MMmmmm…speed.
Did a TT today. A short 8 miler. Same basic route as the fall fling TT (the one I placed 5th in last season). Well...I have cat'd up since then.
Last fall I averaged something like 22mph. Today I averaged 24mph. I hauled ass. I felt good and I looked good. They were doing 30 seconds between riders. I ended up passing 5 guys in front of me.
Ranking wise I tied for 10th in my cat. Boo. This was the last race inthe series. I ended up 7th overall in cat4. Not bad. Out of 14 who completed enough races to be considered. Meh. Not so impressive. Mid pack again.
It was really nice having the tailwind today. I was in my 53x11 and cruising over 30mph. Bliss. Felt like puking at the end so I must have done it right.
Tomorrow is Vernon Hills. we have a lot of bodies going to this one. Should be fun.
ABD TT#3 Report
Another round of beating your head into a wall is over. I am happy to say I have made no gains over the last couple of months. That said I have found that have made no losses either. Meh...here's the pics. That's all any of you care about anyway...
Showed up early enough to see JAnd do his run.
Cheering section - L to R - JF, Little P, Mrs. P
GO JAND GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Time for us to go. Clipping in for torture....
"Hi...I'm f'n nuts!"
Reset the computer....and.......3.....2......1.....GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I burried my head for the first 5 minutes. I didn't look at the screen because I knew I would go too hard if I saw I was behind in order to catch up....or if I was ahead in order to maintain position. So I didn't look.
I was rocking out to a mix of punk and metal. Total "kill everyone" kind of stuff.
I hit my normal wall about 4-5 mintes in, but pushed through. I looked up to see I was behind...by a lot. JF was in front of me. Honestly he's got the chops even though he's new so I really didn't let that bother me too much, but I was at least gpong to try to pull him back.
Up until now I had been running about 270W. I shifted and started bringing around 300W in the second 5 minutes.
"OOooooo"
With a During the last set of 5 minutes I started to crack. I made myself take it easy for 1.5 minutes. Rode easier than I could just in hopes of recovering to finish strong. It kind of worked, but not really. I tried with about 2.5-3 minutes left to stand and go at it. I was within "50 or 60 feet" of JF when I did. When I stood...so did he. That just told me he wasn't going to just hand anything over.
At first I felt bad because I figured he thought I was standing to sprint to the end, but it was way too early for that. I was just hoping to get a quick jump to turn over the distance between us. Turns out when I stood I didn't upshift so my power dropped. Ooops. I sat back down to compensate, but by then JF had taken the opportunity to lay down some power.
I tried to stand and sprint at the end, but I didn't have much. Not the usual punch I have. When done...I felt like puking. So...I did it right. I definitely left some out there though. Just couldn't tap into the deep well if that makes sense.
Shoot me.
Seriously...shoot me.
JF took the win in style. The guy is a naturl athlete that will accel at this cycling thing with no problem. I keep telling him the only thing that will limit how far he goes is how much time he wants to spend on it. He won't be a 5 long and will be a 4 even shorter.
This time he won the CM 19-29. He also got to pick up his medal from the previous TT
To top it off I still owe him a beer to make up for the last $5 from registration I owe him. Will it never end?
So...I ended up 13th out of 28 who took the start out of Cat 4. Furthest up in the field so far, but 2 seconds slower than my last one on the "Flat" course. I did beat Rob Jungels...by like 7 seconds...which just means there is a story there. I'm guessing he had something go wrong or he was doing it as a recovery in street shoes and blue jeans.
Tuesday night at the shop we're doing the mother of all indoor trainer sessions. We're down to 1x45' at threshold. Those sessions have made it easier to race already. They have convinced me that I can ride at an intense effort for much longer than I thought I could.
Congrats to JAnd, JF and everyone else who went out there (MRIDan). Nothing like paying $25 so you can sit in one place and turn yourself inside out for 16 minutes.
Almost time to shave the legs. Mrs. P is thrilled.
ABT TT #3
Today is ABD TT#3. I am something like 12th overall with 32:42 or something. Today is another "flat" course. They basically weigh you, put in a drag coefficient and let you beat your head against a wall for 10K or about 16-ish minutes.
I pulled 16:03 the last time I did a flat one. I would like to kick 10-20 seconds off of that today. I think it's possible. We'll see.
Little P is sitting here smiling, and eating cookies. I guess he's better.
Jan Totals
Spurred on by aham's blog I decided to catch up on my log book. Ran some numbers for Jan. Not overly impressive, but they are what they are:
Riding (mostly trainer) : 20h23m
Strength (core and weights) : 5h50m
Running (le suck) : 2h <- Mainly 10 minute warmups for core work.
