International Ride

I had intended to meet up with another Rhino last night to ride Pontiac Lake. As it turned out he was a no-show. While I was waiting for him, I started talking with another guy who was also waiting for a group. As it turned out, his group left early, without him, so the two of us ended up riding the trail together.

This guy turned out to be a visiting engineer from Germany named Guenther. I work with a lot of Germans, so I'm used to the accent and we didn't have too much trouble communicating (his English was also very good). Even though he said he hadn't ridden in about a year, he was in pretty decent shape, so I didn't have to go oppresively slow.

I was actually really stressed out before the ride, so things ended up working out just about perfectly for me. I got a relatively easy ride in, and I was distracted from other things by making sure I wasn't dropping Guenther and that he was getting through the technical bits in one piece. By the time I was finished, I felt considerably better.

Stony TT Goal Progress

I rode out at Stony Creek again last night. I rode at a "tempo" pace for the first 30 minutes (after I warmed up). I ended up riding virtually all of the singletrack that's in the Stony TT within that time, roughly half of the total course.

So, assuming that my tempo pace is roughly my race pace, which it should be, I rode at a pace that would get me about a 59 minute time trial. That's 5 minutes faster than my time from last year, but still 4 minutes slower than my target for this year. I suppose that means I'm basically on schedule to hit my target time by the end of July.

Most of the gain I've made so far is coming from better technical skill. I can tell that I'm riding much smoother, and therefore faster, on the singletrack.

The part of the TT course that I didn't ride yesterday is mostly more open two-track, and it also has an extended climbing section. So, speed improvements on that part of the course will come from improvements in fitness.

Sunday Ride

I ended up not racing at PLRA yesterday. Having only been out on the trail once this year, I just didn't feel comfortable racing out there.

I did go out to Stony in the afternoon though; I rode for an hour and a half. I tried out my Kenda Nevegal DTC tires. They seemed to work pretty well. I felt like climbing traction was better than my Panaracer Fire XC's, as was rolling resistance. I don't think they cornered quite as well, but it wasn't much of a drop-off.

As for the ride itself, I pushed harder than I had intended to on my first lap. I rode pretty well, but I was starting to get tired by the end. I backed off on the second lap and felt much better, and, for the most part, I don't think I went much slower. I carried my momentum better on the second lap and picked better lines, so I still went pretty fast but didn't use nearly as much energy.

Base 2 Test - Ugh

Sorry about not posting more, this week's been busy.

This morning, I did my LT field test for this phase. I had expected to do pretty well; I felt very fit going into the test. Long story short, it didn't go as well as I expected.

With the idea in mind of crushing the test, I went out pretty hard for the first 10 minutes. That would have been fine if I was really fit enough to crush the test. As it turned out, my energy started dropping off after 15 minutes. At that point, my average power had fallen to about where I was last month. I felt like throwing in the towel then, but I didn't. I kept pushing through to the end; I figured, if nothing else, it was good practice for sustaining hard efforts (that, and it's bad to get in the habit of quitting).

I ended up improving my average power by 5 Watts from last month, mostly by pushing hard again over the last minute or two. I suppose an improvement is an improvement, but it wasn't what I expected.

Looking at the numbers afterward, it's clear that I went too hard at the beginning. In fact, my speed over the first 10 minutes was faster than I've ever gone on a LT test. I suppose this just sets me up for a big improvement on the test next month.

Snowed Out

I had planned to do a lot of riding over the weekend, but Mother Nature derailed me. We got about 3-4 inches of snow at my parents' house this weekend. Crazy...

We're supposed to keep getting rain and snow this week, which probably means I won't race at Pontiac Lake this weekend. It will most likely be a mudpit and I've only been on the trail once this year.

Where Did Spring Go?

It's cold and snowy here tonight.

OK, just a little snow...

Tempo

I've been doing Tempo rides on Tuesday nights for this training block. Last night was also the first Rhino track night. I had considered going, but they were predicting bad thunderstorms so I decided to stay home and do my Tempo ride as-planned on the trainer. It turns out that I could have gone to the track, it still hadn't rained by the time I went to bed!

Anyway, I had a great ride last night. I did a short warmup, then 40 minutes at tempo, then a short cooldown. My legs felt great for all but the last 5 minutes of the tempo riding. For the past two weeks, I felt like I struggled to keep my power numbers even at the lower limit of Zone 3, but last night, I was able to stay at the upper end with reasonable comfort. It's workouts like that that give me confidence in my training plan.

Unfortunately, the weather is supposed to get pretty bad around here this week. Lots of cold days and rain (and maybe snow!). Sarah and I are heading over to Mattawan for the weekend. I'm hoping I can get some rides in anyway, but we'll see. I'll just have to break out my cold weather riding gear again.

The first mountain bike races of the year are coming up in the next few weeks. The first two are time trials, one at Pontiac Lake and the other at Yankee Springs. I was originally thinking I wouldn't do the Pontiac Lake race, it's on the last day of my Base 2 phase, but I'm starting to get anxious to race. I may treat it as a "fair weather" race: if the weather is nice and I feel good, I'll do it, if not, I won't. I'm already signed up for Yankee Springs.

POTATOEE Wrap-up

Well, Dad and I wrapped up our POTATOEE challenge last weekend. We ended up doing our last ride together, and both of us made it to Cockeysville.

Dad got there faster than me. He ended up with 657 miles, I had 639 miles.

I think that all of the riding has been good for him. He's definitely faster than he was last year.

Busy Week

It's been a busy week. I've been working hard at work and staying busy at home. I've been pushing to get my mountain bike rebuilt before today, and I finally finished it up last night.

I woke up at 4:45am again this morning for my Friday strength workout. Both times I've done it, this week and last week, I've been really fired up and ready to go in the morning. I think a lot of it has to do with knowing that Friday is the beginning of the "meat" of my weekly training. I've got 2 of my 3 strength workouts and about 70% of my riding hours between Friday and Sunday. It probably doesn't hurt that Friday is the last day of the work week too...

I took the bike out to Stony Creek for its inaugural dirt ride tonight. The idea was to hit the hills on the two-track for my "Moderate Hill" workout; I also rode some of the singletrack. The new bike worked pretty well, it seemed to go where I pointed it a bit better than the old bike. I think the combination of the longer top tube and shorter stem also made it feel a bit more stable on the descents. I'll need to ride it a bit more to get a good feel for it though.

I'm heading over to my parents' house this weekend to visit. If the weather is OK, my dad and I will no doubt get some good road riding in; even if it's not OK, we probably still will. Should be fun.

Mt. Waterford

I had a nice weekend of riding. I did a road ride out at Stony Creek Friday afternoon. It was colder and windier than I expected, but it wasn't too bad. I did a longer road ride Saturday afternoon, leaving from my house and going out to Indian Springs. For both rides, I used my HRM to keep me in check a little. Especially on windy rides, I have a tendency to push harder than I probably should.

Based on the condition of the dirt road I was on for part of the ride Saturday, I can't imagine that the trails are close to being rideable around here. It's supposed to rain quite a bit this week too.

Sunday morning, I took the HRM off for my hill workout. I decided to climb the imposing "Mt. Waterford". OK, so there's not really a Mt. Waterford, but that's what I'm going to call the hills in my neighborhood. One side of my neighborhood is built on two little hills, and there are roads going all over the place on these hills (the delivery guys call our neighborhood "the spaghetti factory"). While none of the roads up the hills alone are particularly long, you can string together a couple and get some climbs that take about 2 minutes. Not really long, but long enough. There are enough different roads that I ended up riding for an hour and didn't take the same combination twice.

For whatever reason, my hill workout ride wasn't particularly taxing. My hills definitely fit Friel's criteria for a "Moderate Hills" workout (grade less than 6%, takes less than 3 minutes to climb), so I'm not sure what the deal is. Maybe I just didn't ride them fast enough?

