Listening

I went out to the track to ride last night. There were a couple interesting things:

Nasal breathing - What a difference a week makes! Last week, I could hardly get through the warmup without breathing through my mouth. Last night, I only had to breathe through my mouth twice. The first time, I was riding by myself and went a little too hard into the wind. The second time was in a practice race, just before I got dropped.

The other thing I noticed was how much more I ended up paying attention to my gearing, position on the bike, etc while I was breathing through my nose. Since wasting energy makes breathing more difficult pretty quickly, I found myself trying to maximize my efficiency whenever possible.

Practice race - After doing some very good group riding drills (the drills were good... not necessarily the group!), we did a short practice race. Gearing was restricted for the race, meaning it was much more important to hold on to wheels.

Like I mentioned above, I was able to maintain my nasal breathing for the first two laps. We weren't going too hard, but it was hard enough that I was a little surprised that I could maintain my breathing. At one point, while we were in a double paceline, I could hear the person next to me breathing hard, while I was still breathing, more-or-less easily, through my nose.

For the first couple laps, I also felt like I did a good job of riding with the group. I seemed to do better than usual holding on to wheels, drafting, and moving up. In particular, there were a few times where I saw a gap opening a few riders ahead of me and I was able to move up into it. In the past, it seemed like I usually wasn't looking far enough ahead to notice this. I've found that not noticing a gap opening ahead is a good way to get dropped!

The pace kicked up a bit during the 3rd lap; this is when I needed to switch back to mouth breathing. I was still with the group, but I was working harder than I wanted to, so I pulled off. I waited for another rider that had already been dropped, and we worked together to finish the race.

In general, it was a good ride for me again. One of the things I'm noticing this year, since I've been focused about building skills rather than fitness, is that my rides are generally more fun and I finish them feeling good about what I've done.

Trail Ups and Downs

I got out yesterday morning for my first trail ride in a long time. I rode at my "home trail", Pontiac Lake. There were a few positive and a few negative things for the day:

Positives:
+ My low-speed balance and low-speed handling skills seemed quite good. I've been keeping up with my trackstand and slow-riding practice, so this isn't too surprising.

+ Granted, there's nothing too big at PLRA, but my drops were all very smooth.

+ The Kenda Small Block 8 tire that I started using on the rear seems to be working OK. I dropped pressure from 28 to 25 psi for this ride, and it seemed to help the tire hook up better. I didn't feel any of the high-speed squirmy-ness that I noticed when I ran my Nevegal that low. I also felt like the SB8 rolled noticeably faster than the Nevegal.

+ I had some really nice cornering moments near the end of the ride. I need to keep working on doing the skill correctly; this should help me build confidence.

+ I'm not quite as out-of-shape as I thought, but I'm still not in racing shape. I didn't push hard at all, and my lap time was about 10 minutes slower than normal. This includes a few minutes spent crawling through and over a few downed trees on the trail. But I felt a little more fit than I expected.

Negatives:
- I was really rusty early in the ride which led to some bad moments and generally poor riding. This seemed to get better as the ride went on.

- Cornering on the dirt is not the same as cornering on pavement. While my (pavement) cornering practice has helped me, I think I need to start also practicing on the dirt to get used to the tires slipping a little more.

- I need to keep working on looking ahead. Things work so much better when I do that.

By the time it was over, I felt pretty good about my ride. As I ride the trails a little more now, I should get more comfortable and faster.


Also, I tried nasal breathing again on my way out to the trail. There was a pretty stiff headwind, and it was really hard to keep a reasonable pace while also only breathing through my nose. I eventually abandoned it again so I could ride more normally. Still, I think there may be something to this.

I have pretty much adjusted to only breathing through my nose throughout the day. At first, even doing that was a little challenging. Things would be going fine, then I'd suddenly feel like I needed to open my mouth to take in (or blow out?) a gulp of air. Now, I'm finding what I can only describe as a feeling of security when I'm aware of my breathing.

Return to Training

I got going on my training again last night. I went out to the track with the club. It seemed like there were a lot more people there than I remember; I think the club has become much more popular the past couple years than it was when I joined. A lot of my cyclocross racing friends were there, so it was nice to see those people.

My plan was to take it pretty easy and mainly work on just being relaxed and riding smoothly with the group. It was basically a success, I kept myself to only two hard (but short) efforts.

I did a nice, easy, long warmup. I'd been breathing through my nose all day; it was kind of an interesting experience, a few times I felt like I just needed to open my mouth and take a big gulp of air. Breathing through the nose worked OK on the bike, until I tried to increase the intensity at all. Even climbing up the little hill at the track at a moderate pace was enough to put me into some breathing difficulty. I largely abandoned the nasal breathing after my warmup, but I want to keep experimenting with it.

I joined the second fastest group for the formal riding. We mainly practiced just keeping in line while the leaders accelerated and slowed a little. It was good for me to do this a little. Holding a wheel and keeping gaps from opening is something I need to work on.

I thought I could feel a difference from my work this Spring on riding relaxed and working on cornering. While in the group, my shoulders stayed relaxed and I kept a nice bend in my arms the whole time. I also felt more comfortable cornering in the group. We weren't going too fast, but, since I'd been working on tighter and faster corners in practice, I felt confident with what we were doing.

Anyway, it was a good ride. My knees felt fine during the ride and afterward. So, it looks like I'm off to a good start.

Running Followups

I found some follow up articles to the one I posted some time ago about barefoot running, nasal breathing, etc.

The original
Follow-up 1 (More on barefoot running, nasal breathing, aerobic training)
Follow-up 2 (running economy)
Follow-up 3 (illness and injury)

It's always interesting to go back and read something again after some time has passed. Originally, I was mostly interested in the barefoot running part. This time, the sections about nasal breathing and relaxation caught my attention more.

The new articles are good too. I particularly like the third one about injury. He makes the point that injuries don't happen randomly; if you're injured, there's a reason for it. You need to find the reason, and then make some change to fix it. This has been my experience with cycling too. If I get hurt (usually a knee thing), then there's usually some mechanical reason for it. Trying to work around it, or patch the symptoms, just usually doesn't work in the long-term.


Speaking of being out of whack... yesterday was brutal. I couldn't fall asleep until about 2:30am on Sunday night, so I was really dragging all day yesterday. Hopefully that will be the worst of my jet lag. Sleeping was no problem last night since I was so tired.

Korea and Tubulars

I got back from my trip to Korea yesterday. Everything went pretty well, but I've been pretty tired for most of the day. I got a little exercise in while I was gone, mostly on the step machine. It's always interesting to go to public gyms, and gyms in Korea are no different. I slept like a rock last night (for 12 hours), but I'm not optimistic about tonight, we'll see.

My E-bay tubular wheels and tires came in while I was gone. They look like they're in pretty good shape, but I'm not sure about the gluing job. There seems to be a lot of extra glue on the rims; it looks a little bad, but I'm not sure it's really a problem.

Greatest Mountain Biker Ever...

...or, Maybe I Should Start Wearing Pads.

So, I went out to ride the pump track at Stony Creek today. They opened a "skills park" last summer, with a pump track, wooden stunts, etc. I swung by once last year to check it out (right before the cross-country race), but I never got around to riding it. When I visited last Fall, there was nobody there.

I was a little surprised by what I saw today. Lots of families there with smallish kids (and some young teenagers). There was only one person on the pump track, a really little kid (5 or 6 years old maybe). After I started riding, one more kid joined, maybe he was 12 or 13. It was a big enough track that everything was OK, once I explained to the little kid that I would be careful and wouldn't run into him.

Riding the pump track was interesting. It was apparent after a few laps that keeping my saddle in the typical XC position just wasn't going to work for me. I dropped it as far as it would go, and that helped considerably. My only incident was early, I messed up one of the bermed turns (I think I was leaned over too far for where I was on the berm; had I been riding it higher, I probably would have been fine), my tires slid out and up the berm, and down I went. It seemed like the kids were right there, and they made sure I was OK. The 5-year old then showed me all of his safety equipment (knee, elbow, shoulder, chest pads). We agreed that he was obviously much safer than me. He said that he needed to be safer because "I need to live longer than you". Fair enough.

One thing that I always read about riding pump tracks was that it was surprisingly hard on the cardiovascular system. I can now say that this is true. I had to stop every once in a while and catch my breath and let my legs rest. One of the times I was resting, a woman stopped by with her family and said "it really doesn't look that difficult." (Maybe I forgot to mention that most of the families were by the bigger stunts. Not that they were really riding them, but that's where they were.) I tried to explain (with my leg bleeding) that the pump track really isn't difficult to ride, and that the point is to ride it without pedaling, and that makes it hard. I'm not sure she believed me.

So, near the end, the little kid told me I was "the best mountain biker ever." That's going up on the board! ;)

Anyway, I had a good time out there. The pump track was cool. I'm not sure exactly what I learned, but it does make you think about riding with your upper and lower body separated. I had some good moments where my timing was good and I was going fast, and then moments where I felt pretty uncoordinated. I'll try to go back again.

