After over 8 days off the bike and 7 days of no working out at all I am getting back in the swing. I did two work outs today, one in the gym and the other on the trainer in the basement. The gym workout was a change from my normal gym workout. I have decided to up the intensity and weight after a talk with Kurt and Mike about what I was doing in the gym. I am sure that they would both feel that I am still doing too much work for this time of the year but I am gambling a bit. Really I have made two gambles for next season, one is by moving up to Cat 3 without too much in the way of great results last year, and two is my high volume of work at, and up to this point. I will just have to see if my body can take all the abuse and recover enough to have a good to great year. I do have experience in this type of training you see. I was an elite gymnast for 5 years and got there in only 3 years. I was not a top elite or anything. One year I was 25th in the country on the rings and I would place in the top 3 every once in a while but never on the top. The way I got there was a TON of work and I am hoping that I can do that same type of work on the bike. The big difference other than sports is that I was a teenager not 29 years old. But I have never done what people thought I should or could do. So why start now.

I have been looking up a lot of new bike toy stuff for next year. I have found a great Chinese website that sells inexpensive carbon rims. It may even be the wholesaler for the place I purchased my last set of carbon wheels. I am thinking of buying a set of 30 mm rims to build up a climbing set of wheels. I am also looking to build a disk wheel for my TT bike. I looked at lots of really nice disk wheels but there is no way that I am going to pay $800 at the least for a wheel that I wont use but 4-5 times a year. I really like building my own stuff and building a set of wheels is the last frontier for me. I know how to true wheels, and I have replaced spokes and nipples on wheels before but never purchased everything separate and then put together on my own. It is said that the mark of a true mechanic is a person who can build wheels. Soooo I really need to get on that.

Just last weekend I put a new bottom bracket on my road and TT bikes. I wanted to make my TT bike able to use my Quarq power meter so I needed to change the BB from a Shimano to GXP BB. I also needed to order an Italian threaded BB for the Pinorello. I had put a lot of miles into the original one that came with the bike and it was starting to get a little slack. Like most of my bike work lately things did not go smoothly. The BB of my TT was a mountain bike BB, they are really the same I just don't use the extra spacers that come with it. The thing that I think made things a little tough was at Italian BB is 70mm wide while and English BB is 68mm. So there was some slack in the cranks. I would need a 2mm spacer, I don't really have those laying around and I hate not having what I need right away so I stared looking at my pile of crap I have in my shop. I did not have to look far just at the old BB I just removed from my road bike. There is a spacer that is on the non drive side that has a little rubbery plastic molded onto it. I first tried to install the cranks with this extra spacer as is but it was just a little to thick. I used my dremmel tool and a grinding bit to grind off the plastic. This was all that was needed to do the trick. Then I had to install the crank on my road bike. Thought this was going to be easy as pie as I had been riding with these cranks on my bike for months with no problem. Well there was a problem. After torquing the cranks to the prescribed 130 in pounds there was still play in the crank. I found another very slim spacer, maybe .5mm and tried to use that to help with the play but it didn't help. I then said F it and used a normal allen wrench to torque the crank all the way down. That didn't work either, it bound the bottom bracket and made it tough to turn. Feeling very dejected and confused I started to play with my torque wrench a little more. I turned out out that my wrench needed to be turned up to 145 in pounds and then it was snug and free moving. I didn't try it on the TT bike but I will when I have the itch to play with my bikes again.