I Love It...

... when a plan comes together.

I'm feeling really good about my training this week. I had a very good ride last night, I worked on single leg pedaling on the trainer. I didn't used to like the Speed Skill work, but I've gotten to where it's one of my favorites. Maybe because it's relatively easy?

I woke up early this morning (4:45am) and did my strength workout. I don't know if it's the extra motivation from doing something new or what, but I'm feeling really good about my strength workouts. I know that a big part of it is that I have confidence in my plan and I'm going after it with some intensity. To paraphrase a saying in the fitness world, you'll get better results with a bad plan that's well-executed than a good plan that's poorly executed.

I brought cycling clothes to work with me and my bike is in the car, so I can ride immediately after work tonight. Tonight is just a basic aerobic workout. Sunday, I'm doing my first official "hill" workout of the year. If the weather allows (and if I have a mountain bike put together) I'd really like to do this on the trail, but it's a long shot, the ground is still pretty soupy here. I'll most likely do it on the road.

Looking back to my training plan for 2006, I see that I literally only had 4 hill training workouts scheduled for the whole year! I'd have to check my training diary, but I bet I skipped or changed some of those too. I'm sure my thinking was, "Hey, I'm a good climber, I don't need to work on that stuff." It seems like 4 can't possibly be enough though. This year, I'm not going to skimp on the hill work, and I suspect I'll see a big improvement because of it. It makes me feel more confident about making up my 9 minutes!

Double Updates

So, the new strength plan seems to be OK. Not much can be said after one workout. I did like the self-massage at the end.

On the POTATOEE front, Dad is putting in a big effort to get to Cockeysville by the end of the month. He's into Maryland now and has about 90 miles left to go; at the rate he's going, he should have no problem making it. As for me, I'm in Bedford, PA with about 160 miles to go. But, I just checked my training plan for the next two weeks, and I think I should make it to Cockeysville too... if I do, it will be on March 31.

New Strength Plan

Work has been very busy this week, so I haven't had too much time for blogging. I did use my limited free time to work out my strength plan though.

I was initially just going to use the plan outlined in the Friel book with some small changes, but the more I studied the plan, the more problems I had with it. In terms of exercise selection, it's OK, although I think he uses machines too much. My real problem is with the overall structure as it relates to loading. I don't think it makes sense to be doing a Maximum Strength phase of lifting while in a riding phase that promotes high-volume, low-intensity rides. He does have you working on Max Strength for most of the year for some exercises, but just for maintenance. For most of the exercises though, he's got you doing low weight/high rep work. I really don't see the point of working on this extensively in the gym, at least once you've achieved some minimum level of endurance.

So, what does my plan look like? There are two components. The first component is a heavier lifting period using conjugate periodization during the Preparation Phase. Essentially, this allows you to do your most intense strength work with minimal sport-specific (ie- riding) demands.

The second component of the plan takes place during the season. During the season, we need to minimize time in the gym (or basement) so as not to interfere with the more important conditioning and skill work on the bike. My plan here is largely borrowed from Alwyn Cosgrove. In my opinion, he has the structured the framework of the workout to focus on the right things.

The points are:

1. Mobility, Activation and Movement Prep (Essentially a warm-up, but with a focus on loosening any tight spots.)
2. Injury Prevention (Work on any known weak areas. For me, my knees.)
3. Core (Everyone says that Core work is important, so why put it at the end?)
4. Elastivity/Reactive/SCC Training (Plyometrics and agility.)
5. Resistance (Strength training, 20-30 minutes max.)
6. Energy System Development (GPP, intervals, etc - will be optional for me)
7. Flexibility, Regeneration (Self-massage, stretching, etc. 10-15 minutes)

Progression was another area where my previous "plan" was lacking. I'm still not sure what is reasonable here, I may shoot for 5% load increases every 2 weeks or so; I'll have to get into it a little bit to see what is reasonable.

My first workout under the new plan is set for tonight. We'll see how it goes.

Strength Plan

I retested my CP5s and CP1 tests this morning. I tightened the roller on the trainer by one more turn than normal, which helped prevent wheel slippage.

My new 1 minute power-to-weight ratio is 7.08W/kg (rated Fair/Moderate), and my new 5s power-to-weight ratio is 10.o2W/kg (still Untrained per the chart). While these are better than my earlier numbers, they're still not where I'd like them to be.

In the CP1 test today, I was probably limited more by Anaerobic Endurance than Force (essentially, I could turn the gear over, just not for long enough). For the CP5s test, even though I used different gearing this time, I still felt like I just couldn't turn over a big enough gear to get a better power number.

I've been thinking that part of the problem is the haphazard way I've approached my Strength training. I haven't been using the plan in Friel's book (hey, I have the Internet, I know better, right?); I don't think that's necessarily a problem, but I've replaced his plan with a very unstructured plan of my own. As I see it, there are two problems with my "plan". One is that it's fairly random in terms of exercise selection, so I'm not necessarily focusing on the right things (or anything!). That may be OK for the off-season, but it's not now. The second problem, which is probably more important, is that I haven't been diligent about progression. Essentially, I don't have any strength training goals and I'm not increasing loads on a schedule, so my results are limited.

So, to fix this, I'm planning to do two things: First, follow a real strength plan, whether it's Friel's or someone else's. I need to set some goals for what I want to achieve and follow a plan to get there. Second, I need to make sure my nutrition will support my training; it seems basic, but it's easy for me to let it slide.

New Weakness?

A couple of things all came together for me this afternoon. Here's the brief outline:

- During my test this morning, my legs felt OK, but my lungs were struggling to keep up. (This is counter-intuitive, but stay with me.)

- During my full suite of testing in Jan/Feb, my feeling was that I just couldn't produce enough force to turn over big gears.

- Last weekend, I really struggled riding into the wind at Stony (in fact, I always struggle riding into the wind).

- This morning, Sarah commented that I should probably eat more protein. For whatever reason, when Sarah said this, everything started to click...

I've been re-reading Joe Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible this winter (and taking notes). One of the things that jumped out at me was that any weakness in the basic cycling abilities (Force, Endurance and Speed Skill) will produce weaknesses in higher abilities, and likely lead to poor race results.

Here's what dawned on me this afternoon: Force is likely a weakness for me. I had always assumed that Force was a strength of mine (or, at least, not a weakness) since I'm a strong climber. Pretty much everything else points against it though; probably the reason I'm strong climber is that I weigh a lot less than the guys I normally ride with.

The next thing I did was to plot my "power profile." I had intended to do this in February after I finished my testing, but I didn't get around to it. What I found seemed to confirm everything. I didn't test at all the same time intervals, but I feel that I'm close enough. Here's what I found:

- FT Power to Weight: 3.89W/kg (Good)

- 5Min Power to Weight: 4.36W/kg (Good) (I actually used a 6 min test)

- 1Min Power to Weight: 5.85W/kg (Untrained) !

- 5s Power to Weight: 8.35W/kg (below Untrained) !!! (I actually used a 12s test, but I'm not sure switching to 5s will help.)

I'm not sure that I buy the absolute numbers here, since my "Good" FT result should have meant that I shouldn't have gotten smoked so badly in the Hines Park TT last year, but I think the relative numbers are probably valid. I don't mind if my short duration power numbers are lower than my higher duration ones, but I think that they should be in the same ballpark. Essentially, I'm looking for all 4 power numbers to fall along the same line, not to have this big step between the 1 min and 5 min numbers.

Having poor 5/12s and 1min power results means one of two things. Either my anaerobic capacity is poor, or I'm not strong enough to turn over a big gear. While I wasn't doing hard rides on the bike in January, I was doing a lot of Ross's high intensity work, so I don't think anaerobic capacity was the main issue; that leaves strength (or Force in Friel lingo).

