On the Road Again

Yesterday, for the first time in three months, I went for a long ride. Most of my rides have been an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Yesterday, I did 2 hours.

It was a simple ride, just to the Art Museum in Philly and back home for 37 miles. I pushed the pace a few times, usually just up a hill or to chase down someone on the horizon.

I felt great mentally. That kind of ride always feels good to complete. The rest of the day, my legs were killing me, though. Dong a two hour ride after not doing one for a while can be a little more punishing. Over the coming weeks, I really need to get more of them!

You can always tell...

When things are going great, I post a lot. When things are not, I don't post as much.

I've been under huge amounts of pressure at work and fighting one minor illness after another, so I have not been riding nearly as much as I'd like to be. My motivation to race is really not there right now and I'm basically riding enough to keep my weight from going up any more than it has already.

I've tried setting a few goals, but I'm finding that when I don't care about the goals, I don't work very hard toward them.

Hopefully I can get it together soon :-)

The Annual Goal Post

Last year, I had 8 goals. I met 3 of them. That's an awful track record.

This year, as I've mentioned before, I only have two.

1. Complete a 40K time trial in less than an hour (avg speed, 24.9 mph or faster).
2. Get my weight down to the lower 170's.

These two goals are relatively simple, but they both take a lot of work and planning.

My best 40K last year was about 1:03. I "only" have to take 3 minutes off that time, but it's going to take a lot of training to get there. I need to increase my threshold power, I need to be able to stay in the aerodynamic position for an hour, and I need the mental focus to be able to keep the intensity up the whole time. I decided that I am not buying any new bike equipment to help in that goal. I'm going to do this on training and skill development alone.

I've got 4 races on the schedule that are 40K, so I've got a few shots at it. And no, doing a 20K in thirty minutes does not count :-)

My weight is currently 184.6 (down from 186 at Jan 1). I realize that wherever my weight is in April is probably where it will stay for most of the racing season. It's very difficult to stay in top racing form while trying to lose weight at the same time. Your body needs to be fully fueled in order to repair after heavy training sessions and that's not conducive to weight loss at all. If I can lose 1 pound a week, which is not a lot but it's not easy to stay consistent, I should be around 172 by the end of April. 

Time to go get on the CompuTrainer :-)

Test Day

OK, it's been a month since my last blog post and I've not posted any of my "staying on track" reports. Oops. Besides, reports about riding the trainer are usually not all that exciting. Usually.

Still, I've been pretty disciplined with my training. I've been riding 7 to 9 hours a week, including some lunch time rides with the guys from work, so it's a nice mix of the trainer and outdoors. I find it a lot easier to be motivated on the trainer when I get to ride outdoors and remind myself of why I'm doing all this.

My only regret in my training is that I'm not getting a lot of long rides. It's hard to ride 2 or 3 hours when the temperature is in the mid 30's and it's sure as hell hard to ride the trainer that long.

Today was a test day for me. I've been focusing mostly on endurance and threshold work so I can improve my time trials next year. Today was a 20K (12.4 mile) time trial on the CompuTrainer. It does not account for aerodynamics or position, so time was not my biggest concern. It was power. My goal for the day was to match or beat my best 30:00 power from the last 3 months: 255 watts.

I treated it like a race. I warmed up well and paced myself so that I could go harder in the second half than the first. I am surprised at just how well it went.

Total time: 33:19 (22.4 mph) (kind of irrelevant, but useful for future comparison)
Avg Power: 260
1st Half Average: 252 watts (I almost wonder if I held back too much)
2nf Half Average: 268 watts

Mentally, I was focused on keeping my power where I wanted it while remembering to look up (practicing watching the power without staring at it), keeping my cadence where it should be (I kept it around 85 RPM), and watching how much distance I had left to go. Mental focus has been a problem for me, so this was a huge improvement for me.

I'd say my training season is off to a great start. I'm thrilled to see numbers this good.

If Football Was Like Cycling...

Every once in a while, I hear some football fan say that cycling's not a real sport because there's no defense or because there's no score or some other lame reason that amounts to "I don't understand anything beyond people beating each other up for money".

