Training with Power for the Track and Time Trials

More Fast and Furious...

2011-10-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

OK, so it looks like the last two weeks where not a fluke...

I only did two races in the A's tonight. The first was a 30 lap scratch, skipped the Elimination in the middle and then a 5x10 Points.

There was an "increase" in the fast people out this week, Bukcosky and Caves where back. Chaddock and Carleton where there again. So the consensus was that there would be some fast racing.

And yes... very fast. The 30 lap Scratch averaged 49.1 kph. The 5x10 Points slightly slower. After a slow start, the last 40 laps averaged 48.5 kph.

I didn't get a very good warm up so at the start of the scratch I just jumped to the front and gave it a little kick to see who would follow.. they didn't so I took about 6-7 laps at speed and then when they started to reel me in sat up and let them catch me... Great way to get the muscles and heart up to speed . And if they are going to let you get a nice warmup in ... no reason not to :-)

Mostly sat at the back for the next 10-12 laps... Then worked my way up through the rotation. Arriving towards the front with just about 3 to go. At that point our group was about a third of a lap behind the leaders, Chaddock, Buckosky and Sidic... I jumped and bridged to them. Chaddock jumped. I stayed with Buckosky and Sidic. With 1 lap to go I moved to the blue and fought to get over Sidic, taking a narrow 3rd at the line. Hit 800+ watts in the jump, 502 watts average for the last 572 meters, 54.1 kph...

The last race was a 5x10... I was mostly hanging on for the first 10-20 laps... Too busy to go to the front while everyone jockeying for position. I was able to get to the front group, Chaddock, Caves, Jones and Denis and follow around for the 3rd and 4th sprints... but in both cases there was just no getting over anyone to get points.. Nice solid 5th both times... Hit 58 in the 3rd sprint!

Chaddock sprinted with two others for the 4th and just kept going. Leaving four of us for the last 10 laps. I worked in the rotation and ended up nicely positioned, arriving at the front with 3 and a half laps to go. Jumped and got a very nice gap, carried it through to the finish to take 2nd in the final sprint. Unfortunately that didn't quite get me to 5th... :-(

But still I thought it was a very nice effort. And just like last week, finished both races strong and could I think easily have carried through for another 10 laps.

Whats really bizarre is that my CTL has dropped significantly. Had it up to about 85 for the Whister Fondo and now its down to about 50... Can't for the life of me get up to speed or do an effort outside... End up doing L2/L3 recovery rides when I get out on the weekends... But the track workouts and races feel easy. Perceived effort is not that high. Speed is up, power is ok.. Endurance on the track is great.

I've been doing the Wednesday Structured workout, usually followed by a 10-20 minute fast pace line workout in the Buckosky 42kph workout... This week I also did the Tuesday morning workout.

Also back to the Computrainer and the winter racing with the Computrainer Race League. Last week it was the 10k TT opener.. Was about 4 seconds faster than last year.. But the front derailleur cable snapped just before I started, so I was stuck in the small ring.. Probably could have done it about 10-15 seconds faster taking advantage of the "hills" to go fast in the 53x11.

BVC Racing - lots of fast and fun racing!

2011-10-15T02:15:00.000-07:00

I'm really enjoying the BVC Friday racing so far this year... Last week I managed to snag a 4th in the 4x10 A Points race. No pretty pictures though as I managed to get to the track without the Ergomo...

Tonight was better. After my usual early out in the opening Elimination race I managed to finish 3rd in the 25 lap Scratch Race and 5th in the 4x10 Points. No mean feat with ten other riders, two of whom are on the National Track Team (Ben Chaddock and Gillian Carelton.) Overall for points in all three races I was (a distant) fourth behind Ben, Gillian and Bruce Denis. Didn't think that was too shabby a result :-)

This was a fairly fast race averaging 48.8 kph for the last 28 or so laps. With about 15 laps to go I had to make a hard bridge up to Gillian and then we worked to get back up to Ben. Bruce Denis and another rider eventually got up to us but at that point Ben jumped again with Gillian and myself following. Gillian was smart enough to pull up and let me lead the way to the finish line and take the 2nd there.

Getting going in the final 4x10 points race was hard after the 25 lap scratch... was huffing and puffing and seriously thinking of pulling up for the first 5-6 laps... Luckily the group decided to take the first 8-9 laps easy and by the time we got to the sprint my heart rate was back up and the legs where feeling ok again. Again this was a another fast race averaging 47 for close to the entire race. I hung out at the back for the first few sprints and then managed to stay with the (slightly larger) group that split off the front. We eventually lapped the field (although the other group had one less rider so Jeremy scored them down a lap instead of us up a lap.)

Ben Chaddock disappeared off the front with about (I think) 6-7 laps to go... I can't remember seeing him go, just wasn't there anymore... He apparently almost lapped the field. That left Gillian, Bruce, Julian Base and myself. Gillian led out with three to go. I followed to get a (distant) third with Julian and Bruce following. Good enough to get me 5th overall.

Overall the racing is fast so far this year. And very enjoyable. Fast bike, fast wheels. skin suit... and 18 weeks of doing the WTNC's.

Doing the Tuesday nighter's got my 5sec power up about 12%. Still not that high, maybe 920 watts for 5 seconds, but that overall that is letting me get away with pushing the 53x14 99" gear and I think giving me more endurance at the more typical track wattage's (700-800 typical max). Tonight's races where among the fastest I have ever placed in, but neither race was long enough to actually make me feel like I would have to slow down. Still going strong at the finish and could have done another 10 laps at the same pace reasonably easily. So if I can maintain that endurance as we get into longer races I should continue to do well.

And as always every time I move up in gearing I go faster for less perceived effort and do better with more endurance. Hard not to like that! Anyone got a 54 tooth ring I can try?

Planning for 2012 Fondo

2011-09-19T17:25:00.000-07:00

This years Fondo was substantially slower than last year.

By my estimates, looking at GPS logs and power files... The front peloton was 2-4 minutes slower than last year because of the headwind from Squamish to Whistler, and people NOT in the front peloton where slower by 5-8 minutes or more (proportionally longer the farther back you where...)

Compared to last year, the front peloton and all of the small groups of riders getting shelled off the peloton where kept together by the headwind. Last year there where break away riders who finished ahead of the main (small) peloton. And behind the peloton where lots of small groups that where stretched out.

This year the front peloton was much larger and stayed together (except for us shelled riders...) And the shelled riders couldn't do much except try and work in small groups. If you got off the front then typically your group quickly caught back on as you worked into the wind.

Looking at the two years... the first conclusion is that if you want to finish in under 4:00 hours, then you need to start with the main front peloton and stay with it for as long as possible. My estimate for this year is that if you stayed with them until Britannia and then continued on at your best pace you had a reasonable chance of getting in under 4:00..

The second conclusion is that staying with the front peloton requires maintaining a race pace in the main peloton. This year the average speed to Squamish was just over 36kph and we got there in about 1:50...

The third conclusion is that the pace of the peloton is roughly Cat 3/4, but the distance overall means that most Cat 4 riders get shelled off leaving mostly Cat 3 riders at the finish.

The difference between riding in the peloton at that speed and in smaller groups following at lower speed is primarily the difference between racing and time trialing. Racing means low power output mostly while in the draft, but then moderately high anaerobic bursts to get up the hills. Time trialing mode means high aerobic output with low variation and little to no anaerobic work.

At a guess, in the peloton to Squamish, 160-200 typical, 400-450 up the short hills, 350-400 up the long hills. Overall average power about 210 watts. Outside the peloton, about 200-240 typical, 300-330 watts up the hills, overall 220 watts average.

So yes, probably lower "average" watts in the peloton... for higher speed. But the cost is lots of anaerobic matches being burnt.

My better numbers for this year came from precisely three things:

they neutralized us to the to of Taylor Way, I might have been able to stay with the peloton non-neutralized, but it would have been hard
lots of long hard rides with anaerobic training (the fun and friendly hills of Belcarra Park)
the Tuesday Crits, 12 reps of 50 second 450 watt intervals in 25 minutes... great way to build endurance, repeated weekly from May to September

Overall my 5 second power went from 820 watts last year to 920 this year.. attributable to the WTNC's..

I've signed up for next years Fondo already. The goal for next year is another 10 minutes off, under 3:40. To do that I need to hang with the peloton until about Daisy Lake or better (I lasted until Alice Lake this year.)

The difference in training for next year will be to switch to Cat 3 races (I've raced Cat 4 for years...) primary differences are slightly faster up the hills and more times up the hills. Typically Cat 3 should be 1-2kph faster and where Cat 4 races last about 1:30-2:00 Cat 3 races are 2:00-2:30. For a typical Spring series race that means 8-9 laps when the Cat 4 (C group) is doing 5-6.

Which probably means I'll get popped off the back, but overall it should get my 5 second and 1 minute power numbers up, and give me more endurance for them.

Gran Fondo - Starting Stategy

2011-09-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

In the 2010 edition of the Gran Fondo Whistler there was a definite advantage to starting at the very front of the first start chute. The first group went out fast and there was a lot of selection in the park and up Taylor Way. If you started more than a minute or so back you really never had a chance to bridge up to the front riders.

This year the front group was neutralized through the park and to the top of Taylor Way, resulting in a very large (400+) riders effectively starting together ....

This makes the starting strategy a lot different. Remember that your time is measured from when YOU cross the start line to when YOU finish. If you start two minutes back and then finish one minute behind the first people across the line... you will record a better time.

So that begs the question, how FAR back could you safely start. This video provides some interesting ideas.

Global TV Helicopter Video of start

It shows the big bulge at the front of the race going through Stanley Park. Followed by a steady stream of riders .... but other than the big bulge there appears to be a lot of empty space behind them. I suspect that you could have started in the four hour chute, probably 3-5 minutes back on start time... and still easily have moved through the riders to get to the front group before it got up Taylor Way.

This would give you a 3-5 minute buffer against the people who started at the front....

We'll have to see if the organizers change things next year. If they use the same starting procedure (neutral to the top of Taylor Way) it wouldn't actually be a bad idea to use the elapsed time from the starting gun for any riders finishing in the first group at the finish. This would even out the effects of where you start as long as you start somewhere close enough to the front that you can get to the front group of riders. But wouldn't give you an advantage for doing so.

Anyone out there who started in the four hour chute can let me know what it felt like to them this year.

Strava Widgets - Join your club!

2011-09-12T22:31:00.000-07:00

Cool Strava stuff... If your club members "join" their virtual club in Strava then their rides are available via two different widgets:

Summary:

Stats:

Gran Fondo Whistler 2011 - by the numbers

2011-09-12T01:09:00.000-07:00

On September 10, 2011, Stuart Lynne and seven thousand other people rode to Whistler.........

The official results are available here as a PDF..

I munged those back into a Google Docs spreadsheet here for those interested in doing some numerical analysis.

Rider Summary
The riders where neutralized until the top of Taylor Way. To some extent prevented the selection of stronger riders that occurred last year where the "front" sprinted through the park, over the bridge and up Taylor Way. Resulting in a much smaller lead group.

Roughly (my guesstimate) about 400 plus riders ended up as a very large group on the Upper Levels. This resulted in, by Horseshoe Bay in the riders mostly taking over both lanes of the West Bound highway. We where supposed to only use the inside (far left) lane, but there was the lane, there was no (as in Zero cars) and the group was averaging about 35 kph. It just sort of ended up looking like it was safer to ride over there than fight for space with two hundred plus riders (with more than a few sketchy ones in there!)

There was some selection all along the Sea to Sky Highway.. Possibly down to 350 by about Furry Creek. There was some serious damage done there and again coming out of Britannia Beach. My guesstimate is maybe 250 at Squamish. Average speed to there > 36 kph.

I was in a group of about 20 at that point and we couldn't see the front group. But there where some motivated people at the front pushing the speed up > 40 kph... and we managed to catch what looked like the main group at about Alice Lake.

Unfortunately I got "self selected" out at that point... Preferring (bad mistake) to ride my own pace. I managed to do it faster than last year... but not fast enough. I knew that to finish in 3:45 I needed be averaging 33 kph at the end and that I wouldn't be able to pull it up by much in the last 30km...

And about then we noticed that not only where we climbing a long hot hill, but against a head wind. That coupled with the small groups following at this point was the reason falling off the main group was a big mistake. They had the fire power and numbers to maintain their speed. The smaller groups had neither.

This is shown in the histograms. No one off the front this year... It stayed more or less together until the finish.

Overall my time for the last half was just about exactly the same as last year. Although the climbing to Daisy Lake was faster, the final 30km was actually slower. I wasn't passed (that I can remember or noticed) riders once once on the Cheakamus climb until Whistler. I did catch up with a few riders in this segment.... but not that many.. More than 10-20? Certainly not by much!

Overall my placing fell from fell from 289 overall to 260th (roughly 5000 finishers). And since there where 75% more riders this year, that is of course better. I was 49th out of 1221 finishers in the 50-59 group compared to 48th out of 770 last year.

Official Time 3:50:03
Overall 260th - 5000 vs 289th
50-59 - 49th - 1221 vs 48th - 770

The initial group (~70 riders) had (with the benefit of hindsight and armchair quarterbacking) a huge benefit from keeping all the strong riders and working together to keep the pace very high in the head wind. And they missed last years best times by about 5 minutes.

Outside of the initial group, on average for most riders the ride was substantially slower. Possibly by as much as 10-15 minutes.

Personally, I was hoping for under 3:45 and missed that by 5 minutes. But looking the overall picture, I can adjust that down by probably about 5 minutes to equate to last year. So I think I achieved my goal (with reservations). I'll look at power numbers and do some analysis of that later in the week.

Histograms Showing Finish Distributions

This Histogram chart shows all finishers in ten minute intervals. Roughly speaking the peak is between 270-300 minutes... 4:30-5:00.

This Histogram chart shows the first half hour finishers, about 460 riders in one minute intervals. Note the peak at the beginning. Roughly 70 riders finished as a group within the first three minutes. Unlike last year there where no riders off the front.

Contrast this with 2010. Some people off the front, then much smaller groups that dribble in.

Strava Segments

The organizers didn't do split timing this year... which was a shame, the numbers from that where interesting... But with the ever increasing numbers of people riding around with Garmin computers on their bars its Strava to the rescue. It collects uploaded GPS files and then allows you to create ride segments for smaller sections of your ride. And then it will find all available rides that "match" that segment.