So, what next? Well, the first thing I'm going to do is retest my 1 minute and 5s threshold power (I guess I'll use 5s, there's nothing special about 12s) to make sure that this is really a problem. For the retests, I'm going to tighten the roller on my trainer a little more; certainly wheel slip is a factor for the 5/12s test. I'm also going to have Sarah work the computer and stopwatch for me; just one more distraction I can eliminate.

(Last point, the bit about the legs feeling OK and not the lungs. I read an article in Runner's World a couple years ago about this. They said that if your legs are burning but you're breathing OK, it's likely a problem of inadequate aerobic capacity. The reasoning is that your legs aren't getting enough glycogen because the lungs/heart are poorly trained. Conversely, if your legs feel OK but you're having trouble breathing, it's likely caused by an inadequatly developed anaerobic system... in that case, the problem starts with the legs and moves to the lungs/heart.)

Watt's on Second

I had been a little concerned about the LT field test for this Base1 phase I'm just finishing. Since I'd been sick a few weeks ago and took the trip to Colorado, I thought I might not be able to put up very good numbers.

I took the test this morning, and I felt like I was going to rip it up as soon as I climbed on the bike. The test went well, I averaged 233 Watts. I did 217W on my pre-season test this year, so it was a nice improvement.

For comparison, last year I did 214W at the end of Base1 and 233W at the end of Base3. In fact, looking at the other data, my test this morning was actually better than last year's Base3 test even though the average power numbers were the same. This morning, I covered an extra 0.15miles in the first 10 minutes (power in the first 10 minutes is not counted toward the average power). It looks like I also must have made a sprint at the end of the test last year, since max power was 373W; I kept it pretty steady this morning and my maximum power was only 266W.

So, I'm pretty happy with how the test went and I'm looking forward to starting Base2 on Monday. There's less cross-training with Base2 and a better variety of on-the-bike workouts.

Special Delivery

Look at what showed up on my doorstep this week!

Tire Guy

Not too much interesting going on around here. I've been putting together the details of my training plan for the next block; I'm still in the Base phase. I'm planning to test this weekend, it's always interesting to see how that goes.

I've sort of decided that I should get a little more serious about picking my mountain bike tires and setting pressures. I had some experience last year that showed me the difference in performance that picking the right tires and pressure can make, but I didn't really do anything with it. I pretty much just ran a "most-conditions" tire at a pressure I knew worked and left it alone. While that approach is fine for just riding, it's not the way to go as fast as possible during a race. So, I'm going to be doing a little experimenting with different tires and pressures in different conditions and see if I can't get going a little faster.

My first race is in about a month now, the Yankee Springs Time Trial. I haven't ridden out there yet, but it's supposed to be a nice trail. I probably won't be in great racing shape for this one, but it will be good to get out there again.

Weekend Rides

For the first time this Spring (can I call it Spring yet?), we had nice weather for riding outside. It was sunny and in the mid-40's... a temperature that might make me think about the trainer in the Summer.

Anyway, I went to the Rhino group ride Saturday morning out at Stony. I had intended to ride for 2.5 hours, so I showed up half an hour or so early and did a solo lap before the group got rolling. The nice weather meant that there were a lot of people out. The group was 6 people when I joined up, but we kept picking up new people (including a couple guys from the Wolverine Sports Club) and dropping others. The pace was just a touch too fast for me. I finished my last pull with one of the WSC guys, and pulled off for good. So, it only ended up being a 2 hour ride for me.

On Sunday, I rode by myself around my house. I had skipped my speed skill workout Friday, since Sarah's college team had their banquet, so I did some spin-ups on the road. It was, I think, the first time I'd ever done this particular drill on the road instead of on the trainer. For the first two ramp-ups, I started bouncing at a pretty low cadence and felt pretty uncoordinated. The rest of them got progressively better though, and by the end I was doing about as well as I usually do on the trainer.

One other point... I had two sort-of close calls with cars on my ride Sunday. In both cases I was careless and left the door open for something bad to happen. This happened to me last Spring also; I think it's just because I haven't ridden on the road like that for a while and forgot my good habits from last year. So, for everyone else, pay attention and ride predictably!

DDR+Juggling

This is either really cool, or really nerdy... I can't decide.

DDR+Juggling

Training Status

When I got back from Colorado last week, I was feeling pretty unfit and concerned that I was well behind where I was last year at this time. What a difference a week makes! I feel much, much better right now after a week of solid training. I still don't feel race-fit, which is fine, since it's only March, but I'm feeling pretty good.

By the numbers, I am down on training hours from last year. As of last week, I had trained 15 hours more last year than this year. This is to be expected, since in 2006 I started my Base phase in January, where this year I started in February.

The interesting thing is the composition of these hours. Last year at this time, 47% of my hours were on the bike, 50% of my hours were strength training (!), and 3% of my hours were cross-training (ie- off the bike conditioning). This year, 50% of my hours have been on the bike, 25% of my hours have been strength, and 25% of my hours have been cross-training. To me, this seems like a much better mix.

This weekend will be a big riding weekend for me, and it looks like the weather should cooperate. Next week is a Recovery week, so I'll test at some point that week and we'll see how I really did this phase.

Juggling

Ross posted an article about the benefits of juggling on his website. Like most things Ross suggests, I've been giving it a try; I'm learning the 3-ball cascade to start. After practicing a little (5-10 minutes) every day for 5 days, I can get through about 6 or 7 throws before my bad throws start catching up with me and I start dropping.

Skiing

Monday, we went downhill skiing at Winter Park. It was still snowing and kind of windy, but it wasn't too bad. We stuck mostly to the beginner and intermediate runs. I managed to get through the day without falling, but I came close a couple times. In both situations, I ran into some bumps where I wasn't expecting them, so I was going a bit too fast.




The skis that we rented were significantly more "shaped" than I was used to. (I think that they were very similar to these skis.) I'm still not sure if it was the skis or the fresh snow, but the skiing felt very effortless to me. (As the guy at the rental place put it, "In Michigan, you ski on ice. Here, you ski on snow.") Regardless, by the end of the day, I was ready to sell my skis at home and get some newer shaped ones.

On Tuesday, we went over to Devil's Thumb Ranch and did some cross-country skiing. The weather was perfect: calm and sunny. It was warm enough that I took my gloves off pretty early on, and I was rewarded with some blistered hands by the time we finished.

After the cross-country skiing, we drove on over to Hot Sulfur Springs and took a dip in the pools. It was kind of neat I guess, but I think Sarah liked it better than I did. We both smelled like sulfur for the rest of the day, even after showering.

We got up early on Wednesday and drove back to Denver. This time, we hit a snowstorm as soon as we got over Berthould Pass, and it snowed all the way back to Denver. It didn't really cause us any trouble and we got to the airport on time and had a good flight back home.

SuzieQ

I found this picture on the camera. Suzie obviously wanted to go on the trip with Sarah.

Travel to Winter Park

On Sunday we drove from Colorado Springs to Winter Park. Along the way, we stopped at The Garden of the Gods. Here are a few pictures of our walk through the park.

On our way out of the park, we saw a group of about 10 cyclists out on a ride. They were really attacking the hills for February, I surely would have been dropped had I been riding with them. As it was, they dropped our car on one of the descents and we never saw them again.

As you can see from the pictures, there wasn't much snow on the ground around Colorado Springs. This held true as we passed Denver and turned into the mountains. I was starting to get concerned that there wouldn't be much snow in Winter Park (that's typically the way my ski vacations go)... I was wrong.

As we started climbing up the Berthoud Pass, snow started falling, and it didn't stop until late in the day on Monday. The result was that we had about 5-6" of fresh snow on the ground by Monday morning. Driving up and down the pass wasn't too bad, the road was snowy, but not too slippery. Also, since it was a Sunday evening, most of the traffic was going the other way, back toward Denver.