It's got me wondering what football would be like if it were more like cycling:

• If you're the closest to the goal line, you "have the ball."
• You can call a time outs whenever you want, but the other team can keep playing without you 
• The same guys play offense and defense.
• The defense does not get a head start in order to get between the offense and the goal.
• The game is played on concrete, asphalt, and/or dirt roads.
• The only pads you are allowed to have are a helmet and gloves.
• There are no mid-game substitutions. If someone gets hurt, you play without them.
• If you get hurt, the game continues without you. Someone will be along to help... eventually. And it might be a 4 hour drive to the hospital.
• The season lasts from January through October and runs on multiple continents.
• The games are a minimum of 5 hours of actual playing time.
• The game does not stop for commercials.
• The goal line is 110 miles from where you start. Good luck kicking a field goal.
• You play 3 to 4 games a week unless it's grand tour season, when you race every day for three weeks straight.
• If you win too much (i.e., enough that they have even heard of you), people just assume you are taking some kind of performance enhancing drug.
• The fans are close enough to trip you. Sometimes they do.
• The average professional player makes $70,000 a year (compared to $1.9 million for the NFL) and spends half his game fetching water and food from a moving car so that someone else try to win.
• You need to be one of the best in your home country just to get a job. Cycling's top level, the UCI Protour, only has 18 teams with 30 riders each (540 riders total, from any country in the world) compared to the 32 NFL teams with 53 players each (1696 players total, mostly from the US).
• The best defense truly is a good offense. The only way to win is to get to the finish line first.

Staying on Track

How many people do you know who, at some point in their lives, said they were going to lose weight? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Out of them, how many succeeded in losing their goal amount? 5% 10%? Out of them how many managed to keep that weight off for a year or more?

My point here is that most people have a hard time losing weight at all, an even harder time losing as much as they want, and yet even more difficulty in staying at that lower weight.

Despite the difficulty, I intend to be one of them.

Like most successful projects, it's about having a decent plan followed by solid execution (and perhaps a few adjustments along the way). For me, accountability is also a big factor. I need to have someone who I tell about my successes and failures. Having to tell someone that I knew what I needed to do but didn't do it goes a long way.

This blog has helped at that. My friends on Traineo.com have been a huge help too. Now, I've come up with a way to track everything I'm doing and be able to report on it.

As I've written before, my major goal for next year is to get my 40K (24.8 mile) time trial time under an hour (59:59 is just fine). I also want to get my weight down about 15 pounds over the next 6 months (which is well under a pound a week).

In order to meet these goals, I came up with a list of daily and weekly tasks that I need to do. I broke those tasks into weight-loss related and fitness-related. Let's face it: it's totally possible that I could increase my threshold power by 10% but not lose a pound. Or I could lose all the weight but gain no power at all.

I then weighted them so that ones that are more important get a little more emphasis. While I want to spend at least 1 of my trainer days each week on the time trial bike, it's more important that I at least got on the trainer to begin with. I also added bonus and penalty items that might help (or hurt) on a given target. Taken together, they will give me a score for the week.

I'm not off to a great start this week, partially since I did not plan to start this seriously for another couple weeks. Still, my weight loss has been on target. I'm down to 185.0 now (from 187.0 two weeks ago).

This is the chart that I came up with and the first week's results (click on it to enlarge it enough to read):

It's not perfect, but I'm sure I'll improve it with time!

Stowe Away

We spent the last week in Stowe, VT. I've linked a lot of the places we went in case anyone else ever goes and wants to recommendations.

Monday was an 11 hour train ride from Philly to Waterbury, VT. It was a beautiful ride with the trees mostly starting to change colors. It went by pretty quickly, with both of us reading and taking photos out the window for most of the trip.

The train was about an hour late, so we didn't get to the hotel until 9:30 at night. By that time, most of Stowe ha shut down for the night. Luckily we managed to make last call at the hotel restaurant and get some appetizers.