So here are some segments of the Fondo. I've tried to eliminate "overlapping" results... i.e. where people did the same route and managed to match into the Gran Fondo route. This is done by matching the exact start (half block West of Burrard on Georgia) for on segment and the exact finish sequence for the rest.

There still are some rides listed there where not the Fondo. And some that where on Saturday but part of the Giro. So don't assume that all the results are for the ride.. You can see the dates for the matching rides if you have a Strava account (free signup.)

To Brennan Sports Center, 50% distance. Ignoring Marty Lazarski (Giro rider) we can see that there was a tight grouping, large number of riders arriving within a few minutes of 1:48.

From Brennan Sports Center. Smaller group at 1:45 (last half time only!) and then more riders coming in over larger intervals.

The last 30km segment. Same comments as above.. gaps increasing and lengthening.

Gran Fondo - split times for 3:45 and 4:00 finish

2011-09-05T22:29:00.000-07:00

Assuming the same checkpoints as last year...

In other words... all things being equal... riders finishing in four hours last year went through Brackendale at 2:05 and Cheakamus at 2:46.

The other way to pace things is to figure out the average kph you need to achieve your goal time. Then monitor that in your bike computer. You have to start high, for 4:00, about 34 kph at the first checkpoint, 31kph at the salt sheds and 30.5 arriving at the finish. This method may also be subject to error if you stop and your computer only does the average against moving time not actual elapsed time (common.)

Cobble Hill RR - 3rd 55-59

2011-09-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

Last BCMCA race of the year at Cobble Hill. I've done this every year since 2007 and by at about 2kph this was the fastest the 50-59 group has done the race in that time.

Previous years average speed has ranged from 33 to just over 35 kph. Today was hot and fast, average 37.1 kph.. About 8-10 seconds faster up the hill as well.

Luckily the steady diet of Tuesday nighters made the climbs reasonably doable even though difficult at the "new" speed standard :-)

The pace cause a bunch of normally strong riders to drop off... but there was a bunch of new "entry level" 50's guys who pushed the pace all day and where in at the kill making the final sprint fairly busy (race downhill on dodgy pavement and then sprint for 200m!)

I still managed to stay well towards the front for the final finish and took 3rd for my age group.

A small group of 40's caught us in the last lap and walked away from us on the final hill climb... including Claire Cameron. We simply couldn't hang on to them. They apparently averaged 40+kph to be able to catch us.

Very small amount of leg twinging during the last lap. I think from the hill climbs in the heat. Hopefully a slightly lower pace next week well get me through the Fondo with out any (cramping!)

Cedar Sprint Pictures

2011-08-15T17:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Duane and his telephoto we have some nice shots as we head in for final sprint at Cedar RR

15 Seconds just about 230 meters out. Otto had made his move to the front 200 meters earlier and this is almost exactly where he started his sprint to the line.

10 seconds out, about 137 meters. Mike Sevcov has moved around the rider he was following (yellow and black jersey to the far left.) I'm just maintaining my position behind Mike and protecting a line by staying to his right (my left) so I wouldn't get boxed in.

6 seconds out, about 80 meters. Ray Wagner on the far left is coming around the blocking rider. Steve Crowley is stuck in the middle.

1 second out, Ray Wagner moving up on the left, Ray Crowley has moved across to the right. Both are slightly to late.

Otto has a good gap. He has lead the sprint from 450meters out. First attacking to get to the front and then then sprinting from 250m. Mike Sevcov still going strong.

I'm maintaining my position against Ray and Steve.

Final 1-Otto, 2-Mike, 3-Stuart, 4-Steve and 5-Ray.

BCMCA Cedar RR - 3rd overall

2011-08-14T19:55:00.000-07:00

Beautiful weather in Nanaimo today... forecast was for showers but there was just a few scattered clouds and the temperature was warmish but not hot. A fairly strong group for 50-59's (17) with a bunch of strong young guys who seemed happy to do a lot of work keeping the pace up.

First lap we averaged 39.1 kph, lap two was 38.4. We caught most of the 60's about halfway into lap two. The remaining three 60+ riders at the beginning of lap three. We never did see any of the younger groups. They where several minutes behind us at the finish.

Going into the last 5km of the race I just stayed near the front bouncing from wheel to wheel as appropriate taking an occasional pull at the front. Just over a kilometer from the finish there is a little dip, going up the small climb a small group jumped past me from the back requiring a sharp response, gave me the peak power for the day, 922 watts, 573 average for 12 seconds. Followed by 30-40 seconds VO2Max effort. But that kept me on the wheels of the front half dozen riders.

I was able to re-position in that group about 3rd back on the outside giving myself open road to move up when needed. At about 400m there was an attack from the back. I was able to follow that wheel, staying roughly 3rd.

At 200m Mike Secov came sprinting down the inside and the the rider I was following responded. We finished 1,2,3. Great leadout!

So at the finish rider Otto Kamstra 1st overall, Mike Secov 2nd, and I was 3rd.

The advantage here was the flat (ish) final sprint with a long lead out... A little work on my part helped to spice things up starting about 5km out. Pull the speed up early, get people working harder earlier... wind the final leadout up starting a km out... by the time you get to the finish line you have a bunch of people who are tired and hopefully aerobically challenged... Which impacts their final sprint.

Effectively this tries to change the odds from favoring those with good 5s-1m power to those with good 3m-5m numbers :-)

File from Strava and TrainingPeaks.

Pictures from Duane Martindale's site.

BCTT 2011 - Lake Cowichan planning

2011-07-28T03:00:00.000-07:00

Out and back 40km course. 10km up, 20km rolling (about same climbing as first 10km), 10km descending.

Dist elapsed Goal Average Speed Power

km m kmh FTP

10 17 35 108% - Mostly uphill slog

20 32 38 100% - Rolling slightly less uphill than 10km back

30 49 37 105% - Rolling slightly more uphill than 10km out

40 62 39 90% - Mostly descending

That's the plan... 10km in 17m average speed 35kmh, 20km in 32m, 38 kmh average, etc.

Takes into account the relative amounts of climbing or descending. So push hard from 0-10, a little easier for 10-20, hard again for 20-30, and fly down the last 30-40 which is mostly downhill.

Because it is rolling for the middle 20km (10-30) think in terms of matches. There are about 8-10 hard climbs and similar number of easy climbs. So lots of anaerobic contribution.

Go 105% up a hills until you have crested and regained target speed, 100% where it is nominally flat and 95% for downhills.

Depending on the length of the hill, you may try for slightly higher power (shorter) or lower power (longer). But to optimize power to CdA increase power at low speeds, decrease to recover at high speeds. Always keeping power high until back to high speed, remember don't lower power at crest of hill, push past and get speed back up.

Most people reduce power at the crest as their brain, lungs and legs are telling them to stop and since they have finished the hill it seems like that would be OK. Its NOT!

62 minutes or less should podium in Master C (well it depends on who shows up... OlafS. should be under 59).

My time in 2007 on the same course, but 49km (started and ended differently and went farther out) was 1:15:26, average speed 39.3. So 62 with an average speed of about 39.5 should be doable. If I recall it rained that day and slowed us down considerably on the final 10km descent.

Here is blog entry for that race.

Two different studies - LSD vs HIT

2011-07-23T00:33:00.000-07:00

Both of these highlite the importance of keeping HIT (High Intensity) down and LSD (Long Slow Distance) up.

The easier and shorter read from Dr. Stephen Cheung, Ph.D. http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/default.asp?pg=fullstory&id=9472

•Total training time was strongly correlated with FTP and VO2max. This observation strongly supports the above correlation with overall rider ranking.

• The amount of time spent in “aerobic endurance” workouts and at the Zone 2 (Endurance) power zones also strongly correlated with both FTP and VO2max. This is a very interesting finding and runs counter to most our pre-conceptions that better fitness comes through better/harder/more intervals. Rather, this points to the importance of developing that big “aerobic engine” as the foundation for better fitness. Indeed, many of us, despite our limited training time, probably do as much higher intensity work as elite riders with double our training volume. So if you can arrange to have a week or two of increased training volume, it may be best to focus on endurance efforts rather than more intervals or high-intensity work.

• The above finding is about total time in aerobic endurance work. However, the overall distribution of training time at different zones were similar across all 11 subjects, averaging ~73 in Zones 1-2, 22% in Zones 3-4, and 5% in Zones 5-7. Note again the preponderance of relatively “easy” endurance work even in elite/world class cyclists. This suggests that the mix of training is about the same across these elite athletes, and again that “quality equals quantity” even at these elite levels.

• FTP was most strongly correlated with total training time spent doing “strength” workouts, which consisted of low cadence (40-60 rpm) high gear efforts for 2-20 min.
• The amount of time spent in “aerobic endurance” workouts and at the Zone 2 (Endurance) power zones also strongly correlated with both FTP and VO2max. This is a very interesting finding and runs counter to most our pre-conceptions that better fitness comes through better/harder/more intervals. Rather, this points to the importance of developing that big “aerobic engine” as the foundation for better fitness. Indeed, many of us, despite our limited training time, probably do as much higher intensity work as elite riders with double our training volume. So if you can arrange to have a week or two of increased training volume, it may be best to focus on endurance efforts rather than more intervals or high-intensity work.
• The above finding is about total time in aerobic endurance work. However, the overall distribution of training time at different zones were similar across all 11 subjects, averaging ~73 in Zones 1-2, 22% in Zones 3-4, and 5% in Zones 5-7. Note again the preponderance of relatively “easy” endurance work even in elite/world class cyclists. This suggests that the mix of training is about the same across these elite athletes, and again that “quality equals quantity” even at these elite levels.
• FTP was most strongly correlated with total training time spent doing “strength” workouts, which consisted of low cadence (40-60 rpm) high gear efforts for 2-20 min.

And the longer and more in depth peer reviewed paper from Stephen Seiler and Espen Tønnessen http://www.sportsci.org/2009/ss.htm

Here are some conclusions that seem warranted by the available data and experience from observations of elite performers:
•       There is reasonable evidence that an ~80:20 ratio of low to high intensity training (HIT) gives excellent long-term results among endurance athletes training daily.
•       Low intensity (typically below 2 mM blood lactate), longer duration training is effective in stimulating physiological adaptations and should not be viewed as wasted training time.
•       Over a broad range, increases in total training volume correlate well with improvements in physiological variables and performance.
•       HIT should be a part of the training program of all exercisers and endurance athletes. However, about two training sessions per week using this modality seems to be sufficient for achieving performance gains without inducing excessive stress.
•       The effects of HIT on physiology and performance are fairly rapid, but rapid plateau effects are seen as well.  To avoid premature stagnation and ensure long-term development, training volume should increase systematically as well.
•       When already well-trained athletes markedly intensify training with more HITover 12 to ~45 wk, the impact is equivocal.
•       In athletes with an established endurance base and tolerance for relatively high training loads, intensification of training may yield small performance gains at acceptable risk.
•       An established endurance base built from reasonably high volumes of training may be an important precondition for tolerating and responding well to a substantial increase in training intensity over the short term.
•       Periodization of training by elite athletes is achieved with reductions in total volume, and a modest increase in the volume of training performed above the lactate threshold. An overall polarization of training intensity characterizes the transition from preparation to competition mesocycles. The basic intensity distribution remains similar throughout the year.

And from the commentary on the above paper by: Stephen A Ingham:

But just as vestiges reside in species, high performance training programs contain residual imperfections. The current paper highlights, in my opinion, the most common mistake: the accuracy of training execution. Specifically, this paper supports my own observation that for endurance athletes (particularly middle-distance), low-intensity training is performed too high whilst high-intensity training is performed too low. I surmise that the latter is a product of the former. The case studies illustrate the effects of including higher volumes of accurately performed low-intensity training It is not clear whether low-intensity training is more effective than high intensity training or whether low-intensity work simply allows more rapid recovery and preserves high intensity systems for performance of high-end work.

When working with middle and long distance athletes, this bunching of intensities on the plot of percentage of training time vs intensity is the first thing I look for when establishing a profile and understanding of ways in which preparation and performance can be improved. Further, there is a tendency for sports physiologists to prescribe types of sessions to an athlete with inadequate knowledge of the athlete’s program or how it is performed.

So get in more LSD. Keep the HIT well defined and to about two sessions per week. Ensure that LSD is LSD and HIT is indeed HIT.

Thursday Crit - 1st tt'ing off the field

2011-07-21T22:47:00.000-07:00

Fun crit out in Richmond... I sandbagged it in the C group and just TT'd to the finish.

The race started slow so following my usual reaction to that I jumped... and got a good 300m gap... so just kept going.

Did about 40.8 kmh average (top blue line in chart) for the first 10 minutes (to the preme) and about 39.0 kmh average for the rest of the race (bottom blue line).

There are two long 300m places on this course that you can look back to see how close the rest of the race is getting. Tonight I just kept my gap at that distance. If I couldn't see anyone I slowed down a bit. If I saw them at the far end I just picked up the pace. There was at least one pair of riders that made it about half way across just before the preme lap, but they eventually gave up and fell back.

So could I do this in the B group?

First its likely I was helped by Ryan, Mark and Scott working hard to prevent anyone from getting away to try and bridge up. So hopefully any attempt for the B's would get helped by some EV guys...

Second looking at some power files from two years ago it looks like the average speed (then) for the B group was about 40.5. So no, unlikely I could stay away for the entire 30 minute race.

But possibly (maybe) there might be some hope trying to get away for the last 7-8 minutes. Say about 4 or 5 laps to go. Far enough out that possibly most of the B's wouldn't think to try and cover a jump. But within my best 10 minute window for 40.8 (which could be pushed higher with some motivation for and end of race effort.)

W/Cda

2011-07-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Straight from Andy Coggan via Alex Symons blog.

Like Andy's Power Profile which shows Watts / kg so you can see where your power ranks you, this shows your FTP in Watts x your aerodynamic drag, CdA to give you Watts / m2 so you can see where you rank for (flat) TT performance.

My best guess for CdA is about .23, current FTP 295. So 1282 or just about smack dab center of Cat 3. Which more or less is where I show up in TT results...

Anmore Tour - new PB!

2011-07-15T23:49:00.000-07:00

So the secret does seem to be training load. Sounds obvious but.....

I've concentrated, for the last few months, on long hard rides. Tempo or better for 3-4 hours. Moving my post Xmas CTL from mid 30 to about 85.

Tuesdays WTNC, possible NP-Buster was the first result.

Today I only had two hours free, so went out hard for my Anmore Tour... to see if I could get a PB...

And WOW! First split is the top of the first climb up East Rd, typically 9 minutes, previous PB about 8:30... Today 7:30!