I had wanted to ride the XC trails a little bit more than I did after my pump track session, but my bike was ghost-shifting badly, so it would have been an exercise in frustration to continue. I'm trying out a new rear tire (Kenda Small Block 8) this year. It makes the bike noticeably looser, but I'm not sure that's necessarily a bad thing. I want to experiment with the tire pressure a bit more and ride it a bit more before I make a judgement about it.

About the pads... right now, both of my knees and both of my elbows are scraped up. Definitely the fall on the pavement did more damage than the fall on the dirt, but still. Both times I've crashed while "practicing", so maybe pads for practicing aren't a bad idea. It might help me feel OK about continuing to push, and keep me intact when I make the inevitable learning mistakes.

BMX Kids

I've been fighting off a cold this past week. Some of the days I felt good, but other days I had a sore throat and runny nose. I didn't feel great yesterday morning, but I did want to get out and ride. I decided just to do an easy spin; I headed over to Waterford Oaks, where, if nothing else, I usually have the park to myself.

Apparently, BMX season has just started, and there were a bunch of kids out at the track. I stopped and watched for a few minutes. They hadn't started racing yet; just warming up I think. There was a wide variety of skill level out there. I had a good view of the first two rollers; some kids just got over them however they could, others were pumping the rollers, and at least one kid manualed the rollers (which, as I understand it, is the correct technique). It was obvious that pumping was faster than just riding, and manualing was faster than pumping. It was pretty interesting and fun to watch.

After that, I spent some time working on my own riding skills. I did some cornering work again in the parking lot; I'm definitely getting better and more consistent. Then I decided to work on my bunnyhopping progression. The Lopes/McCormack book suggests that you learn to balance a sitting wheelie before moving on (I think, so you learn where the balance point is). I'll admit, I never got wheelies down as a kid. Sure I could pop my wheel up, but I couldn't keep it there. Yesterday, I made some pretty good progress. I got to where I could balance it for at least a few pedal strokes, but I think I still wasn't leaning as far back as I needed to. I practiced this on a grassy field, just in case I did lean back too far.

What's pumping you say? Watch the first half of this video...



While I'm posting videos, I might as well post this one. The recent time trial at Pontiac Lake, my "home" trail. Too bad I couldn't race it this year.



Good post on Joe Friel's blog about pacing for a time trial.

Bunnyhops and Endo's

I rode again on Sunday; I basically did the same stuff that I did on Saturday, except for the crashing. It didn't go nearly as well as Saturday. Mainly, my bunnyhop practice wasn't so good.

On Saturday, I worked through the progression pretty thoroughly. I started with wheelies, then lifting the rear wheel, and then the bunnyhop. On Sunday, I sort of rushed through the first two steps and went straight to hopping. It didn't work so well. My timing was off, and maybe I was overemphasizing the rear wheel lift. Anyway, the result was that my front wheel wasn't really getting up enough... I nearly endo'd over the curb, twice. I definitely need more practice.

I think my knee is doing well. It's a little hard to tell now because it's sore from crashing on Saturday. But, it's a different kind of sore. I'm going to Korea next week for work; I'll do a few more easy rides before then and I'll start training in earnest when I get back. This hasn't been a fun process, but it does seem to be working. I really haven't had any major setbacks.

A couple of other random things:

- So, it turns out that my road frame got damaged in shipment on the way back from Georgia. The head tube is pretty badly dented. I did ensure it, and I'm going through the process of resolving it with UPS. They've been pretty good to deal with so far, but we're not finished yet. I haven't decided what I'll do yet, if I'll try to repair it (it's a steel frame) or do something else.

- I just won an Ebay auction for tubular wheels and tires for my 'cross bike. They should show up while I'm in Korea. The tires aren't my first choice, but I'm hoping I can get through this season on them.

First Crash of the Year

Well, I had my first crash of the year today... it was a beaut! I was doing my tight (slow) figure-8 drill in a parking lot, got too close to a curb, decided to grab a handful of front brake while leaned way over (oops!), which had the predictable result of tucking the front wheel under and putting me on the ground. It put a hole in my knee-warmer, scraped up my knee, got road rash on the elbow, and messed up my new pair of gloves. Quite a bit of bodily damage for such a low-speed fall.

Otherwise, I had a great ride. I'm still babying my knee, and it felt good... aside from falling on it. Cornering practice was good again. I also spent some time working on bunnyhopping. Just hopping over lines in the parking lot, curbs, little features on the trail, etc. I made some noticeable improvement, but I'm still inconsistent. I a few really nice hops over the curb though... totally smooth landings.

That is the plan for this year. Keep working on the basics. I can see where this focused practice on the basics will improve my riding. It should be fun to see how I progress.

Who Wins Races?

Before hockey last night, I was working on my bike and watching Battlestar Galactica. It was an episode where one of the pilots had to do some nearly impossible mission (which he accomplished, of course), and there was a big celebration when he got back.

So, on my drive down to hockey last night (my last skate of the year, by the way), I got to thinking about what makes something like that possible. How do you achieve a peak performance? How do you win a bike race? Assuming we don't consider cheating or luck, I think it comes down to preparation. Not just physical preparation, but mental, equipment, strategic/tactical... everything. You give yourself the best chance to win by being prepared in all facets.

I've been thinking lately about how I achieved my best race results. Certainly, I was usually reasonably fit, but there are other trends. One is that I have gotten all of my best results when I've gone out hard early and have been at or near the front for awhile. The second trend is that, in my better races, I'm usually focused outward, watching about how the race is unfolding, thinking about what my moves are going to be, etc, rather than focused inward, thinking about my pace or how much I'm hurting. Granted, there is some link between them, if you're not fit, you won't be able to get to the front (or stay there long). This may also lead to you riding by yourself, in which case it's hard to focus externally. Anyway...

I was thinking about one race in particular, Munson 2007. This was an interesting race for me, tactically. I got a good start and made a group of 4 that were well off the front. I got dropped by this group after one lap, and I ended up riding most of the second lap by myself. Eventually I got caught by Mark C, who I worked with for a little while. This gave me a chance to recover a little, and I eventually burned Mark off my wheel and rode in for 4th place.

In this race, it didn't turn out to matter, but here is the question: "When I got dropped by the front group, should I have sat up and waited to be caught by Mark (and maybe John O)?" I think, most of the time, the answer is "yes", especially if there had been more than one or two in the group behind me. Since it was a windy day, I burned a lot of energy on lap 2 riding by myself. It also happened early enough in the race that it would be tough to stay away. So, I would have been better off sharing the work in a group. Coincidently, I just read a race report from Mike Simonson where he was in a similar situation, and he did drop back.

I guess my point is that it's important to prepare for races in other ways besides just getting your fitness dialed. I think a big part of it needs to be planning what you will do in certain situations. As with the example above, your first instinct may be wrong, and it might pay off to have considered the situation beforehand.

More Cornering Thoughts

I rode outside again on Saturday, basically the same ride as Thursday. My knee still didn't feel perfect, but it was improved over Thursday, so I feel like I'm still on track. I'm still not planning to do anything hard on the bike for another week and a half.

Anyway, I spent more time working on my cornering. In the parking lot, I worked on initiating the turn by counter-directional steering. It seems to work pretty well, and I got pretty comfortable with it by the time I was done. I like that it forces the bike to lean, and that it doesn't put much weight on the handlebars. I think this parking lot cornering practice has been pretty effective.

The second thing I noticed was out on the trail. There's a slightly off-camber right hand corner that follows a little descent. Nothing too extreme, but I feel that I need to brake going down the hill. These are the kind of corners that I tend to have trouble with when I ride. Saturday, I discovered one reason why. I was going down the hill after having been brakes at the top, so my cranks were level (which, I think, is the proper position for braking and descending). When I got ready to turn, I felt that familiar bound up feeling that I sometimes do, and I ended up not taking the corner very well. What I realized later was that I'd never moved my feet to the 6-12 position, so my body wasn't in a comfortable cornering position. I repeated the hill a little later, got my feet in the correct position before I turned, and went though the corner much more smoothly.

What I'm working toward here is a little cornering sequence. Obviously, mountain biking is pretty variable, so you don't need to do everything for every corner. For example, there are times when I do prefer to corner with my cranks level, like during a quick sequence of open corners. In general though, my sequence might be something like:

1. Look at entry
2. Pedals to 6-12
3. Look at apex
4. Initiate turn (push inside hand forward)
5. Weight outside pedal, point hips into turn
6. Look at exit

Obviously, if you think about each steps while you're doing it, the corner will be over before you get through the list. But I think it's helpful for review and for practice. The way I see it, you need to have some idea what you're trying to get your body (and bike) to do before you can do it... with any consistency at least.

On the Trails Again

The weather was great last night, so I got outside for my ride. I've been a little hesitant to ride outside while my knee is recovering because I have a tendency to ride too hard. I do a much better job of controlling my effort on the trainer.