We stayed at the Green Mountain Inn, which was absolutely great. The room was huge, with a king size bed, a hot tub, and a gas fireplace. The inn was right in the middle of historic Stowe, which is a cute little town which does not allow major chains. As a result, all the restaurants, chocolates, drug stores, and hotels are locally owned an operated. It was great to have so many options of so many great things.


Stowe Mercantile is their amazing everything store. It's got clothing, candy, syrup, books, and a little cafe. We got some of their butter cream fudge that was completely addictive (we ate over a pound of it in four days).

We toured the factory where they make Ben & Jerry's ice cream and ate lots of Cabot cheese at the Cabot Annex store.

The leaves were changing colors, with some leaves having red, yellow, and green all together. Their leaves turn a bright fiery orange or yellow, which made for some great photos.

We got to see a couple of great glass blowing studio, Little River Hotglass Studio. While we'd seen glass blowers at the Renaissance Faire before, this was dramatically better. The work was just gorgeous (and of course, we had to get a couple).

We saw lots of local artists with paintings and etchings that were way out of our price range, but at least we got a calendar with some of the art on it. We also bought some of the most beautiful sounding wind chimes that I've ever heard.

I'd be remiss if I did not mention Jack at Blazer Transportation. He got us around for the whole week and we would not have seen half the stuff that we did if he had not told us about it. Perhaps the highlight was the artist who made wood wild life sculptures... with a chainsaw.

Now we're back home, sifting through the 850 pictures from the wedding (we have to pick 36 for our album an 20 each for our parents...) and 450 pictures from the honeymoon.

On a fitness note...

I did not ride or lift at all for the last 10 days. I have completely spent that time focused on the wedding and reception and honeymoon. We slept about 9 to 10 hours a night and only went on relatively short walks (no more than an hour at a time). I'm pretty well rested now. I'm also well fed.

I've managed to gain 3 pounds in 10 days. I fully admit that I ate everything in sight, from the semi-bachelor party to the rehearsal dinner to the wedding reception to our private wedding dinner to lunch with our parents to all the places we ate in Vermont. I'm not surprised :-) My weight this morning was 187 pounds and 22.7% body fat. That's OK. It was totally worth it to have some great food and to hit the new 2012 training season (which starts tomorrow) well rested!

Transition

It's that time of year again: Transition phase, the change from racing season to "off-season."

In other words, for the next month or so (until after my honeymoon), I'll be training how I feel like it, when I feel like it, and if I feel like it. Sure, I'd like to lose another pound or so before the wedding and I'd like to get into the gym enough to get past the initial muscle soreness, but those are hardly major goals.

It's also a time for me to look at my goals for the next season in closer detail, pick my priority events, and start outlining my training. I start to geek out and reread all of my Coggan, Bompa, Friel, Carmichael, and whoever-else books so that I can remind myself of what needs to be done.

Above all, it's really nice to have a little time to just enjoy riding and working out because I enjoy it and not to prepare for a race that's looming.

The Year Ahead

For the 2012 season, I have two focuses: lose weight and improve my time trialing. That's it. Just two.

To start, I'm really sick of trying to lose weight, so I want to get the weight off and be done with it. I'm aiming for 170, and the only thing stopping me from getting there is my love of snack foods at the office. Since my weight tends to vary by a pound or two naturally during a week, I'm really aiming for an "average" of 170, with my weight fluctuating between 169 and 171.

To help motivate me, I bought some new clothes that I really like that are just a little too tight right now. Once I reach the new weight, they will fit (and look) great.

While my power profile suggests that I'm a more natural sprinter, I'm just not into crits and road races that much. They are fun and all, but the risk-reward ratio is just not there (potential crippling injury, dismemberment, or death for little bragging rights and up to $100 in prize money). The biggest risks during a time trials would be getting hit by a car and having a heart attack from the exertion (both of which I risk every time I get on the bike anyway).

So, I'm focusing on time trials for the next year. My primary goal is to do a 40K in less than an hour. That's 24.84 miles in 60 minutes, so I need to average 24.85 mph in order to be under an hour. By comparison, that's the rough equivalent of doing the West River Time Trial three times in a row with a time of 20:09 all three times.

