Training!

My Pergoretti Marcelo is almost done!  I changed out the regular 53/39 cransket and square taper bottom bracket for a Campy Centaur Ultra Torque compact double for my upcoming Wintergreen Time Trial and MS150 ride.  Since I had the bottom bracket out, I decided to re-cable and clean everything else.  Today I received the small torque wrench in the mail today so now I can finish installing all of the small bits.  She's a beauty and here she is in all her glory:

Just in case you can't read the small print:

I'm going to put tubular wheels on her.  I snagged a couple of classic Ambrosio Nemesis rims and laced them to a set of older style Campy Record hubs (you can see the rear hub in the last pic above ... gorgeous IMHO).  I plan to take her out to Skyline Drive this weekend.

This is the first time riding sewups or tubulars and I had a time gluing the tires on.  It's not as hard as some have made it out to be but I think next time I'll use the glue tape.  I think I got the tires on reasonably straight.  I'll find out this weekend on the Skyline Drive descent!

I have one more wheel to build then I'm done with that for a while!  I took a wheel building class with Bill Mould through Spokes, Etc. that was excellent.  Bill now has a DVD, Master Wheelbuilding, that is great.  It fills in the holes with exotic lacing patterns, spoke tension, etc.  I've had a lot of fun building the wheels and I find that I prefer the aesthetics of Ambrosio rims and older Campy Record hubs.

I've been in training for my upcoming events and yesterday and today were good days for me.  Yesterday was an endurance day:

• 20 min warm up
• 12 min Z2
• 5 x (1 min Z3, 1 min Z2)
• 5 min Z2, 100RPM cadence
• 5 min Z3, 70RPM
• 5 min Z2, 95RPM
• 5 min Z3, 75RPM
• 5 min Z2, 90RPM
• 5 min Z3, 80RPM
• 5 min Z2 85RPM
• 10 min Z2 w/10sec surge/min
• 10 min Z3
• 10 min Z1

Today was threshold work

• 20 min warm up
• 4 x (5 min just above threshold, 1 min rest between interval)
• 20 min cool down

Thomas Bailey at Velo Works put the plan together for me and I feel very good right now about my progress.  I just need to remember "don't go out too fast".  I blew up early and often last year and had a terrible time.


Oooh!  Best of all, this week the rest of the Rapha kit arrived!  We'll be sporting these on the MS ride:

I'm working on getting some ride specific graphics added and will post pics after that's done.  The quality of these items is amazing!  There are a lot of details that have been looked after and make these well worth the cost.

Well, it's late and I'm off to bed.  I'll let you know how Skyline Drive goes this weekend.  They got 3.5" of snow last night but the weather is supposed to be sunny with highs in the mid 50s!