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.

Drawing to a Close

Today was my last race of the 2011 season: the Ernie Simpson Memorial Time Trial, a 20K (12.4 mile) time trial held near Carlisle, PA.

The course is a little unusual: It's 8.5K to the turnaround, with the first part mostly downhill, then there is an 11.5K part to the finish, most of which is uphill. Don't let me kid you though, the part out had two pretty solid climbs as well. Still, there were some really steep and fast descents.

Above all, I'd say that I paced this time trial better than any other that I've done this year. I started off easily, held back on the first climb, and gradually pushed harder until the turnaround. After the turnaround, I was able to gradually increase power all the way to the finish. With about 2K (1.2 miles) to go, I gave it all that I had left. Of course, that last 2K was all uphill, so it was not all that fast.

I finished the race, rolled back down to the parking lot, got to the car... and it started POURING. I quickly got my bike into the car and got inside to get changed out of my racing uniform. I was lucky. All the folks still on the road got soaked.

A few numbers:
Total distance:20K (12.4 miles)
Total time: 34:06
Avg Speed: 21.9 mph
Max Speed: 40.7 mph
Avg Power: 243 watts (261 normalized)
Avg Heart Rate: 162 bpm
Max Heart Rate: 170 bom
Total climbing: 624 feet
Morning weight: 182.2 pounds

As I wrap up the year, I look forward to some time away from racing and training a little more randomly for a while. I want to get back into losing weight. Looking back, I managed to drop form 190 to 180 pretty quickly, but once racing started, I pretty much hovered from 180 to 183 all summer. If I can drop another 10 pounds, that will help a lot with next season.

My next few posts will take a look back at this year and what I'm thinking about for next year (and probably something about my honeymoon in there!)

What a difference the course makes

Two weeks ago, I did 23.7 mph at 231 watts on a 40 kilometer (24.8 mile) course that was dead flat with just a little wind. This week, there was a sustained head wind on the way out and a decent 3/4 of a mile climb just before the turnaround on a 17.5K (10.9 mile) course. My numbers were 23.9 mph at 254 watts. A lot more wattage for just a bit more speed.

I was much better about my pacing this time. For the first 3 miles, I held back a bit, knowing that there was a lot of wind and a climb still ahead. I focused on keeping my head down and into a solid aero tuck.

I knew the guy who started 30 seconds behind me (Greg). Once he caught me, he got about 50 yards in front of me... and I held him there. I dug as deep as I could to keep myself from losing ground to him, but not so deep that I burned out.

The first (and only real) turn was a little nasty, with some bumpy pavement. I took it way to fast (22 mph) and almost went into the grass. Luckily it was a left-hand turn, so I had a slightly larger radius to take the turn. I didn't learn...

The rest of the course was just a straight grind to the turnaround. The wind was probably around 10 to 15 mph, but when it's straight into your face and you're already doing 23 mph, that's a stiff wind.

At the turnaround, Greg was only about 15 seconds ahead of me. I took the turnaround as fast as I could. Maybe I can catch him on the way back...

He was still about 50 yards ahead of me when we hit the descent. We were pushing 32 mph. I tried as hard as I dared but couldn't bring him back. By this time, we were starting to pass a few people who had started ahead of us. I think bringing them back was driving Greg as I was trying to bring him back.

As we can towards the turn, I felt like I was gaining a little on him. I roared through the turn, forgetting (a) that it was a right hard turn on a narrow road and (b) the pavement sucked. I hit the turn at 25 mph. I bounced enough to lose traction and started to skid into the other lane as I heard the course marshal say something, but I know I heard the word "...car....". I looked up to see an SUV coming toward just as I crossed the yellow line and missed a couple cones. I jammed on the brakes, suddenly realizing that I had not closed my rear brake. As a result, my front brake was far stronger than the rear and I felt my back wheel start to come off the ground.

By now, I had straightened out my line of travel. I let go of the brakes and leaned hard to the right, dodging the cones, and getting back to my side of the yellow line. I missed the SUV by about 5 feet. One thought crossed my mind: Where's Greg?