Anyway, I rode my 'cross bike over to Waterford Oaks (my mountain bike and road bike are still in pieces, and I won't be riding my singlespeed for a while). I rode on the trails a little bit. It was nice to get out on the dirt, even if the trails are pretty tame. I also practiced cornering for a while in one of the parking lots there.

My knee didn't feel perfect this time, but it wasn't painful either. I'm not going to ride today, but I'll ride Saturday again. Hopefully I can transition smoothly to riding longer (and outside) again.

A couple of observations from last night's ride:

1. I was trying to focus on staying relaxed. In particular, to keep my shoulders down (not hunched up) and arms loose. I noticed that keeping my shoulders down automatically puts my arms in a nice bent position. This feels good on the bike, but seems to have resulted in some weird chest/back soreness.

2. Looking ahead in corners: I need to remember to look ahead to the corner entry, apex and exit. I have a tendency to focus on whatever is to the outside of a corner, which is not helpful. Looking through the corner to the exit also seems to reduce perceived speed. I think that remembering to look at the sequence is more useful than just thinking about "looking ahead".

3. Turn initiation: I was playing around with a few different ways to initiate a turn. The one that felt the best was to initiate the turn by pressing down with the inside hand. I liked it because it easily leaned the bike and automatically put pressure on outside pedal. I think that this isn't a good technique though. I felt like I was putting too much pressure on the handlebars, and, if I'm going to put pressure on the bars, I want it on the outside, not the inside.

I also tried initiating the turn by sort of rolling my outside hand into the corner. This created a better condition at the handlebars, but I didn't feel like it was very purposeful motion. The last thing I tried was the countersteering method: pushing the inside hand forward to turn the front wheel out of the turn, which then causes the bike to lean into the turn. I was a little hesitant about this, it just doesn't feel like it's a good idea to turn the bars the opposite way that you want to go. I was more inconsistent with this method, but when I did get it right, the bike really turned for me.

I'm obviously overthinking this way too much right now, but that's how I am. Once I figure out what I really want to do and start drilling it, it will start to become automatic and I won't have to think about it so much.

A couple more pictures from my phone...

Knee Progress

My knee recovery is coming along nicely. It has felt perfect on my past 3 rides. Beginning with my next ride tomorrow, I'm going to start slowly ramping up the volume again. I'll still be keeping the intensity low for a couple more weeks.

I've been having a little trouble finding motivation to train lately. With my knee problem, I feel like I haven't been training enough to keep good "training inertia". I'm hoping that will get better as I start extending my rides and getting outside again.

Tonight was an off-night for riding. I ended up shooting baskets in the driveway for about 40 minutes. It was fun to get outside and do something different.

Use It!

One of the lines I really like in "Sport Psychology for Cyclists" is that when adversity pops up, you can let it use you, or you can use it. I've been thinking about how I can use my knee problem. (By the way, my knee has been feeling very good lately.)

First, I've been spending more time visualizing mountain bike situations. Two things have surprised me so far: one, my visualized pedal stroke on the mountain bike is much more choppy than when I visualize myself riding on the road. So, I need to work to clean that up. Two, I can't immediately bring up a clear mental image of how I want to go through corners on the trail. This probably explains why I'm inconsistent (at best) in reality. So, I'm working on my cornering when I visualize now.

Second, I've been reviewing my training plan, to make sure I understand how and why I got hurt, and to make sure it's really what I should be doing. As I've posted before, I'm pretty sure I know how I got hurt and how I can avoid it in the future. The question about the appropriateness of my training plan turned out to be more interesting.

I've written many times before about how much I think my race results would improve if I were a better bike handler. I've also written more recently about how I'm not in "race shape" for enough races. I took a look at my original Morris-based training plan relative to these two objectives. Judging from my own planning, and other people's experiences with the Morris plan, I realized that I'd be spending a lot of time on the trainer doing intervals. Is this really going to help me improve my bike handling? Will this get me into race shape?

For the bike handling thing: no, my original training plan would probably not have done much to improve my bike handling. For years, I've said that this is something I need to improve, and my training plan doesn't address it! That alone is probably reason to change.

As for the race shape thing: I'm sure my original plan would improved my fitness. I'm starting to think though, especially for someone with very limited time, that the intense training needs to be more race-specific. What if, instead of doing somewhat arbitrary intervals, I focused on the specific aspects of race fitness that I wanted to improve. For example, starts are critical in MTB and CX races, so how about working on specifically improving those (on the trail, grass, etc)? Fitness would still surely improve, and the training would apply directly to racing! There's a big psychological component here too; you would know what to expect out of your body in race situations, because you would have come close to replicating those situations in training.

This is getting to be a long post already, but the gist of my proposed training plan is this: One, spend a lot of time working on fundamentals (balance, cornering, riding in groups, etc), these are likely to be longer lower intensity rides. Maybe with the addition of a little extra riding, this would be sufficient to build aerobic capacity. Two, make the more intense rides race-specific. This would include working on starts, doing intervals on technical sections of trail, etc.

I know that this plan is not ideal for developing fitness, but, it does address my training objectives... and that's really the whole point of a training plan, isn't it?

Georgia Riding

I got back from Georgia on Tuesday this week. It was a shock to go from 70 degrees and sun to 30 degrees and snow!

The trip went well. My bike made it down without damage, although I need to learn to pack it better if I'm going to do this very often. I got in three rides; it was not as much riding as I'd hoped to do, but it was good recovery time for my knee. I wore shorts and a short-sleeved jersey only one day, but I had to wear knee warmers and sometimes arm warmers the other days. Still, the weather was very nice for riding, and the terrain was dead flat, which was good for my knee I think.

I kept my rides relatively short (about 1 hour) and easy. My knee is feeling pretty good. I'm not feeling any patella discomfort now, but my knees are feeling a little fatigued by the end of the rides. I think that this is a result of my body adapting to the corrected saddle height (I've experienced this before). I'm going to stick with the short easy rides for another week or so, and then I'll start building the volume back up a little. So, I'm hoping to resume normal training by the end of this month.

So, assuming all continues to go well, this injury will have set me back over two months. This is why it's important to train in such a way as to avoid injury! This means that my goals for the season really need to change, as I will be totally unprepared to race the Spring mountain bike races. There are a lot of races in August, so I think I will build toward those, and then focus on cyclocross.

Conditioning Options

I was a little down yesterday about being hurt. Part of it maybe is that early season races have started here. My club had their first training race on Saturday, and Barry-Roubaix was Saturday. (My dad got 4th place in his category!) The other part of it was that I came to the realization that I had been thinking in a pretty limited way about what I could do to stay in reasonable shape. I was frustrated that I hadn't thought a little harder and done a little more during the week.

So, here's my new list of conditioning exercises to do that shouldn't bother my knees:

• Swimming
• Heavy bag drills
• Swing sledgehammer
• Skating / hockey (only because I know it doesn't bother my knees)
• Upper body and core exercises following Tabata, minute drill, or density protocols for conditioning effect.

The list I came up with earlier in the week was: swimming. I decided that I probably didn't have enough time to get to the pool at the local school, and therefore I couldn't exercise! If I heard someone else say that, I probably wouldn't think too much of them...

Hockey was OK last night. I didn't feel particularly fit, but we also only had 3 on the bench, so it was a lot of skating. Only one more skate left this season already. My knees felt fine, but I did take a puck in the back of my leg (low calf area) so that's a little sore today.

Last point: I've been doing this training thing for a little while now (since the end of 2005), but I'm finding that some of the things I'm learning aren't carrying over from year to year. For example, I just learned (the hard way) that I should measure my bikes at the beginning of the season to make sure the setup is correct before I start riding a lot. Will I remember this at the start of 2010? It's a long way off... My experience with tapering is another thing that comes to mind as something that I end up re-learning every year. So, I want to write myself a little set of notes about my own training, broken out by time of year or training phase. Hopefully this will save me from repeating the same mistakes.

Rehab

I've been working on getting my knee back to a healthy state since my last post. Lots of rest, ice and stretching. Not too fun, but it's better than continuing to try to train and not getting any better.

My daughter turned one this week. We got her a cool little tricycle. I didn't think she'd be too impressed with it, and, mostly she's not. She was excited enough to see it and play with it a little that she made her dad happy though. Mostly, she just likes to spin the pedals.

Injured

Well, the ride at Stony last night was pretty disasterous. I felt really good for the first 20 minutes or so, then I hit the little hill back on the Nature Center spur and my knee started hurting again. By the time I exited the spur a few minutes later, I had decided I needed to call it quits for the day, so I just soft-pedaled back to the car.

So, I decided that I'm officially "injured" now, and I need to respond accordingly. I also decided that I wasn't going to feel bad about it, because there's really no point. I doubt that Lance Armstrong is wasting time feeling bad about his broken collarbone. He's probably focused on doing what he can to stay fit and thinking about his next race.

