Those changed my life. They don’t sit like a rock in your stomach (looking at you, Cliff Bars) and are a bit more palatable than Gu-Gels. Two thumbs up!
Since late last season though I’ve started to ski with a backpack on. Because you’re more or less in a natural refrigerator for the entire day, it gives you quite a few snack options. Discovered recently that one of these bad boys fits easily in my pack:
What a week. ‘Only’ 301.6km so far (I’ll add about 40-50km tomorrow) but the weather wasn’t as nice as the week before. Grey drizzle and cold eastern winds made for challenging morning commutes and easy rides home, still better than the other way around but I certainly prefer calm days.
The constant stress I put on my old bike starts to show more and more. Luckily next friday I’m going to order my new custom bike.
I would love a pure road bike but that’s just not practical for the purpose of commuting and touring and I can’t afford to buy two good bikes right now so I’m going with a fast touring bike. It needs to have a rack, good lights, a hub dynamo (don’t want to depend on batteries when I’m touring, plus I can use it to charge my phone and my head unit during rides), while still offering something fun and fast.
Considering all of this I chose the Patria Randonneur as the base for my new bike. The frame will be custom build to fit me after taking measurements at the LBS.
Component wise this is what I have in mind:
Thoughts?
That’s a beautiful looking bike. Even with the fenders and rack it looks like a true machine - you will be the fastest commuter to work!
According to Strava I’m already one of the fastest commuters around here and I expect this one will make me even faster. That being said, there are some guys on my commute that I’ll never catch up to. I’m afraid that ship has sailed xD
A few weeks ago I tried to CAT 6 race a guy on a 26’’ MTB and when I finally catched up and was about to overtake him, riding at around ~32km/h, he simply shifted up and took off, probably hitting 45km/h. I gave up at 38km/h. On the next stop light he congratulated me on a good effort - the guy wasn’t even out of breath. Turns out he used to race on an amateur level.
On another note, do any of you have experience with gearing?
I need to get a lot stronger to be able to push 50/11T so I’m considering a 14-28T or 12-25T cassette as well but I have used the 48T 11T combo a lot when I was riding DH in Switzerland and Eifel. At the moment I have a 48/38/30T Chainring with a 11-32T 8-speed cassette. I ride almost exclusively 48T - 20T/18T/15T and only need to shift into 48T - 13T when I get up to 45km/h which doesn’t happen too often and 11T is reserved for over 50km/h which basically only happens down hill and hills are a rare breed around here.
I also don’t need the 30T chainring (only used it once or twice since I got the bike…), so I’m thinking a 36T ring instead of the 34T one would suffice. I can push 38T-28T up a 13% incline without the need to get out of the saddle but it’s hard work. I can always swap the chain rings when I’m touring mountains.
That’s cool. One of these days I need to get out to the hills north of Greenville, SC - just an hour south of here. George Hincapie owns a place out there called the Hotel Domestique: LINK. Can you imagine riding with that guy? I’d keep up for about 500 meters.
That looks amazing. Beautiful landscape as well. You sure have a lot of beautiful places over there.
And yes, I’m sure I’d get dropped after a few meters riding with any ex pro. I mean, I can barely push 28km/h average over the course of an hour on a good day and even for amateurs that’s kinda slow.
For example, this was with a decent tail wind this week, I guess I could have pushed it over 30km/h that day if I’d gone for a max effort but it’s still slow compared to anyone who races or used to race:
My Valentine’s Day gift to myself:
I’m starting to think about working with a running coach: I’m compensating for am old ankle injury on one side and an old knee injury on the other, and it’s not helping things on either side.
That is really fantastic! I haven’t hopped on the scale yet - I’m fairly certain my progress hasn’t been that good. I’ve been on the new recumbent bike every day though - I’m just doing the pre-programmed “weight loss” profile which is basically a parabola of resistance. Each 30 minute workout only takes me about 10 miles (16K), but I think soon I will increase that to 45 minutes. It feels great to be back on a program again…but I do need to mix in some strength training as well. I shudder to think how many pullups or pushups I could do at the moment…
Meanwhile I am down to 93.6kg (from 98.0 in January). So I lost almost 10lbs which is OK I guess. Not as good as @EinsteinEP but I am on my way.
I feel that I am stagnating a bit though, concerning weight loss. Might be the muscles building up or me getting used to some exercises, so I will slooowly ramp it up soon, now that the weather is getting better.
My training plan for March will be:
Past few weeks have been a disaster, haven’ t been able to motivate myself to go out, been quite tired too. Now I’ve been hit by a cold that has me stopping after a few minutes… So yeah, not the best 3 weeks so far!
My only suggestion is- take it easy. As soon as you try to overwork it you risk to sprain something and then it’s (nearly) back to square one.
Don’t worry if weight loss slows down. It’s normal.
This week has been great for me. The weather was great, very little wind with one evening that was completely calm and I achieved a new personal best for my commute home yesterday, averaging 28.4km/h over 32km:
Despite working extra hours this week I’ve ridden 302.7km at an average speed of 26.4km/h and I gained ~0.8kg (weighed on an empty stomach after my ride home) compared to Saturday from two weeks ago putting me up to ~53kg/117lbs. I’m not too worried about my weight - after all I’ve been underweight all my life and no doctor was ever able to tell me why - but it’s nice to add some muscle mass 
This week’s training log:
I’m 169cm. I take comfort in the fact that there are mountain specialists who weigh the same or only a little more than me.
But then again I’m not a pro, just a dude on a beat up trekking bike who religiously cycles 30km to work 5 days a week and eats a metric ■■■■ ton to sustain it and gain a little weight at the same time 
Woah. I’m about the same height, but i never weighed any less than 58Kg, and i was seriously skinny back then. You must be invisible when you’re standing sideways. Well, as long as you’re healthy…
I am 1.75m and only 66kg so it’s not that unreasonable. Although I am quite skinny.
