Change Your Bar Tape

Last week I took my road bike to my friend Mike who does all my wrenching for me. The bike was actually working pretty well but I've been riding it more than I used to and figured I should stay ahead of any major problems by having him check it out and give it a bit of a tune up to keep it in decent working order. The bike is ~10 years old and while I've replaced parts here and there along the way, it's typically in need of some type of maintenance fairly often.

It was a bummer when he sent me a text saying "It's happening again"... followed by a picture of my handlebars that were all corroded and ready to snap. My shifters were in a smilier condition. I guess riding where it's humid and dripping sweat all over your front end all the time isn't exactly good for metal parts. Mike replaced the bars and the shifters for me and then said (just for fun) he applied some pressure to the old bars to see how strong they were. Apparently they snapped under very little force. He said I was just one good pothole away from requiring some extensive dental work. I guess the moral of the story here is, once again, change your bar tape.

Anyway, I didn't have that bike back yet so I took my TT bike to Tantalus today. I've never actually timed myself bottom to top while riding my P3 so I didn't know if my splits would mean much today (On a climb like that would the TT bike be faster? Or slower? I really didn't know), but I figured I'd have power and that might be fun to watch... In the end I think the bike was a non-factor. Splits were right about what I would have expected them to be. I rode up first time just sort of steady. I wouldn't say it was easy but I wasn't pushing either. 35:10/185w. Kinda fun that my warm up pace today was right about the same as my max pace a few months ago! :) 2nd lap I thought I'd shoot for 200w and see what that got me... had avg 201w at the top... 32:55 which was about the same as the fastest one I did 2 weeks ago. Then last lap I was just going for anything over 201w... Managed 205w and that put me at the top in 32:15. Solid effort for sure. I think I'll go back to using my road bike on the climbs going forward b/c I prefer descending on that bike vs the TT bike, but nice to get a gauge for the power and to know that I can climb just fine on the P3.

View of Honolulu and Diamond Head half way down... It was warm and sunny today!

Off the bike I repeated the run 2 miles up/down. Up in 22:39 which is to the second(!) exactly the same as last week, but I looked at it as progress b/c today was hot vs last week was cloudy with a bit of rain... and today my effort felt controlled vs last week it felt quite hard. Similar story on the way down. I was actually 20" faster (14:27) but it felt more relaxed for sure. My climbing was harder today vs last week but I still ran better/easier, so overall I think today represents continued improvement which is always fun and motivating!

I genuinely enjoy this key brick and look forward to it each week now. I think I'll do it 2 more times before Honu, maybe progressing it by extending the run up another mile? We'll see.

What I didn't enjoy was coming home to find that Maia had chewed up all sorts of stuff and spread it around the house... Apparently she doesn't appreciate it when I'm gone all day. In good news she didn't really chew up anything of value, but still, the clean-up wasn't something I was stoked about doing this afternoon. She doesn't know it yet but she earned herself a ticket to being locked out on the patio all day next Tuesday.