East Rd - 7:30 - 8:30
Buntzen - 16:05 - 17:00
Whitepine - 32:20 - 33:00
Belcarra - 42:30 - 43:50
Burrard Thermal - 55:02 - 56:16
Home - 1:32 - 1:35

The previous PB's for the splits where across multiple rides over 4+ years... so beating all of them in one ride is nice. Its possible to hit a PB in one or two segments just by going harder for that section, but doing it for every split is far harder.

I suspect that the WTNC's are also helping. One thing I noticed today was that on the short climbs (1km, 100-150m) I was able to maintain a higher wattage for longer with a lower perceived effort. Not necessarily something I could maintain for a longer event, e.g. Whistler Gran Fondo at 3.5 - 4 hours. But noticeably better for this distance. And I suspect the reason for the PB's.

WKO's power profile shows the progress as well. Not as definite in the anaerobic range (5s and 1min) but definitely the 5min and 20min just continue to respond to the load and move up. Now nudging into Cat 3 territory. So the question is how much farther can I push those ranges in the next 6-7 weeks before the Whistler Gran Fondo.

A tale of two Crits

2011-07-13T22:49:00.000-07:00

We've had a marvelous WTNC season so far... no missed races for rain. And last night we got a bonus. The UBC Grand Prix took all the Cat 1/2 riders so us lowly and unprivileged types (Cat 3/4 and novice) got to do a double distance for our WNTC..

This made for interesting comparisons as last week the Cat 4's had fastest ride of the season (and quite possibly faster than any last year..) @ 41.5kph average speed for the 26 minute race. With a peak at just about 42kph average pace about half way through.

This week of course was a bit slower. There where a few upgrades (people moved up to Cat 3...) And the group was smaller. But my impression was that because we where going to race twice as long, 50 instead of 25 minutes, the pace setters where setting the pace a bit slower. So About 38.5 for the first half and (strangely) a bit faster at about 39.4 for the last half. Or about 39.1 kph average overall.

Here are the two power files with the average speed and power shown.

What I found was the pace for last week was just at the edge of what I could do. Heading into the last two laps it was maybe I could just pull in right now... Perceived effort was over the top.

Last night the pace (2.5-3 kph slower) meant I was just inside my comfort zone (well not comfort but at least not my unconfortable zone...) So hitting two laps to go close to 50 minutes in and I had no thoughts of pulling in.

Last week vs this week numbers, normalize power watts and average watts

316, 235
311, 247

So last week overall wattage was lower, but the peaks (up the hill) where higher and more punishing. This week overall wattage was higher for longer, but the peaks where less punishing. So overall I was closer to my ability zone and therefore perceived effort was lower.

The numbers also show another "problem". I hit 100 TSS points in 50 minutes. And in fact after a short (< 1 minute) "rest" actually decided to push on and keep up a (not quite race) effort to fill in the one hour. Got to 120 TSS ... which of course with an Intensity Factor of 1.09 makes this an NP Buster... theoretically impossible. Although IFF possible it would be done by doing repeated short high intensity intervals with rests between ( a good enough description of the WTNC course...)

But I suspect this simply means I need to move FTP up... currently at 285. Probably need to move it up to about 295, which would move TSS down to about 105 which is closer to what Coggan predicts should be the max for this type of effort.

Trainingpeaks links:

Fatigue Profiling - from Allan / Coggan V2

2011-04-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

Was revisiting Hunter Allens Fatigue Profile page:

http://www.peakscoachinggroup.com/ASPX/FP/FP.aspx

I previously blogged about it here:

http://tt-training.blogspot.com/2010/05/fatigue-profiling-from-allan-coggan-v2.html

And there is another writeup at PezCycling:

http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/?pg=fullstory&id=9001

Tells me a couple of things...

my L7-Neuromuscular absolute numbers still suck but are a bit higher than last year
but my endurance at that level is very good, what I can do I can do for a long time
which means I'm not "explosive"
L6-Anaerobic Capacity is similar
By the time we get to L5-VO2Max the numbers start to look relatively higher and still with good endurance

So if want out sprint anyone I have to go early so that the sprint drags out to 1-2 minutes minimum. So that most other Cat 4's are running out.

Comparing my numbers to the PezCycling example:

Much higher L7-Neuromuscular
Slightly higher L6 Anaerobic Capacity
Lower L5-VO2Max
Slightly lower L4-Lactate Threshold

This guy will beat me in a one up sprint up to one minute. But as long as I can stay on his wheel for that minute I should be able to get past him at two minutes.

Alternately if I can jump from behind and get a gap he cannot close in less than about one minute I stand a good chance of staying in front of him. Typically this means going from about 600m (3 laps on the track.)

Aldergrove by the numbers (never let a time trialist get off the front with less than 15km to go!)

2011-03-27T15:14:00.000-07:00

Jumped at the top of the small hill (entrance to parking lot) with 2.5 laps to go. Got 300m gap by the time I hit Zero ave, never saw the pack again :-)

They finished about 2-3 minutes after I did. The A's helped a bit by coming past the C's just after I got off and that probably helped confuse and confound them. I kept thinking I was about to get caught, sit up, and then it's a bunch of A's. First the break. The the main group. I actually had to play cat and mouse with their main group for most of a lap, pass them on the downhill ("neutral, single C break coming through") and then getting caught on the small hill, then pass them again, then get passed on the 272nd climb... Didn't take any advantage drafting wise but certainly they where a nice carrot to pace myself from.

My average speed wasn't that high actually, 34.6. Which was very close to the overall average for the C's to where I jumped. But in fact they had dropped down to about 33 for the preceding two laps. I was watching the average speed. We peaked at about 35.2kph at the end of lap 3, but then the overall average started falling. So I figured the main riders where starting to slow down. With 3 to go slowly started moving to the front, getting there at the bottom of the small climb. Got to the top of that about 4th or 5th wheel back, jumped and didn't look back until Zero.

Fast nights in the A-Group!

2011-02-19T00:38:00.000-08:00

A nice set of races at the track tonight.... and because of other obligations I was nicely tapered not having been on the bike since Sunday.

The first race was a 30 lap Tempo, always good for a fast pace and tonight was no different. Average speed for the 30 laps was 49.3kph, with just under half - 14 laps / 3:20 minutes - averaging 50kph! Can't remember a race this fast. At least not one I was able finish.

I was on a 51x14, about 95.2" for racing after doing a solid 20 minute warmup on a 52x14 (97.1"). Since my form was good this felt very comfortable and I had no trouble hanging in even as the the pack speeds hit 52-55 and stayed well over 50 for extended periods.

Even my heartrate stayed well down, only hitting 182bpm for the final lap. Average for the race only 170bpm.

As always, as long as I can stay on top of the gear overall the bigger I go the better I can do. I'll continue with the weight program to see if I can continue to get raw strength up so that I can move up to the 52x14 for racing and maybe 53x14 (98.9") for training.

One side effect of the bigger gear is that it makes it more comfortable to get up off the seat for short efforts even when at speeds over 50kph. Typically leg speed makes it uncomfortable to push hard standing at much more than about 125 RPM. But on this size gear 50kph is about 120RPM and that I can do standing and get a nice jump.

In the second race, a 3x10 progressive points race the A's actually let me get over the top and attack with 3 laps to go.. they are a really polite bunch letting us old guys do some work at times.

Not that I did much... Jacob Schwingboth and a couple of others bridged back on to my wheel and went over me at the final sprint. Still it was fun. Someday I'll surprise them and stay away :-)

I'm playing with some of the new options in the online version of trainingpeaks. While heavily flash based the results are still quite nice and it is easy to make workouts available. See here for the tempo race and here for the progressive.

They also have hooked up with facebook and twitter and you can have your uploaded files automatically summarized and posted to either of them. This can be done either automatically or only for specific workouts. I'll play with posting them to twitter as I only have about 5 followers and as far as I can tell they are all some random people I don't know. They think they are following some other stuartlynne.

Back to the Track - Motorpacing in the A-Group

2011-01-22T00:22:00.000-08:00

The last few months have been very slack... between work and puppies I was down to about one Computrainer ride a week for most of December...

Anyway, the Winter Track Racing season is back. And again I'm up with the A-Group where it is less embarrassing to get dropped. There I can use the gearing that works for me, 50x14 but it rolls out as about 94" because of the very low profile 28-19 Vittoria Evo Pista CS tubular I use... If I raced with the B's I would have to use a 48x15 and its altogether possible that I'd get dropped just about as often... and that would be embarrassing :-)

The first two weeks where a bit hard. I was on a training wheel because the tubular I glued onto my disk back in October developed a very strange and severe problem early in December. Quite literally the glue holding the tape on to the tubular turned into a greasy sticky substance and the tubular started to roll off the disk! Once I noticed and came off the track and let the air out the tubular just fell off the rim. Leaving the tape firmly glued to the disk!

I finally got around to gluing a new tubular this week. And also decided to bring my old Zipp 3000 tri-spoke out of storage. Previously on my old frame it seemed to develop wheel wobble fairly badly. Worse than other wheels. But I haven't noticed any high speed front wheel wobbles at all since I got the Cervelo T3. So thought it might be time to give it another try.

So tonight it was back with tri-spoke and disk and skinsuit and new booties...

The A-Group did a 40 lap scratch, elimination and 4x10 points. Managed to stay with the field for 20+ laps in the scratch race. And then stayed with the second group when they split off. We got lapped once. That contrasts fairly well with last week on the training wheel where it was stay on for 4-5 laps and then pull up and wait. Then repeat... getting lapped about 5-6 times in a 40 lap race.

The elimination was a bust... pretty hard to accelerate the big gear into the back of the group right off the start. I was the first volunteer.

Had fun in the final 4x10 points race. Nicely warmed up and the field wasn't too fast... Coming around turn two with two laps to go for the first sprint I got gapped slightly behind another rider... with about 4-5 (of 8) riders out front going into the back stretch at about 47kph. Got up and bridged over, only about 10m... but managed to get a good head of speed so just went over the top and dived down.

Now I'll admit at the time I thought that there was only one to go... I was slightly surprised when I came around turn four and saw two laps to go till the sprint. But heck I was sure of two things... first I did have somebody behind me... But second probably only one or two and then a gap... So I just dug in and lead them out.

Anyway, Erik Mulder nipped me at the line, I managed to take a second with Attila very close for third. Since Eric could out sprint me in his sleep I suspect he was being kind to just take me at the line. As far as I could tell there was a 10-20 m gap after Atilla.

The overall numbers where very good. Hit a top speed for 58.5, average 54.9 for 30 seconds or 457 m distance covered (just over two laps!) Average watts about 565 watts for 30 seconds and 464 for 60 seconds...

Of course while it was fun it was also a race ending type sprint... had to pull up and let the main group go around, loosing a lap... But it still managed to get me a 4th overall. So that was OK.

The Zipp 3000 seems to be OK on the P3 frame. No wobble at all tonight or last Wed (had it out to test on Wed for the BVC Structured workout.) I have a Tufo mounted on it. Reasonably good one so hopefully CRR not too bad (I pumped it up to 180 PSI!) Probably I should mount a Vittoria on it. But the Tufo will do for now.

Now just have to move CTL from 26 back up to something reasonable, say 70 or therabouts before Spring Series starts (about seven weeks.) My long term goal for the year is a time under 3:40 for the Whistler Grand Fondo in September. So I have to do longer harder races and rides this year. Haven't decided, but I may do B group races in Spring Series. At least for the flatter courses.

Computrainer Race League

2010-10-09T14:40:00.000-07:00

A quick note, for anyone with a Computrainer, there is a Race Series for the next 21 weeks.

The first race (10k TT) must be submitted before Midnight GMT this Sunday.

What price a wheel?

2010-10-09T14:37:00.000-07:00

It has been a busy month, trying to get hours in on the bike, get back into track shape, and some paying work done :-)

Last night was the 2nd Friday night race of the year. I'm racing with the A group this year so that I can race in my 93" gearing.

What was interesting about was the difference between the last week and last night. A week ago we did a 40 Lap Scratch race and a 4x10 Points race. In both races I was getting spit out the back, then going up to the blue line and when the pack came around jumping back in. Last night we did a 25 Lap Scratch race and a 6x10 Points race. I managed to stay on the pack for the 25 Lap scratch and didn't get lapped in the points until lap 30, and even then was working well with smaller groups who where also down one lap.

Speedwise last night was about the same as last week. But there was something different about last night. Suddenly I was able to stay on the pack, at the back of pack, not working in the rotation. But still much better than last week where I simply couldn't hold on (in many cases couldn't even get on.)

The difference was the rear wheel. Last week I was on a loaner training wheel with some no-name training tire. This week I had my Zipp 900 with a Vittoria Pista EVO CL 22. Gearing remained unchanged at 50x14 (about 93.6" for the 700x22 Vittoria.)

If you look at the scatter plot on the right, The green and yellow points are from last weeks race. Blue and Red from this week. This is power at speed. And you can see a clear trend for higher speed at most power levels for the red and blue points.

At a guess, between 2-3 kmh for most power levels. An that makes the difference of hanging in at the back and getting spit out.

So what is the price of a wheel? Call it about 2 kilometers per hour. For whatever power output you have you'll be able to go about 2 kmh faster.

Or more pragmatically, something like an extra 50 watts to push around the training wheel at speeds between 46-52. You'll need to produce those extra watts if you want to use the training wheel.

GranFondo - claim jumpers

2010-09-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

It is apparent that a good starting position is critical for a good finish time, but also that a good starting position does not guarantee a good finish time if you are not in shape.

I was 438th across the start line, just about 1:40 after the first riders. While I managed to move up a great deal. The people who started at the very front had an open lane and took good advantage of it. This group got a nice gap and kept it throughout the race. IFF you are not in that group off the start, then you have to move forward to it. Not impossible as there are people all along to bridge too. But still more work than if you start at the front.

Out of about 30 male riders in the first big group to arrive in Squamish, 5 started in the Alta Class (pay extra for best starting position.. about 40 people) at about 6:59:45. The rest started in the the 3-4 hour chute, at about 7:00:05. They where in recorded start positions starting at 44 through 137 (male starters) with the 137 crossing only 35 seconds later. There was only ONE additional rider, starting 70 positions or an additional 18 seconds later who managed to bridge up and join this group, which had a 1:11 lead over the next group once they got to Squamish.

I went across at 7:01:20. Another 18 seconds and a couple hundred more riders behind that rider. And was about 9 minutes behind by Squamish.

