Tuesdays - This & That

The weekend came and went in the blink of an eye and I continued my streak of non riding which I currently don't have a huge issue with, although after taking a look at my year in review today I wish I had stayed with my cyclocross schedule I had set out.

Michelle showed up on Thursday evening unannoucned which was a welcome surprise and since I didn't really have any plans of riding I was able to adapt as the weekend went on. Saturday was spent with an incredible day in Chattanooga with un-Fall-like-weather that encouraged us to spend the entire day outside. The downtown/river area of Chattanooga is just so neat with three bikes shops (we visited all three of course), local art galleries, and great restaurants.

Sunday was productive including fixing the wobble in my Thule T2 rack from a hitch extension to clear my spare tire and doing some much needed cleaning. First up in desperate need for a cleaning was the cassette on my road bike which I had pulled off recently when switching wheels on the cross bike. I used a diluted "Mr. Green" because Wal-Mart didn't carry Simple Green, and let the cassette soak in it for about 20 minutes before taking the brush to it.

"Mr. Green" Bath (Dispose of this stuff properly).

A firm bristle brush.

Nice clean cassette when all was said and done, I let it air dry for a few days because I'm lacking an air hose.

Since I was in the cleaning mood I decided I would investigate the pair of Candy pedals I had been riding on my SS bike for a while, which ultimately caused some damage to my crank. They were practically new when I used them for the Fools Gold 50, and haven't seemed the same since, however I understand why.

Both felt pretty rough.

As I was unscrewing the end cap the dirt began falling out.

A 6mm wrench is needed to remove the nut axle nut.

Crank Brothers has a real nice video up in the tech section on their site that goes through rebuilding a set of their pedals. I didn't buy one of their rebuild kits but I wanted to take it apart and see how bad the damage was from that miserable day. As I expected I found lots of dried up mud inside the pedals, mainly on the threads of the cap but some also made its way down onto the outer bearing. The bearing didn't feel like total crap, just a little like crap. I cleaned them out and greased the axle's before re-assembling them, the non-drive-side pedal turned out great but the drive-side still feels really rough, I may need to purchase a rebuild kit.

I also decided I would retape my bars as the Fizik tape has finally begun wearing through:

Really like this tape, it's good stuff.

Eventually I got around to cooking some dinner:

And yes I did eat more then asparagus, but this was the photo I took.

Yesterday I got the bright idea I would go to the gym and see if I could remember how the whole "running" thing is supposed to go because I had the brilliant idea to run a 10k Turkey Trot next Thursday. I've decided I was going to see if I could still run 6.2, which I knew I could but wanted to see how it would feel. Around 3 I wasn't considerably happy, nor again at 5, but at 5.5 I decided to increase my speed each minute for the remainder of the work out. A total time of 55:14, or 8:57 a mile, not too shabby considering my last run was in June.

This morning while at work I decided it was time to commit and sign up for the 10k.


It's the same run we did last year, which was pretty fun but I'm not too sure I can match the 47:16 I ran last year. So with that a short 5k run this evening again at the gym to prevent muscle soreness.