I may try to get on the trainer and do some very short and very easy spins in the next few days, but I don't plan to try to really ride until I go to Georgia. Even there, I plan to take it pretty easy. Fortunately, it should be ideal knee-recovery training ground there... warm and dead flat.

Technical Difficulties

It seems that I've had a few technical difficulties this week:

On Sunday night, I spent about 20 minutes trying to adjust the rear derailleur on my 'cross bike. I'd put a new chain on and changed the cables, but I otherwise hadn't changed anything. So, I really couldn't figure out why the shifting was so bad. It looked like the chain just kept wanting to climb off the cog; it also sounded terrible in the bigger cogs. Then it hit me. I bought a 9-speed chain, for my 10-speed drivetrain! Doh! I went to the shop and got the correct chain; I had it on my bike and shifting fine in less than 5 minutes.

Last night I packed up my road bike for our trip to Georgia. I'm shipping the bike down ahead of time. It's the first time I've tried to box up a bike. I was a little frustrated by the experience; I had to take apart a lot more than I expected, so it took longer than I expected. Probably if my road bike were a little newer (like my other bikes), it would have gone more smoothly. Still, I got it all in there, and it will be nice to do some riding in shorts and a short-sleeved jersey.

I got on the trainer for a short, easy spin last night. I wanted to test out my knee before I start some more serious riding tonight. It felt much better than it did on my rides over the weekend, but it still wasn't perfect. I felt a few twinges. I think the plan for tonight will be to keep the intensity pretty low, but try to hit my target ride duration. I'm going to ride the road at Stony, so it will be pretty easy to soft-pedal and head home if my knee starts bothering me. I just need to keep in mind that it's only March, and spending a little extra time to make sure my knee is properly recovered won't have a big impact on most of my season.

Risk / Reward

I've been reading Joe Friel's blog lately. I knew that he started one some time ago, but he seems to have been posting more frequently. There's some great stuff on there. Some of the posts that caught my attention were about risk/reward and training consistency. They are relevant to my current situation...

So, I'm pretty much over my cold now. I basically missed a whole week of training because of it. Consider this though, I was starting to get a sore throat on Sunday morning. I elected to play hockey anyway, knowing that it would further stress my body and mean that I'd only get about 6 hours of sleep on Sunday night. Had I skipped hockey and taken the whole day off, I would have reduced the physical stress, and I could have gotten a lot more sleep. Maybe I would have still gotten sick, but maybe not. One of the points Friel made in a post was that professional atheletes are often much more conservative in their workout choices than amateurs. It's key to train in a such a way that you avoid illness, injury, etc. He makes the analogy of owning a million-dollar race horse; if you were responsible for training that horse, you'd never push it to the brink of injury or breakdown. Which leads to my next point.

As I started feeling better (Friday), I decided to get back on the bike just to do some easy spinning. I did keep the intensity and duration in check, so this wasn't a problem for my cold. But, my right knee soreness (PFS-type) came back almost immediately (this was a problem that cropped up on my long ride last Saturday).

It's really unusual for me to have pain in my right knee, and especially PFS-type pain. This hasn't happened to me since I was a beginner. So, after my ride on Friday night, I decided to check my saddle height. Sure enough, it was about a quarter inch too low. Having the saddle too low is pretty much a textbook cause of PFS. I should have been more careful with this on the Saturday ride in the first place, and turned for home as soon as it started bothering me, but I didn't. I probably should have also checked my bike setup before I started riding a lot again this year. I vaguely remember messing with my saddle at the end of last year now, and I probably just didn't put it back in exactly the right spot.

So, I'm fairly confident I've found the cause of the problem, but now I have to deal with the consequences. Probably if I hadn't pushed too far last Saturday it wouldn't have been a big deal, the time off from my cold would have been enough for me knee to recover, but it obviously hasn't been. I'll just have to take it easy on the bike for awhile until this clears up. Potentially, this also puts my participation in the Barry-Roubaix next weekend at risk... a couple hours of grinding out hills in the cold is not what the doctor ordered for knee recovery.

I'm putting Friel's risk/reward graph up on my training board (which I need to post about), so I'm frequently reminded about it.

Sick

So I've had a cold for a few days now. I went home early from work on Tuesday, which actually helped a lot. I just spent the afternoon on the couch, switching between sleeping, reading and watching TV... mostly sleeping though. I felt a little better yesterday, and much better today. We'll see how I hold up as the day goes on. I haven't done any kind of exercise since Sunday night.

I reread some of Thomas Prehn's "Racing Tactics for Cyclists", it got me thinking about efficiency during races, and how I kept getting dropped on the Thursday night ride last year.

I've been thinking about mountain biking technique again too, re-watching my Fluidride video, reading Lee Likes Bikes and watching him do the figure-8 drills. It's amazing how smooth these guys are.

Think you're really leaning that bike over? Think again...

(from Leelikesbikes.com)

The more I race, the more I come to realize that my main problem is not fitness (although, more fitness never hurts). What I mostly need to do is keep improving my riding technique, and keep learning how to use my energy more efficiently. Improving that would have a big impact...

Big Picture

I've had some frustrating days since my ride on Saturday. Due to my sore knees, I decided not to ride on Sunday; it would have been a very short ride anyway. I did play hockey on Sunday night. It actually went pretty well. I'm not used to skating when I haven't done some other workout earlier in the day; I had a lot more energy than I usually do. My knees didn't bother me skating at all, and they felt back to normal yesterday.

Sarah had been feeling a little sick over the weekend, and I seem to have picked up the cold that she had. I've been trying to get lots of rest, taking my Vitamin C and Zinc, but it doesn't seem to be helping yet. Unless I make a miraculous recovery today, I'll probably have to postpone my rides for the week. Today would have been a beautiful day to ride too.

Anyway, it's not fun, but I firmly believe that it's better to focus on recovery while you're sick and not try to ride (at least for regular Joe's). Looking at the big picture, I think it's better to completely miss a couple days of training than to do low quality training for a week or more.

I looked back at my training log for this same time last year (I was checking hours... I've done more total this year, but less on the bike), and I noticed that this was exactly the same week that I got sick last year. Aside from the time of year being the same, I also saw that I'd just started riding outside, just like this year. I also know that I was around a lot of little kids with colds (or their parents) at that time, just like this year. It's probably a combination of things, but I guess I need to be very careful around this time of year (and, I think, when the weather changes in the Fall).

Long Ride

I got in a decent 3 hour ride yesterday morning. I wish I could have waited until a little later in the day when it was warmer, but it wasn't too bad.

The first hour was sprint intervals. I found them a little tougher on the road than on the trainer. I think you end up cheating a little on the trainer when you get started because there's some wheel slip. The tires don't slip on the road, and it's tough to get goin in a big gear; I had to back off 2-3 cogs on the road to get started in a reasonable time. These intervals also seem hard on my knees. This time, they left my right knee a little sore... usually my left knee will bother me if anything does, so it's a little weird.

Anyway, I did the sprint intervals in a quiet neighborhood close to my house, and then I went on the road for the rest of my ride. I rode out to Indian Springs and back. It was good to be out on the road and to have the change in scenery.

Today, my right knee is still a little sore. I had planned a short ride for today, and I'm not sure if I want to do it or not. I'm leaning toward no... I'll still play hockey tonight though. It's most important that I get it feeling better so that I can go at it again next week.

This, by the way, was exactly what I was worried about with this Morris Endurance phase. I didn't do very much riding while in the lifting phases, so I was concerned that my body wouldn't be ready to jump into the longer rides, especially in the relatively cold weather. Apparently, it's not. If I want to do this again next year, I'll have to find a way to ride a little more prior to this phase.

A couple random pictures from my phone...

Outdoor Ride

Finally, I got to ride outside last night! It was my first outdoor ride of any significant length this year. I went over to Stony Creek after work and rode on the park roads for about 2 hours. The first 10-15 minutes were pretty cold, but once I got warmed up, it wasn't really too bad. Still, there was ice on the lake, and my water bottle was partially frozen by the time I was finished.

I figured that there might be quite a few people out last night. I only saw two other people on bikes, but there were a lot of runners. It was probably a better night for running than it was for cycling.

The first hour was just some Zone2-3 riding... just a little pressure on the pedals. That went fine, but it's always a little weird to be out on the road for the first time. The changes in resistance from the wind and hills feel strange compared to the steady resistance of the trainer.

The second hour was "muscular endurance" intervals. This was a new workout for me. You're supposed to keep the cadence low, resistance high, and go for 8+ minutes. Ideally this is supposed to be done on a hill or the trainer. Well, around here, there are no hills (that I know of) that take over 8 minutes to climb. The longest hills I've found are about half a mile long. What I did instead was to pick a slightly uphill stretch of road, with a headwind, and ride it in a big gear. The section of road ended up being about a mile long, and it took me about 3.5 minutes to ride. I just kept repeating that stretch until I'd accumulated about 20 minutes of work time.

