Road Fixie

Since the Kusatsu Hill Climb is coming up fast I figured I better ramp up my effort and start the final micro-cycle of training. Today went out for a morning ‘hiki’ or tire pull. This time I added more weight and gear and did the whole length standing – but never going out of Zone 3 (about 140 for me). This builds up a very deep, slow twitch ‘burn’ but never really gets into LAT or max power threshold. Great for shedding some extra fat and getting comfy with a long slow grind up a hill at 70% or so max power.

Tonite will be the gym. Then tomorrow I get some intervals and high cardio work done. Friday is light recovery , then Sat will do a CTF (Climb To Fail) ride hopefully at least 1400 – 1500 m. Sunday , light recovery then the same pattern all next week as well. Then slack the power rides and just focus on interval sets until 3 day before the event.

Nice morning training ride and biz meeting. The weather has rounded the corner and 6.30 am starts finally possible again (at least to me-who-hates-the-cold) Another VC2 shakedown cruise down the Arakawa which turned into an increasing TT, then finally a 2500m dash for the finish. Awesome work out! Head wind all the way back gave us another workout – great times! Had a flat – and even though had to walk to find someone with a pump – it turned out for the best as we met a couple other oyajisan riders doing their morning constituitionals – one of them had an ancient Silca – I was afraid to use it – and it didn’t work anyway as the leather cup had long since deteriorated. The other had a more modern pump, but upon clipping it to the stem it virtually fell apart. Neither of the guys could remember when they’d ever actually used the pumps!! Haha. Luckily as this is the infamous ‘Yamada san Hiki Strip’ A pump is stashed by the bathroom – and sure enough we could use it to pump. Back on the road, the god of all cycling smiles again and sure enough , here comes Yamada san, TAN NO LESS, dragging 2 tires. Double Tire Hiki-fu, nice pump, mild headwind and a mini sprint – can’t get much better than that my boys!

Oh yeah – and a very sneak peak at the infamous ‘Chub 88′ riding on the very <not> stealth Durca Durca.

Our favorite Roadfixie team member, James Ferrer was spotted at the Taiwan Cinelli Peace Ride and Race. Riding the trusty Durca Durca he dominated to a 1st and 2nd place finish! Yeah!

Click here for more on this cool event.

Well, yours truly resides in Japan so it was a no-brainer to participate in this ride. I rode the trusty titanium Toge Warrior and was also happy to see another Ti rider at the event, on a fixie! Please do YOUR PART and support your favorite charity in helping out Japan. We really need it! Many communities are utterly devastated and hundreds of thousands of people are homeless having LOST EVERYTHING. Let’s put the brotherhood and sisterhood of the wheel to work – just like RAPHA is doing!

I challenged all my cycling friends to post up their best Hasselhoff Karaoke song. You gotta do a cover of the Hoff doing a cover and I’ll donate 100yen for each post.  Out of my own pocket until I , well, can’t donate anymore!

Here’s the first by HFC Mike! YEAH!