Looking at starting, the Alta Class started at 6:59:45 and the last rider (except for some late starters) rode across at 7:19:49. So it took about 20 minutes to start everyone. I was 438, and about 30% into the 3-4 hour chute. So at an estimate the 3-4 hour chute had (at least) 700 starters (counting men only) and they where all started by about 7:03.

Of these only about 240 actually finished under 4 hours. So about 450 people didn't and their finish times ranged all the way from 4-6 hours. In fact I could find over 50 riders starting at the very front of the 3-4 hour chute (i.e. in the first 60 seconds) that finished in over 4:30. Again this is male riders only.

Possibly a few of those had mechanicals. But its reasonably obvious that people where not seeding them selves appropriately. Finishing 5-10 minutes over 4 hours is justifiable. More than 30 minutes looks slightly bad and more than an hour is ridiculous, they never had a chance of finishing close to 4 hours.

I couldn't find anyone starting in the later chutes who finished under 4 hours. So it appears that the people who could do under 4 hours did seed them selves correctly. But there is a large contingent of people who just don't follow instructions and effectively make it more difficult for those who might otherwise.

In some respects perhaps the setup of the chutes promoted this. With five chutes (3-4 hours, 4-5, 5-6, 6-7 and +7) that where all about the same size, or say holding about 20% of 4000 people, roughly 700-800 riders in each. But only about 12 percent of the finishers actually got in under 4 hours. So a smaller 3-4 hour chute with some effort at policing the entry to it would be appropriate. Probably about half the size of this years chute.

Big Ride - aka RBC GranFondo Whistler

2010-09-13T01:53:00.000-07:00

The first RBC GrandFondo Whistler went off without a hitch yesterday. This was an amazingly well run event that saw 4000 people (plus a few hundred in the separate Giro BC Cup race) head up to Whistler from downtown Vancouver. We had a closed lane all the way. Something like 15000 traffic cones, 110 flaggers, 45 traffic cops, six aid stations, and a nicely organized finish area. BC Premier Gordon Campbell was on hand to wish us luck and start the race and fondo and there was a helicopter overhead taking pictures.

The start was setup with seven starting chutes:

Giro
Alta Class (pay a little extra)
3-4 hours
4-5 hours
5-6 hours
6-7 hours
7+

Rob McMurty drove Paul Baker and I down and we arrived on site at 6:05, early enough to get well placed in the 3-4 hour starting chute.

Roll out after the start was 1:20 (chip timing, this gets deducted from your overall to get actual elapsed.)

I put on a bit of gas and finding openings migrated forward. I figured that the first bottleneck would be about 6km in, where we climbed up Taylor Way. Short but steep; and I wanted to be well in front of the main bulk of riders by then. By the time I was coming off the Lions Gate Bridge I had lots of room in front and back and then climbing up Taylor Way there was room to easily maneuver and climb at whatever speed was appropriate.

Once on the Upper Levels it was just a matter of finding a comfortable pace and a group riding at that speed.

I kept trying to see where the actual front of the group was. I think at one point, going up the hill out of Furry Creek, I saw what looked like the main front group. At that point about 3-4 minutes ahead.

I arrived at the Brennan Community Center with a split time of 8:57:53. This is the half-way point. Since we have the split information we can also see the state of the race here:

Tete de le course - Samuel Devlin - 8:34
Owen Hrrison - 8:44
Powered by Chocolate Milk Group - 8:47
Front group - 8:48 - 8:56
Second group - 8:58 - 9:02
Third group - 9:06 - 9:38

So I was just about up to the tail end of the first main group. But had not quite joined on. That group of about 295 riders was at that point spread out across 8 minutes. The second group was about 196 riders. The third group was the bulk of the field, there was a continuous stream of riders (30-40 per minute) for another 32 minutes. At that point I was behind 231 or 10.4% of the mens field. NP to this point was 256 Watts.

From a power perspective, at this point I was at about 155 TSS points. Or roughly equivalent to most of the training and racing I have doing this year.. And at about that point I started to get the twinging calf muscles and shortly after going through the split point I actually had a fairly bad cramp in the right leg. So I stopped and took of my knee warmers and gave the calf a quick massage... then back on the bike.

At this point we where leaving Brackendale and starting the longest climbs of the day, 350m over 9km then after some short descents another 150m over 4km. I brought the power numbers down a bit allowing people to get by me, just finding a pace that let my legs recover a bit. The next split was just before the summit. At that point I had slowed enough that 327 riders or 14.7% of the mens field was in front of me. NP for this section (1:12, about 30 minutes past the second split) was 218 Watts. Very easy to see in the WKO chart.

Once we got to about Daisy Lake I was behind a fairly strong rider who brought the pace up quite nicely. The legs felt a bit better and I was able to get to the front and start pulling as well. From here to the end of the race I managed to get the power levels back up. Although by the end the twinging was back. But I found that with a bit of standing up and looking for a comfortable cadence I was able to start catching people and move forward quite nicely. I had dropped 96 positions from Squamish to Daisy Lake. I managed to pull back 53. It helped that by this section people where slowing down. I was also looking at the average speed, 31.5kmh, doing the math and trying to see if I could stay under 4:00..

Assuming 120km, 31.5kmh meant for sure... but 120km came went just past Creekside... about halfway (from memory) to the Village. And then how much of a climb through the village to which parking lot... with an estimated margin (at that point) of about 1-2 minutes when I hit the turn into the village and a sign saying 1km!

Squeaked through with an elasped time of 3:59:02! Total TSS for the day was exactly 287.

The distribution at the finish:

Winner - Samuel Devlin - 3:24:46
2nd - Owen Harrison - 3:27:01
3rd - Hunter Lowden - 3:30:17

From that point there was a steady stream of finishers. At a rough guess, IFF i had managed to maintain my pace through the middle section, I would have been about 5 minutes faster, say about 3:54.

Looking only at my age category, 50-59. I was 37th out of 613 riders. The fastest rider in this group, David Taylor finishing in 3:31:54. So he was only 7 minutes behind the fastest rider, in the first group (1-2 minutes behind first in his group) and 13th overall in the mens field.

So I need to reduce my time by 25+ minutes overall to be in the front group.

My apparent problem this year is twofold. First not enough training hours or more correctly a too low CTL. I should be higher than 80 and close to 90. Currently a dismal 60.

Secondly, I need to have longer harder rides. This year my typical hard training rides (and races) have all been about 150 TSS max. And the common point with the leg cramping seems to be hard rides AND rides that go long. I thought it might be hydration or heat. But yesterday was cool and I don't think I was dehydrated. So whats left is riding past the built-in limits from training.

Both of these are in fact mostly due to my shoulder issues. The impingements (both sides since May 2009) led to very poor muscle tone in the shoulders (above and behind) and that lead to a ride limit of about two hours. At that point it was simply too painful to continue. I have managed to get some strength back over the last two-three months. And only since about July have actually been able to do longer rides.

So I need to ramp that up. Get out and get longer rides in. Move up to 3-4 hours hard rides at least once per week in addition to the current regime. That would move CTL (over time) to about 80-90 and get my legs used to doing longer rides without cramping (hopefully.)

Anmore Tour - new PB!

2010-08-19T01:21:00.000-07:00

Last night was another WTNC, fairly warm so the pace was slow. So I spent the first few laps attacking on the downhill ... lots of fun, pushed heartrate way up... Gave up when they rang the bell for the preem.

Then got dropped after another few laps. Got caught up with the cat 3's and dragged back to my group. Went to the front with Ryan and strongly suggested that the race was neutralized until we got back to the downhill...

Did one more attack and then let them go for the bell lap... just soft pedaled it to the finish..

Today was cooler (finally...) Out to do my Anmore Tour. Didn't have any strong expectations heading out, but realized on the first long climb (1.5km @ 8%) that I was feeling fairly strong and would probably be close to my PB for it. Didn't quite get there (9:10 vs about 8:30) but given that I hadn't bother to warm up and didn't really get serious for the first 4-5 minutes that wasn't too bad. Probably a PB for 2010.

Buntzen: 17:00 beating 17:20 (2007)
Whitepine: 33:45, beating 34:20 (2007)
Belcarra: 43:50 beating 45:20 (2007)
Burrard Thermal: 56:16 beating 57:30 (2009)
Aspenwood: 89:02 beating 90:00 (2007 & 2009)
Home: 94:55 beating 95:36 (2009)

I'll have to try this again next week with a proper warmup. In theory I was 40 seconds slow at the top of my first big hill on east road. But then pulled that all back plus some getting over to Buntzen. If I just matched my best time up that hill and maintained todays pace for the rest of the course that would get me down close to 94:15.

I reasonably sure that the Tuesday nighters are helping this. They are just 10x1minute L6/L7 intervals with about 90 seconds rest in between (unless you attack on the downhill...)

Also the Anmore Tour is repeated l-2 km hills and lends itself to doing a lot of standing up on the pedals doing L5-L6 efforts and then getting your breath back cruising down the backside of the hill to the next one.

This should help TT FTP etc. Although Time Trialing is more (almost all) aerobic, L4/L5 and not much standing up. We'll see how the Cypress HC goes on the 28th. There is also the BC TT on the 29th. May be able to sneak into that as well if there are no snafu's and I get enough volunteers. It will be the Warp Speed course, but two laps. So slightly longer than the Squamish course. Goal time would be 53:00. But my best time on the single lap is 26:47, so 53:00 for two might be a tad optimistic :-)

BCMCA Cedar RR - 3rd the hard way in blistering heat

2010-08-15T00:34:00.000-07:00

It was a hot day... no it was a very hot day... hmm. Make that a VERY HOT day.

George McLaughlin and I did a park-n-ride. Race was at 12:00 so easy ride over to Cedar.

But it was hot (did I mention that it was hot already?) By noon over 30C.

Waiting for the race to start I finished off a 590ml sports drink to get pre-hyrdrated.

We started at a reasonable pace, about 38kmh. And caught most of the 60+ group (except Dave Mercer) in the second (of three 20km laps). We had whittled down our 9(10?) starters to 6 by then, and picked one additional person from the 60's.

I tried in the first two laps to get the pace up by getting off the front. But couldn't maintain a decent pace through the rollers. And no-one seemed to want to try and go with me.

Tried to stay hydrated, finishing off my second bottle on schedule halfway through the bell lap. But at that point started to feel the dreaded twinging in the calf. That continued and got worse.

Followed Bill and Chris in for the sprint but by then the twinging was more like a cramp. And when they started the sprint with 200m to go I pushed hard and it was like my legs turned into concrete...

I'm not sure if this is a heat or hydration problem. But this is the third or fourth time it has happened. All on medium to hard races in hot weather (Dove Creek last year, Metchosin a couple of years back.) Another data point from this year though. After only a short (15-20 minute) rest I had to dash to get back to the ferry. Had a bit to drink (one can of coke) and a couple of cookies. And then pushed hard to get to the ferry. And didn't have any cramping or twinges... Rode back in 30 minutes.

So I don't think it is effort, i.e. doing too much work. And it could be getting dehydrated. But I'm suspecting that it may just be getting over heated.

Looking at the power files later, average temp for the race was 35C.

Westwood HC - new PB 14:26

2010-08-11T22:32:00.000-07:00

Last night's WTNC was slower but I made up for it by attacking on the downhill and then leading up the climb... but I paid for it by almost popping off the back. Heart rate not quite by almost off the chart with peak 10s 184 bpm, peak 1min 182 bpm and peak 2min 180 bpm.

Nominally anything over 180 means I have to recover at a corresponding lower rate below 180 for a similar amount time...

Tonight I did my Westwood HC route, 3.72km, 279m of climbing, 7.6% grade average.

Even with a slight delay for the (new) traffic light a third of the way up I still beat last years PB by 8 seconds, 14:25 vs 14:33. Power numbers up a bit as well, probably because I'm about 1-1.5kg heavier than this time last year.

I'll hopefully have time to do the Cypress HC in two weeks (the day before the BC TT which I'm acting as race director for so won't get to do.. :-( ). This ride indicates I should be able to take about a minute or more off of last years time (38:29).

But that is a mass start race, so the time you get depends a lot on getting on and staying on a good wheel. That said, last year, by the time we got to the last 1-2km, it was down to about 2-3 riders and if I recall, I popped with about a km to go, but had only one other rider with me (just behind by a bit) for the final 500m or so. I knew that the other couple of riders where in a (vastly) different age category and couldn't find the watts to stay with them as they pulled away.

Anmore Tour - L4

2010-08-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

The skies looked threatening early in the afternoon, with distant booming of Thunderstorms. So I mentally changed gears from WTNC attendance to just riding locally IFF things looked better.

Well by 7:00 it did look better so I headed out for an attempt at a fast Anmore Tour.

Was within one minute of PB at Buntzen, then 45 seconds at Whitepine, Belcarra and Burrard Thermal. About two - three minutes getting home (97 minutes, PB is just under 95.)

Appears to be an NP-Buster ride. Best 60 minutes at NPavg of 295 watts, for 111 TSS, IF 1.053.

Probably didn't drink enough, only went through one bottle and dropped just about 3lbs. It was quite warm.

Stave Lake - social ride sort of

2010-08-01T22:25:00.000-07:00

Headed out and did a VeloVet ride on Saturday. Now that the Albion Ferry is no more the meeting place is closer, Starbucks at Harris Rd in Pitt Meadows. Then out to Stave Lake and back along Dewdney. Lunch at Tim Hortons in Maple Ridge, then home.

Felt great, and shoulders where not too bad. I've been doing some exercises to get strength back up and that seems to be helping.

Heading home after lunch, about four hours in, definitely my longest ride this year, legs felt strong and fresh enough to climb up part of Westwood on the way home. Total TSS for the day about 250. On a base CTL that is only about 58...

Sunday I went out for a recover ride. Just a spin out around Ford Rd. Legs felt terrible, no strength, no push.. Definitely sore and out of energy after the ride on Saturday.

WTNC - very very fast, off the back

2010-07-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

This weeks WTNC Cat4 group was very fast. We averaged slightly over 45kph for laps 2 and 3!

The first lap or two was fast because someone got off the front and got us moving, and then we could see the Cat3 group which tends to act like a magnet :-)

Anyway, I managed to keep up for 16 minutes, at that point our average speed was 42kph, and I was whacked. So just drifted off the back. Was going to try and stay with the Cat3's, but they caught me at the SW Marine Dr to Stadium Rd corner, so I had to sit up to let them pass, leaving me with no speed to stick in at the back.

But shortly after Ryan Cousineau caught up with me and we did a couple more laps at a high enough speed to at least look like we where in a bike race.