At the time, my legs didn't feel too bad, although the last couple intervals got really hard. My legs feeling OK might have had something to do with the weather being cold. By the time I got home, I was starting to feel the effort though.

So, it seemed like the long false flat + headwind method worked OK, but I want to try it on a shorter steeper hill too and see how that goes.

Trainer Madness

I've started my Aerobic Endurance phase with a little trainer madness. I rode 2.5 hours easy on the trainer on Sunday. It was kind of cold and rainy, so I didn't want to go out. I watched Miracle; it's a good movie for the trainer, gets you fired up.

On Tuesday, I'd hoped to ride outside, but it was still raining. It wasn't terribly cold, so I probably would have been OK riding, but it wouldn't have been very fun. I rode the trainer again (another 2.5 hours), and watched some Stargate SG-1. My knee got a little achey around the 2 hour mark. I got off and stretched for a minute, and it was fine for the rest of the ride.

I'd wanted to ride yesterday (a little cold and windy, but sunny!), but my knee was kind of achey all day, so I decided not to ride at all. I spent a few minutes working on figure-8 drills in the driveway, and then I went to bed early.

So, today, my knee feels fine, and there's no rain in the forecast. The only bad part... it's going to be a cold ride tonight. It's not supposed to make it to 30F this afternoon/evening, and it's not particularly sunny either. I packed a lot of clothes with me, so hopefully I'll be OK.

Testing and Finishing Power Phase

Yesterday was a pretty big training day for me. In the morning, I got up and completed my first LT field test of the year. I was gunning for 250W (as measured by my, no doubt, super accurate trainer), a little down from where I was partway through the Base phase last year. I really had no idea what to expect though; I've mainly been doing strength training, just a little sprinting, and very few longer rides...

So, I blistered through the first 10 minutes (that don't count), right on pace for 250W. I was thinking, "Geez, this is too easy, I'll probably go higher than 250 for the test." 5 minutes later, I was starting to hurt a bit, and then I faded pretty badly at the 20 minute mark (10 minutes into the part that counts). So, I ended up at 240W.

I'm not too disappointed, 240W is about where I was at the end of Base 1 last year. I also matched my best ever effort over the first 10 minutes (which means I went out too hard). The point of this test was just to set the baseline. I will be disappointed if I don't see a big improvement at the end of the upcoming Aerobic Endurance phase.

We went to a friend's baby shower in the afternoon, and then I came home and did my last Strength workout of the year. I'm happy to be done with those. The lifting was fun for a while, but I'm tired of it for now. Just not enough variety. For sure, the lifting has made me much stronger; whether that translates into more speed on the bike remains to be seen...

Weekend Workouts

I had a good weekend of workouts, it seems that my rest time last week was worthwhile.

My strength workout on Saturday was good. I felt rested and strong. I got back up to my 22 total pullups. Two more strength workouts to go, then I'm done.

On Sunday morning, I did my postponed Sprint Interval workout. I have done similar workouts in the past, but not exactly like this. I think the big difference was that Morris has you starting from a dead stop. It takes quite a bit more effort to do that than it does to go from a rolling start. Anyway, it was a pretty nice workout. I can tell I'm not used to doing much intensity on the bike anymore. After the intervals, I stayed on the bike and did another hour at an easy pace. I'm still a little concerned about how fast my riding volume will ramp up in the Endurance phase.

With this in mind, I checked my total hours compared to last year and the year before. I've actually done more total training hours than I did at this point in 2008, and about the same as 2007. The main difference is in where I spent my time. My total strength time is much higher than at this point in past years, while my total bike time is lower. Of course my bike time will shoot up this month once I start the endurance phase. So, we have the curious result that my "low volume / high intensity" training program has, so far, resulted in more training hours. However, since I'm only training 4 days a week instead of 5-6, it definitely feels like I'm spending less time training.

Also, hockey was good last night, even though my legs were more than a little tired going in. I had a nice goal about halfway through the skate. I was trailing the play just a little, picked up a loose rebound and buried it in the upper right corner... it tucked right in behind the crossbar. Sometimes it's better to be lucky...

Breathing

Taking the extra rest day seems to have been a good move. I immediately felt better as soon as I "officially" decided to do it. I was still tired last night, but my stress level had dropped.

After putting my daughter to bed last night, I spent a little time working on my bikes, and then I went to bed (about 8:30pm). Even though I had to get up early for a 7am meeting today, I still woke up feeling refreshed. A few more days of this, and I'm sure I'll be ready to go at it again!

I touched on it a little bit yesterday, but I think a key thing for me this year is to make sure I'm doing high-quality training sessions. That means putting forth my very best effort at every session and making sure I'm mentally and physically prepared. That's one of the reasons I've liked doing the breathing sessions at night before I work out.

I've considered switching my weekday workouts to the morning instead of the evening. I notice a definite difference with my strength workouts if I do them on a weekend morning as opposed to a weekday evening. I've just accumulated more fatigue on the weekday and the quality of my training session is reduced.

I'm also considering doing some of my weekday riding at lunch time, mainly for time management purposes, but also since I'd be a little more fresh than I would be at night. It would be a long lunch break, but I don't think anyone would have a problem with it, especially since it would only be 1-2 days per week. We have showers at work, so that wouldn't be a problem. The other advantage is that we have some big hills around the office, and hills are always good!

On the Edge

- For the last few days this week (since Monday), I've been in a pretty bad mood. Easily irritated with the family, the dog, you name it. It was especially bad last night, and today, I woke up in a bad mood.

- Including the Preparation phase, I've been working the Morris Strength plan since Dec 30, without any breaks longer than 2 days.

- There's usually a reduction in the quality of my training on a weekday compared to a day on the weekend, but I thought last night's workout was worse than normal. I noticed it with the upper body work. Saturday I did a total of 22 pullups (a little better than normal), last night I struggled to get a total of 17 (worse than normal).

- My legs are now not recovering very well. Last Sunday, during the day, my legs felt terrible... just walking around, going up the stairs, etc. Napping didn't help much; rolling them didn't help much.

- I'm just starting the 2-week Strength-Power phase. There's no scheduled rest block between this and the 4 week Endurance phase.

When you put it all together, the problem and the required action are pretty clear: I've been going too hard for too long and I need to rest. The hard part is that, unless you put it all in one place like I just did, it's not always so easy to see. It's also hard to battle your ego and decide that the best thing to do is to rest. I like to call this the "art" of training.

So, I'm going to postpone the Sprint Interval workout I had scheduled for tonight. My plan is to take the next three days off and see how I feel by Friday night / Saturday morning. I think this should be enough, but we'll see. Then I'll get going again.

Over the past few years, I've come to the conclusion that the most important thing you can do is to avoid getting sick. Say you get sick, maybe you miss a week while you're actually sick. Then it takes maybe another two weeks to build back up to where you were before you got sick. That's three weeks where you made no progress. If the decision is between missing 1-2 days of training or making no progress for 3 weeks, the choice is pretty clear!

Breathing

I wrote a post a while back about how I'd started working with the book Sports Psychology for Cyclists. I read the whole thing, and then I went back and started working on the exercises. I've been doing this for two weeks now.

The two exercises that I wanted to write about involve breathing and visualizing smooth riding. I always start with several minutes of breathing. I've found it to be very relaxing. It also tends to clear my mind and leave me with more energy than I started with... this is nice if I still have a workout to do at night.

After some breathing, I start visualizing riding smoothly, emphasizing good technique. It actually took me a little while to get this right. Initially, my legs in the visualization were not turning smoothly, and, for the first few sessions, it took a few minutes for me to fix it. In particular, I kept "feeling" a lot of movement with my right hip. The way I eventually got it was to imagine my hips as a stable platform that I could pedal from.

Here's where it gets interesting. The book also suggests that you practice your breathing a few times while riding, particularly while doing intervals or other harder efforts. At this point, it doesn't ask you to do much more on the bike, just go into the breathing. So... here's what happened Saturday. I was just doing a moderate effort (nothing too hard scheduled in my plan yet) and I started focusing on my breathing. So, that was fine, it also has a calming influence on the bike. What I didn't expect was that my pedal stroke also immediately cleaned up (just like I had visualized!); with the more efficient pedal stroke, my cadence and speed crept up a little.

Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but I think it's pretty cool. It means, that without thinking about it, going into the breathing triggered the improved technique! It makes me wonder, as I progress with this mental work, what else can be linked or triggered by the breathing?

Ending Strength Phase

I had a really nice strength workout yesterday. I was really fired up and I did some good work. Pushing heavy weights around is hard, but it's pretty fun.

Yesterday was my last "Strength" workout; I move into the Power phase next week. Weights are lighter, but the movement is more explosive. Should be fun.

I'm really getting excited about doing some more and harder work on the bike. I start with sprint intervals this week, and I'll also be trying to get my body (mostly my rear end) ready for some longer rides next month.

