N. Price Blog

So it’s been a while.. again since I posted but I have some time now. Training has been going well over the past few weeks, I can feel my endurance coming back into a more acceptable range the more I train. This is mostly just base building (err… re-building) but a meaty house must start with a strong foundation, and my foundation definitely developed some cracks that will take more than a little epoxy to fill. On the plus side I have time, on the minus side I have to accept running slower that I feel I should. Anyone who has trained hard, developed endurance, then has gotten injured and had to rebuild knows that is a hard pill to swallow. But I’m working on it.

Some lingering pain here and there, but nothing that lasts more than a few hours, nothing I can’t forget about on a long run. So I’m good, I would have to say, looking forward to next year, looking forward to racing as that was sorely missing from this year.

The new training tool that is on my mind as of late is a Computrainer, I need a way to measure power on the bike over the winter. It would be a better way to gauge my progress that heart rate, and push a little harder. I know I am leaving watts on the table every time I train indoors (and out but PowerTap will have to wait) and those watts equal better fitness.

Speaking of PowerTaps, there is a new game in town (or soon to be) in the power meter market. A company called MetriGear Inc. is releasing a pedal based power meter called Vector. I guess they debuted at InterBike 2009 a couple weeks ago, with a very clever take on where to measure power, inside the hollow spindle of your pedals. At the moment they are Speedplay only. Which is fine for me since I ride on Speedplay Zeroes, but sucks for the rest of the world. But I’m not the rest of the world as I am sure you have gathered by now. The two nicest parts about this unit is that you can train and race on this system, and it’s ANT+ compatible, so it can work with your Garmin Edge 705, Forerunner 310XT, or my favorite the new Garmin Edge 500, a smaller, no fuss, bike computer. Basically the 705 without the maps. Honestly, how often are you riding that your require a map to get you home? Clever, but often more than is required. Will it supplant the PowerTap, SRM, and now Quarq’s of the bike world? Only time and some hard miles will tell if this system can hold up the rigor of many long seasons (and if they can get the price:precision ratio right) but it worth a look.

You can check them out here:

METRIGEAR

On another note despite my objections to the contrary I recently turned 35 (yes… 35) and discovered I am old. I knew it would come, and penultimate moment of realization of this fact came the other day. It’s easy to tell when you’ve gotten old, it’s when you see what might be a teenager, one you don’t even know, and now being old, you just can’t understand what they did to their hair, or why, or even comprehend the lineage of hair styles that led up to this mess, and then you get slightly angry when you see it. Then think to yourself “What do your parents think about that?” Whoa! Did I just think that? I was ready yell “Get off my lawn ya darn hippie!” I knew I was old at this point, out of touch with kids today, the only fortunate thing is with getting older is you get to acceptance a lot quicker and go about your day. I dwelled more on the fact that I THOUGHT the hairstyle (don’t get me started on the clothes) looked ridiculous, than the style itself.

So I am out of touch with the youth of today, which I guess I can accept as it was bound to happen sooner or later.