Strangely, it seems like the Cat4 group eventually did slow down as the Cat3's re-caught them in the last lap.

Comox Weekend

2010-07-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

Another fun weekend over at Comox with Emil Marcetta and George McLoughlin, slightly marred with a crash the first day in the B Category Crit.

Saturday we had a Prologue, about 5.5km 2% uphill time trial, with the last 500m at about 8-10%. I managed 11:15 on my road bike. Bill Yearwood brought over his TT bike and full aero kit, and managed about 35 seconds faster. I think full aero + TT + being in better shape, should allow for 10:15-10:30. Which is just under what Bill did.

The second race Saturday afternoon was the Crit using a 4km course near the Dove Creek RR. This was supposed to be 35 minutes plus one lap, but the bell was rung after about 32-33 minutes. Caught me unaware as I was expecting another two to go and had sat at the back getting ready to push for two. Left us all scrambling to get to the front. After the final corner there where still some of the slower riders at the front leading us out and as the pack was passing them about 200-300m from the finish someone got bumped and went down. I was just in front of him on his right and may have bumped his bar, didn't feel anything though, just heard the crash.

Sunday was the Dove Creek RR at 8:30AM. Much nicer starting then compared to 11:00AM last year. Cooler and didn't run out of water. The race nicely kept together until the end and then I just followed Bill Yearwoods wheel for the last few km. He got a nice lead out, with Mike Secov following. I had a brief problem with another rider which cost me two pedal strokes or about 20-30m before getting onto Mike and Bill's wheels. Didn't quite catch them and one other rider, they still had about 5m at the line. Still it was fourth overall.

Versus Tour Tracker

2010-07-05T14:06:00.000-07:00

I forked out the $29.95 US for Versus Tour Tracker this year. And other than some hiccups with their use of a streaming plugin (autobahn) for the first two days I'm really enjoying it.

What you get is the full TDF video feed in HD downloaded and viewed in your browser via a flash plugin. This means from the race roll out to the end of the podium awards. For Sunday's stage one this was six hours compared to three hours.

This is not the same as the Versus broadcast. You get Phil and Paul's commentary, mostly, but it is not the same commentary you get on the over the air (cable) version. I still have my PVR setup so I compared the two versions for todays feed. For some portions the video and commentary are the same, with either or both Phil and Paul doing commentary. But in other portions they split up and you get different audio.

For the most part this is when they need to do a sponsor blurb, or a replay of something missed in a commercial, etc. One of them continues with the tracker commentary and the other does the over the air commentary. More kudo's for Phil and Paul, they are doing a lot more work than we realize.

For the parts of the feed prior to when Phil and Paul are available, i.e. for when they would be doing the over the air version, there is another commentator. So on Sunday we got him for the a little over three hours and Phil and Paul for the rest.

Another strange difference, for the over the air broadcast you get the audio portion of the video feed. At least what I presume is audio from the race, crowd noises, cheering, etc. That is missing from the tracker feed.

For the first two days they where using Autobahn which is a plugin which was supposed to improve streaming. I had a lot of trouble keeping this happy. Especially trying to stop / restart, skip, replay etc. Todays video was a bit slow in becoming available and there was a short lived announcement that autobahn was removed so that streaming would improve. I think the bit rate I was getting with autobahn was better. The quality seems to be slightly less today. I need to play a bit and see if I can figure out how to improve the download bit rate.

As a bonus this also works on your iPhone. Login and you can watch the video in full screen mode there. Note that there is also a Versus iPhone app for $14.95 which may be slightly better, but that won't allow you to watch on your PC. The free Versus iPhone app is pretty cheesy. It just does standings, results etc and mostly devotes a lot of screen real-estate trying to sell you the $14.95 version.

The bottom line is I think that the tracker version is worthwhile. While you can get Versus in HD in the US we are stuck with the older non-HD feed via OLN up here in the frozen north. I have been saying for the last two years I would cancel my cable and signup in a minute for anyone who would get me HD feed for the tour. And this is doing that at a reasonable cost, only about a buck and a half per stage... maybe about $.25 per hour ...

Heritage - L4 hill reps

2010-07-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

Tuesday the WTNC was a bit slower than last week. Average speed was under 39kmh. Compared to 40.5 last week and over 41 a few weeks back. Made it much easier to keep up and I was right with the pack at the end trailing it into the finish by only 10's of seconds.

Tonight I was on on Heritage. Didn't feel up to any intensity, and the weather was threatening to change to rain so didn't want to get to far from home. So just did L4 hill reps. Tried to average about 280-300 for 2:50-3:00, with 2 minute rest between. Did a dozen repeats, then wandered around doing some more L3 short climbs to round things out to two hours and get back for supper.

WTNC - managed to keep up this week

2010-06-23T02:11:00.000-07:00

Had a good workout tonight at WTNC. Pace was a little faster than last week, slower than two weeks ago. Kept up until the final lap when I get gapped when the people I was following gave up in the last 50m of the hill. Couldn't quite get back onto the back so followed the peleton up the final hill about 100m back.

The weather final co-operated so that I could get in three reasonably good workouts over the weekend. So I managed just over 400 TSS points in three workouts... which is not to bad with a CTL at about 60.

This week will be tough though. Busy every evening and on Saturday I'm helping with timing at the ellevation Cypress HC. I've setup some netbooks with Race Timer and the goal is to get unofficial finish times available via a builtin webserver more or less as people go through the finish line. And then to have the official results available quickly after the race (as fast as the commissaries can compare to their hand written results and say yea or ney.)

WTNC - off the back again

2010-06-16T00:43:00.000-07:00

I took most of a week off two weeks ago. A bit of a virus, work etc... Which killed me for WestSide. Just couldn't convince myself to get out of bed.

But then felt better two days later and had a great WTNC last week. The Cat 4 group averaged about 41kph and I managed to stay with them until the last lap. Positive TSB probably helped.

Tonight was not so good. Smaller group, slower. But that gave me ideas, I tried getting to the front to see if I could stay there for the climb. Yes I could. The bad news they rang the bell for the preme and that meant the next lap was fast and I was out of breath and then out the back.

What is the distance from last turn to top?

Was discussing the length of the climb with Ryan C. and Mark W. before the race. Ryan thinking (for him) there was some advantage to going for a preme from just before the corner. If you are in the first few riders around the turn then you get an advantage, possibly a small gap and then you should be able to sprint to the finish from there.

The distances, to the turn circle, just over 100m, to the finish line about 170 (total about 270m). Another 200 or so to the top.

Overall about one minute for the whole climb at a reasonable pace.

I expect a "winning" sprint from the turn to the finish line would need to be well under 30 seconds.

Which means probably within the AWC (anaerboic work capacity) for many people. Pretty much the same as a two lap final sprint on the track. Doable, but only just.... Well actually, not quite for C, barely for B, and typical for A. Which kind of delineates quantitatively the difference between the abilities in the different ability categories (read novice / Cat 4 for C, Cat 4 / Cat 3 for B and Cat 1/2 for A.)

One of the interesting things I have learned is that (at least for me...) just following the conservative follow at the back and suffering a bit from the rubber band effect at the bottom corner still leaves me in better shape overall than attempting to get towards the front by working along SW Marine then sagging back during the climb.

When done properly (last week, not this week) I hit the bottom turn with a heart rate at about 152 and by the top I'm at 166. If I do an extra 10-20 seconds work to get forward in the group, I start at about 160-162 and am at about 170 by the time I get to the top.

And that means over several laps I start getting even less recovery, so hit the bottom higher, and end up spit out the back...

Fatigue Profiling - from Allen / Coggan V2

2010-05-17T23:59:00.000-07:00

So one of the latest new concepts from the new book (do you have to ask.... Training and Racing With a Power Meter, 2nd Edition by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan PhD) is Fatigue Profiling.

For each of the different energy systems, which of course map to how well you perform for each of four different time periods we have (up till now) relied on the Power Profile.

This provides some feedback showing your best numbers for five seconds, one minute, five minutes and one hour. The resulting slopes are usually characterized as "all-rounder)" - roughly sloping up; "sprinter" - steeply sloping down; "Time Trialist" - sloping up; and "pursuiter" - upside V with peak in the one minute column.

I've never learned what my profile represents, other than roughly flat for the first five seconds and one minute (untrained and occasionally getting up into low Cat 5 territory. And roughly flat for five minute and one hour up in the high Cat 4 or low Cat 3.

Fatigue profiling is an attempt to show how fast you fatique in each of these areas. You set up periodic charts for your recent training. Showing your best efforts periods of time in the range around each power level.

The book suggests cherry picking the numbers from each chart, i.e. best numbers for each level from different days. I'm not quite sure I agree with that strategy. If you think of each energy system has a certain amount of "work" it can do. Higher numbers will (in my opinion) use that reserve faster.

So I'm taking a more conservative approach and picking best sets in the same period.

Peaks Coaching has a small widget that will munge this for you. And provide some commentary on your fatigue scores.

L7 - Neuromuscular Power - for the limited wattage I have, at least it lasts reasonably well. I can get a nice kick in and keep it going. Just as long as I get out before I'm in L6 territory.

L6 - Anaerobic Capacity - average and below average - and that is starting low! Definitely my weakest ability.

L5 - VO2 Max, starting high, staying above average for short periods, and at least average for 8 minutes. This is definitely my strength.

L6 - Lactate Threshold, starting high, and below average for 60 minutes. Most likely this is because I really haven't done any long hard FTP testing type rides this year. All of the numbers are low.

2010 Amgen Tour of California daily power file analysis by Hunter Allen and Dirk Friel

2010-05-17T16:00:00.000-07:00

Just noticed that we can get some daily power data analysis for the Tour of California. See here for daily race analysis... by Hunter Allen and Dirk Friel.

The 2010 Amgen Tour of California consists of eight stages starting in northern California in Nevada City and travels south to Agoura Hills near Los Angeles. TrainingPeaks is proud to support two teams in this year's event, Team Saxo Bank and Team Fly V australia. Stay tuned after each stage to see and download actual race files from these amazing athletes. For immediate notification when race files are posted follow www.Twitter.com/TrainingPeaks

Good way to get some tips on how some high end coaches look at power files.

Campbell Heights RR - got gappppppeeeddd...

2010-05-16T22:49:00.000-07:00

I was doing well, I thought...

Managing to keep up with the Cat 4 field up the little sprint hills. But somehow on lap five I got behind the wrong wheel between the two hills. Looked up and saw two things. First that there where some people accelerating off the front! Second my two guys where dropping off the middle group!!!

By the time we got to the top of the second little climb I was about 200m behind the following group of about five guys. And they where a good 300m behind the leaders.. I had to TT for about 2km to catch up. Then we stayed about 30 seconds behind the leaders for a couple of laps. Then during the second last lap that lead extended to about 60 seconds...

By the final lap we had collected another 5 riders dropped from the lead bunch so we all had a fun time doing our own little sprint. I ended up on Brian Wongs wheel about 300m out and he ended up going too early, with me following and going to early and having to pull up about 30-40m from the finish line which let Bill Reilly get past me.

The race was slightly slower this year, I think because the course was shorter. We did eight laps of 8km, last year was seven laps of 9.6km. With the same amount of climbing per lap. So end result was 30 seconds faster and a fair bit more work... 180 TSS vs 166 TSS!

Escape Velocity - WTNC promo video

2010-05-13T21:29:00.000-07:00

Every Tuesday until September.... 10-12x1-2m VO2Max/Anearobic Capacity workouts with 2m rest... this is one heck of a good workout and a lot of fun too.

WarpSpeed TT - 26:42

2010-05-09T22:08:00.000-07:00

After getting all 100+ riders through the ITT in the morning, then 15 TTT teams doing 40km finished, prizes awarded and everything loaded back up into the 4Runner, I finally got my reward. Drag the P2C out, pull on the skinsuit and ride the course myself.

Managed to take about 10-12 seconds off last year, 26:46.

Quick numbers check in analytic cycling, Assuming CRR 0.0038, CdA 0.230, average watts about 280. If I got watts up to 320 OR CdA down to 0.210, then I would reduce time to under 26 minutes.

Ant+ arrives on the iPhone

2010-05-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

Well almost, hopefully available soon.

Here is an early review. And here is the Wahoo Website for more information.

They will be offering a small Ant+ dongle that can be used with pretty much any Ant+ device (power meter, heart rate strap, cadence, foot pad etc.) to log data.

They have a Wahoo Ant+ utility app (already) available in the iTunes App store. This can be used to test or record data.

Best yet, they will have an API available to allow any iPhone App developer to develop applications using the dongle. So if you want to do a customer coaching app that monitors your Metrigear or Quarq or ?? device, then go for it.

The developed app's should run (with Ant+ dongle) on pretty much any of the current Apple products. I.e. iTouch (version 3 OS), iPhone (3Gs) and iPad. Allowing for a wide range of platforms. From the inexpensive iTouch ($200 and up), the ubiquitous iPhone, and the larger screen iPad (for those coaching apps).

The Ant+ dongle will be available as a dongle. And also as a iPhone case. I would expect an iTouch case as well (maybe with GPS added.)

I have done a bit of development on the iPhone/iTouch. The specs are pretty amazing. You get a real bang for you buck in these devices. Lots of memory, lots of CPU. The one limitation with the version 3 os is that it is difficult to have something run in the background. E.g. for data-logging. You need to keep it in the foreground and manage the screen to reduced battery usage. And you get kicked out for things like incoming phone calls (iPhone only.) But the version 4 os (fall release) should address some of those issues.

I don't own an Ant+ devices yet (actually, maybe, I have some older Garmin accessories that might be, and an iAero.) But I am going to order this so I can play with it as a developer.

Two Time Trials

2010-05-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

Got to do two time trials today.

First was the season opener for the Vancouver VeloVets 10k TT out at Iona. Nice conditions, just a little wind. But still only able to get 14:33. Which is a bit slow.

Then I got a complimentary entry to Race the Ridge Golden Ears TT. Normally only open to people doing the full stage race they where nice to let me ride (probably as I won't be able to ride next week's WarpSpeed when I put my race directors hat on.)

The conditions where very nice. Probably the best seen on that course for a few years. It is a spring race and typically early cold damp mornings. Yesterday was warm and dry.

I put in a reasonably good effort, 32:29. Which is about 45 seconds faster than my time from two years ago and a new PB for me on this course. Comparisons to the rest of the field are a bit harder as they had all spent 2-3 hours doing a hard road race earlier in the day.

