POTATOEE

My dad and I are doing a little trainer challenge this winter that we've dubbed POTATOEE (Pedaling Our Trainers And Tracing Our Efforts East). We borrowed this idea from the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society. Our route takes us from Mattawan, MI (where my dad lives) to Cockeysville, MD (where my brother lives). Since the weather has been so dry here, we're also going to count real road/trail miles also.

My dad made up a cool spreadsheet to track our mileage. It puts a little circle on the map showing where we are.

Even though I'm not planning on riding the trainer too much in January, I decided that I should at least get "on the board". Dad put in 13 miles on January 1, and I suspect more since then. So, last night, I put in a movie I got for Christmas, Transition, and rode the trainer for an hour. That ended up being 14 miles on the nose, so I'm past Kalamazoo now, and maybe just a little bit ahead of Dad. I'll be on the trainer again tonight working on pedaling technique.

Transition turned out to be a pretty cool movie. It follows a group of top cyclocross racers through their season. The interviews are pretty entertaining and there's lots of good race footage.

I'm still doing the contrast shower thing. I haven't been sore since I started doing it and my legs have felt good every day, but again, I'm not sure that I'm training hard enough right now that I'd be sore anyway. I am finally starting to build up a little tolerance to the cold water. When I started, it was all I could do to stand in the cold water for 30 seconds. Last night and this morning it didn't feel so bad and I let the cold water run for about 45 seconds. I'll probably try to work up to a full minute.