I'm not really following my "training plan" a la Friel, but wtf...I look better than I have and I am putting some good numbers down and it's only the beginning of Feb.
I did 3 indoor TT's all Cat 4:
1/2 hour VQ TT - 6 out of 9
10k ABD TT #1 - 15 out of 28
10k ABD TT #2 - 12 out of 23
Hopefully we can get on the road here soon and I can maybe start getting some runs in outside. I can't stand the treadmill. This weekend is looking good for some group riding out of the shop. Team + anyone else who shows. I hope the weather holds...
EDIT: OH and how can I forget...I borrowed some rollers and tried them out tonight. Awesome. I love them and I am surprisingly naturally good at riding them. I moved out of the dooreay within 10 minutes or so. I still need help starting (hand on a wall), but that's it. I even got confident enough that I put my TT bike on it and rode in the aero bars. Awesome.
ABD TT#2
Everyone has been asking me how the TT went yesterday. Funny thing is I don't really know. I didn't have a clear goal going into it and therefore even after having seen my results I don't know if that was good or bad.
In general I guess I have maintained my fitness. I finished mid pack cat 4 again.
JF - a new member to our team decided to give it a shot. He has had a road bike for a while, but really hasn't put much time in on it for quite a while. He's in good shape, but doesn't have a lot of saddle time. In essence I was more excited about watching his ride than my own. I love seeing new people get involved in the sport and I have a feeling he's going to end up loving racing.
So here I am a 'semi-trained' cat 4 (only because I fast-talked the upgrade with a lot of talk of cyclocross and TT's) and JF just about beats me. I took the time to manually record his power profile and plot it against my own after the fact.
If you know what you're looking at you'll see that with a little aerobic conditioning/threshold conditioning this guy can possibly kick a lot of cat 5 (and 4)ass this year. I should have savored my victory while I had the chance.
Here he is warming up before the TT (on the right). The guy ont he bike on the left is another BF member mridan. The guy who looks fast standing still is Andy Skeen.
In the pain cave - there's cobwebs, bats, and scary things. Time to clean it out and makes it a nice home. You'll be spending lots of time in there.
Beat. At this point I am guessing he was debating puking. This is a good thing.
After he was done I went over and caught the end of Julie's race. She put in a hard effort as well. She was especially pleased that her picture was being taken right after she finished.
mridan was up next. I wrote his power down as well and shouted as much encouragement as I could. I think he too has been bitten by the competitive bug.
All in all a good TT. Glad I did it. Now...Tuesday night will be me running the Bicycle Heaven trainer class. 2x25'@threshold. Hmmm....need to put together some tunes...
Not slow
This is a slow time of year for everyone no doubt. I apologize (to any of you still reading this) for slow turnaround on posts, but let's face it - we're living through one of the worst winters I can remember during what coule be described as "interesting" economic times.
The job is changing - more responsibility, authority, and yet no title or salary change. Isn't that how it always goes? Like most of you though I am thankful that I still have a job to go to.
I took little P to the shop last night at the end of the trainer class. He loved it...after he stopped hiding from everyone. He is sure he can ride a bike "fast, fast, fast!" The sucker that Cory gave him was a hit and ended up at his spot at the table so that he could return to finish it first thing in the morning.
Pulling myself inside out at the trainer classes is both great and absolute torture at the same time. I keep finding new bottoms to the well of pain. I have spent a tlot of time hanging out at threashold lately. If you don't know what threshold is I can only describe it this way - Threshold is that place along the spectrum of athletic effort where you are beyond starting to sweat, beyond holding a conversation, beyond wanting to stop, and at slightly short of total shutdown or immediate puking.
If you don't vurp (vomit/burp) a little after about 5 minutes then you're not going hard enough. If you can talk you're not going hard enough. If you're thinking about what you're going to do when you get home, or the chores left undone...then you're not going hard enough. If you can think coherently then you're not going hard enough.
My stream of semi-conciousness goes something like this:
"Time?......2.......min.....utes..............18....left......18!......18!!........saddle......sore......move.....a little. Wa.....ter......quick!....in...between....breaths....GO!....pain....of ...swall....owing.....will....pass....try....to....relax.....stare.....at....something.....is...that........a..........unicorn...?.........it....will....hurt....more...than....this....later.....we....have......what.....2??..more??.....Of?.....These???....."
If you don't end up questioning why you are doing this then you're not going hard enough. If you don't fear that you won't be able to maintain this for the entire duration of the effort....then you're not going hard enough. I think you get the point. For those using Heartrate my LTHR (Lactate Threshold Heartrate) is currently 178. It hurts.