That said, the best Cat 3/4 time was David Stephens with 29:48, one of only four riders go under 30 minutes (including Cat 1/2.) There where three more Cat 3/4 riders just over 32.

I ran the Golden Ears file through Aerolab. Still learning how to tweak the sliders for best results etc.. This shows that a hilly course that gives you a lot of variation in speeds. Without being so hilly that you change position too much to invalidate the results.

On this course the speed varied from 20-70 km/h (exclusive of the turn-around and start.)

Best guess, CdA getting to about .220-.230.

Anmore Tour - SST

2010-04-30T00:58:00.000-07:00

Last night was Heritage Mtn, 4x10m VO2Max / L5.

Tonight was my Anmore Tour, a little slower than usual, but still SST mostly. But put in a nice 5 minute interval towards the end climbing up to the top of Parklanes development on Heritage Mtn, 329 Watts PAvg Watts for 5 minutes. And that after a reasonably hard one and half hour workout...

Total TSS for the full two hour ride was 173. NPAvg 258. Which probably explains the sore legs.

TT season starts on Saturday. We'll be out at Iona for 9:00AM to do the VeloVets 10k. In the afternoon I'll be out to RaceTheRidge Golden Ears TT to get a practice ride in and put some WarpSpeed posters out.

And hopefully all the local readers of this blog will be out to WarpSpeed next weekend. I'll be putting my Race Director hat on so won't be able to ride. Hopefully everyone will enjoy themselves. I'll be thinking of good friend Doug Preston the previous race director who was killed last year while training on his bike.

Golden Cheetah - Aerolab - figure out your CRR and CdA

2010-04-25T14:53:00.000-07:00

Got around to looking at the new Aerolab extension to Golden Cheetah.

Golden Cheetah is an open source ride managment / power analysis tool that runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Aerolab is an extension that allows you to use the Chung Virtual Elevation method to derive CdA and CRR from a power file.

Currently this emulates the Chung spreadsheet quite well, but does not auto-solve. You have to play around a bit to look for the best solution. Also you have to jump through a few hoops to get the Rho constant (air density, for which you'll need altitude, temperature, dew point temp and know how to calculate, I can provide a small spreadsheet if anyone is interested.)

I'm still a bit confused as to how to discern the effects of CRR and CdA. But within some reasonable degrees of accuracy you can get some good ideas.

The above shows a VVV TT, the 10k Iona course, out and back. With reasonable results, I think this was my PB for the year. Assuming about 0.0033 for CRR my CdA would be about 0.229.

Just a sanity check, plugging those numbers into analytic cycling gets me a speed for just about exactly 40km/h for 284 watts average. On the day it was about 43.7 (exclusive of start and turn-around.) So getting close...

Ford Road - 20m L5

2010-04-25T01:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday was Heritage Mtn, 6x3m L5 and 4x2m L6 with 3-4 minute rest between. Trying to get some VO2Max work.

Today was supposed to be 2x20 SST but I was pressed for time and the weather was NOT co-operating. So I did one 20m L5 session and headed for home before the rain started (didn't quite make it.)

Not to bad either, 300 watts Pavg and 306 NPavg. And that course has lots (nine) corners and round-abouts (four!) with corresponding bits with lower power. Nice average speed, 36.6 kph, mostly against a good head wind.

This is reasonably close to where I need to be for this type of effort. The best 10m Pavg was 306 watts, which compares well to, for example, my PB on the VVV TT last year which had best 10m Pavg 308 watts.

Getting CTL up is still hard. Only about 65, low for this time of year. Its been tough getting long rides in for all sorts of reasons... too much work, weather, spring series, weather, etc... Also my shoulders make it tough to do much longer than 2-2.5 hours at a time.

Generally though this still leaves me able to do efforts of about 150-175 TSS. And that accounts for pretty much all of the races I plan on. A typical BCMCA 65km race usually is between 130-175 depending on how flat or hilly it is. Even Westside Classic in Cat 4 was only about 180 TSS last year.

Tips on Mass Start Hill Climb Pacing

2010-04-23T15:56:00.000-07:00

This assumes a long (> 15-20 minutes) hill climb where the pre-dominant effort is at or slightly above FTP and anaerobic power will only be used (sparingly) to maintain contact with other riders.

This also assumes a mass start race where drafting is allowed. An uphill TT format would require different pacing.

----- Original Message -----

From: Stuart Lynne

Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 2:07 PM

Subject: Re: [Wattage] Hill Climb Pacing

Unless you are best at low RPM go with a 12x25 or 12x27 cassette. That will allow you to keep your cadence in a more comfortable (to most people) range. (On our local Cypress HC, 12km @ 5.7%, my average cadence last year was 76.)

5-6% grade means you want to be drafting. Which means you want to have someone in front of you. Which means try and find someone who is setting a pace that allows you to maintain your best power.

This usually means finding the best wheel during the first few minutes as the rest of the riders spread out each according to their best 1-2 minute power. Stay with the one that matches your best, don't over reach so that you blow up. But also don't stay with a group that is too slow or you will be too far back to win.

Lots of people will blow up, so be willing to look for a better wheel to follow if the one you picked starts to slow down.

Overall from a pacing perspective. The first 2-3 minutes will be about 110-120% of FTP with some spikes as high as 150% if you need to catch onto a wheel. Then it is just a slog at just above FTP (i.e. your 20minute power) to the top. Possibly with a sprint at the top.

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 08:15, wrote:

I have been searching for information on hill climbing races and how
to use power to get the most out of the effort, and so far I have come
up short. I plan on doing the Lookout Mountain Hill climbing here in
CO. Its 4.5 miles at a steady 5-6% grade that should take me about
21-22 minutes. Being that the race is about 20 minutes long, I have a
good idea of what wattage I can maintain for that amount of time. I
would presume that I should pace myself close or just slightly about
my 20 minute wattage for most of the race and then 2-5 minutes out,
try to ramp it up until the end. Is this the proper way race hill
climbs or am I missing something?

Thanks for then feedback,

Old post from Andy Coggan on TT Position

2010-04-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

Found a reference to this old post in the Wattage list today: http://groups.google.com/group/rec.bicycles.tech/msg/3b477e774a67737e

Tom Kunich wrote:

> It looked to me as if you really had to
>do a lot of trial and error research without a wind tunnel or SR power meter

> to tell you what was going on in real time.

Not to be disagreeable, but I disagree. If my goal were to set myself up in an aero position with minimal drag and I didn't have access to a wind tunnel, I'd just drop the elbow pads far enough down below the saddle that my shoulders (acromion process) were within a couple of inches of being level with my hips (head of greater trochanter), move the elbow pads in to where my arms were as narrow or perhaps narrower than my thighs when viewed from the front, tilt the aero bars up ever-so-slightly, and keep my head down. I'd then go out and ride the bike - hard - in that position and see how far foward (and thus up) I needed to move the saddle to where my thigh-torso angle was similar to the "working position" on my road bike. I'd then ride the TT bike for at least one hour - hard! - each week for at least 6 weeks before any race. Sounds crude, I know, but for a flat TT this neandrathal approach will probably get you to within about 1 km/h of your maximal speed.

Now, the caveats:

1) achieving such a position will, as has been discussed, probably require special equipment, e.g., a frame with TT-specifc geometry, or at the very least a down-angled stem/forward seatpost. The latter approach is okay as long as you don't fall off your bike as a result of having too much weight on the front wheel.

2) the above isn't necessarily the fastest position for a rolling or hilly course, or at least may not be unless you devote more time learning how to go fast in such a position.

3) gaining that extra 1 km/h will probably require spending time in the wind tunnel further refining your position.

4) use of a power meter such as an SRM or Tune to try to refine your aero position can be entertaining, but unless you have access to an indoor velodrome probably won't help you go any faster than just following the advice of somebody with a well-trained eye (like John Cobb), or simply copying the positions of athletes known to have low drag. OTOH, having the power data can be very useful for training purposes, and for pacing during TTs.

To quote John: "The key to faster TTs is to step on the cranks harder ..."

--
Andrew Coggan

Photo Finish

2010-04-19T16:28:00.000-07:00

Here is the photo finish....

I shows John Guthrie getting me by maybe a cm...

I suspect I made the fatal mistake of letting up a bit and looking over when I heard him coming.

Luckily both of these riders where 50-54 so I still got 2nd in the 55-59 group.

Still hurts to loose the sprint like that though.

Thanks to Duane Martindale for the pictures. See more here.

BCMCA Langley Thunderbird RR

2010-04-18T21:41:00.000-07:00

First BCMCA race of the year out on Gord Reddy's new (as of 2009 at least) course.

Short 6km course with one sharpish sprint climb and then rollers for the rest. Twelve laps, about 74km total.

Last year we (50's) never did catch the 60's (Peter Kirkland) and got caught by the 40's (Larry Zimich and friends.)

This year we still didn't catch the 60's (Derek Tripp and Dave Mercer) but the 40's never did show up.

Fairly large groups. About 25 riders in both the 40's and 50's groups.

Derek Tripp and Dave Mercer cruised to the finish without being seen by anyone. In our group Ray Waggner and Martin Willock succeeded in getting off the front on about their 4th or 5th try, with about 3 laps to go. Managed to stay off with the rest of us following about 30-40 seconds behind.

I kept a good position just back of the front for the run up to the finish. Followed another rider who moved up along the left to the front. With about 300m Scott Jutson jumped, got on his wheel, he was following Greg Funk. Adjusted my gears and with about 100m to go jumped and almost got 2nd in our group. But someone else managed to get me in a photo finish.

Good enough for 2nd in the 55+ category and 7th overall.

You know you have too many wheels when .....

2010-04-17T21:21:00.000-07:00

I picked up a new rear Bontrager XXX Lite carbon wheel on eBay.. Lets say the price was right. Less than a new Bontrager Aero Aluminum.

I wanted to expand my options for training with carbon wheels. Switching to aluminum for training requires swapping the pads which is such a pain.

Anyway, needed to swap cassettes around, which meant cleaning them all and checking which ones need replacing etc etc...

Lined up its a getting to be a a fair collection. This is only the "active" set. There are some older aluminum rims that could still be used in a pinch but don't have cassettes mounted. Also no track wheels.

Westwood HC - 15x40s L5

2010-04-15T23:04:00.000-07:00

Babying the shoulders this week. Three days in a row but all short workouts. About an hour and a half each.

But with some hard bits. Last night I did some Westwood hill reps. With 3 L7 (>400 watts) intervals about 1:20 in length.

Tonight the coach was suggesting 10x40s L5 with 20s rest. To quote "this is an intense workout". I didn't have time to get out to Pitt Meadows so I could do it on flat roads. So I did it as a hill climb up my good old favorite Westwood. That is about 3km and 300m of elevation gain.

Hard (!!) workout. I ended up doing them all the way to the top. Although past the first ten they where perhaps getting a bit shorter and harder to get restarted :-)

Overall just under 16 minutes to the top. Which is probably my best time this year. If I remember correctly my best time last year (6 lbs / 2kg lighter, mid summer) was 15 minutes even (well I did that at least once...)

I was a bit surprised that the time was that low. While I was pushing about as hard as I could for the 40 seconds, I was also sitting up and pretty while not actually stopping it felt like it.

I did, I think, about the first four sitting down. But just couldn't keep up the intensity. So did all the rest standing up.

Spring Series - Snake RR

2010-04-04T22:46:00.000-07:00

Snake was fast this year. The C group was climbing it about 10-15 seconds (est) faster than we did it two years ago. My times where from 1:50 to about 2:10-2:15. Two years ago 2:0 to about 2:20-2:30. I was doing sag climbs (first onto the climb and last off the climb.)

I managed to be off the climb and close enough that I could TT back onto the main group every lap except the last. Ended up with two other dropped riders who couldn't help me and ended up dropping off leaving me to follow the field at a distance and finish about 500m behind.

Ah the joys of a Class TimeTriallist Power Profile :-) Nothing much for 5sec, 1min (untrained, Cat 5 on a very very good day.) And Cat 3 for 5 minute and 1 hour.

Overall my 8th for the Crit and 1st for the TT got me 2nd overall for the Omnium. Probably should have been 3rd as one of the leaders didn't race on Sunday. If that rider had started on Sunday they would have had (at least) 2nd and I would have been 3rd.

So what does it take to climb Snake and can I do it faster; or why do I sag climb?

I used a spreadsheet available from the wattage forum (tt_analysis.xls). It allows you to enter distances, grades, power for a tt course and get an idea of how to pace it.

In this case I just set the segments to all be 500m, 11% grade, then various multiples of ftp. This is shown in the chart as the red line. Effectively power required to climb for a specific number of seconds.

The second line is the Mean Maximal Power numbers (copy raw from WKO chart). Note the cross over at 130 seconds. This indicates that (at least as far as the model is accurate) that it is unlikely I can do this climb very much faster than 130 seconds. For example to get down to 110 seconds (about what the lead climbers where doing) I would need to do about 450 watts for 110 seconds. And according to the MMP chart (which is my best efforts over the last 28 days) my best effort over 110 seconds is about 375 watts. I would need to add 75 watts to that.

On the other hand the 130 seconds matches fairly closely the times I did get.

Spring Series - River Road ITT

2010-04-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

We got to do a full 12km this year as the person (ahem...) who put out the cones and signs pushed the turn-around out as far as possible. By co-incidence this made the turn off 88 to 272 at exactly the 3km point. So you get 3km east/west and 3km north/south.

This made the course just under a km longer than last year. The extra half km out was very painful, slightly uphill against a strong headwind. So almost all of the times this year where about a 1-1.5 minutes slower than last year.

I managed 17:15 which got me first in C group, compared to 15:38 (2nd) last year.

Mike Sidic had the best time of the day, 15:31. Only 16 seconds slower than his time last year. Other A riders where about 60 seconds slower so that shows a big improvment for Mike.

Spring Series - Old Yale Crit

2010-04-03T21:58:00.000-07:00

Flat one km course. The wind helping on one leg. I managed to stay with the pack for 20 minutes, until the 5 lap to go sign went up. Then couldn't quite stay and did the last laps by myself. I suspect, as usual, I was the "last" person to get dropped.. A distinction of sorts (same at Armstrong.)

Good for 8th or 9th out of (I think) about 25 or 30 people who started in the C group.

C Group Breakaway for 5th on Atomic RR

2010-03-27T23:55:00.000-07:00

Managed to get a nice little breakaway for the last lap to end up with 5th place.