POTATOEE Update

Quick POTATOEE update:

Last time I updated, I was making a little comeback on Dad, but now he's crushing me again. He's put in 369 miles against my 315. The plan is for our little competition to end at the end of March, so I don't think it's too likely that I'll catch him, but we'll see.

As far as our progress toward Maryland... Dad is about 30 miles into Pennsylvania, while I still haven't crossed the border. It doesn't look like either of us are on pace to make it to Cockeysville by the end of the month.

Colorado Springs

I started my trip to Colorado in fine style last week, by missing my flight. I left the house about 2.5 hours before my left was supposed to leave, which I thought would be plenty of time. It took a little less than an hour to get to the airport, but then I must have stumbled through a rift in the space-time continuum or something, because by the time I got to the counter to check-in, I only had 20 minutes left... which was too late. It's a good thing Sarah left on Monday, she has a thing about getting to the airport super-early, so she would have been ticked. So, I had to wait around a couple extra hours to take the next flight out.

I drove down to Colorado Springs from Denver in rush hour traffic, but it wasn't too bad. It was sunny and warm and there were always mountains in the distance. The hotel was nicely situated. It was about a 10 minute walk to the competition rink and there were a bunch of restaraunts also within easy walking distance. I got something to eat Thursday night and did a quick workout (one of Ross's minute drills), but that was about it. I did find it interesting that the altitude didn't bother me as much when exercising as it did last year when I was in Vail. On the other hand, Colorado Springs is at ~6000ft, whereas Vail is at ~8200ft.

Sarah's team skated early Friday morning. It was an interesting flight. The team that won was clearly the best, and the teams that brought up the rear clearly belonged there. But the majority of the teams (maybe 9 of the 13) were not too much different from each other, so the marks were all over the place. Sarah's team skated well though; they certainly improved a lot from where they started late last Fall. Good coaching no doubt!

Later on in the day, we visited the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs (with the kids on the team and their parents). It was kind of interesting, but not really as cool as I expected. I thought we might get to see more of the 'scientific' training equipment, but that wasn't the case. We saw a few of the athletes: a bunch of wrestlers training, a cyclist that was riding his mountain bike while rolling his road bike alongside, and a female weightlifter (her back and shoulders were huge!). We saw the velodrome from the bus as we were leaving, it's a few blocks from the training center.

Saturday we watched skating all day. Sarah was pretty relaxed since her team was done competing. Actually, it was much better than watching skating by myself, which is what I'm used to.

Sunday, we packed up and headed to Winter Park, but I'll save that for another post.

Back Home

I'm back from Colorado now; I'll post again this weekend about the trip. For now, check out this little Q&A with Michigan racing hotshot, Mike Simonson.

The Sunday Game

I got "the call" again this week so I played hockey again last night with the Birmingham group. Finally, for the first time this winter, I didn't feel out-of-sync on the ice. I'm still not able to do everything that I'd like to do, but at least I'm reasonably close now.

I'm basically over my cold now. I did skip my workout last Tuesday when I felt really bad, but otherwise I did the conditioning part of my plan as-scheduled. I also skipped my Strength and Core workouts every day this week. I decided that doing two workouts per day was probably too much while I wasn't feeling good, and, that if I had to choose, I should do the conditioning work.

Cold Update

My cold seems to be getting better pretty quickly. I decided not to ride the trainer last night. I did get out and shovel snow for about an hour though.

I felt much better today than I did yesterday, still not great, but there's a big improvement. I put in a pretty easy hour on the trainer tonight; once I got warmed up a little, it felt OK to ride.

And now, a quick POTATOEE update. Dad still has a lead on me, but I've closed the gap down to a much more manageable 22 miles. Dad's just on the other side of Cleveland.

Sick, Again!

Well, I've picked up a cold again. I'll blame one of my co-workers for this one. I was maybe still a little worn down from a tough week last week, and then Rod came over to my desk yesterday morning, all sniffly and snuffly, and I started feeling sick a few hours later.

The symptoms are all "above the neck", so I may try to do some easy riding on the trainer later on, we'll see. Hopefully I can get over this cold pretty quick.

I had just gotten to the point where I felt like I was really making progress from a fitness standpoint, so this is frustrating.

Cold Ride

I went on a relatively long road ride with a few of the Rhinos this morning. There ended up being four of us. The other three guys were clearly stronger than me... and they all rode bikes with knobby tires while I had slicks. Still, I don't think I slowed them down too much. It just ended up being a more intense ride than I expected.

It was about 21F this morning and windy. My choice of clothing worked out pretty well. I wore some Pearl Izumi AmFib tights for the first time. My legs stayed comfortable for the whole ride. I also wore a balaclava for the first time. My head felt a little cold on our first turn into the wind, but it seemed OK after that.

I did learn one thing about riding in weather that cold though... normal water bottles are no good. Mine was frozen after an hour. One of the other guys had an insulated bottle; I may try that next time.

CP12 Test

I rode my CP12 test last night. I decided not to do it on Sunday since my legs were still a little fatigued from the long ride on Saturday. My shoulders were also really tight on Sunday. I think it was a combination of the long ride, my strength workout (lots of pullups, for me anyway), and hunching my shoulders in the cold ice rink the day before.

Anyway, I was able to complete the CP12 test to my satisfaction in one attempt. I followed Friel's advice and tried to hold a slightly lower power value than I thought I should; it ended up being a good strategy. My hunch was that my CP12 power would be around 240W, so I tried to hold 230W. With about 2 minutes to go, I was really starting to struggle, but I held 230 through to the end; I don't think I could have done much more.

I'm not particularly thrilled with the number itself (since I held 240W last year for half an hour), but it's early in the season and this CP12 test has a strong anaerobic component. So, this is just telling me that my anaerobic fitness has declined over the winter. That's to be expected.

One more test to go, CP6. I'll try to knock this one off tonight. I think I performed the tests in a pretty good order, saving the two that I didn't have a good feel for (CP12 and CP6) for last. Based on the test last night, I think I have a better idea of what my CP6 power should be.

Bicycling - Mar '07

I just received the new issue of Bicycling magazine. This magazine isn't one of my favorites, but I get it because some kid came around selling magazine subscriptions and I thought his sales pitch was pretty good.

So, a couple of thoughts on this issue:

1. Is white the new black? It seemed like there were a bunch of pictures showing people in white jerseys and shorts. Now, I admit, I think the white looks pretty cool, but I can think of a bunch of reasons not to wear white on a bike... especially for shorts. I think I'll pass on this trend.

2. The cover guy. Considering that this is the "abs" issue, is this guy really the best choice? I mean c'mon, my abs look better than this guy's (however, I think my lack of a tan and unshaven chest would have kept me off the cover... maybe next year ;-) ). He doesn't really even look like a cyclist...

3. The core workout. If Bicycling would consistently include articles like this, I might keep buying it. To me, this looks like a well-constructed workout; the focus is on functional cycling muscles. I actually ran through it last night. A lot of it is similar to what I already do, but there were some new movements for me. In particular, I had a little trouble with the scissor kicks and the "boat pose" (see Jack LaLanne below). I'll probably roll this routine into my Core workout rotation.

4. Wheel review. I guess I'm out of touch in the roadie world... I couldn't believe that a "mid-range" wheelset is $1000+!

Testing

I changed up my plan a little bit this week. With my first Base phase coming up next week, I decided that I should start doing my tests. This year, I'm planning to do the full battery of tests from the Friel book now (at the start of the Base phase) and at the end of the Base phase. I will also do a few critical ones in between.

So far, I've completed the Sprint Power test, Critical Power tests at 12seconds, 1 minute and 30 minutes, and the Lactate Threshold Field test (which is the only test I did last year). I still need to do the Graded Exercise test and the Critical Power tests at 6 and 12 minutes.