So far we started out with something like 3 minutes @ threshold done something like 15 times. Then it was 5 minutes repeated 10 times (10x5'). Then it was 10 minutes 6 times (6x10'). Then 4x15'<-that sucked. Then 2X20' on Tuesday.
I get to run the class on Tuesday and we're doing 2x25'. The following is 2x30' then 1x40' - the crown jewel. 40 minutes in a state close to hell on earth. A race. A race against yourself.
...then we "start the hard stuff" to quote our team captain.
great.
FWIW - it does seem kind of weird sometimes to be in a room full of a bunch of guys who are lactating.
Hopefully all this means I will do well in the next instalment of the ABD indoor TT series on Sunday. They lined me up this time with a bunch of cat 4 women. Guess I'll have to beat them all. That or start wearing a skirt. At least my legs aren't shaved yet.
Empty
I did the ABD TT on Sunday. Highlights...the guy from the race before who was on the station I was assigned to was amazing. He was 80 yrs old and hooked up on the Computrainer giving it a go. He never once wavered - even though he needed help off the bike in the end.
His race was awesome. Unfortunately the side-effect of his effort was that I was stuck sitting behind him for 15-20minutes longer than I should have been. I totally cooled down while all of the guys I was racing against were busy warming up on their stations.
By the time I got mounted in and calibrated I was able to take a few seconds of spinning before the official came to the front and said "slow to under 10mph.....OK" and the screen flashed "3,2,1, GO!"
SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!. It was like a real race - I was cold at the start.
Good thing is that this was only 10k. A sprint by bike standards. I noticed I was laying down some serious power form the start. I looked up and saw I was in 2nd place right off the bat. I slowly degraded - like I knew I would and slipped into third.....and then 4th. I finished in 4th and felt like I had done about 95% of what I could have done.
So....results get posted and I placed 15th out of 28 who took the start in cat 4. That's a little misleading because this is ABR and entry level ABR was Cat 4 until this year so many of those are entry level guys.
So...not feeling stoked, but a better effort than the week before. So Monday I go lift weights. I bumped everything up greatly and dropped the reps. Then tonight I get to the shop to do the trainer class. Rob is leading the class....I had an idea that pain was coming.
He starts spinning and says, "We're doing 3 reps of 10 minutes at threshold. Then we'll take a long break....*wink*...and then do it again". For reference that means we'll be putting out roughly the same power I put out during the TT (which lasted for 16 minutes) over 1 hour.
It sucked. By the end my legs were absolutely empty. I have not felt like this in a long time -if ever. Maybe my moment of despair during the RAIN ride was similar. I just felt empty.
60 minutes at threshold will make you question a lot of stuff. It will take you into the rabbit hole that is your mind. It is exquisite suffering. I am a strange guy. I know that, but weird stuff starts happening to me mentally when I am on the limit like that. My mind starts playing tricks.
In the end I was empty. Shaking kind of empty. Disoriented kind of empty. Wishing I would puke kind of empty. Towards the end my power dropped 100W and I still felt like i was killing myself. The body is a weird place.
VQ TT #3
Did another indoor TT last Sunday. I was with MJH2, little P, one of MJH2's friends, and another teammate DonI.
The plan was to have those guys race the early race while I watched little P and cheered them on. Cow bell and all. Then we would switch and I would race while they watched little P.
They all had a great race. When we switched I was ready to go, but I was already mentally drained. I was already thinking about the logistics of the return trip, my job, whether little P was acting up, sticking his finger in an electrical outlet, etc.
Needless to say my mind wasn't in it and I knew it. My heart even seemed to not be in it. The course was a stage 4 TT from one of the last Tour de France. It started uphill. Yeah. I don't like hills. That just meant that I would start way too hot and overcook myself.
Less than 5 minutes in I was ready to throw in the towell. I couldn't hit the power numbers I was hitting during the last TT so either something was wrong or I had lost a lot of "form" (physical fitness). I looked up and I was in 1st....which just meant I had to push.
Then I couldn't. I had nothing. I lost position slowly. Next thing I know I was in no-man's land. I wasn't going to lose any more positions and there was no way I was catching anyone. I eased up. I did that for a while. It let me recover for a bit. I even stopped pedaling and "coasted" a few times. Who does that!
Towards the end I got a second wind and laid into it for the last climb. Yay me. Not.
Ended up in 6th place out of 9 in cat 4. Poop.
MJH2 won and was the 2nd fastest man. That performance was the awesome. I have some pictures but they are locked up inside the camera.
So....I felt kind of let down by not giving it my all. It's Jan. I shouldn't give a crap, but I do. Mainly because those kind of efforts really do my body good. So....Monday I hit the gym and ran and lifted weights. Tuesday was 2 hours on the trainer (the suck) including 5x6' THRESHOLD intervals. After that set our Team Captain told us to lay off because we have been doing too much work lately.
