Training - Back Issues

The last couple months I noticed something after my rides - my legs weren't sore. I mean, okay, that's good, right?

Well, yes, and no.

I've noticed in the past 5 or 10 years that it takes me longer to recover from muscle soreness, whether from lifting, riding, or even doing core exercises. I got used to that low grade soreness while walking down the stairs in the morning.

This summer, though, I haven't gotten very sore at all, not enough to notice.

To me part of this meant that I haven't been working hard enough muscularly. If my legs aren't sore then I'm not breaking down the muscle fibers. I understand that it's not always good to be sore, but I'd expect some soreness after harder rides.

So Sunday, when the Missus took Junior out shopping so I could ride, I went out with the express intent of making my legs sore.

I pushed bigger gears, pedaled at lower rpms, and pushed pretty consistently, doing two laps of my Quarry Road Loop. The first lap I stayed mainly on the tops, trying to stay on top of the bigger gears.

There's one little rise, literally a 2-3 pedal stroke "hill", on the loop. It's a little test, insignificant really, but an indicator of where I stood in terms of overall riding goodness.

Sunday I found that I went over it at about 20 mph. In 2010, when I weighed 20 pounds less, I'd regularly roll over it at 24-25 mph. For me this was a concrete example of what weight gain (and loss) does to my riding. I thought to myself that losing weight over the 2014 winter would be a good thing.

I did the second lap mainly on the drops because, frankly, my back was hurting and it felt much better on the drops. I actually rode it pretty well, covering the same loop about 45 seconds faster. The first lap I get a 35 mph running start into the first bit of Quarry Road (because I come off of a descent) so to do the second lap faster was significant. It meant that I pushed the whole time. It also probably meant that I was more aerodynamic in the drops, which makes sense also.

I arrived home pretty spent. My back ached pretty badly - it's really the only thing I noticed when I climbed off the bike. After cooling down and taking a shower I took "inventory" - legs were fine. Back was not, and in fact I couldn't lift Junior very easily.

The Missus noticed that I was favoring my back and tried to cover for me. The fact that I was that bad led me to think about how I haven't done any core work for a year or two. I did core stuff regularly in 2010 and didn't have back issues even with a lot of riding. I stopped, had such back issues in 2013 that I couldn't shovel snow, and in 2014 the Missus got me to buy a snow thrower so that I wouldn't have to shovel.

My thought is that my core strength is so low that it can't support the workload my legs. This is why my legs don't get sore after a race - I can't work them hard enough.

My back, on the other hand, has been bugging me this whole season. Therefore I need to work on my core. This will give me the base necessary to get my legs back into the mix, to work them hard enough to get sore.

The other thing is weight. My bike weight doesn't vary that much between racing and training wheels yet it feels really substantial. To lose six or seven times the difference would be astronomical yet I haven't done it.

When I went out on Sunday's ride I was wondering why my legs didn't get sore after some very hard races. I realized during and after that ride that it went further than that.

So for me the answer is clear.

Work on my core.

Work on losing weight.

See what happens in 2015.

Life - Back

So my back is pretty messed up right now. I have to dole out my efforts, just like a race (or a ride I suppose). I have x number of lifts before my back is done and if I'm close to x but I really need to do a lift then I'll do it. "X" is about 4 or 5 over a couple hours, maybe fewer.

When I say "lift" it basically means lifting Junior. Most everything else I can move around without lifting them but Junior, I lift him up for things. The worst is getting him into a car - it got to the point where I'd put him in the car first because I knew that if I couldn't do that then we wouldn't go out. If I could get him in the car then I could get his bag and whatever else.

In fact this morning the Missus took two of the cats to the vet. They totaled maybe 30 lbs but lifting one was brutal and I realized pretty quickly that I wouldn't make it lifting both the cats as well as Junior. The Missus took the cats and I stayed behind with Junior. I think that this saved my back from going out today.

Changing position is bad also. For example standing up from a kneeling position is pretty bad, and I tend to do a lot of kneeling with Junior. From a laying position isn't as bad. These are limited to perhaps two or three every hour. It helps if I can lift myself up by bracing against a table or something.

The worst is lifting Junior when I'm seated, on a chair or couch. I've resorted to dragging him up onto my knees because I can't perform a proper lift.