I did the LT field test tonight; I had forgotten how hard it is. My heart rate was consistent with the tests I did last year, which is not too surprising I guess. My average power was 217W, which was a little disappointing, I had hoped to be in the 220's (no particular rationale behind it though). That being said, I also tested at 217W last April, after I had gone through three months of Base training! So the test today also suggests that I'll see a nice year-to-year improvement over last year.

The other interesting thing about the LT test today was how consistent my effort was. In past tests, I've usually had a little left in the tank for a hard push over the last minute or so. I usually see this reflected in my max power number. This max power number has been steadily dropping every time I do the test though. The first time I did it, my max power was 250W more than my average power . Today, it was 54W over my average. I'm just getting better at gaging my effort over the 30 minutes.

I expect to have trouble with the 6 and 12 minute critical power tests. Not because they will be hard (they will!), but because I will have trouble gaging my effort. For the shorter tests, I could pretty much just go all out (although I almost didn't make it on the 1 minute test!). As I've said, I have some experience with the 30 minute test. But how hard to go for 6 or 12 minutes? I'm really not sure, they are kind of strange time intervals. I expect that I'll have to do these a couple times each to get a good number.

Tomorrow is a break from testing though. I'm planning on doing my "long ride". I was originally thinking I'd do it outside with the Rhinos, but it's pretty cold here. They're predicting it will be about 10F tomorrow morning, but will feel like -5F with the wind. Ahhh... I think I'll stay instead.

Recovery Techniques

Ross had links to two articles about recovery on his blog the other day. This one in particular I thought was very good.

I had a some good workouts tonight. I'm still doing a lot of cross-training right now. I played DDR for about an hour (yeah, I'm a geek) and then did a core workout. Tomorrow I'm on the trainer for some speed work, and I've got a strength workout scheduled.

I checked the POTATOEE status today (Dad and I are keeping track using Google Docs, it works pretty well). Dad is crushing me... he's about 60 miles ahead right now! He's already well past Toledo and almost to Sandusky, and I still have 25 miles to go before I even get to Toledo. I'll put in a few miles this week though; probably about 15 tomorrow on the trainer and then maybe another 35 or so on the road over the weekend.

We Now Return...

... to your regularly scheduled workout.

OK, not really. Today was supposed to be a day off, but I've had so many days off this past week with my cold, I decided I needed to do something today. I went down to the basement and went 8 10x10 rounds with the ol' bag. It was rough... I can tell I haven't been doing much lately.

This week is the last week of my Preparation phase, next week I start into Base. Reading other guys' blogs, it seems like I'm really behind in my schedule, but I guess it doesn't matter. My schedule is my schedule. I'm set up to peak for the Stony TT at the end of July and then again near the end of the MTB season and the beginning of 'cross season.

I tore my 'cross bike almost entirely down yesterday and built it back up. The headset had gotten pretty sticky, so that's what got me going on it. It turns out that there was a bunch of water trapped in the frame (from a race or a cleaning, I don't know), and when I hung the bike from its rear wheel in the garage, the water all collected at the headset... not good. I cleaned everything up and re-greased it; it seems to be pretty smooth again now.

I need to do the same with my road bike...

Boucing Back

OK, I'm convinced that I actually got two bugs. The first one hit me last Thursday and I got over it on Tuesday, when I immediately picked up a second one that left me sick for the rest of the week. I'm still not back to normal, but I'm finally starting to feel better.

I went ahead and did a short technique workout on the trainer last night. It was driving me crazy to not do much of anything for so long. I haven't decided what I should try to do this weekend.

Recovering

I'm still a bit sick. It's kind of annoying...

I felt really good Monday night and yesterday, so I went ahead and did my normal workouts last night. Just a pretty easy hour of spinning on the trainer and a core workout. Today, I'm still feeling OK, but my nose has been running like crazy. I finally took some cold medicine tonight just so I could take a break from blowing my nose!

So, I'm postponing tonight's workout for a later date. I think I need to rest a little bit more.

On the POTATOEE front, Dad has used my illness wisely and has pulled out a big lead on me. He's right around Toledo, and I'm about 30 miles behind!

Under the Weather

I've been feeling a little sick with a cold for the past few days. Nothing too bad, but enough that I haven't been too active. I went through a stretch last week and early this week where I just wasn't sleeping enough, and I think it finally caught up to me.

So, the plan is to take it easy for the rest of the weekend and try to get feeling better for Monday.

My wife has been in Chicago for most of this week with her skating team. They competed yesterday and finished 5th, which was good enough to qualify them for Nationals next month. No doubt a result of the good coaching!

Nationals are in Colorado Springs this year. I'm going to head out to Colorado a few days after Sarah and watch the team compete, and then we're going to stick around for part of the next week and vacation a little bit. I've sort of got it in my head that we should try snowboarding while we're out there. I've downhill skied but never snowboarded before.

Hockey Night in Birmingham

I played hockey again last night down in Birmingham. Incidently, Birmingham keeps their rink at 55F! My wife says that the figure skaters love it, but, as a hockey player, I find it uncomfortably warm.

Anyway, this was the same group I played with around Thanksgiving. We only had 7 skaters on a side this time instead of 10, so we didn't get much time on the bench. I definitely played better last night than I did the time before, but I was still pretty out of sync. It seemed like I'd always hang on to the puck a step too long, or just be a step away from where I should be. Still, there were some flashes of good play, I ended up scoring a goal and got a few other good chances. I really didn't play so well in my own end though.

The most memorable line of the night had to be from our goalie... "I don't know what you guys look like without your gear on. You're all just a bunch of skinny-stick bastards to me."
The other good news is that I wasn't totally dragging today at work. I slept in on Sunday and took a nap in the afternoon, and it seems to have helped.

I'll probably hit up the Wednesday night drop-in session again this week.

POTATOEE - Week 2

Even though the week isn't quite over, Dad and I exchanged mileages for the week. He caught up to me and passed me this week. Both of us are near the Indiana / Ohio border now (about 97 miles from the start), but Dad's about 2 miles ahead of me. He said that he's riding today too, but I'm not since I'm playing hockey tonight.

Foundation

While I'm not convinced that the type of program detailed over at CrossFit would really work for bike racing, I really do agree with most of their principles. One of these principles is illustrated by this "fitness pyramid":

The idea is that there is a hierarchy of development for an athlete, and that a deficiency in the base levels of the pyramid will cause the higher levels to suffer. In my opinion, sleep should also be on the Nutrition level.

What does this have to do with anything? As I've mentioned before, I'm still in the Preparation phase, and I'll be here for 3 more weeks (!). It's just the way my schedule worked out this year. The best way to describe the Preparation phase is that it's "training to train".

Another way to look at it is that I'm working on the foundation of my pyramid. So far, I've been using this time to try to develop good sleep, nutrition and recovery habits (with varying degrees of success). Hopefully I can carry them through for the rest of the year.

1. Contrast showers - I wrote about these before and I'm still doing them. While they're certainly not a cure-all, I've noticed that a lot of the little aches and soreness that I used to get have almost disappeared. I think this recovery technique should help quite a bit once my training load increases.

2. Napping - I'm going to try to make a habit of taking 30 minute naps after work. This helps boost my energy level for my evening workouts and seems to help offset sleep shortages from the night before. Of course, napping after work is pretty easy now while the sun is setting around 5:30.

3. On-bike nutrition - I've started mixing a bottle of pretty dilute sports drink for all of my rides, even for relatively easy technique workouts. It doesn't make a big difference on shorter rides, but I do tend to feel a little more fresh for the last 20 minutes or so. That fresh feeling means I work just a little bit harder. For one ride, it doesn't make much of a difference, but I suspect it adds up over the course of a season.

4. Off-bike nutrition - While I've certainly cleaned things up relative to December, I can do better with this. I went through a stretch last summer where I was pretty diligent about eating lots of fruits and vegetables and it seemed to make a difference.

The Old Guy?

