Ready for the knackers yard?

Well this story isn’t new.

Flipping shoulder!!

Honestly, I don’t know what to do or where to turn anymore.

Having given up (or temporarily put off) swimming I expected my shoulder woes to end.  And it seemed like that was the trick.

However, yes, however, over the past two weeks I’ve felt my shoulder niggling away while biking.

Is there any sport I can do without this stupid shoulder hassling me??

It started with the very simple movement of putting my bottle back into the bottle cage.

The first time I was surprised.  Where did this come from? How did that happen?  Why is it happening?

But now it’s every time I reach to get my bottle or put it back.  Maybe I need to grease my bottle cage or something.

This week we’ve ramped it up a bit to where I get off my bike at lights, where I shift my weight onto my handlebars as I put my foot down to stand waiting at the light.

I’m certainly wondering if I’d be better off with one arm at this stage. 

Right, off to practice tying shoe laces and writing with just the left arm in preparations.

As the Fonz would say …

Just sit on it!

Come on, you all remember Happy Days, surely you do.  I’m not the only one of *that* age that recalls the programme.

This time I’m talking about my saddle.  Or more my butt and it’s on-again, off-again relationship with my saddle.

Right now, this past week or so, when I get on my saddle my left cheek (yes, I need to share these details) bone just feels like there’s no padding at all.

I swear the sit bone is coming through the skin because there’s no sense whatsoever that there’s any padding between it and my saddle.

Often I forget to wear chamois cream.  And if you’re following Facebook you’ll perhaps have seen my request for information about when you’d wear chamois cream.

I tend only to remember for cycling events.  And past events have been 100k plus.

However, I did remember this past Saturday.  But for all that, my sit bone was still grumbling right from the word go.

As I say, it’s a love/hate relationship with my saddle.  Some times it’s just fine, and other times it’s a right royal pain in the butt!

I wish I could grumble that it was a loss of bootiliciousness (I would never give J-lo or Beyonce a run for their money) but I have no scientific evidence that it’s the cause

It might be time to talk to a nutritionist

It’s quite funny.  I was planning on writing this post this morning and then Anne had a post very similar to what I was going to say.

Anyway, this week I’m very tired.  I know there could be many factors contributing to this (lack of sleep, late nights, sudden change in weather etc etc) but one that struck me was food.

My diet is fairly simple (and basic) so it didn’t take much effort to think about what I eat and whether it was sufficient for the amount of activity.

Here’s a typical days food.

Breakfast: bowl of home-made muesli with milk (not much, just sufficient to cover the bottom of the bowl and no more).  Whether it’s green or blue I don’t care.  I don’t like milk.

Lunch: two slices of home-made 50/50 wholemeal/white flour bread (with seeds) with Rice Bran spread with either marmite or jam.  I did say it was simple   Then I have some fruit salad that I’ve made, it’s about 1/2 orange, 1/2 mandarin, raspberries, strawberries, blackcurrents.

Dinner: about 150gm red meat with lettuce salad (lettuce, egg, cheese (yum yum) tomato – still simple!) and highlander salad dressing.

This is pretty much what I eat day in day out, well in proportions anyway.  The meat might change – see, I do like to spice things up a bit

Then I think about today’s ride, 34 mins to work, then 2hrs 15min ride after work.

Some days I don’t have as much training, the above would be my longest training session during the week.  But even in the weekends I wouldn’t eat any more than what I’ve got above, but perhaps a treat or two (like the handful of lollies Richard says is OK!).

When I think about it, I don’t think I would eat any less if I weren’t training.  Maybe my salad wouldn’t be so big (it’s more than 1/2 my plate) but I’d still be eating the same.

Oh, on days I’m bored or feeling a bit hungry during the day, I’ll have a muesli bar.

Perhaps I don’t need a nutritionist to tell me that more food when training would make me feel better.

There’s the flip side of things.  I’m not exactly losing weight with what I’m eating vs. my training. So if I add more food then wont I just get fat?

Hmmmm, food for thought

Putting new skills to the test

One of the most valuable pieces of information Chris shared on Monday during our first MTB lesson was this:

You’re either braking or pedalling

So guess what I did?  It’s daft.  You’ll laugh.  You’ll think I’m slight mad(der).

I took the advice with me during my Thursday Short Bays ride.  We all know that I suck descending and that I go very slowly (almost a stand still) at the hair pins from the Sign of the Kiwi into Governors Bay.

What did I do?

