I’m not sure if all of you realize it, but Swiftwick socks are, quite possibly, the best cycling socks ever invented. They have some compression to them, so they stay in place, they dry quickly, and they’re very durable. I wear the Performance Fives in the summer (they have a wide variety of styles and cuff lengths- just remember, the “four” length is the shortest acceptable cuff for cycling use. It’s the rules).
Side note- also, as part of “The Rules,” you should always wear the same length sock in order to cultivate a sharp summer tan line. Since Swiftwicks stay in place so well, they’re the best chance you have for creating lines to match the ones on your thighs and arms.

Anyway, I wear white socks on the road and black socks on the trail. However, in typical “you could mess up a crowbar” fashion, I got chain grease stains on my white socks. Not pro at all.

Washing- even with a normal laundry pre-treater, didn’t budge the grease. I got an idea while I was washing bikes, though. I used ProGold Degreaser+Wash as a pretreater before I washed them, and, just like the chain on my bike…

Magic.

In other road-related news, I had an underwhelming road ride fail yesterday. I set out around 8:15 in the morning with the ambition of riding 5 hours in a heat advisory by breaking the ride up into two loops with a break in the middle to cool off and refill my bottles with ice water. Unfortunately, from the first hour on, I basically became less and less able to produce any sort of power.
I did sprint very briefly when a driver right-hooked me as she turned into a parking lot for a closed down mall (she was using it to cut through to get to the nearby interstate on-ramp). If I’d not locked up my brakes, we would have hit each other. Unlike my previous post-rouge roubaix-wreck close calls that sent me cowering in the bushes in a heap of tears, this time something snapped. I sprinted after her, across the parking lot, with every intention of causing damage to her car and her person, should I catch her. She realized that she was in trouble and floored it- wailing her car over the multitude of speed bumps across the lot and turning out wildly into traffic on the other side. I was left panting on the other side of the lot like one of the angry dogs that comes screaming out of a junky house trailer  yard with all intentions of catching and destroying both you and your bike.

I digress.

The heat destroyed me yesterday. With good reason-

 

A heat index of 119 is nothing to eff with. There’s nothing you can do to train outdoors as usual in that sort of condition- no amount of acclimatization, hydration, or toughness can prevent you from overheating when it’s like that because the humidity prevents sweat from evaporating off of your body, thus negating your body’s “go to” method of cooling during physical activity. So, since that sort of weather pattern is a summertime staple, I’ll be setting the trainer & fan up in the living room soon. My strategy from last summer is to do the lower intensity volume on the road then hop on the trainer as soon as I get home and polish off some intervals. It’s not the most fun way to train, but the subtropical climate is balanced out by being able to train outside for a majority of winter- something that people further north do less of because of similarly extreme winter weather. I’ll take extreme heat any day over that stuff.

ADDENDUM:

(NSFW language)

In better training news, on Tuesday I rode my singlespeed for the first time in a while. It’s not hard to fall in love with that bike again after taking a bit of a hiatus to race the geared bike for everything so far this season. The Niner Air 9 CYA frame is killer stiff. After riding the slightly toned-down RDO frame for a while, it’s like getting back into your track day-only car when your daily driver is already a Corvette. I’m excited to one-gear it up & down some mountains in the near future.