I played hockey again last night. This one was a drop-in session at a (sort of) local rink. It turned out that we had 9 skaters and 2 goalies. So, we played 4-on-4 mostly, or 3-on-4 once people started getting a little more tired. It wasn't terribly late for adult ice time (9:15 to 10:35pm), but it was late enough that I'm draggin' this morning. I also had a small headache this morning, from being dehydrated I think.

So, I don't usually feel too old when I do stuff like this, but this group seemed really young. There was one guy who was probably in his 40's, then me, and then everyone else looked to be college-aged, maybe even some guys still in high school? We also had a girl out there who plays college hockey. I was probably up there with the best of them in terms of conditioning, but my skating and puck-handling skills were still pretty rusty. I was never as good as some of these youger guys were though.

Still, I had a good time, and I'm planning on playing on this Wednesday night session for at least the rest of this month. I also got invited back to the Sunday night game for this week with the guys I played with before Thanksgiving. I expect to play considerably better this time around.

POTATOEE - Week 1

I rode with the Rhinos this morning. A group of us met up at Depot Park in Clarkston, rode to Indian Springs where we met another group; we all rode a few laps at Indian Springs, and then my group headed back to Depot Park. We kept the pace pretty easy, which is all I need right now. Temperature was in the low to mid 30's, but I dressed appropriately, so I was reasonably comfortable. It was nice to talk with some of the guys I raced 'cross with last Fall and hadn't seen for a while.

Dad sent me his mileage for the week for our little POTATOEE challenge. He's ridden more times than I have, but I've put in more miles. Both of us have now "ridden" through Battle Creek and have turned off I-94 and we're now heading South on I-69. The next milestone is Coldwater, and then we hit the Michigan / Indiana border.

The Hook

I did a heavy bag workout last night instead of getting on the trainer again. It's way too early to be spending a lot of time on the trainer, especially for the low intensity rides I'm doing right now (Ashwin agrees too!). It doesn't put me in good shape for my POTATOEE competition with my dad, but I'll start catching up next month.

I tried a modified version of the 10x10 drill that I've done before. Instead of throwing rounds of 10 straight punches (1-2-1-2...1-2 where 1 is a jab and 2 is a straight right), I threw rounds of 20 5-punch combinations (1-2-1-2-3 where 3 is the left hook). I was able to make it through 10 rounds again, although it seemed a little harder than my last bag workout.

So, this morning, I figured maybe my left arm or shoulder would be sore, since I threw more lefts and was doing a new punch. Nope, my left arm was fine, but my left ankle was really sore! How weird is that? I think it had something to do with the way I was pivoting on my left foot to throw the hook. Anyway, the ankle loosened up throughout the morning and felt normal again by lunch.

I'll be taking the next two days off, more-or-less. My wife and I are going to a Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert tonight, and then we're heading over to Cleveland for the day tomorrow for a skating competition. I was tempted, but decided not to extend our Cleveland trip to visit Ray's.

Looks like the Rhinos are doing a slow pace ride Sunday morning. If the weather is OK, I'll probably do that.

POTATOEE

My dad and I are doing a little trainer challenge this winter that we've dubbed POTATOEE (Pedaling Our Trainers And Tracing Our Efforts East). We borrowed this idea from the Ann Arbor Bicycle Touring Society. Our route takes us from Mattawan, MI (where my dad lives) to Cockeysville, MD (where my brother lives). Since the weather has been so dry here, we're also going to count real road/trail miles also.

My dad made up a cool spreadsheet to track our mileage. It puts a little circle on the map showing where we are.

Even though I'm not planning on riding the trainer too much in January, I decided that I should at least get "on the board". Dad put in 13 miles on January 1, and I suspect more since then. So, last night, I put in a movie I got for Christmas, Transition, and rode the trainer for an hour. That ended up being 14 miles on the nose, so I'm past Kalamazoo now, and maybe just a little bit ahead of Dad. I'll be on the trainer again tonight working on pedaling technique.

Transition turned out to be a pretty cool movie. It follows a group of top cyclocross racers through their season. The interviews are pretty entertaining and there's lots of good race footage.

I'm still doing the contrast shower thing. I haven't been sore since I started doing it and my legs have felt good every day, but again, I'm not sure that I'm training hard enough right now that I'd be sore anyway. I am finally starting to build up a little tolerance to the cold water. When I started, it was all I could do to stand in the cold water for 30 seconds. Last night and this morning it didn't feel so bad and I let the cold water run for about 45 seconds. I'll probably try to work up to a full minute.

Last Workouts of '06

Last workouts of 2006 today. I did a Ross GPP workout and a core workout. Everything felt OK; I'm not sure if my contrast showers helped yesterday or not. My legs felt decent today; I would have thought they'd be a little tired from yesterday (I did the ride in the morning and a strength workout in the evening). I don't know if the reason I wasn't tired today had to do with the showers or just that it's early in the season.

Final tally of the hours for 2006:

• 177:37 on the bike


• 110:46 of strength/core


• 19:03 of cross-training

I'm off on Monday, so Tuesday will mark the beginning of my 2007 training schedule. I'll be staying in the Preparation phase for a while in '07. So, I'll still be doing lots of cross-training for the next several weeks, but I want to get on the bike at least a few times per week also.

I'm re-reading Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible this Winter. One of the things that has stuck out at me so far is that I somehow need to be monitoring workload. The most universal way of doing this seems to be to use RPE. So, as part of my data collection next year, I'll be assigning an average RPE for a workout and then multiplying that by the time to get workload. I think tracking this last year would have helped my Peak and Race phases. It also makes integrating cross-training easier.

Contrast Shower

So, I tried a new recovery technique after the ride today, a "contrast shower". Basically, you take your normal shower, then alternate between hot and cold water for a few minutes at the end. I did 30s cold and 1 minute hot three times (finish up with cold). All I can say so far is that this is definitely an exciting way to finish up a shower! That cold water is really cold! It takes your breath away.

We'll see how I feel tomorrow. It really won't be much of an indication if the legs feel just OK. If they feel good, then I can say that it seems to work.

Winter Training Ride

I went out with the Rhinos this morning on the first "Winter Training Ride" of the season. I showed up a little late, just as they were rolling out of the parking lot. Fortunately, we just do loops around the lake at Stony Creek, so, in theory, all you have to do is go in the other direction to catch the group.

I helped a guy fix a flat, and by the time we were about done, the group had finished their first lap. "Great", I thought, "I'll just jump out on the road and catch them." Well, by the time I got to the road the gap was kind of big (it's a big parking lot). "No problem", I thought, "I'll just have to hammer for a few minutes, it will be a good warmup. They're not supposed to going fast." I did a good job closing the gap for the first few minutes, and then I hit the wall. I managed to keep the gap about the same, but I wasn't catching them any more and I was working way too hard. So, when I was about halfway around the lake, I turned around to pick them up on the other side. At least it gave me a story to tell once I joined the group.

The group's pace was actually right where I need it to be right now. Although, a lot of the guys are riding mountain or 'cross bikes with knobby tires, and I had slick tires on my bike. Hopefully the pace will stay like this for a while (I hear that it does pick up toward March). It's nice to do the longer rides with a group for company.

10 Rounds!

I did the 10x10 drill again on my heavy bag yesterday. The last time I did it, I only made it 7 rounds before my punches were so weak that there wasn't much point in going on. Yesterday, I went the full 10 rounds! Once again, my last punches in the later rounds were kind of weak, but it was definitely better than before.

I'm not sure exactly what I'll do today, I may hit the trainer or do a short ride outside. Tomorrow I'm planning on doing the first of the "Winter Training Rides" with the Rhinos. Supposedly this will be long ride at an easy to moderate pace, which is what I need, but we'll see.

Back Home

I'm back from my trip to Mattawan for Christmas. We had a nice relaxing time.