I looked up the road to see that he had gained probably another 20 yards on me while I was busy playing in traffic. So much for catching him... I settled into a rhythm, knowing that I only had 2 miles left.

When I saw the 1K to go sign, I poured all that I had left into the pedals. Looking at the download, I averaged 26 mph for the last minute of the race.

I saw that Shelli was a little past the finish line. I tried to keep my pedaling up for a few extra seconds so she could get a couple of extra pictures :-)

Given the hill and the wind, I was aiming for about 28:00. I got 27:24. I was quite happy.

The numbers:
Total Distance: 10.9 miles
Time: 27:24
Average Speed: 23.87 mph
Average Power: 249 watts (254 normalized)
Average Heart Rate: 163 BPM

One more time trial and then the season is over!

The Race of Truth

I've done a lot of time trials in my life. Most of them are the 8.3 mile West River Time Trial in Philly, which I've done several times a year since 2004. I've done a few 20Ks (12.4 miles) and a couple random distances here and there. But there's nothing like a 40K (24.8 miles).

For most people, that's between 50 minutes (for the elite) and and 1 hour 10 minutes (for the normal people). In order to do well, you need to keep the pace high, but not so high that you burn out part way through. You also don't want to hold back too much and finish feeling like you could have gone harder. Done right, you should hit the finish line and almost collapse.

This course in Cambridge, MD is dead flat. It's kind of a deformed square with 3 turns and no turnaround to worry about. That region is known for its high winds, but the forecast was not calling for anything too bad.

Given my recent training numbers, I was aiming for a time of 1:04:00 and an average power of about 235 to 240 watts.

I'd been watching the weather all week. There was a 50% chance of rain, which would made the race even less fun. What I should have been watching out for was the temperature.

The adventure began the day before, when Shelli and I drove down. A really dark set of clouds rolled in just as we were leaving, giving us the last moment of dryness for the entire trip. It poured almost the whole time.

Making things worse, my GPS unit decided that the best way to go was to go about 30 miles out of our way to the east. I thought the estimated time was a lot higher than what Google Maps had said, but I thought maybe it was just a difference in the anticipated speed settings. Nope. What should have been about a 3 hour drive (without traffic) was more of a 4 hour drive. In the pouring rain.

Race morning was better. Sort of. It was sunny with light winds. It was also hot and humid. It was 80 when I got on the trainer to start warming up. Luckily, I'd planned ahead a little. I drank two bottles of Cytomax before I had even gotten there and had another one while I was on the trainer. I did not want to dehydrate out there. I knew it was going to be rough in the heat just watching my heart rate climb.

I set up my power meter to show me current power, average power, heart rate, and distance. I wanted to know where I was in the race and how my pacing was going. I didn't have time showing.

The race itself is a bit of a blur. I remember that the first 4 or 5 miles were brand new pavement with a touch of a tailwind. It was beautiful. I probably went a little too hard in this section since it was so nice. After turn 1, we had 3 or 4 miles of really bumpy pavement, which had my aero bars vibrating in my hands. After turn 2, the winds started kicking up, just as the heat started really getting to me. I think the winds kept me cooler, even though they made me work harder. After turn 3, I was really hurting. My heart rate was brushing into the 170's and all I could think was "keep pedaling." A few times I got out of the saddle and pushed it hard for a few strokes just to try to keep my legs moving.

Usually you'll give it whatever you've got for the last few miles of a time trial. I was already there. I tried accelerating, tried picking it up, it was all I had already. The last 500 meters, I think I was able to give it just a tiny bit more, but not a lot. I had given it absolutely all that I had. I hit the line, shifted to a lighter gear, coasted, let out a huge sigh, and dropped my head to relax my neck a bit... then I remembered to hit the button on the computer. When I looked down, I saw it say 1:03:05. Even missing several seconds, I was still a minute better than my goal.

My power numbers were not so great. I was aiming for 235 to 240 watts. My average was 231. It's still not a bad number, I just wanted to do better. I think the heat took a little bit of a toll on me.

After the race, I could barely move. It kept riding to cool down a little, but that was at about 5 mph. My legs were cooked and I was sweating like crazy. Luckily Shelli was right there to let me in the car so we could crank up the air conditioning and get me another bottle of Cytomax.

