The Stans add weight but in the scheme of things I don’t really think it matters much.

Wheel set: 2006 Zip 404, 650 Clinchers. Light, stiff, aero, versatile, Overall great wheel set, Oh and I got them for $400, with only about 200 miles on them.

Chain: SRAM PC 9speed Hollow-pin – Light, easy to maintain, and shifts great.

Crank Set/Bottom Bracket: Dura-Ace 10 sp Double, Length 167.5 mm, 39x53 This is a strange size but my short legs seem to like the 167.5 crank arm length. The first time I used this crankset I felt awesome! The former crankset was heavy and had an odd gearing of 41x52, but combined with the 650 wheelset I had reasonable climbing power but would always spin out on the decent. The new gear ratio gives me a few more gears on the assent and a little bit more speed on the decent. Overall a great choice, but the Q-factor seems to be a bit smaller that the old crank set which limits my crossover gears, Oh well, life is tough when you ride a small bike.

Pedals: Speed Play X2, Light easy to get in and out of, lots of float.

Rear Derailleur: Dura-Ace, short cage, Smooth shifting, light.

Rear Cassette, Dura-Ace 11-23, I’m leaning toward this gear selection because IMAZ only has a few small hills (Other than the b-line) My other choice is the gear that I’ve been riding for the training rides it’s an SRAM, 12-26. The SRAM is a great Cassette and an overall good gearing, light and much cheaper than the DA.

Skewers: Zipp Titanium shafts – 85 grams for the pair, light, strong and they match the Zipp wheels!

Graphics: “Bones”, From Speedy sign, it cost’s all of 5 bucks, and, I think, is pretty cool.
Front Derailleur, Ultegra, Stock – Couldn’t justify upgrading this.

Waterbottle cage: Arundel Carbon, what can I say, carbon is cool.

Brakes: Ultegra, Stock. These are good brakes, why change them out?

Headset: Stock, I’ve never had and issue with it.

Seat Post: Easton EC90 Carbon. I needed a straight seat post because of the extended seat tube. The Easton is light, straight and was on sale! Yeah, thats right, there's only about half and inch of post showing!

Seat: Wow, This has been an ongoing quest but I think I’ve finally found the right seat! It’s a Blackwell Flow, It’s much narrower than I’m used to riding but things seem to be supported quite well, no numbing issues, no back pain and no chafing. If you notice the sides of the saddle come down past the rails which make the nose a bit wide, but that’s not a deal breaker. For me, this has been the best Tri saddle I have ever ridden.

Hydration: X-lab carbon wing. This back of the seat hydration pack is much lighter than it’s predecessor and it sits back off the tail end of the seat a bit more. With my old wing I was constantly breaking bottle cages. The new one is light strong and has many more ways to attach gear. On the bottle side of the wing I’m using a specialized rib cage, which keeps me from ejecting bottles.

Cycle computer: Catyeye Dual wireless. This really cleans up the bike while giving me everything I could ask for in a computer. Nice easy to read display, cadence and it works flawlessly.

Spacers: Carbon no-name – Yeah, Carbon is good.

Stem: F99, 80 mm, Very Light, stiff and reasonably inexpensive.

BaseBar: Syntace Stratos, Small 39cm. For some reason this bike came with a 41cm basebar – who knows why?

AeroBars: Profile carbon Stryke. These bars are about the most adjustable bar I have every come across. You can tweak them endlessly. Light good vibration dampening. I changed out the stock Profile arm pads with the Syntace pads which actually have padding.

Shifters: Dura Ace, Not many other options.

Brake levers: Provile Quick Stop 2 - Good solid levers – no reason to change out.

There you have it, 4 years of component evolution.

Soma

Soma:

I feel like an athlete by association, is that the way it should be? Does that mean I haven’t been racing enough or does it mean that I’ve lost whatever drive it takes for me to consider myself an athlete? The ironic thing about this whole feeling is that I’m in the final big weeks of training for IMAZ. I think working Soma and the Elephant man and watching everyone compete has made me feel kind of like an outsider. Obviously I’m not but it’s really a strange feeling to shake.