Wednesday was running and lifting again (against the Captain's orders). Today I ended up going to the shop to trianer ride again. I just did about 1-1/2hr of recovery spinning (sub 140W). Time for a rest. The next TT is on Sunday. ABD's. Turns out it's only like 15 minutes long. That means it will be intense amounts of pain. Captain said, "Do 115% of threshold for the TT."
Yeah...
.....for 15 minutes....
....
.....le suck.
Indoor TT at Vision Quest
So 2 Sunday's ago I was looking to ride. It was the first Sunday after the end of Cross season and I was still looking for a way to beat my head in for 1/2 hour. I had a power test that I was going to try to do, but MJH2 called me up and said there was an indoor TT that Vision Quest was putting on for that day.
I checked out the site and decided I would have a more effective power test if it was in actual competition. So we both decided to go.
First off let me say that Vision Quest is owned and run by Ex pro cyclist Robbie Ventura. He rode with Postal and 7-Eleven during his career. He was/is also Floyd Landis's coach. you might remember Floyd as the 3rd Americna to win the Tour de France in 2006 who was later found guilty of doping and stripped of the title, banned, and whose trial turned into a circus of a show that included members of his entourage calling another Tour winner Greg LeMond and threatening him with revealing his secret that he was molested at an early age by his uncle......
....now where were we?
Anyhooo....the TT. First off this was a really nice facility. Top notch. A lot fo money went into this and it shows. The setup is 24 computrainers all wired together in a multi-trainer package. They had a table at the door for registration where they took your bike, wiped off the tires, set it up in the trainer for you while you changed and weighed in.USAC officals and all this was a sanctioned event.
This shot was sent to us in Robbie Ventura's Holiday e-mail. That's myself in the front row next to the red sleeveless jersey guy. MJH2 is right next to me.
The setup from the other side. Notice the large flat displays? Rocky was giving me strength.
So the TT went OK. I ended up placing 8th out of 16 Cat 4/5 racers. I had a lot of caffiene that morning so my HR averaged 185 for the duration of the event. That hurt. For the last sprint I peaked at somewhere near 198 bpm. The USAC official was looking at me like he was going to have to take me to the hospital. Meh.
Good news is I established an FTP or Functional Threshold Power of 266 watts. Not super high, but about 3.3 watts/kg....woughly half what a TdF contender can put out.
On the way out of the locker room I spied this poster:
For those who don't know me that well let me just say that I started riding "seriously" in 1988. That year I was picking up cycling magazines and soaking up everything that was in them. I picked up an issue of Winning at some point and started reading about this squirrelly looking blonde kid wearing a pink jersey.
Hot pink was in back then, but still I thought, "what a panzy. Who would want to wear a pink jersey. I would be so PO'd at the organizers." Then I saw the picture that is in the poster above. It is simply a picture of Andy Hampsten riding across the Gavia wearing shorts on his way to sealing up his 1988 Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) victory.
It was, and is, the toughest picture in cycling I have ever seen either before or since. Sure there are some other great ones, but this one is mine. I have a copy of the poster sitting in my dining room still unframed that I got by writing a letter to Andy's brother when he was still selling them. This picture changed my life. If you saw it in real life you would know why. Stare at it. Think about all the posting I do about cycling and suffering. Think about the raw will that it takes to ride like that. That is cycling to me. You become a machine blinded by pain and focused on one thing. It's beautiful.
Anyway....to see that poster hanging on the wall autographed by Andy himself.....I just about swooned like a 13 yr old girl at a boy band concert.
After the TT we got to look through the new flagship Trek store atached to the facility. Tons of lance stuff on the walls. I'm not going to say that I ma not a Lance fan. I am not going to poopoo what are great achievements. I'll just say that while in there MJH2 and I both found the Landis stuff more interesting as well as both of us wanted to ask where the LeMond bikes were....
A set of all 7 of "official" TdF yellow jerseys signed by the man himself.
A cool wall of Robbie Ventura's stuff from his career. The bikes are junior track bikes he raced in Northbrook and Kenosha as a kid.
MJH2 posing in front of 2 podium presentation jerseys from Floyd Landis. One from the TdF and one from the Tour of Georgia. These are uber rare as it is. Floyd's story makes them even more interesting. To many they are worthless to some like us...they are priceless.....and shoved in the back corner of the store...
Beauty of a Phonak team jersey from Floyd. "Thanks for the help."
The TT was cool. I want to do another one, but the holidays have my all a jumble. Want to lose some more weight this winter, but lifting has me adding weight right now....lifting weights as well as beer and cookies that is.
Trying to focus.