I did end up doing some training every day I was there (including Christmas Day). I didn't do anything yesterday though, our travel-day home. It's not looking like I'll do much today either... but we'll see.

Christmas Training

So, I'd been thinking that I wouldn't do any kind of workout on Christmas Day, until I read about Daley Thompson over on Ross's board. This guy was a decathlete who used to train twice on Christmas Day because he figured his competition wouldn't be training that day (the second time was so that he'd still be up on a competitor, just in case someone did decide to train on that day).

So now, I don't know what I'll do, but I'll do something...

Stony Ride

I went out to Stony this morning for a little ride. I figured I might as well take advantage of the nice weather while it lasts. It was around 34F for the ride, and the trail was in great shape. I was reasonably comfortable after the first 10 minutes or so.

I felt pretty decent on the bike, but I wasn't pushing very hard. I decided to stop and take a few pictures to force myself to slow down.

Transition to the climb up "Mt. Sheldon". I'm actually at the top of a hill looking backward. The legs burned a bit more than normal on the climbs, but it wasn't too bad... hey, it's December.

On top of "Mt. Sheldon". It's hard to see in the picture, but you can make out the city of Birmingham from here.

There's a bench at the top, for resting I guess. "Mt. Sheldon" isn't really a mountain, it's just the highest point on this trail.

Entrance to Roller Coaster 1 is in the middle of the picture. There's an easier way down to the right.

Beginning of Roller Coaster 2.

The climb at the end of Roller Coaster 2 (again, I'm already at the top looking backward); it's actually much steeper than the picture suggests. This one trips up a lot of novices. The trick is to really haul the mail down the hill on the opposite bank, then you only have to make about two or three hard pedal strokes to clear this climb.

The last little section of singletrack before you're back out on the wide park-maintained access roads. There is one nasty climb after this picture. I saw that they had strategically placed some foam padding around a few of the trees on the descent... must be for the XC skiers.

Day 22 - Intervals and Vacation

Yay, I'm finally on vacation! I had planned to work on Tuesday, but since I went in for half the day on Thursday and Friday, I was able to take tomorrow off too. Things are largely under control at work, so I should be able to enjoy my time off.

Today is another interval / core day. The intervals are supposed to be short (only 50 meters), so I'll run the stairs for that work. I've noticed an increase in the flexibility of my back lately from doing the core work. There's an exercise called "wall walking" that I've been doing regularly that seems to help. With your back to a wall, you walk down the wall with your hands, ideally until your hands get to the floor and you're in a bridge position. I still have to stop well before I get to the floor, but I'm definitely getting better.

I retensioned the wheels on my singlespeed, so it's ready for winter riding duty. If the weather stays dry and cold, I'll head out to the trail in the morning for a little riding. Plan B for tomorrow is to hit the Rhino's indoor training session, but if you can ride outside, why ride inside?

Dog Pictures

I got a request for some pictures of Suzie, so here we go...

Also a little movie chronicling our ill-fated water-skiing adventure this summer. Some pretty serious biker-tans there too.

Day 21 - Fast and Furious

No, not the movie... "I need NAAAWWWSSS". On a vaguely related topic, my wife spied a NOS brand energy drink. Sounds nasty...

OK, so Fast and Furious is also the name of the final Warrior Challenge in the 50 day plan. If you do all 50 days, you go through each challenge twice. This one was a combination of pullups, dumbbell swings, plyometric pushups and knee tucks. No limits on rest between rounds, but the idea is to do as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes. I made it through 7 full rounds and was halfway through number 8 when the timer went off. My rest breaks got progressively longer through the 20 minutes; it was definitely another brutal workout.

The results of this plan have been impressive so far I think. My upper body and back are noticeably stronger (especially my back). My legs look like maybe they've gotten a bit smaller since the cycling season ended, but not too much. My bodyfat has stayed pretty low, somewhere in the 10% neighborhood according to my scale, despite not eating a particularly clean diet. My wife says that I have to wait until Christmas is over before I get more serious about what I'm eating. Despite the shorter duration of my conditioning drills, I also expect that I have largely maintained my aerobic conditioning, which is really the main goal of the off-season.

As far as the conditioning goes, I'll find out soon enough. I'll still be doing a lot of cross-training in January, but I'm going to start adding more time on the bike. If the weather stays dry, I'll do some riding outside. If not, the Rhinos are starting up weekly indoor training sessions Tuesday.

2007 Season Goals

I sat down yesterday and spent some time defining my 2007 season goals. The list I'd put on my blog before was OK, but I think they weren't sufficiently inspirational. They were closer to training objectives than real goals.

So, here we go, just two main goals for 2007:

1. Finish the Stony Creek MTB time trial in 55 minutes or less.

Depending on who shows up, this would be a top 5 finish in most of the Sport classes. It's also 9 minutes faster than my 2006 time (yikes!). That being said, I did cut 12 minutes from 2005 to 2006, but this jump will be harder. Still, goals are supposed to be hard and are supposed to push you... that's the whole point.

2. Race well enough in cylocross races to move up to the B's in 2008.

Well, there's really no rule about upgrading so I could do this regardless, except that I'd really get crushed if I'm not ready. Effectively, what this means is that I want to be consistently on the podium (top 5) in the C races in 2007. In 2006, my best finish was 6th, and I finished 11th a bunch of times. This won't be easy, but it should be achievable... probably easier than finding 9 minutes at Stony.

Day 19 - GPP Till You Drop

Yesterday's GPP session was brutal. It was scheduled to be 10 rounds of jumprope, burpees, pushups and bodyweight squats. No rest in between rounds either. I made it through 6 rounds plus the jumprope of the 7th, then I got down to do the burpees, and it just wasn't happening. I had slowed down dramatically by then too. I went through the first round in about 2 minutes (if that), but the stopwatch read 18:30 when I stopped... you do the math.

Attempts at a Vacation

Well, I was scheduled to take the day completely off today and tomorrow, but that's just not happening. My project at work is in a critical phase, so I went in for half the day today, and I'm going in for half the day tomorrow. That puts me with 4 vacation days left and 5 days to use them. Hopefully things calm down enough that I can feel good about taking most of next week off.

So, since I did come early today and the weather was decent (for December), I took the 'cross bike out for a ride. I only went out for about an hour, but it felt good to actually ride outside again.

It's just cold enough that Pontiac Lake has a little ice on it.

No ice on the pond across the street though...

It's not a particularly difficult loop, but there's usually a bit of a headwind on the way out and a couple little hills. I felt pretty good, my legs burned a little more the usual on the climbs, but it wasn't really too bad.

So, this helps to validate what I've been doing the past few weeks. Since I've been mainly doing higher intensity, but shorter workouts, I've been a little concerned that my aerobic fitness would degrade too much. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case.

On an unrelated topic, here's what drinking a Coke does to you.

Day 17 - Stair Intervals

I had an interval workout scheduled for today. Since I'm still not running per se, I decided to do some interval running on my basement stairs. (For some reason, running on the stairs doesn't bother my knee, but running outside for any reasonable period of time does... at least, it did the last time I tried it).

In true Ross fashion, I didn't rest between my intervals, I did a variery of pushups, squats, squat jumps (ouch!), etc instead. It was a relatively short workout, but by the time I was done, my whole body was nicely fatigued.

29er Wheels

I got my new 29 inch tires today. I put them on my planned sacrificial road rim, everything seemed to fit OK. The rim doesn't look so narrow, I don't think it will be an issue. So, the next step is to figure out what length spokes I need and start building up the wheel on the mountain hub.

Just a quick comparison of the 29 inch combo to the 26 inch combo... I like the look of that big wheel and tire.

Belated Japan Pictures

Oliver sent these pictures around from our trip to Japan last month...

Tokyo station.

Utsunomiya after dark.

Oliver and Miyoshi-san.

Keith, Eckart and me.

Utsunomiya station.

