X's and Oh's.....

To my single speed(ing) friends...

You got me convinced. I bit the bullet and went with the "less gears is better mantra". That's right, I'm not racing a 3x9, 27 speed mountain bike combination this year. I've made a change for the lessor.....

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You didn't really expect me to go whole hog with this single speed idea, did you?

XX = 20 gears, seven less than before. It's a start...

Lastly, ever notice how many X's go into a bike? Take the above and add the following....

Otherwise training is going well, coming off a great 3 week block of training. With it however the downfall of intense training, a compromised immune system. And Sunday.. I contracted a major cold. Not exactly feeling like a million bucks right now. It's a recovery week in the training schedule so that's favorable but doesn't bode well for making a run at the first race in the WORS series next Sunday.

Upping the game....

Pretty exciting stuff coming out technologically on the training front. When it came to training with "power" - measuring the actual volume of work produced when cycling. I like to think in terms of weight lifting -- a way to measure how much weight and for how long it can be lifted. The more weight one can lift or the more times one can lift a given weight the stronger the rider.

Predominately there's been only a couple ways of tapping into this kind of training device. A company called SRM which putts a power measuring device near the cranks & chainrings of a bike. And Cyclops/PowerTap -- a system which is located in the rear wheel hub.

But slowly more options are becoming available. One company Quarq has come out with a crank/spider driven power measuring device called CinQo. Very nice in that if you have different bikes with the same spider/crank setup it's a relatively quick & easy move from one bike to another. Drawback.... is the chainring compatibility is for larger road bike chainring setups and not MT Bike systems yet. However perhaps later in 2010 or early 2011 some of those options will be available.

The other and perhaps newest device is called Vector by a company called MetriGear. It's still in beta testing and has a bit to go before being available to the general public -- but this device fits inside the pedal spindle -- if they can get this technology to work reliably it could be a real game changer. Power training as portable as moving your pedals from one bike to the next....

I'll try to get links up later.... Good stuff!