But on to more fun things:

Helping official at the Soma Triathlon was great! Across the board everyone was thankful there were enough Refs on the course to break up any packs that might have formed and hopefully we succeeded. The folks I talked to at the airport didn’t report any large packs or any other problems and everyone seemed to have a good time.

This was my first large race that I was an official at and it was pretty interesting. You really do have the best seat in the house to watch the race. Unfortunately I only got to go out on the motorcycle towards the end of the Half Iron so I missed the burnt of the action. However, I did get to monitor the bike mount/dismount area. There were several athletes that tried getting on the bike without buckling their helmets and fortunately the volunteers did a great job of reminding folks about their helmet straps. Some of the athletes had an amazing dismount process, several came in way to hot and crashed at the dismount line, a couple lost shoes and one guy even unbuckled his helmet before starting to do his flying dismount, right in front of me. That’s focus, and I have to give him credit for an incredible act of agility, however it is against the rules. We will just leave it at that.

I moseyed over to the street next to the mount/dismount area to watch the race and make sure there weren’t any blatantly large packs. Now this is the interesting part. It took about 15 seconds for most riders to go from the top curve, down the hill and into the next curve. This is a long way when you are doing 18-30 mph and I don’t think most of the athletes realized that they could legally draft through that section. I made myself pretty obvious by standing in the middle median, it was pretty hard to miss that bright red shirt. Folks would have outstanding manners while I was around. They would complete passes “just like they intended on doing”, pull to the right and let people pass. Very courteous and rule following while I was there, as soon as I made myself less visible people became much more aggressive and more willing to draft. It was pretty funny because this was all in a little 15 second strip of the course, where I couldn’t really ding them anyway. It has really changed my perspective on how to get the most out of those little sections.

There was one athlete on the dismount zone that was a little ticked off at one of the volunteers trying to get him to slow down, he started to yell something until he spotted me, we made eye contact and he just bit his lip. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been there, and I wonder how that athlete was treating the other volunteers.

I kind of felt like that frustrated cop on the freeway, you know the one that is stuck in traffic doing exactly 65 mph, Cars in front, cars in back, cars to each side but strangely enough, no cars 200 yards beyond or behind him. Everyone “acts” good when they think they might get dinged. Which is fine, I was just hoping just to be visible enough to let some of the less scrupulous folks know that there were officials around.

And really, I just noticed the folks breaking or really pushing the rules everyone else, the vast majority, of the almost 1800 athletes were great and I hope they had a good safe, experience.

Congratulations to all the folks that raced! Special congratulations to DP, who finally raced and completed the race!!

Duke City Marathon

Ahhh, Iron fitness,

It’s kind of funny how your perspective changes as you get more and more into endurance sports. Yesterday Miguel and I ran the Duke CityMarathon as a training run for Ironman Arizona, yes, a training run. We ran at a goal pace of 9:30 minute miles, which is, for me, a very aerobic hr of 130ish, that translated to about a 4:17 marathon.

I was a bit nervous about running marathon because I haven’t really been training for a standalone marathon with my longest run of the year being18 miles and that was last week! I was hoping my IM fitness would carry me through and it did with flying colors! I’m only a little sore today and expect a speedy recovery.

A few years ago the thought of doing a marathon on less than 45 running miles per week sounded absurd, this marathon was done on less than 25 miles per week. Granted I have been very consistent in my long runs of 14ish miles over the course of the spring and summer and I have been training for an Ironman, but I’m still amazed at how good I felt during the event. Maybe not doing a 100 mile bike ride the day before a long run helps, who would have thunk?

We did the marathon at a pretty slow pace, far off any personal records but the goal wasn’t to set a new PR, it was to get a good long run under out belts, get our legs and feet use to taking a pounding, working on our nutrition, and have a good time doing it. All of which we accomplished. One more check on the IM prep schedule.

It was great seeing all the fellow Outlaws and friends out on the course. It was an absolutely perfect day for a marathon, nice and brisk in the morning and warming up towards the end of the run, with a slight breeze on the way back to keep you cool.

When I look at the course profile it’s interesting how much of an elevation change the course actually has. According to Mr Garmin, there’s 2801 feet of change. Very interesting.