Anatomy of a Heavy Bag

I got a new toy a couple weeks ago, a water-filled heavy bag. Supposedly, it's 80lbs when full. I didn't check it on the scale, but when I had to hang it, 80lbs seemed about right. I was kind of fascinated by it's construction, so I took some pictures as I was putting it together.

Here's how it came. Mostly a lot of foam and plastic.



The shell with the foam inserted.



Bladder inserted and filling. There ended up being more air space between the filled bladder and the foam than I expected. This helps to make the bag very soft to hit. The bladder felt pretty tough. I don't expect to have any issues with it rupturing.

All closed up.



Hung up and ready for some punishment.

So far, I like the bag pretty well. Like I mentioned, it's fairly soft to hit, so I haven't had any issues with my hands (I am wrapping my hands and wearing bag gloves when I work with the heavy bag). I'm not getting a whole lot of bag movement, although it does move some; I think this has to do with the foam, the air gap, and it being water-filled.

I've only done two real workouts with it so far. One was part of a longer workout, and I just hit the bag for 5 minutes straight. The other was a bag-only workout suggested by Ross. Essentially, he had you throw 10 sets of 10 punches as fast as possible, take a little break, and then go another 10x10. I managed 7 rounds (10x10x7 = 700 punches), but my last few punches in the last two rounds were pretty pitiful.

What's this have to do with bike racing? Not much, but it's December. My plan for this part of the year is just to stay in generally good shape and give my legs a little break from cycling. I did do a speed skill ride on the trainer yesterday, and I felt surprisingly strong. I can say that spending so much time off the bike for the past few weeks has really gotten me fired up to start riding again.

Day 14

I'm continuing to truck along on my 28 day "50 Day" plan. It's been more of the same the past couple days. It was interesting (and good!) that my back never did get sore from the sledgehammer swinging like I expected.

Today was another GPP day; it had the typical assortment of Ross exercises. I'm definitely improving with this type of workout. While today certainly wasn't easy, I'm now able to keep up a much more reasonable pace much farther into the workout.

The other thing that appears to be true is that, if I chose, I could do a GPP-type workout in the morning and be recovered enough to do a quality ride in the evening. This is something I'm contemplating for next season. I would essentially replace some of my "pure" strength sessions with GPP workouts. So far, I think it's doable, but I won't know for sure if I can handle it until I start riding more frequently than I am now.

Day 11 - Density Day

Day 11 brought another Warrior Challenge, this one entitled "Density Day". To summarize: 10 minutes of dumbbell snatches and burpees, 10 minutes of swinging the sledgehammer, and 5 minutes hitting the heavy bag. The sledgehammer was rough, my back will be in full protest mode tomorrow.

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Day 9 - GPP 2

Another day, another GPP workout. I'd been feeling like maybe these workouts weren't hitting my legs enough, but today changed that. This GPP workout had the usual assortment of burpees and jumping jacks (essentially, active rest), but it also threw in some split jumps and mountain climbers. That was enough of a change that my legs were giving out before my arms. I guess that's good.

Sarah is still doing a good job keeping up with me. She ended up effectively taking an extra "rest day" on the day of her skating competition last weekend; she was basically gone the entire day. So, she's one day behind me now.

I've decided that I need to try this whole 29er thing, with the intention that it could be my race bike for next year. My plan is to do it the dirtbag way until I decide if I like it. I've got an old set of road rims that I'm not using, so I'm going to build up a wheelset using those. Yeah, they're a little bit skinnier than a normal mountain bike rim, but only by about 1/8 inch. It should work out OK. I'm going to use the hubs from my 26 inch bike (I also checked to make sure the spoke count matched on both the rims and hubs!).

Where I'm really going to end up spending some money is on the frame and fork. I've pretty much decided that I'll get what I might ultimately want for these, and if I don't like them, sell them back on ebay. The frame and fork are just too critical to the way the bike performs for me to dirtbag that part of the evaluation. I'll strip just about everything else off my 26er.

Day 7 - More Conditioning

More conditioning work today... you're getting the gist of Ross's program now, right? It works in 5 day blocks, 1 of those is a rest day, 1 is devoted purely to strength work, and 3 are conditioning (although many of his conditioning drills also develop strength). I've been impressed at how quickly I've shed the little extra fat that I built up on my couple weeks off, and I haven't been eating particularly clean lately either.

This was supposed to be an interval day, but since I'm not running yet, I substituted some other exercises. So, instead of doing 400meter intervals, I did burpees, jumping jacks and grasshoppers in 1min 30s intervals. It was tough, but good. There may have been some residual fatigue from all of the burpees I did yesterday. For the 50meter intervals, I did 10 seconds of all out jump rope (I've been practicing, so 10s is no problem).

Today was also a Core workout day. The exercises were effective, as usual. The Core work is always interesting. The first Ross workout I did (a couple years ago) was from his now out-of-print "Underground Guide to Warrior Fitness". I remember that I got about halfway through it and had to stop, I was just laying on the floor with my muscles burning and totally spent. Now, that same workout would be way too easy for me, I'd have to increase the workload about 50% for it to be effective for me. This is the payoff for consistent resiliant action.

I'm thinking about switching mountain bikes for next year. I'd like to build up a 29er (hardtail... maybe this one?). I still think that full suspension is probably overkill for Michigan trails, but I would like to eliminate some of the rear wheel chatter I get right now. We'll see...

Quick Notes

A couple of quick notes, since I'm staying up a little later than usual on a Saturday night. Past 10pm... woohoo!

- Looks like Meechigan may get another shot at tOSU. While I'd certainly like to see Michigan play in the national championship game, I'm not so sure I like the idea of a rematch like this. I won't be crushed if Florida goes instead, especially since that would mean we'd get to play USC in the Rose Bowl... classic!

- I noticed that my blog made it on the list of links over at The Biking Hub. Cool!

- Video of Stephen Colbert talking about Floyd Landis. Good stuff...

- The synchronized skating team that my wife coaches took 4th out of 4 in Ann Arbor this afternoon. Tough way to start, but they get better every time I see them.

- There was a good editorial in the June issue of Grassroots Motorsports (easily my favorite car magazine) about setting up a car for autocross. The author's contention was that the best car to race is the one that is easiest to drive fast, not necessarily the one that is the fastest. It's gotten me thinking about how my mountain bike is set up... no doubt I'll post more on this later.

Day 6 - Work Capacity 101

Holy crap! I just finished my workout for the day, Work Capacity 101. This one is another of Ross's "Warrior Challenges". I found it much more difficult than the first one, The Magic 50.

This challenge is broken up into two minute rounds. You have 2 minutes to complete a set of pullups, medicine ball slams (I did band slams, since I didn't want to slam my new medicine ball), burpees, and jumping jacks. The trick is that it doesn't take two minutes to actually do the above exercises, so you get to rest for the remainder. You're supposed to do 10 rounds (or, as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes).

Well, I made it through the first two rounds OK, but I was extremely fatigued after the third round, so I switched to 3 minute rounds (giving me an extra minute of rest). So, I completed 2 two minute rounds and 5 three minute rounds in roughly 20 minutes. I was absolutely smoked afterward... my whole body was just quivering (actually, it still is a little now, 45 minutes later). I like the idea of this workout though; since round times are fixed, the faster you work, the more rest you get.

The beauty of Ross's conditioning workouts (like this one), is that they work your whole body. Your arms are tired, your legs are tired, everything is tired. The burpees are the hardest part of this workout. When Sarah does it later today, I'm going to recommend she starts out with 3 minute rounds, or cuts back from 15 to 10 burpees per round.

If you're unfamiliar with burpees, check out this article. I do burpees the Ross way, with a pushup... like the article says, it is also key to focus on jumping as high as possible (higher jump = more rest, right?... seriously though, working on jumping higher does a better job of working the legs). Although, as I get more and more tired, the quality of the jumps and pushups really start to suffer.