Atomic has three climbs:

Ross Rd, 600m@5%, about 1:30
Huntingdon, 700m@4.5%, about 1:40
Bradner, 400m@8%, about 1:20

Effectively they all climb about 30m total elevation. But each has its own characteristics and certainly each feels very different.

Ross Road starts with a very fast drop and you hit the bottom and spin up for a bit, then typically everyone finishes standing up as it kicks up at the top.

Huntingdon has a preliminary 300-400 hundred meters that is uphill slightly, so by the time you hit the steeper bits you have slowed down. But overall the grade is less. So mostly sitting down and spinning.

Bradner starts steep, about 200m at 10% and then drops down, go around a corner and then it kicks up again for that final little insult before you get to the top (and just past that is the finish line.) Mostly people start this one standing but typically by the top everyone is back in the saddle.

We had to do six laps (10km per lap.) What I was finding was that I was quite comfortable on the Ross Rd. climb. No trouble matching the pace to the top. Even starting from the back. Huntingdon was even easier. I had a 12x27 cassette and found it very easy to go from the back at the bottom and accelerate up to the front by the top.

Bradner the younger guys hit standing up and moved up it fairly fast, and while I could match that. I knew that doing so six times would not probably be a good idea.

I stayed at the front for the first lap. Mainly to get nicely warmed up and get some idea how fast the C group wanted to race. That gave me a baseline and also showed how expensive it would be if I tried to do that for the entire race. I was showing about 35 TSS points for that lap. Trying to do that for six laps would get me up over 200. Doable (maybe), but probably would leave me few options at the end.

So I my goal was to do three laps with minimal effort. Hang out at the back, go to the front on Huntingdon just so I could be first at the bottom of Bradner, sag climb up Bradner so conserve matches (Anerobic Capacity efforts).

Over the course of 4.5 laps the C group numbers dropped from about 40 down I think about 25. My strategy was to push hard on the second last time up Huntingdon and see if I could get off the front one a couple of people. That was my "easiest" climb. So instead of following and starting from the back, I moved up after the Ross Rd. climb, so I was in the top four at the bottom of Huntingdon. Then climbed just a bit faster than my normal pace and the "normal" pace was typically taking me from the back of the peleton to the front. so starting from the front and pushing a little harder caused the group to split badly.

From about half way up there was another rider who made several small jumps off the front to see if anyone wanted to try and get away. So with about 30-50m of the climb to go I moved up to him, said "lets go" and jumped hard. He managed to get my wheel and we go well off the front. Stayed well off through the Bradner climb. Which I did at his pace. About 500-800m past the start/finish another three riders managed to bridge up to us. But it appeared that we had a very good gap. 300-400m at least from the main group.

We worked our way around. I pushed fairly hard to get us some additional distance. Unfortunately couldn't quite match them on the Ross Rd climb. Ended up about 150m back. So just TT'd around following them. I could see another group about 300m back. Going up Huntingdon the group behind started closing so I picked up the pace. Hoping to stay away.

Then after the drop coming into the Bradner climb for the final sprint I come to an almost grinding halt, There was a large truck with trailer moving up this road, which is a tight steep skinny (not quite two lanes) road, with cones in the middle and this idiot is driving up at about 2kph... !!

As I slow down the group behind me catches me and we start to try and pass him, there was only about a meter left on his left side for us to climb past, and then I notice that the riders passing me where from the A group! Now I'm really confused. So I just followed them up and finished. Taking 5th.

It turns out that the rest of the C group pretty much shattered on that climb up Huntingdon. There was effectively no real main group after that. They all just moved around the last lap as best they could. The group I had been trying stay away from was the A breakaway.

So even though it was only 5th, I think this pretty much counts as a tactical victory. Had a plan, executed the plan, and pretty much the plan worked about as well as I could have hoped for.

Overall my time was about two minutes faster than last year at Spring Series, 1:45 vs 1:47.

But I'll note that our pace was substantially slower than the BC RR Masters race last August. We did the first four laps in 1:11, the August pace was 1:02. Or 34.1 vs about 38kph. Of course that race had six "Master A" riders who had ridden Westside classic a few months earlier as Cat 1/2. So presumably that had a lot to do with the faster pace. :-)

It appears that all of those Anaerobic Capacity workouts on the Computrainer in January and February (2k loop repeats.) seem to really be making a difference in what I can do this year. Still can't sprint but much more comfortable on the climbs.

Wet, cold, crash...

2010-03-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

What an awful day. Cold and wet. The C's where just phoning it in. I actually had to get out front just so I could get warmed up enough to stay on the bike. We where on the North Bradner course, which is normally my favorite.

We started with about 25 people. Where down to about 15 by the last lap. I was well positioned at the front, or so I thought, but going up one of the small climbs on the back side I guess I slowed a bit too much and all of a sudden was in the middle, someone crossed my wheel in front of me and down I went.

The bike and front wheel got the worst of it. Luckily Marsh Coopers parents where close by with their pickup and kindly offered a ride back to the parking lot.

I ended up with some road rash on my left knee and a bad bruise on my right leg (I think from the top tube.) and possibly a bruised rib on the left. Amazingly neither shoulder hit anything. I seem to remember bringing my arms in so that I would roll, and that was due to not wanting to screw up my shoulders any more. In fact I think the bruised rib is from rolling over my left elbow as it was tucked in :-)

Also I was lucky that this was on a small climb, so going fairly slow, which also meant I didn't get run over by the people behind me. I think another two or three people went down. Jasmine Glasner was able to get back up and rejoin the group. There was one other rider who also had some bike problems so also had to get a ride.

The wheel looks worse, I think, than it is. It is a Bontrager Aeolus 5.0 and these are actually just Bontragers carbon rim with a carbon shroud added. And it appeared that only the shroud was damaged. Hopefully Rob Mulder will be able to repair that.

Meanwhile the bike is at the shop so they can fix the bars, shifters etc. Again it looked like mostly superficial scratches there. May need to rerun cables etc.

Reward for 2nd place

2010-03-21T00:09:00.000-07:00

My personal reward to myself for 2nd place... once I got home and put my feet up. This was a Howe Sound Imperial Red Ale only available during the Olympics.

Hmmm hmmmm good, especially after a hard race.

Spring Series - Aldergrove Bradner RR - 2nd C Group

2010-03-20T17:42:00.000-07:00

Good result on the new Aldergrove Bradner RR course. This is a 10km loop with two climbing sections. The new one being along Huntindon just before turning onto Bradner (this is also the bottom left turn of the Atomic RR which we do next Saturday..) This is a series of small climbs leading to the sharp left. From there it is a fast downhill and then flat until we turn North on 272. Then an annoying small set of climbs (rough pavement, seems harder than it should be) and finally the finish sprint climb. Total of 100m climbing over the entire loop.

Actually I just checked the power file. The first little climb along 272 is actually a bit more elevation gain than the second. About 30m in .875km. While the final is 21m in .25km. So I guess there is a reason it feels hard. Just doesn't look like it should.

We did 5 official laps. But the parking is in the middle so actually did the last third of the course one extra time.

We had nice weather today. But the usual Westerly wind that we usually get to fight along Zero Ave was replaced by a brisk Easterly to help push us along Zero..

Aldergove Expanded RR

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

I had a nice result. Got out and tried to push the pace up a bit on Bradner and Zero. But there was not a huge amount of interest. Event with the nice tail wind the peleton was content to sit up and average only about 40kph. Rested up at the back during lap four. Moved up to the front at the beginning of lap five, during the descent and climb along Huntingdon.

About 50m from the top of the climb along Huntingdon and jumped and got a nice gap and cruised through the corner. Then pushed hard down the hill and to Zero ave. I think about 150-200m gap by then. Turned on to Zero and got down on the bars. TT'd all the way to 272. Easily kept the speed up to just under 44 (huge tail wind) and was about 300m ahead when I turned onto 272. Then it was manage heart rate, work as hard as I could to get up the first climb, coast down to the second getting heart rate down and then sprint...

I still had about 50-75m gap going into the final sprint climb. And only one rider managed to get past me and that was right at the line. Less than a meter.. Still I was more than happy with a second palce.

Spring Series - Armstrong Hill RR

2010-03-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

After missing this race last year (I marshaled) got to do Armstrong again. In three previous attempts I have never managed to stay with the front pack past lap 3, usually getting dropped on the 4th time up the climb.

The climb is about 1.6km in length with an overall average of 4.6%. But it has three separate bits. Starting with 300m at 12%, then flat for about 400m, 400m 6%, 200m 2% and then finish with about 400m at 5%.

The younger guys sprint up each section with a rest in between. I have trouble with that because my anaerobic is not quite as good. Fortunately I can hit the top and without much recovery, throttle down to a fairly high L4 aerobic number and time trial back on.

So that was the rule today. I would take about 4:30 to climb. The front would take about 4:10. I would then scoop up the 2-4 riders between me and the front and we would work together through the descent to get back onto the front. Just in time to do it again... Overall 4 minutes climbing, about 4-5 minutes catching on, then maybe 2-4 minutes recovery. Repeat as necessary.

That worked well for the first six laps. Unfortunately on the bell lap I ended up at the top, 20-25 seconds back with no one to work with. The three guys I had worked with on the previous lap where another 20-40 seconds back... They eventually caught up with me at the bottom of the climb. But by that time we where 40 seconds behind, so just climbed and finished, probably about 2 minutes back of the first group. Which by that time was down to ten riders (from original starting group of about 50 riders.)

Interesting power numbers. I have been assuming my FTP is about 280 watts. But that would make this an NP buster ride (> 1.05 intensity factor for > 1 hour workout.). The best one hour was TSS: 119.6 (1.094). Overall TSS: 157.1 (1.07).

The format of each lap was conducive to getting a high NP. Three one minute anaerobic sprints in the climb. And then some serious hard work including some short high anaerobic bursts to get caught up. My highest 5 and 10 second numbers where some 791 and 584 watts in a downhill section, jumping the speed up as high as I could to catch back on. And the rest of the time doing lots of L3/L4 work.

Anyway I met my race goals of staying on until the last lap. I would have liked to be with them at the bottom on the last climb. That will be the goal for next year.

Armstrong RR:
Duration: 1:22:16
Work: 1181 kJ
TSS: 157.1 (intensity factor 1.07)
Norm Power: 289
VI: 1.21
Pw:HR: -6.59%
Pa:HR: 13.91%
Distance: 44.16 km
Elevation Gain: 589 m
Elevation Loss: 584 m
Grade: 0.0 % (5 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 815 239 watts
Heart Rate: 76 179 159 bpm
Cadence: 33 118 81 rpm
Speed: 9.6 63 32.2 kph
Pace 0:57 6:15 1:52 min/km
Altitude: 76 155 110 m
Crank Torque: 0 99.4 29.2 N-m
Temperature: 10 12 11.1 Celsius

Here is a post from Culyar Conly who rides for Westwood and did the A-series this weekend. He needed a ride this weekend, he is staying with Scott and Sara Laliberte who are on a training vacation in Southern California. Good summary of what it's like to ride in the A group.

Spring Series - 232 / Zero Ave - Murhison Road RR

2010-03-14T18:24:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the ever popular 232 / Zero Ave course.

Things looked ominous as I loaded the truck at 8:00AM to head out. Raining, cold, ugly looking clouds. And the forecast for Langley was for rain. But the rain stopped around 200St as we drove along the freeway and by the time we arrived there was actually blue sky and sunshine.

I had a reasonably good race. The pace was a little slow this year, 36.3kph compared to last years 37.3 I think due to a nasty head wind along 240th. The C group stayed together till the end except for the usual attrition. I did a fair bit of work at the front. But nothing to heroic and didn't have any real opportunity to try and get away.

Was with the field into the last turn, but had no chance sprinting up the final 300m finish (3% uphill).

Spring Series - River Road C Group

2010-03-08T01:03:00.000-08:00

First race of the year, Spring Series, River Road. I stayed with the C group. A little smaller this year, about 41 people starting. I think a bunch of people who otherwise would have raced C raced in the Novice group. Certainly we didn't loose too many riders over the first laps. And normally we drop a bunch in the first few laps.

C group was fairly crash free this year. We had one person go down by them self hitting a cone. And in the last lap someone at the front (about fifth wheel) apparently touched wheels and went down hard. Which caused a bunch of other people to go into a pothole on the shoulder. And a bunch more to stop dead. The rest of us managed to get around the final turn and sprint to the finish without incident. If memory serves this is the first time in several years (3-4) that there hasn't been a crash in the final corner in C group.

Average pace was so so, only about 38.2kph. We got caught by the B's in our 9th lap. We where only supposed to do 9 laps, but the lap board guy seems to have got confused and we ended up doing one extra. Luckily as otherwise we would have been trying to sprint into the back of the B's.

BronPhoto Picture here...

Hunter Allen interviewed.

2010-02-17T13:09:00.000-08:00

An interesting interview with Hunter Allen over at BikeRadar...

In response the ever popular what are the benefits to a power meter question:

Top three, then...
Number one is the planning. I can actually plan my training around the response I want to get; this is called the dose and response system. Pacing is also a very, very big part. On-the-bike pacing in an event is very important, whether that’s a time trial, a criterium, a road race or even a breakaway. We often lose sight of the fact that this sport really is a sport of pacing. So we’ve got pre, during and then the post side, the actual analysis side; figuring out what the data means – did I improve, and how much can I handle?

And some more generic info:

Has coaching changed because of the use of power meters?
Now, I have a very clear understanding of what needs to be done to elicit a certain response. Before, if we wanted to improve your ability to go hard for a short period of time and recover quickly, we knew to do short intervals. Now, there are wattage numbers that we are trying to hit, a goal effort. It’s changed the prescription side of the coaching.

I actually think this is the primary benefit of training with a power meter. It allows you to optimize your time on the bike:

Does volume still count for what it did before the popularity of the power meter?
That has changed. There are a lot of these old myths that have been propagated throughout the years – base training for two months, riding really slow, or whatever. Those things work well for pros, but are just silly for the rest of us. If you’ve got eight to 10 hours a week to train, you can’t afford to ride slow. It does mean that you’ve got to keep a higher level of fitness throughout the season and take more of these smaller rest periods.

And finally a bone for us data analysis nerds:

What's the biggest mistake you see people make when training with a power meter?
They don’t value the cumulative power of all of the data. It gives you your training stress and tells you how much you can handle over three months, four months, six months... It allows you to look at it in that periodic type of way. What you really need to understand is how it all builds together. It can tell you your chronic training load [what you do every day], but you have to account for that. If you just ride, collect information and look at it in the performance manger chart in our WK0 software it can tell you a whole lot about what you can handle.