The numbers from the download:
Total Distance: 40K (24.8 miles)
Time: 1:02:49 (I was coasting longer than I thought before I hit the button!)
Average Speed: 23.7 mph
Average Power: 231 watts
Average Heart Rate: 168 BPM

On an equipment note, this was the first race with my Rudy Project Wingspan helmet and my new Oakley Jawbone sunglasses with polarized vented lenses.

The helmet was great. For a hot day like this, you can open up the vent in the front and open the underside of the rail, sacrificing a little aerodynamics in the name of better ventilation. It worked great.

The glasses performed great as well. Even though it was pretty humid, they didn't fog up once. When I was riding almost straight into the sun, I could still see perfectly.

I still have two more time trials to go, both of them 20K. They will be shorter, but that just means I can go faster :-)

My morning weight today was 181.4. I've only lost 1.4 pounds in the last three weeks, but at least I'm moving in the right direction!

Melting in the Sun

The last month has not been great for me. I caught a really bad flu that kept me out of work for a week and off the bike another week after that. I eased back into training, but it was another week before I could ride at full intensity again. In the process, my weight went up 4 pounds and my threshold power dropped about 10 watts.

When I showed up at the PA Masters State Time Trial yesterday, I had no dreams of glory. I just wanted to survive.

Looking over my training data for the last few months, my best 30 minute power was 260 watts. I expected this time trial to last about 32 minutes, so I figured 255 to 260 watts average was the absolute best I could hope for.

The heat made that goal even harder. It's been in the 90's for about a month now and I've done everything I could to stay out of that kind of heat. Mostly I've been riding the trainer instead of riding outside. I've never dealt with high heat and humidity very well and this year I'm completely not adapted to it since I've been avoiding it; so when the temperature at the start line was 82, I new that I was not in for a good day.

I got in a good start and quickly found a pace that felt about right. The course is almost constantly climbing or descending, with very little flat road, so it's critical that you pace yourself. Don't attack too hard on the climbs and don't relax on the downhills. It's really not a course that suits me well, but it is a really pretty course and the race is really well run.

About a mile in, I could feel the sweat just pouring out of my helmet any time I shifted my weight just a little. Not good. Not to mention, I'd be in the direct sun for about the first 7 miles of the 12.6 mile course. I'd be on the shady side of the road on the way back.

I hit the turnaround at 257 watts (normalized), so I was really happy. I felt awful, with my heart rate holding at 165 bpm and sweat just pouring down my face, arms, and chest.

I also made a rookie mistake in the turnaround: I was in WAY too big of a gear. As soon as I was out of the turn I stood up to try to accelerate and I was met with a ton of resistance. I'm sure that cost me 10 seconds right there.

The way back is much more downhill than the way out, but it has a couple solid climbs. As much as I could, I kept pushing on the descents (hitting 39 mph on a couple occasions) but on the climbs I just didn't have the power that I did on the way out. I was really struggling. I couldn't breathe very well and my legs just felt week. It wasn't the classic "I'm working too hard" feeling of pushing really hard. It was the "I'm overheating and my body isn't keeping up" feeling. My heart rate was climbing to 170 bpm.

I hit the finish line at a time of 33:30. It was over a minute faster than last year, so that was good. I was disappointed though since my fitness is better than last year in almost every measurable way. I'm 3 pounds lighter, my threshold is 10 watts higher than last year, and my time trial position is more efficient than last year. I think it all came down to the heat.

Some numbers:
Morning weight: 182.8 pounds (yes, I still have dreams of being 174 by the wedding)

Total
Distance: 12.6 miles
Time: 33:31
Avg Speed: 22.3 mph
Norm Power: 250 watts
Avg Heart Rate: 166 BPM
Total calories burned: 480

On the way out:
Distance: 6.8 miles
Time: 18:55
Avg Speed: 21. 7 mph
Norm Power: 257 watts
Avg Heart Rate: 165 BPM

On the way back:
Distance: 5.8 miles
Time: 14:35
Avg Speed: 23.2 mph
Norm Power: 240 watts
Avg Heart Rate: 170 BPM