I braked and pedalled!

Yes, foolish behaviour.  Why on earth would you pedal when you’re braking?

Alright, let me explain.  Clearly I had no tension on the chain when I was pedalling, and I wasn’t pedalling as fast as was needed to get tension on the chain.

I did it because Chris explained that the bike will naturally travel.  It flows on it’s own.

So it’s only ME that’s trying to man-handle the bike to do something that’s not it’s natural flow.  But he said that when you’re pedalling you’re doing what your bike does naturally.

Actually, Helena said the same today.  The bike would do it’s own thing and it’s only us on the bike that pulls it about and makes it feel unsafe.

Yep, I would be the first to put my hand up admitting that I’m my own worst enemy.

Anyways, back to the braking and pedalling.

I was heaps better. H.E.A.P.S better.  I’m not saying I’m good to go against the best descenders, but I’m saying it felt so good and it wasn’t nearly as scary as it normally feels and I didn’t brake as much or for as long as I normally would.  I just pedalled.

I was pretty pleased with my speed too.  During that long straight bit (after the 2nd hair pin bend) I would normally be braking off and on, more ON than off.  But I felt good enough to let the brakes go and just pedal.

The same during yesterday’s ride.  I was pretty excited that my speed down to Governors bay got to 54km/hr (ok, it’s not really that fast) but for me it was a big deal.

Then I checked my max speed after getting to the bottom of Evans Pass.  64km/hr.  64!  And on my second descent down Evans Pass I got to 65!  Actually my fastest down there has been 71km/hr but that’s after lots of hill work.

My descending is way improved with continuing to pedal and I’m as happy as.  It almost felt like fun.  I almost got a sense of what everyone has been telling me for years, that the descent is the reward for all the hills, it’s to be enjoyed. 

My second round of Short Bays yesterday wasn’t along the bays at all, it was along the Summit Road.  That means more corners than you get around the bays and I was pedalling around corners that I was braking around during my training for Le Race.

By crikey, I might finally be getting the hang (drift!) of this descending/cornering thing yet.

MTB Skills training

Today we had a two hour session with Helena Parsons of MTBSkills.

I’ve only just realised that she’s part of the Complete Performance network and *gulp* I should have gone through CP to organise the training.

I thought Richard was talking of her with too much familiarity but there you go, she’s part of the CP group and I had no idea (until now when I’ve just done a search on her).

We met at Lower Sumnervale Drive (and it happens to be right next to her place).  Phew.  It was flat, it was grassed it looked safe!

First off we started with the basics.  The bike setup.  Mark got his seat raised – a lot – and his reflector removed (thank you Helena).  We also loosened his pedals right off as far as they would go.  This after he fell off right in front of us.

His saddle has also gone back a little bit.  But Helena did all this while explaining how we move on the ground and what’s normal, and what we do to emulate it on the bike (she says "bicycle").

My seat got raised a bit and it was noticeable better.  I’d already raised it a bit myself (a couple of times).

We talked about our position on the bike and where we have perfect balance.  We talked about what muscles do the work.  Looking at the upper body we talked about the pecs and the biceps.  We spoke about the placement of your arms and did little exercises to see if you could switch on your bicep with your arms out straight, with them slightly bent or with "chicken wings".  Chicken wings won.

We were positioned right between the two wheels and keeping feet level and the weight off your hands.

Things like braking, body position when you’ve got a drop off, climbing and everything between.  There was plenty of practice of the new skills and we even gave the incorrect positions a go so that we could tell for sure that it was a no-no and that what we’d been taught was the correct way.

And the old "do you brake with the front, the rear or both brakes" discussion.

Again we put it all into practice on a gravel little rise (going down naturally) and we could tell very easily which was the right way to do things.

Helena was very encouraging and gave feedback all through the two hours.

She even said that Mark had really strong legs (when he was out of ear shot) and that he was quite natural.  Yep, that’s my husband, he’s actually better than he thinks he is.

What Chris taught us on Monday complemented what Helena had for us today. 

Helena wanted to know what sorts of events we were looking at and as we left we said we were off to McLeans Island.

Now that we’ve been out there, we feel Helena would have been shaking her head in disbelief.  Here she is imparting her expertise and we head off to McLeans Island!

Out of Bottle Lake and McLeans Island, our pick is Bottle Lake.  It’s more technical and challenging.  McLeans Island was pretty sedate in comparison, but it does offer plenty of opportunity to practice your cornering, something that we didn’t cover today.