A New Level

Since my Senior Project has taken over my life, I figured I might as well post about it instead of writing about my non-existent training schedule.

I'm in charge of the carbon fiber monocoque chassis/fairing for a supermileage car competing in the Shell Eco-Marathon this April. It's gone from Computer Aided Design to molds in 3 weeks, all done 100% by hand. It's taken about 350 man-hours to get this far. With only 3 people to share the load, it's been a busy time. Next step is to prep the molds for the carbon fiber layup and structural foam, then it gets baked in a huge autoclave for a few hours, and voila, a carbon fiber car body!

Computer rendering

Final CAD

Flow analysis

Male plugs

Female molds in the oven

Just like riding a bike...

My cycling training as been abysmally non-existent in the past 6 months. I could easily count the number of times I've ridden my bike since August on my fingers and toes...probably just my fingers. The weather has been nice enough in the past few weeks to melt all the snow off the road, and today the high was 39F; perfect for a ride. I took it easy and felt pretty comfortable. During the ride I tried sprinting and managed to squeeze out 1,314 watts, exactly 17 watts/kg. My powermeter is new so I have no previous data to compare this too, but I'm expecting the numbers to jump up dramatically once I get my butt in gear this spring.

I have a couple swim, bike, and run time trials coming up in the next few weeks...the truth will soon be revealed about how much training I SHOULD have been doing in the past few month.