146.4, 142.8, 146.2, 144.4, 140.8

So much of cycling is about numbers, or can be about numbers, if you are trying to do things scientifically and optimize everything (as I am, and as I try to do)

Don't get me wrong, I love the whoosh in my hair, and the little fright that comes from tipping into a corner at full speed, as well as just in general being outside a lot. I like not using my car to commute whenever possible. But I also like charts and graphs.

The numbers in the title are what happens when you have a thing for riding bicycles in 100 degree temperatures:

146.4 - weight Sat morning
142.8 - weight Sat afternoon, post race, and after 90oz of fluids
146.2 - weight Sat night, mostly recharged (whew)
144.4 - weight Sun morning after making the earth just that bit more humid while sleeping
140.8 - weight Sun afternoon, post ride, and after 140oz of fluids near as I can tell

There's just over 15 ounces of water in a pound. So apparently I'm 80 or so ounces of water away from being rehydrated. It's going to be a long evening.

And that despite every Cat 2 on Team Oakland collectively deciding we were cooked and bailing out to take the BART train home :-) (edit: Maury actually toughed it out and rode home, chapeau, sir)

The cooler air coming in tonight will be very welcome...

In other news, I have been racing some - I've done two races now, both of which were P12 crits (okay, one was P123). Both worked out roughly the same - I was strong enough and good enough at bike handling and pack positioning to be in the right spot when the winning moves happened, and I was mentally aware enough to know they were the right moves, but I didn't have the extra capacity, so I sat in the field. Then the field rolled around until the end came, and I could get in position for the pack sprint but not without my legs starting to cramp a bit.

Why cramping? Good question. My current thesis is that my training bands were way too low (they were, 20% - LT is 256W now instead of 210W from April) so I hadn't trained muscular endurance enough. I've changed that and we'll see in two or three weeks whether things have improved when I toe the line again. It's also possibly diet but in a 60-minute race I think that's pretty easy to discount, though if in 4 weeks I haven't gotten past cramping, I'll work on diet.

That's the haps. Hope everyone has avoided melting