Cross Training, Winter alternatives and troubled Waters

Last days Py got back to alternative additional or part substitutional training. Still riding to/from the Camp Monday and Tuesday and adding the lunch time run "Bluestone 10k" on the Camps back roads to his schedule. This run in particular, just his second run (he stated running again just the week before) since the LI Corporate Challenge 3 1/5mi run..., turned w Terry into some pretty fast one with increasing pace to the end -- no precise timing, but he was back under 40min and had fun getting up the stairs after that one... and still had to ride home his bike at the end of the day just before sun set, what surprisingly was less troublesome than expected after all that -- the bike muscles seamed left unimpressed :-)

Regardless -- on Wednesday he took it easy and used his four wheeled steel enclosed gasoline powered four stroke engine equipped vehicle to reach the Camp. It was a nice day. He intended to do some swimming in the pool but missed the 1st lap swim time slot and decided to do a just before sun set swim at his favorite beach "WRB" at the LI Sound -- may be the last one out there for the season. The water was surprisingly warm and there were some good waves coming in from East. Py is not the best fish so far and just starts to work on his skills to do this right and some how efficient. Some breast strokes mixed with some it may get into crawl some time... but so far more splashing and swallowing salt water... However, 20min splashing around several laps parallel to the beach into and with the waves made him a bit tiered and he got out and quickly got to his towel... as the air was not so warm any longer.

On his drive home he just wanted to get a few grocery items form the near by KK, but as there that day were only old left overs of veggies and other "non-fresh" items left, even he tried hard to find reasonable fresh things and so wasted time and spend way tooooo long in this freaking cold section, that's seamed not helping either keeping things fresh but as it turned out later made Py little sick as he still was not fully dry on his head and only had a Tee on, argrrrr.

Next day NOAA called for rain at end of day lasting into the whole weekend, also Py did felt an upcoming cold -- stupid KK -- and on Friday he stayed in his bed most of the day -- sick o-(

Saturday he felt much better, still very wet warm, humid and raining heavy at times. Decided to go for an easy swimming and crawl experiment into the warm pool at the Camp... that was very nice, even he swallowed more water (and Cl chemical this time -- he honestly prefers salt water to that), some GXSM hacking and chilln' for the rest of the day.

Py is not a fish... but some humans try to... may be some time he gets a bit closer?


Studying swimming techniques....

And BTW -- no Birds for Py tomorrow, rain or shine -- still not back to 100%.

Eight Birds

Early Sunday morning once again Py got up a quarter to five, it was still all dark. Preparing breakfast -- he got a bit upset about his egg, as it popped open while cooking and all the yellow came out. Well getting ready, he initially planned on driving to the start, but as he was ready by 6:30am and it was already enough light to ride -- sun rise would be in about nine minutes -- he decided to ride to the start again, it should turn into a great comfortable day, later so. Did not felt to cold outside, reading 13C at his porch, he put a long sleeved jersey on top.

What he not yet noticed at his place, there was a lot of mist in the air coming down or evaporating just that time of the day. Moving faster -- more wind chill, and this wind chill was one of the worsed he ever felt. That evaporation cooling works really great, but made him shivering, fingers freezing and toes getting cold -- unbelievable -- looking forward to reach the start and warming up a bit at the "Golden Bow".

Not far from the start, but not yet there it looked like this, stopping really felt good, as with no wind he nicely warmed up a very tiny bit.

From Early Birds

At the start a few were already there. Two more shivering riders came riding to the start, suffering the same cold experience. However, it will warm up soon. In the meantime a total of eight birds showed up, a small good group -- as the "Tour de Hamptons" was the same day. They decided on North, should be warmer.

7:34 already, time to roll....

A good stable pace soon developed and they efficiently rode into the more rising sun, still a bit chilly, but already much better. They basically just stopped shortly after the tanks run and for some reason skipped the Deli stop and kept going, until T got a flat at the last section.

From Early Birds

From there the usual fast uphill section and a flying pace with constant rotation (sprint to the front) developed and they came back the parking. Just one newer bird got little behind shortly after the hill but made it back in a few minutes later. A perfect team ride. A good time -- they made it back by 10:11.

Ride Statistics -- group average of 37.6km/h:

Just a getaway into the woods once in a while

A great day for a MTB ride and to hide from all the craziness on the roads... just in time he found his renewal of his DEC permit yesterday in the snail mail box. And with that Py went for a nice Rocky Point ride -- flying low over the trail.

Very low to no bike traffic, nice fast trail, just a few sandy sand boxes as usual :-)

Easy 1h43' full w all blacks loop pace non stop.

RP2IPBP variant - late ride - tropical winds

Py was ready for the EBs this morning, but did not liked the very wet road conditions and light rain around 6am so much. However, around noon the sun made it out, minor road were still quite wet and the very high humidity and warm South-West-Winds just helped drying thr roads off at more sun exposed and open section. However, the ride out East on his RP2IPBP variante today was fast with Cross/Tail winds. Here out at IPBP:




And the little ride stats for today:

... and a stop at WRB for a little cool down and swim ;-)

Stupid design or assembly

We nite hill ride was on Py's plan today again. He had exactly 15min from putting his shoes on to catch up with the We nite hill ride group on the 25/WadingRiverManor Rd crossing... so he sprinted out of the Camp all the way and took a virtual chase of an virtual rider at warp speed going east on 25 with just 6min left to go after winding out of the Camp and flying over the short Cross part... hitting over 40km/h for a good stretch. Just getting the light on 25 in sight the group passed over quite exact 15min after he started out o-( Just catching the last green he passed cars and turned in WRM Rd, no one noticed him so far, even yelling from too far away :-(
Alright... FullSpeedAhead the virtual chase turned into a real one for about little over one mile until he caught them and could ease up to comfortable speed just hanging on for a while to recover.
But not for long, down hill on North Country into Wading River, turning at some speed into Remsen up hill. Taking the lead for the first uphill while one rider passed and took over -- but he is hanging on and pulled over to the front again at the last up hill on this 1st section of the hill sprint and finished leading all the very fast run down to WildWood SP. Climbing back following and taking over again... repeat on NC up to RP... a good fast pull.
Somehow he still has soem uncomfortable pressure on his feets, just where the cleats are, this came slowly and seam to worsen lately -- some thing seam wrong with the shoes -- really no fun.

Back home he had a deeper look into it:



Quite some gap and missing support just in the center behind the cleat mount and a under pressure quite uneven surface (may be slowly shifted over time??) -- that sucks and needs to be fixed. Cleaning it all off fixing the unsupported holes behind and left/right of the mount with a two layers of double sided 3M padded tape and realigning that original padding on top it now looks and feels all smooth again:



Has to be tested.