I have changed my opinion of the Duke City Marathon. The last time I did the marathon the aid stations were few and far between, they pretty much ran out of water/Gatorade/cups and they just didn’t have any porta-potties set up on the course. All that has changed! They had plenty of aid stations, lots of water/Gatorade, porta-potties setup at various places, lots of volunteers, they even had little four wheeler cruising between the aid stations. The timing was done via some sort of RFID tags with timing stations setup throughout the course and the staff was great to work with. Overall it was a great experience! My opinion of the DCM has really changed! Well worth the $65 entry fee.

Ironman dues

Some days you wonder if you should even be riding.

Ironman Arizona is now less than 50 days away and the weekend long rides are at 100 miles, or at least they should be. This weekends 100 mile ride didn't go quite as scheduled.

For some reason I couldn't sleep in the morning of the ride, maybe I was a little apprehensive because I knew the ride was a big one and the next days run was also going to be pretty long. So while I was wondering around the house I decided to check the tires on my bike and air them up for the ride. Well wouldn't you know it I had a half inch slice in the rear tire and the Stans was oozing and bubbling out. Darn it. I took the tire off patched the TIRE, put a new tube in, filled it with Stans and called it good. Maybe this was an omen that I completely missed?

We finally meet up at Defined fitness and SWTRIGAL suggests changing our route because of the bad weather, She wants to head north for 20 miles then turn south for 40 miles, then turn back north to get the benefit of a tail wind on the way home. I really wanted to get some hill training in so we decided to play it by ear. As it turns out playing it by ear doesn't work so well

We head north to our traditional breaking point, or should I say our traditional porta-potty point. Most folks are fairly well hydrated and need one final relief before kicking the ride into high gear.

It's all going well until we leave the parking lot, I manage to get myself wedged between two riders at the parking lot exit, not good since the exit has a very solid wood post right in the middle of the exit. Darn, my left foot won't unclip and my track stand just wasn't going well, down I went. Okay, this is going to be a rough ride. At least I get a lot of sympathy from the lady outlaws, the guys were more concerned about the delay I was causing by trying to get back on my feet! Oh well, guess it's better to fall over and embarrass yourself in front of your friends, right?

The next 30ish miles of the ride out to San Ysidro was uneventful, except for the 25-29 mph that a really generous tail wind provided. We knew it was going to be rough going back, but boy, we didn't count on mother nature getting really pissed at us and throwing everything she had at us.

Brian and Paul agreed to pull the group back and most folks lined up behind them, at this point we had about a 20 mph head wind. I hung off the back, out of the draft zone so I could get a good workout in and maybe help pull any wayward riders back up to the pack.

Completely The winds were pretty outrageous and it felt like we were going to be blown over any number of times. About 65 miles into the ride the sand and gravel that was blowing into our faces was replaced by a light rain, not so bad, Then the hail started and that hurt, we made it to a gas station to regroup we discussed stopping at the local Flying star and having folks pick us up but decided to carry on, the weather looked like it was clearing up. I borrowed a jacket from Michi, who wisely decided she had had enough fun in the great outdoors for one day and called for MG to pick her up. On our way back the weather calmed down for a good few miles and the head wind picked back up. We all regrouped back at the Defined Fitness parking lot and looked at the storm front moving in. I decided to hightail it home before the storm hit. Well....While I was at the light crossing the only major street that separated my from a nice warm shower the rain hit. Now, I don't mind riding in the rain, after all I had a nice jacket that Michi lent me. No problem, Another quarter mile up the hill to my house and the hail started. Ouch, It was hailing so hard I couldn't see where I was going, The almost marble sized pellets really stung, luckily the storm was moving quickly and I was only in the hail for four or five minutes. By the time I got home I was completely soaked.

While I getting ready to take a shower I was summing up the bruises and scrapes from my little fall when I noticed all the little welts all over my back arms and legs. Those darn little hail pellets left their impression. It took several hours before they went away but at least most of them didn't bruise.

All in all, It was one of those rides that will live on in our memories. "Remember that ride we did getting ready for IMAZ back in the fall of '08?" . Yep, it was one rough ride, and I didn't even get in my 100 miles! Now, SWTriGal assures me that riding 80 miles on those conditions is equal to 100 miles of normal riding. I think we have all paid some of our Iron dues this weekend! Guess we will find out around November 23rd!