Drag Torque Experiments

I'm in the process of getting my bikes cleaned up and rebuilt for Spring. I thought that this would be a good time to explore something I've been interested in, namely, the extra drag that I notice on my external BB cranksets and Time ATAC pedals.

My idea was pretty simple: I don't have a torque wrench that's sensitive enough to measure the drag directly, but I do have a pretty accurate scale. So, I hung weights (washers) off of the crank or tip of the pedal until it started to turn, then measured my weights. Since I knew the moment arm, I could calculate torque and then power.**


I checked three cranksets and two pedals. Here's what I found:

Crank 1. No-name square taper cranks: torque was 0.005 N-m, so power at 80rpm is 0.042W. This is an old and cheap crankset/BB that I've never messed with. With no chain on it, the thing spins like crazy... you start to wonder just when it will stop!

Crank 2. FSA (Mega-Exo) Gossamer cranks: torque was 0.060 N-m, power at 80rpm is 0.503W! I just took this crankset apart, so maybe the drag is a little higher than it would be after it had been ridden for a while and everything got re-seated.

Crank 3. Shimano (Hollowtech II) XT cranks: torque was 0.033 N-m, power at 80rpm is 0.280W.

Pedal 1. Shimano M520: torque was 0.653e-3 N-m, power at 80rpm is 0.005W (for 1 pedal).

Pedal 2. Time ATAC XS: torque was 12.4e-3 N-m, power at 80rpm is 0.104W.


Then, I added up the total power (2 pedals + cranks) for my three setups:

1. Road/trainer bike (the square taper cranks and Shimano pedals): 0.052W at 80rpm.
2. 'Cross bike (FSA cranks and Time pedals): 0.711W
3. Mountain bike (XT cranks and Time pedals): 0.488W

So, relatively speaking, there's a big difference in power loss between the square taper and external BB setups (about a factor of 10!), and a big difference between the pedals (a factor of 20!). But, the numbers are all so small, maybe 0.2% of the total power I'm putting out, that maybe other factors need to be considered.

For the cranks, the external BB setups are much lighter than the square tapers. They're also much stiffer, although I'm not sure how significant the difference in stiffness is for me.

For the pedals, the whole reason I went away from the Shimano's was that I had trouble clipping in and out while riding in sloppy conditions. This definitely outweighs a small difference in drag.

So, I probably won't change my setups. If I had seen numbers more like 1W in drag, I might have changed my mind...


** There's a key implied assumption here, that drag doesn't change with "static" load. That is, I'm assuming the drag is the same with no load on the pedals/cranks as it is with someone pedaling the bike. My first thought was that this probably wasn't a significant effect, but the more I think about it, I'm not so sure. I suppose this could potentially change my conclusions...

Reality Check

Velonews has Gustav Larsson's power file from Stage 1 of the Tour of California posted. The first thing that I noticed was that his average power over the stage (241W) seemed pretty mortal. Sure, I couldn't hold that power for 4 hours, but I see numbers like that...

Then, I looked at his "mean-maximal" 20 minute and 60 minute power numbers. 380W over 20 minutes, and 324W over 60 minutes. Uh, OK... now that would take some work...

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I was joking with my wife over the weekend that this is the time of year when I get pretty delusional about racing. I sort of forget the hard parts and only remember the fun parts. I also start thinking, "yeah, I could win this race, I could win that race"... we'll see, hasn't happened yet...

------------

Since I didn't post this yesterday when I wrote it originally, you can now see Larsson's Stage 2 power numbers.

The authors are estimating Larsson's FTP is around 415W. It says he weighs 80kg, so that's 5.2 W/kg... pretty awesome. For me to hit that power to weight ratio, I'd have to pick up another 90W (+36%!) or so, without gaining any weight! (See, the delusions continue...)

Zone 2

I got on the bike (trainer) last night for some riding. I'm a little concerned about building up to do all the volume required in Morris's Aerobic phase. Anyway, I rode for an hour, which is the longest trainer ride I've done in a while (usually, I've been riding about 45 minutes max). Per the Morris book, after a warmup, I kept power and HR in Zones 2 and 3 (a LSD ride).

Since I haven't done a threshold power type test this year, I estimated it based on last year's results and my typical drop in power over the winter. Threshold heart rate doesn't really change. So, it turns out that the Morris zones are a little different than others I've seen... basically the low limit of Zone 2 is higher.

Similar to what I found last year, the ride was manageable, but uncomfortable. Basically, it's a hard enough ride that you have to pay attention or your power will drop, but it's not so hard that breathing gets difficult or HR shoots up. My legs didn't feel particularly good, but that's no surprise since I haven't been riding much, but they did feel strong.

Two Books

Hockey was tough last night. I felt like I expected to feel two weeks ago... my legs were tired and I had no jump. We had all of the "energy" guys there though, so it was a fun, fast skate.

I mentioned that I'd been reading a couple of books:

Ride of Your Life, by David Rowe. This e-book is essentially about goal-setting and time management for cycling. It's really geared toward long-distance cyclists, but I think the process is essentially the same for racers. I thought the first half of the book was particularly good. The exercise of evaluating past performance on the bike turned out to be very worthwhile for me. Also good was his advice about managing your relationships while in pursuit of your cycling goals.

Sport Psychology for Cyclists, by Saul Miller and Peggy Maass Hill. I had a terrible time getting my hands on a copy of this book. I think that it's out of print, although the Velopress website doesn't say this. I've read through the book, but I haven't officially started the exercises. Each chapter presents a concept, and then there's some "homework" at the end. It's set up so that you do each chapter's homework for about a week before moving on. The first couple chapters are about breathing. Then it gets into some imagery, power talk, etc.

One part that really stuck out for me was the chapter about commitment. The discussion was about how you handle the adversity that comes up in a race (or in training, or in life). You basically have two choices, you can let it use you, or you can use it. If you're committed, your only choice is to use it!

Movin' On

I finished my last workout in the hypertrophy phase today. I can't say I'm sad to be done with it. Because the volume of lifting was so high, I found the workouts to be pretty tedious... my legs were also pretty trashed at the end of every workout.

That's the bad side of it... the good side of it is that it seemed to do what it's supposed to. My legs (and to a lesser degree, my upper body) are noticeably bigger. I gained two pounds over this phase, and I shed just a little fat, so... not bad.

I'm looking forward to reducing the lifting volume, lifting some heavier weights, and starting to get on the bike a bit more.

Steve Tilford Article

Cool article about Steve Tilford here. I met him briefly last Fall.

Colorado Dreamin'

I just got back from a trip to Boulder, Colorado with the family. The synchro team that my wife coaches was competing, and she wanted to bring our daughter, so I was there mainly as a babysitter. It made for a slightly dull trip, but it was OK.

After seeing a picture of a traffic jam of people heading into the mountains on a Friday night, I have always joked that "it must suck to live in Colorado." The trip reminded me that, alas, Colorado does not suck. We had clear blue skies every day and temperatures into the 50's over the weekend. I saw people out riding and running in shorts! Not only that, but, if you did want to go ski, we could see the snow clouds back deeper into the mountains (we heard that chain laws were in effect).

Boulder sort of fits my idea of where you'd want to live in a place like Colorado. It essentially butts up to the mountains without actually being in them. So, you don't have to deal with the problems of living in the mountains (remoteness, snowfall, etc), but you could still access the mountains very easily.

I managed to mostly keep up with my lifting while I was gone. The hotel had a decent gym with a weight machine and I hand my elastic bands. The weight machine was interesting; I couldn't do most of the lifts that I wanted to. I thought, here's this expensive piece of equipment, and I can't even do a squat with it! It was also interesting to watch the other people in the gym; since I work out in my basement, this isn't something I'm used to.

I read some good books while I was gone; I'll try to post about those later. I also got a lot of sleep. There's only so much you can do in a dark hotel room while your kid is taking a nap...

Of course, when I came home on Sunday night, I found my driveway covered in a few inches of snow and plowed in. There were also 4 newspapers scattered around, thanks to the paper not stopping delivery when I'd asked. Wonderful...

Will My Pants Still Fit?

So, the question is, at the end of this hypertrophy phase (pronounced, by the way, hi-PURR-tra-fee), will my legs still fit into my pants? OK, maybe my legs aren't getting quite that big, but I am responding pretty well to the lifting, and I still have almost two weeks to go. I also credit my Paleo nutrition plan for the way my body is responding.

Still, this phase is hard work, especially after doing a real job all day, even if it is a desk job. Last night I was feeling especially beat down.

I expected hockey to go badly on Sunday night, but I felt surprisingly good. I was able to skate hard until the last 15 minutes or so. I also scored a couple goals and had several other good chances. From the sport psychology standpoint, I changed my goals for the skate slightly before I went, and I wonder if that was more effective? Maybe always changing goals a little bit is better than using the same ones over and over again? It sort of makes sense.

Weekend Update

I did my second micro block of the hypertrophy phase this weekend. It was pretty weird to take two days off on Thursday and Friday. I was fully recovered by Saturday morning.