Of course I try to save a lift or two for emergency purposes. Today there were a couple, one when he toppled back off of a full sized chair, another when he needed a belay while climbing the cat tower.

Junior, poking at Mike's eye and yelling, "Eye! Eye! Eye!"

Mike is laying on a platform five feet off the floor.

Still, though, my back has been pretty screwed up. I'm unclear on what caused it but I'd been riding consistently for a bit, did some snow shoveling, and bam, that was it.

Last year I did almost the exact same thing, some consistent riding, snow shoveling, and then I was done.

So remedies going forward, to try and prevent this from happening:
1. Buy a snow blower, per the Missus.
2. Be a man and let the Missus shovel the walkway when she offers.

For now it's Advil, some very easy stretches (my back feels like it needs to pop), and taking it easy.

Equipment - Radical Steelman Stem On Bike

A few people have asked me what my stem looks like on the bike. I posted a pretty distorted picture that really makes the stem look ridiculous so I wanted to post something a little bit better.

The distorted picture, a still off the helmet cam; the stem was unpainted at that point.

When you look at that picture it looks like the drops end up below the 60mm fairing of the front wheel. The saddle looks like it's a good foot up in the air (I guess my National Lampoon style taillights don't help either). Although I have some saddle-bar drop the picture makes it look just a little bit ridiculous.

Therefore I lugged the camera down to the basement take a more reasonable picture.

The now-painted stem on the bike, in the trainer room.

I took the picture kneeling, hiding myself from the camera by placing myself behind the head tube of the bike (meaning so I don't appear in the mirror, or the flash in the mirror doesn't drown out the bike). The drops are shown a little more accurately in terms of relative drop.

Of course my kneeling position makes the saddle look like it's pointing up but trust me, it's not. It's level with a little dip in the middle. However the saddle doesn't look like it's towering over the bike like it does in the first picture.

The drops end up in the same spot as they were before, about next to the tire. Due to the compact bars, with their 3 cm shorter reach and 3 cm less drop (meaning it's 3 cm higher), I commissioned Steelman Bikes to make me a stem that would situate the drops properly.

They did and it does.

Yesterday I went on an Expo ride and the unstoppable Heavy D had his helmet cam on. I grabbed a couple stills from there to illustrate that my position on the bike isn't nutty as the stem makes it look.

In the paceline. I'm on the right, in case you didn't realize.

(still from a clip by Heavy D)

I admit I do have a flatter back than many riders out there, but it's because my back hurts if I ride in a more upright position. Another Expo rider, chatting with me on the roll out, theorized that the longer, lower position would reduce the load on my back by transferring it a bit to my hands. That makes sense. My back is definitely my weak point and it can be almost crippling at times. Riding on the drops is almost like therapy for me, easing the discomfort and making things much more manageable as far as my back goes.

Of course it doesn't hurt that it's aerodynamic or anything, but if my back forced me to sit upright that's what I'd be doing instead.

Making an effort following a hard working Jeff.

(still from a clip by Heavy D)

My position isn't radical at all. My arms are a bit bent but the low drops isn't meant to give me straight arms or bent arms or anything like that. It's meant to give me a good position when I'm out of the saddle and my only contact points are the pedals and the drops. I need the drops to be low enough that I can pull up on them and so that the front wheel gets a bit of weight on it. With higher bars (by 3 cm) the front end got really skittery, making the bike hard to control in sprints. My short legs determine the bar height, not any need for mucho drop.

Unfortunately I was behind Heavy D when I made my rare jump efforts on the group ride so there's no shots of me actually going hard out of the saddle from that ride.

You may notice that I have a saddle bag on my bike. I normally carry stuff in my pockets but with a limited amount of pocket real estate on my jacket (one huge pocket, one key pocket), plus the fact that the stuff was moving around too much on me in Florida, pushed me to use my saddle bag again. It's nice - no worrying about it, not as much weight bouncing around in my pocket, and easy access (I tightened a bottle screw just before we rolled out).

So that's the bike. I need to get a second stem for my other bike, so that I have two bikes with the same set up. There are other maintenance things I need to do, mainly gluing tires, but for this year that's the only significant change I'll make as far as the bikes go.