That kind of speed requires strong fitness (functional threshold and flexibility), good aerodynamics (both the frontal profile and the slipperiness of that profile), and good technical skills (like turning around quickly and riding the shortest course possible by watching the curves in the road).

In the coming weeks, I'll write more about what I'm looking to improve in each of those areas and how I plan to do it.

The Year Behind

2011 was a pretty wild season. I did a total of 14 races this year (4 crits, 2 road races, 1 hill climb, and 7 time trials), which is probably double the number I had done in any previous year. The downside is that I hit the end of the year without hitting any of my goals (more on that later).

In general, I'd say that I did pretty well on riding regularly throughout the year with a combination of riding the trainer in the morning before work, riding with the guys from work at lunch (even through the winter), and riding outdoors on the weekends.

I did not do so well at getting to the gym regularly. Over the winter, we only went about once a week at most. During the summer, we barely went at all.

I started this training season (Oct 2010) with my weight at 186. It climbed to 190 by New Year's. By the beginning of May, I was back down to 180 pounds. I more or less held it there until July, when a combination of new tattoo project and a wicked flu kept me off the bike for almost 4 weeks. My weight climbed up to 184 and I now have it back down to 182. At least I'm lighter than last year :-)

My racing was a little scattered. I started off the year doing a bunch of crits and road races, at one point doing 8 races in 6 weeks. I did pretty well in the practice crits, but ultimately my pack handling skills are not what they should be for the real ones. I tend to end up at the back of the pack as I struggle to maintain position in each high-speed corner.

After that, I decided to switch to time trials. I started fiddling with my bike fit and my position on it. I'm finding that I like time trialing for many of the same reasons that I enjoyed speedskating: The subtle technique, the focus on set distances, and the same (smaller) group of people who travel to all the races in the region.

My goals for this year were:

1. Get my West River TT time under 20:00 (my best was 20:01)
2. Get my max 5-second sprint over 1300 watts (my best was 1268)
3. Improve my pack skills (after setting this goal, I did only two pack races, one of which I was dropped on the first lap)
4. Get my weight down to 175 (stated when I was 190, as I write this, I'm 181)

These goals are a little bit opposite from one another. First off, it's really hard to lose weight at all when you're racing a lot. There's too much focus on performance to worry about calorie deficits. Everything is about recovering from the last workout and recovering for the next one.

Being a better time trialist and a better sprinter are pretty opposite training and technical goals. Improving time trialing requires a better threshold, better muscular endurance, and better flexibility to stay in a low tuck for an hour. It also requires a deep mental focus to keep you at just the right pace, not so hard that you burn out and not so easy that you hit the finish line with energy left. Sprinting requires you to be able to draft other riders from 2 inches away at 28 mph and then very rapidly accelerate around everyone at just the right instant to hit the finish line first.

Ultimately, I'd sum up this year by saying that I learned a lot.

• Focus on one type of race that I want to do well in.
• I can lose weight as long as I pay attention to it
• I lose weight more easily when I'm lifting weights
• Success in time trialing is more than just power output. I need to work on my flexibility and balance as well.
• Those 4-hour zone 2 endurance rides really do help build up your aerobic fitness
• I'm only willing to drive so far for a race (3 hours for a 30 minute race is a bit much; 5 hours is out of the question)
• Riding the CompuTrainer in Erg mode is probably the most efficient training method for me
• The only way to survive racing in the heat is to train in the heat
• Even though my natural strengths are as a sprinter, I enjoy time trialing a lot more.
• Riding at lunch with the guys from work is fun just to get out and do a few sprints and hills. It's also a good way to get outside during the winter
• I get better results when I plan things out AND THEN STICK TO IT

So, for the next month I'll be training a little randomly. I want to get into the gym a few times and get past the initial muscle soreness phase. I am starting to do a little yoga; just one DVD so far amusingly titled "Yoga for Inflexible People". And I'm getting out and riding without any real goals or intervals or plans just so I can enjoy being on the bike.

Coming soon: the post about my goals and plans for next year.