Today was the first full day of training on my new PCs. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It seems that the longer I rode on fixed cranks the lazier my hamstrings, flexors, etc. got. They're not used to being isolated like that. I was hoping to go out on my standard route of 60 miles and 4300 ft of climbing, but had to cut it short and had to skip a few hills.

The 300K has about 3800 ft of climbing, so I'm not too worried about being able to complete the 300K. But I need to focus on doing more road work for the 400K in 5 weeks and the 600K at the end of April. The 600K has about 10,000 ft of climbing, so I have some work ahead of me.

One thing I noticed after the ride is that my knees aren't sore like they are after a similar ride on fixed cranks. In fixed cranks, especially over time, I tend to start relying on my quads, which creates some kind of imbalance in my knees. So after a ride, there's a small pain under my kneecaps. When I go for a long ride on my PCs, the load is distributed among several muscle groups, which seems to stabilize my knees. All I know is that they don't hurt or ache after a long ride on PCs

One last thing... Today I rode up inside Torrey Pines near La Jolla. Part of the road borders the Torrey Pines golf course where they're holding the Buick Invitational that Tiger Woods is playing in. It was early in the morning so the crowds weren't that big. But it was strange watching all kinds of people standing around watching guys golf. And the applause at golf tournaments is not like any other applause I've heard anywhere else. On balance, I was glad to be on my bike.