I thought the Saturday morning workout was noticeably easier than the workout on Tuesday. The workout this morning was tough again... most likely from the residual fatigue. Hockey will be brutal tonight...


I realized that I didn't post about how I resolved my squatting problem. It turns out that I don't have heavy enough weights to make the two-leg squats worthwhile. So, I went back to my single leg squats and focused on increasing depth. So far, it seems to be working well. I'm still not getting quite as deep as I think would be ideal, but I'm going deep enough that it seems to be effective.

Starting Hypertrophy Phase

I started the hypertropy phase of the Morris strength plan this week. It was pretty tough going, lots of reps... Morris has you do two days back to back, and then take two days off. I felt OK during the day on the second day, but I felt (understandably) worse during the workout. Today is the first rest day. I'm a little sore, but it's not too bad. I should be good to go again on Saturday. I see why he suggests not riding much during this phase. So far, the lifting has been enough to wipe me out.

"1RM" Testing

Last night I did most of my 1 rep max (1RM) testing. I didn't actually go for my 1RM, but I used an estimation based on 4-10RM. I think it's close enough for my purposes.

I did the same thing last January in preparation for my strength work in 2008. My results for this year were consistently better than those for last year. I'm a little surprised, I figured that they would be essentially the same.

The only test I didn't successfully finish was my squat test. I was hampered a little bit since I hadn't done much squatting on both legs (see my last post). Still, it was not paying attention that ultimately screwed me up.

I did my warm-up set, and it was fine. I made my first attempt at the test and made it to 10 reps without too much trouble... I definitely could have done a few more. So, my plan was to rest for 5 minutes or so, add some weight and do it again. I rested, then made my second attempt, and I made it to ten reps again. "Hmm..." I thought, "that didn't seem much harder than last time..." Then I actually looked at the dumbbells and saw that I hadn't changed the weight! Doh! While not near my max, I figured that the two sets were hard enough that I probably wasn't going to get a good result if I tried again. So, I'll try again tonight or tomorrow, depending on how I feel.

Squatting

I'm feeling less fatigued this week, even though work has been busy and my daughter decided to wake up at 4:45am today (15 minutes later, my dog licked me square on the mouth... not pleasant that early!). It's bitterly cold here, so I've not been running or skiing outside.

I've been deeply pondering the squatting situation I talked about last time. On Tuesday night, I did reduce the weight I was lifting to try to go to a deeper squat. Sure enough, I could go much deeper. I had to reduce the weight about 40% to do it. I'm definitely much weaker near the bottom of the squat.

Then, last night, I was explaining all of this to Sarah, and she had me demonstrate everything, including seeing how far I bent my knees on the bike. We reached the conclusion that I still wasn't going deep enough in my squat to match the knee bend I get on my bike. The only way I was able to go deep enough was to do the squat on both legs.

I was looking for a chart online of leg angle around the pedal stroke, but I didn't find one. (I do have some in my books.) I did find this one of muscle usage around the pedal stroke. It's kind of interesting.

Plan Progress

I'm wrapping up the Strength-preparation phase of the Morris plan this week. (Earlier, I said that this wasn't described in the book, but it is. It's just maybe not in an obvious location.) My ramp up has gone fine, but I might have progressed to the heavier weights just a little too quickly. I haven't been sore at all, but I am feeling the fatigue. I'm sure some of it has to do with resuming training with more seriousness and being back at work after a long Christmas break.

I've scheduled a little more rest this week to get ready for the next Strength phase. I want to start the phase feeling fresh because I've heard it's a tough one. The main thing to get done this week is to do the 1RM (1 rep max) test. I probably won't actually go to 1RM, but maybe 3-4RM and calculate 1RM from there. It will be close enough for me, and safer.

I have been thinking a little bit about the lifts I'm doing. I had good success last year in doing 1-leg versions of the squat and deadlift. The benefits to doing the 1-leg exercises are that it's easier on your back, you don't need as much weight, and it uses more stabilizing muscles. The drawbacks are that you can't lift as much and reduced range of motion in the lift (for me, anyway).

I think the fact that you can't lift as much weight is probably not a big deal for an amateur. (By "not lift as much", I mean that on two legs, you could probably lift more than double what you could lift on one leg, since stability is much improved.)

The reduced range of motion is what's got me thinking, particularly for the squat. Because of the more stable position, I can definitely go much deeper into a squat on two legs than I can one one. It seems like I should at least be getting to a knee bend that matches my max knee bend on the bike, and I know I'm not there right now. Relative to the bike, it means that I'm missing out on the top part of the pedal stroke, which is definitely important for generating power.

How to remedy this? I guess first I need to verify if this is a balance issue or a strength issue. I guess the test here is to back off on the weight, try to go deeper and see what happens. Now that I'm thinking about it more, I suspect it is mainly a strength issue.

I wish that I'd thought about this before I started the prep phase. C'est la vie. It will be a little hard on the ego to back off on the weight, but I'm pretty sure I'll get more of a benefit from doing the exercise properly through a wider range of motion. In fact, I may improve substantially on the bike if the muscles really were weak at the "low" part of the squat (top of the pedal stroke).

Hockey Notes

So, after a very productive game last weekend, I hardly got a sniff of the net this week. Lots of factors influenced it I'm sure, but here's the key lesson I took away from it:

About 2/3 of the way through the game, I'm sitting on the bench thinking about how I'm not playing well. I was skating hard, but it seemed like I couldn't catch (or throw) a pass to save my life, and I wasn't getting good bounces. I realized that I had to change my message. Instead of thinking, "Man, I'm sure playing like crap tonight", I started thinking, "Keep skating hard, and things will start to go your way." Hockey is interesting in that way, you have time to sit on the bench and think while you're not playing.

I can't say that it dramatically changed the way I was playing, because it didn't, but maybe there was some improvement. I did end up with a couple of decent plays near the end.

The point is that I need to practice staying positive when things aren't going my way. It will happen, and those negative thoughts need to be caught and stopped early. In bike racing, maybe it's an early crash, or a mechanical, or any number of other things. I'm thinking back to the Brighton race from last year. Not the DNF in the XC race, but my crash in the short track race that sent me all the way to the very back of the field. Old men and children had passed me! I could have quit or gotten down, but instead I put the hammer down, passed a ton of people and finished 4th. I think part of what made that race happen was that I was very confident going in (I thought I had a good chance of winning, and based on the final results, I probably did!). I think that confidence, in turn, shaped my response to the crash.

XC Ski

I had a few REI gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to buy some cross-country ski gear. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but I've always had more bike-related things to spend money on.

So, I picked up my skis last Tuesday night. On Wednesday and Thursday we started getting snow. My wife and daughter would be coming home late Thursday night, so I took the opportunity to scoot over to the nature center / fish hatchery in our neighborhood. There's a flat 1.7 mile loop around the fish ponds that I figured would be skiable. More people had walked on it than I expected, but, for the most part, I could find good snow. Someone else had already been out skiing, so I followed in their tracks for most of the loop. I only had enough daylight to do one loop, but it was a good shakedown test.

We got a lot more snow Friday night and Saturday. Since I had more time Saturday, I went over to Independence Oaks during my daughter's morning nap. Supposedly, this park is one of the best local places to go. It wasn't quite what I expected, but it wasn't bad; I would go again. There's a very well-traveled and flat loop around the lake, and some hillier (less-traveled) trails through the woods. I skied for just under two hours. Even though it didn't seem like really hard work, I was pretty tired by the time I was done.

Hat Trick +1

I had a good skate last night. For the first 20 minutes or so, I was just flying around. I didn't have anything to show for it, but it felt good. Then, I sort of hit the wall. We only had three guys on the bench, and I just wasn't getting enough rest. So, I took a pretty long (kind of easy) shift on defense, and that seemed to help. On the next shift I scored two goals! On the first one, I got my own rebound, but my momentum carried me behind the net. I shot the puck toward the goal anyway, and it ended up bouncing off the goalie and going in. On the second goal, I caught a nice pass in the slot, waited for the goalie to slide out of position, and then put it in.

I was OK for a few shifts, and then I started getting tired again and took another shift on defense. On the next shift, I got goal number three. I don't recall now how I got to the front of the net, but my shot rang off both posts before it went in.

At some point during the game, I got dumped (tripped?) pretty hard in front of the net. My feet were way over my head. It bent my back pretty good, but it feels mostly OK today. I felt fortunate that I'd been stretching my back quite a bit over the past week. I did land hard on my knees though, and they are pretty sore today. I spent some time icing everything before I went to bed (bags of frozen vegetables make good icepacks!), but it didn't help my knees as much as I'd like. I suspect I'll have some good bruises there.

My last goal was a garbage goal. I put a rebound in from a foot or so away. The Zamboni driver usually lets us play until the last goal, and mine was the goal that got us off the ice. So, I was happy about that.

