The End of the Year Draws Near

Well, it's been a few hundred miles of mostly uneventful rides since my last post and it will soon be time to wrap things up for the year. My longest ride since the last post has been about 37 miles, so certainly I've done nothing epic. And I haven't been anywhere to ride either.

But there are two things worth talking about. First, I've started back running a little on the indoor track at work. I've lost enough weight to be able to do this, at least at a very easy and slow level. I kind of figured at my age "if not now, when"?  It went well until a severe calf cramp/strain put me down for a week. But I like running and intend to continue to run once a week or so.

A second at least somewhat noteworthy thing to report is that we have begun indoor training in the "Velo Garage" again. Here in Omaha outdoor riding can be limited by cold weather and winter is a good time to put in some intense work on the indoor trainer.

I reported on this at some length last year. The crew consists almost entirely of faculty and staff at the university where I work, and we generally meet twice weekly between about Thanksgiving and Easter. The sessions are usually under an hour and never more than 90 minutes, and they are designed by "Coach Dusty" a Ph.D. in exercise physiology.

I use a power meter in the indoor training sessions, which gives an objective measure of the work output for each ride, beyond just what a heart rate monitor could provide. The indoor sessions were very productive for me last year and I know they made me a stronger rider. Here's a sample workout:

My fellow travelers in the Velo Garage this year in addition to Dusty are John:

Jeff and Griff:

And Dusty's wife Megan will also be riding sometimes. Mavic is our official Mascot.

This is what the output from my power meter looks like in case you haven't seen such. Right click to see larger versions of the pictures.

I am going to post at least one more time before the end of the year to review what's been accomplished in 2012 and maybe talk about what lies ahead in 2013. (Hint: I'm going to Italy to ride.... the pics should be great!) Thanks for reading.