So, what's with the sudden explosion in my goal-scoring and general improved play? (Recall, I got 2 at the last skate also, compared to 1 or 2 total in all of the skates preceeding!) It could be a lot things. From the technical side, I've been spending a few minutes during the week working on balance and stickhandling stuff, and I'm sure this is helping a little, especially the balance work. I think the main difference is in my attitude though. I wrote a few weeks ago about practicing my mental preparation techniques on the way to the rink. One of the ideas I had was that there was no reason I shouldn't be one of the best players at our skate. Yeah, I don't play hockey as much as everybody else, but I'm one of the youngest and one of the most fit. It makes a difference when you go out on the ice expecting to win the little puck battles, expecting to score, etc. Then, when you actually have the success you expected, your attitude improves even more. Sort of a positive feedback loop. This kind of attitude is something that I need to carry over to my riding.

2009 Training Has Begun!

This week marked the beginning of my 2009 training. As I've discussed before, I'm switching over to a Morris-style plan for this year. It's not covered in the book, but I'm beginning with a short preparation phase before I start his Hypertrophy phase. I saw the idea to use a short prep phase on Ashwin's blog, and it makes sense. Coming off a long block of mostly light exercise, it doesn't make sense to jump right in to lifting heavy weights. So, for the next couple weeks, I'll be getting myself ramped up.

My other exercise this week has consisted of one short ride on the trainer and a couple of runs. The run I did on Tuesday was pretty terrible. I was pretty happy about the roads being clear of snow and ice; as a result, I paced myself badly. I went out way too fast and was suffering before I'd gone too far. To top it off, after a long downhill stretch, my knee started bothering me, even though I was well short of my target run time. So, I called it a day and walked home. After I got home, I checked the training log and found that I'd only run twice over the past two weeks, so I probably bit off too much. I had been doing some jump rope stuff, thinking that it was an OK substitute for running, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

I ran again today (on snowy roads), and it went much better. I paced myself better and took a slightly different route that didn't have me going down long hills. It wasn't a particularly comfortable run, but I didn't have any knee problems and I was able to hit my target run time.

Difficult-Difficult

I wanted to post a link to this article on Alwyn Cosgrove's blog before I forget it. It's about stretching yourself and comparing activities that are difficult-difficult with those that are difficult-easy. Good stuff.

I'm nearing the end of my "transition" period of the off-season. I've been staying pretty active, but not taking things too seriously. Training resumes in earnest tomorrow. I will be following the Morris plan for 2009. It will be interesting to see how it all goes.

Confidence and Cleaning

I've been officially on vacation for the past few days. Unfortunately, I've still had to check work email a little and I had to call in to one meeting. Now I'm really on vacation until Jan 5th, as my customer's office is now closed. I've been spending most of my time cleaning up around the house. The family is all coming over for Christmas, so we needed to get the house in order. I can't say it's been fun, but it's nice to have a clean house.

My workouts have been pretty sporadic. We've been getting dumped on with snow, so I'm at least out shoveling, but I haven't done much else. That's OK though, I've only got another week or so of "transitioning" before I get going on the '09 training.

I had a decent hockey game on Sunday night. I ended up with two goals and a couple other good chances. I'm starting to play with more confidence, even though my skills (skating, puck handling, you name it...) are not where I'd like them to be. I think the confidence thing is key, even if you're just faking it. Fake it 'till you make it...

Suzie Q, Space Dog!

10,000 Hours

There's sort of a pop-pyschology theory floating around that says to become a world-class performer at any skill, you need roughly 10,000 hours of practice. Most recently, this theory has been publicized by Malcolm Gladwell, but it originated elsewhere. I'd heard about this before, but it came back to my attention due to this T-Nation article (note: T-Nation is not at all a work-friendly site... I'm almost embarassed to admit I read it, but they do post some very good articles).

The interesting bit in the T-Nation article (if I scared you off from reading it yourself) was that, in the original study, they didn't find exceptions. That is, there were no "naturals", people that were elite that put in significantly less than 10,000 hours, and there were no "grinders", people that put in 10,000 hours but were not elite.

Relative to cycling, there also seems to be anecdotal evidence to support this. There are plenty of stories about pro cyclists who rode many many hours in their youth. Interestingly enough, the pro cyclist stories usually are told with the idea that they probably rode too much. Maybe in hindsight they do feel like they rode too much, but I really wonder if they would have become pro's if they hadn't done it.

OK, so we're coming to my main question. If something like the 10,000 hour theory is correct, should we really be using low-volume, high-intensity training schedules? On the face of it, you'd have to say no. Low-volume means that you'd have to train much longer to hit your 10,000 hours.

Under further examination though, the answer isn't so easy, because I think not all training time is equal. To give a slightly absurd example, let's say I spent my 10,000 hours only riding on the trainer. Would I become an elite bike racer? Obviously not, I wouldn't have any handling skills. What about 10,000 hours doing LSD rides outdoors? Not as easy to answer, but probably still not. 10,000 hours racing or doing quality efforts? I think you'd have to answer yes there (although I don't know how long it would take to accumulate that time).

This suggests to me that there is some separation between the strength / conditioning aspect of racing and the skill of bike racing. (In fact, Jeff told me as much earlier this year, "You're finally starting to look like a bike racer..." What I didn't write in that post was his other comment, "Putting down power is easy.") So, the issue is the quantity of quality hours, not just the quantity of hours.

For the high-intensity plan, I see two ways this could benefit you: 1. You should spend more of your training hours training at race-like conditions. 2. The lower volume of hours spent working on the conditioning aspect of cycling could free up more time to work on other skill aspects.

Sorry for the long post, but there was a lot to cover...

Screw Shoes Update

I've gotten in a few runs now with the screw shoes. The first run was on very hard-packed snow and ice. These are probably ideal conditions for the screw shoes. You definitely still slip a little (and I was being careful), but the screws slow down the rate of slip considerably. Even though everyone says it's fine, I was worried about feeling the screws poking me through my shoes; everyone is right, you don't feel them. The shoe is not real comfortable running on bare pavement though, since your weight is entirely focused on the screw heads. Probably more screws would help with that I guess.

The run I did last night with the screw shoes was a little different. There was a lot more unpacked snow on the ground, and the shoes didn't work quite as well. It felt like the sole of the shoe would pack up with snow so the screws wouldn't bite and it got a little slippery. Still, most of the time, it was vastly better than running on unmodified shoes.

Win Every Shift

There were a lot of good quotes in the local papers when Steve Yzerman retired. I thought one of the best discussed his desire. It went something along the lines of "... he wanted to win every game, every period, every shift."

On Sunday night, I decided that I should use my hockey games as an opportunity to practice mental preparation techniques that I also use for cycling. I thought I'd keep it simple and just come up with a few goals for the game, just like I have goals for my races. With the basic goals in mind, then the technique is to come up with a short, powerful phrase to get your mind in the right state to achieve them. Then, I used what my Mental Edge book calls a "success history search" to associate some emotion to them.

My phrases for the skate were:

1. Win every shift
2. Own the corners
3. Get open (I had a little trouble coming up with a good #3)

Doesn't sound like too much when you read it, but, when you've spent 30 minutes in the car attaching emotions and positive images to those phrases, it gets you pretty fired up. In the game, I found that my phrases worked really well. One surprising result was that my focus during the game was much better than it usually is. Since hockey isn't my "main" sport and it's a pretty informal group, sometimes on the bench near the end of the game, I'm getting tired and I'm watching the clock and I'm just ready to go home. This week though, even though I was getting tired near the end again, my focus was much better. I didn't have any thoughts about the clock running out and going home, and I actually felt stronger near the end of the game.

Assuming that my fitness this week wasn't noticeably better than last week, you have to put the difference down to my attitude. Interesting result.

After some reflection on the way home, I think for next week, goal #3 will be "move your feet".

Nebraska

After watching the Lions get spanked at home on Thursday, the family headed out to Nebraska for a wedding on Friday. The trip down on Friday went very smoothly, my daughter was pretty calm for our first flight (Detroit to Chicago) and slept the entire second flight (Chicago to Omaha).

The time we spent in Nebraska was fairly relaxing, aside from keeping my daughter up past her bedtime every night. We stopped by the bike shop in Grand Island, NE. It was a pretty decent shop; they had a cool kids tricycle that caught my eye. Maybe a first birthday present for someone? (I think this photo doesn't do it justice. I will try to upload the picture I took with my phone at the bike shop.)

I was pretty happy to not be trying to stay in shape on the trip for the race next weekend. I managed to get some exercise in one day out of the three. I had planned to play hockey Sunday night also, but...

Our trip back Sunday was pretty brutal. We left at 8:30am, and didn't get home until about 10:00pm. Both of our flights were delayed, and we sat on the ground in planes for quite a while waiting for gates to open up. Our checked bag also didn't make it to Detroit on our flight. It arrived at our house at midnight (!) last night. My daughter did OK on the planes, but it was a long day of traveling for everyone.