I have been trying for years to get Hunter to put this into a one-pager (well two pages double sided, and we can use a small font). Then I could print it out and put it into my track bag to hand out to people.

BVC Friday Night racing - A/B

2010-02-14T23:35:00.000-08:00

Friday night racing was a little slow ... as in number of people showing up.. I guess there must have been something else happening in Vancouver that night..

Jeremy split the B group in half... Half raced with the A's and the rest with the C's...

So it certainly wasn't a slow night on the track. I was up in the A/B group which was setting a nice pace in all three races. Mostly I was just hanging onto the back for as long as I could then pulling up and waiting for them to come around again :-(

Long night too. 35 Lap Tempo, 4x10 Progressive Points and finished with a 5x10 Points!

Yesterday it was rain, so back onto the Computrainer for my weekly dose of 6x1m L6 and 4x30s L7 intervals..

Today I did my ever favorite Anmore Tour. Not terribly fast but still hard enough. Slightly abridged version today. Usually I head out to the Burrard Thermal Plant, nice ride down and back up, usually with no traffic. Unfortunately the Thermal Plant is deemed to be a high risk target so they have closed the road for the duration of the Olympics.

CTL finally back over 70 as of today... only one week later than last year.

Now if I could just get weight down. I went from 161lbs at the end of last season to 171lbs in about a month. Still around 168lbs.

Computrainer workout - 8x1m L6, 5x30s L7

2010-02-07T23:20:00.000-08:00

Killer two hour workout on the Computrainer today.

I'm trying to increase my anaerobic capacity (L6). Which for me is 330 watts to about 410 watts. For many of the local races (Atomic course, Armstrong, Snake, Westside) the climbs require (for my weight, 72-74kg plus bike) about 350 watts for between one and three minutes.

These are painful intervals to practice, but the only way to get better at them is to do them. During the summer I use Heritage. But I just can't seem to get going and pushing L6 if it is cold. So back to the Computrainer. My favourite 2k loop course, push up the mini hills at L6, just about exactly 1:05, then 3 minutes rest. Repeat. Managed eight, Pavg watts between 340 and 390 for all of them.

Then some longer rest, with some short neuromuscular power 20-30 second intervals. Generally 450-500 Pavg watts.

As a bonus, with the reasonably hard workout I did yesterday (some tempo and threshold hill climbs on Westwood), racing on Friday, managed to get total TSS for the week up to match (exactly) the same as last week, 548... which got CTL up to 68...!!!

Just not sure I'll be able to walk tomorrow :-(

BVC Friday NIght racing - 3rd and 2nd

2010-02-05T23:35:00.000-08:00

Only two races tonight. On the new lower gears... 86".

We did a 35 lap scratch and a 40 lap Point-a-Lap.

In the Scratch race stayed at the back for about the first 25 or so laps... With under 4 laps to go Adam Barlev got a very nice jump out of the back straight. close to a half lap gag... I managed to follow at a distance also getting a gap, just not as good. Managed to close a bit but started to loose steam with one lap to go. Marcel van der Veen caught me about then so I moved up track and let him go by. Still had a good gap so cruised to an easy 3rd.

The Point-a-Lap was fun. Good pace. Dave Kosick put out a big effort and got the first four laps. About lap 12 Adam Barlev got a nice jump and cruised a half a lap out for 17 laps... Jeremy finally announcing he had a lock on first.. So he moved up... I was expecting that and had saved myself and stayed in a good position, so immediately jumped out and got my own half lap. Cruised that to the end of the race, 11 laps. Final results Adam first, my second and Dave for third. Good results for Team Escape Velocity / BVC BOD (and also EV BOD for Adam and me...)

Both races where reasonably fast. Average speed just under 45kph. And in both races I managed a nice jump off the front hitting 55-57kph and following with a nice pull. One of 10 laps, 3 minutes, at 330 PAvg watts. The other four laps PAvg 441 watts. Both hitting over 800 watts on the jump. And both with cadences hitting just under 140 RPM.

These are quite high for me on the track. But it does confirm that the limiter at those speeds (> 55kph) is not leg speed but torque (i.e. power) to push the pedals against the wind. I'll need to try and get into a final sprint following someone fast and see if I can get up to something close to 60kph (aka about 145RPM). I've hit 60 in the big gears following a fast sprint to the finish (A group.) That was only 130RPM. But it would be144RPM to hit 60kph... Same power. So can I get there?

BVC Structured Workout

2010-02-03T22:48:00.000-08:00

To hopefully reduce the number of accidents we are instituting gear restrictions for the Friday racing at the track. Looks like 86" or 50x15 or 48x15 depending on tire size etc.

The lower gears are problematical. To get ready I put on a 50x15, which with my 700x19c tubular is supposed to be 86.6" and rolls out at 86.2". Last Saturday night I was out and did tempo and threshold work. Including some "motorpacing", Rob Muldur took me around for 5 laps about about 48-49kph. Managed to hang on..

But felt totally beat up the next day. The lighter pressure on the pedals is making me put more weight on the seat and that in turn makes for a much bumpy ride, especially through the turns. And that in turn made for sore muscles in more than the usual places. So did only a recovery ride on Sunday and then two days off.

Tonight it was back for the Wednesday structured workout. We did some tempo paceline work. Bit tough, still trying to keep control on the bike with the higher leg speed. Then finished off with a hard threshold workout. Dave Gerths paceline of pain. We did 30 minutes at about 44-45kph. I was doing 5 lap pulls, trying to stay above 45.

Again, sore the next day. Mainly from high cadence and bouncing around.

BVC Friday Night racing - 3rd

2010-01-30T01:29:00.000-08:00

We had a 20 lap scratch, elimination and a 5x10 points race tonight. Nothing much in the first two but a nice 3rd in the 5x10 points. Getting a early start out of the blocks with a 3rd in the first sprint. Then 5th in the 3rd sprint, 2nd in the fourth, 3rd in the fifth to get an overall 3rd place. Actually tied Lido Crema for points but he took the last sprint so takes first overall. Probably could have got that one, but a dropped rider blocked us for the final sprint and Lido had a clear line above me.

BVC Friday NIght racing - 4th and 3rd

2010-01-23T19:57:00.000-08:00

Improving ... slowly.

The B Group did three races: 5x5 Win and Out, 30 Lap Scratch and 5x7 Points.

Surprisingly I managed to snag a 4th in the Win and Out. I was just hanging out at the back of the pack when I saw 7 laps to go... was already nice and high on the blue, well rested and the pace was a not terribly fast 45kph... Just dug in, went over and dived down in my old favorite, corner 3... big gap, just cruised to the start finish... :-)

The 30 lap scratch race DID NOT go to plan... about half way in Dave Stevens and Bart Ludbrook ramped the pace way up and the entire field fragmented into multiple small groups... I had to work my way up bridging from small group to small group. At one point having to do a almost a minute at > 50kph to bridge a big gap. To no avail. I was lapped by Dave in the last lap. With the rest of the group he was with finishing with just behind me (almost but not quite a lap up.) So I was out of the top five entirely.

In the 5x7 Points I moved to the front to get the pole position out of the neutral lap. There was some quick laps and I (luckily) ended up behind Dave Stevens at the front of the pack. After about one lap at 45 Dave just put the hammer down and started to move away from us off the front. I followed and just barely manged to get on his wheel. We got a good initial gap which grew quickly as Dave lead me around for about four laps at > 50kph... By which time we had about a half lap, he took the first sprint with me as second.

Carried through to the next sprint, I manged to nip him at the line for that. About then we where joined by Bart Ludbrook. I thought he was a lapped rider so didn't worry about him. We kept going, trading places for the next two sprints. With a couple of laps to go Dave and Bart finally finished lapping the field.

Because I thought Bart was lapped I didn't think I needed to follow and just hung back, I would have a lock on second and nothing could get me first. Bad move. Bart had actually bridged up to us. So both of them got 20 points for lapping the field while I took only 5 for being first in the final sprint. If I had just followed into the field I would have taken second. Instead I ended up with third... Moral never assume you know what you know is correct ... this of course assumes I was not so utterly whacked by that time that I could have followed... of course I could have... :-)

At least I can look forward to is Dave and Bart getting some more B races under their belt so they can move up to the A's... clearly they are already strong enough.

BVC Friday NIght racing - B Group 2nd in scratch

2010-01-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

Well the Computrainer and weekly track interval sessions seem to be paying off.

Last night we had three races in the B Group. Elimination and then a 4x5 points race. It was a huge 21 rider start, and I just didn't really get going in the Elimination. And the 4x5 just started with an immediate acceleration to +50kmph, before I could get my heart rate up and my legs moving I was spit out the back :-) Just for fun I jumped back in and managed to stay between the breakaway riders and the rest of the field till the end of the race...

The last race was a 40 lap scratch. Much more my type of race. Started easy and built up speed. Just stayed at the back of the big field as attrition worked to my favor. Was near the front with about 14 laps to go.. David Stevens and Adam Barlev jumped off the front, I followed and got on their wheel. We had about 12 laps to go with almost a half lap gap. We took half lap pulls staying well off the front. With two laps to go we jockeyed about a bit. With David Stevens getting the best position behind and above while I was leading out (bad planning on my part...) I moved him up track by going to the blue. He went, I followed. I almost got it at the line, missed by a few centimeters.

Final sprint was about 25 seconds, 600 watts average, speed started at 43kmh, hit 59.4 and averaged 51.6.. Still not quite back to my best results last winter. But definitely an improvement of the dismal and best forgotten 2009 Fall series :-)

There was a bad crash in our first B race. With Scott Jutson, Jasmin Glasser and a couple of other people going down hard coming out of turn one. Almost taking out some bystanders as they slid across the Cote d'azur. Email from Scott today say's he is in hospital waiting to get a pin or plate for a broken collarbone. Sounds similar to my break two years ago.

BVC Friday NIght racing - winter series started

2010-01-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

Last week was the BVC Maximum Entry weekend series... Total bust up.... I was tired, TSB negative and was racing on my training wheels (mega-spoke mavix with Tufo tubular...) Legs felt like lead pushing a concrete bike around... Only did two races on Saturday... One in the B group and then one with the C's (to get the number of B's down to 20, I was going so slow anyway...) And then I had a flat on the training wheel in the C race so didn't even race on Sunday. Just did the results.

Friday was the first night of the Winter Friday night track series. Felt a lot better... Had the disc back with a new Vittoria tubular.. The B group had a huge turnout, full field of 20 riders Did the first two races, 30 lap scratch and 4x5 Win and Out just cruising using a 52x15 (90.5") gear. Switched to 51x14 (95") for the last race, 4x10 Points. That felt a lot better. Managed to take fourth by taking the second sprint. Same old same old, big jump over the field, push the big gear, get a huge gap with about 3 laps to go. Then just ride it through.

As always, huge difference in racing success once I get back into the big gear. Although it also needs legs that can turn it minimally.

Other than that I have been attempting with some success to push CTL back up with copious amounts of L2/L3 on the Computrainer. From a low of 44 in early December I'm now (today) back to 60.

Spring Series is only about eight weeks away....

BVC Racing, Computrainer

2009-12-13T23:08:00.000-08:00

Friday was the last of the fall series... three nice races, Elimination, 30 lap Scratch and 5x10 Points.. not that I was competitive, but probably my best efforts for the last month or two... I was on my training wheel as the disc was at home with a flat. So moved from my typical 50x14 (93.1") to 52x15 (90.4") and that actually felt like a reasonable gearing.

Lungs starting to feel better, GP gave me s stronger puffer, Alvesco, to help get the bronchitis under control. And also some Naproxen for the shoulders (its the next step up from Ibuprofen apparently... still prescription in BC, but OTC in the rest of Canada and US...) So that is letting me get a little more focussed.

Did an easy two hour L2 ride on the Computrainer yesterday (75TSS).

Today an L3/L4 workout today (130TSS). First Adnan's Three minute hill repeats (erg mode, power setting 200 moving to 300 over three minutes, then three minutes at 200, repeat eight times.) I tried to do the L3/L4 efforts at a cadence of 100+ with reasonable success for the first five or six...

Then another 20 minutes of my 2k loop as L4 and then 20 minutes cool down.

Getting things running again

2009-12-05T21:29:00.001-08:00

Busy, sick, work, and multiple computer crashes... what a fun month...

The bad news (other than being sick) was my new (July this year) Vista box crashed and burned a couple of weeks ago.. What looked like a bad hard drive turned out after buying a replacement (did you know you can't get 1TB drives anymore... 1.5TB is all of $119CDN though) to be a bad MB. The hard disk controller. Windows Install DVD wouldn't even recognize the new drive to install on it.

But by the time I got the MB replaced the old drives where corrupted enough that Vista wouldn't boot. So I installed Win7 on the new 1.5TB drive... Two weeks Plus later and I'm still looking for things to re-install. I do have most of my old files AND the older stuff from my (still running) WinXP box (prior to July 2009)...

Interestingly, the new 2008 Excel under Vista didn't like my spreadsheet for generating the TSB graphic and PMC chart ... But under Win7 it looks like it may be working again. Not quite working but possibly close enough that I can start generating the PMC chart again.. (TSB was ok).

Between work and reinstalling I also spent another week and a half off the bike in November. Another "cold" and again bronchitis...

And I've been running around to Xmas parties and planning meetings for next years Road Racing...

So CTL is still low.... and I'm still either getting lapped if I race in the A's (last week) or just managing to stay at the back in the B's (this week)...

Anyway, last night I was at the track. B group. Forgot the Ergomo. So est 75TSS for the night.

Today I was back on the Computrainer. My ever favourite 2kloop. Which gives me a nice L3 ride with some small "hills" to sprint on for 20-30 seconds.

Computrainer - Track simulation

2009-11-08T21:41:00.000-08:00

It was a Computrainer weekend. The Soloist is still at the shop with the busted derailleur. And I didn't feel like sorting out some training wheels for the TT bike just to go out in the cold wet rain...

Yesterday I did an hour plus L2/L3 ride. At least according to the CT numbers. But really it felt a lot harder. Only 73TSS points for an hour and fifteen minutes. But I could barely walk after..

Today for fun I built a Track simulation 3d course. 200m, flat about the right dimensions....

This was fairly interesting. I did my normal "paced" type ride. I.e. set the CT pacer going with its constant wattage and then just try and stay in its draft. Again this felt harder and for what should have been equivalent to the track, a lot slower. Normally an easy pace spinning around would be about 35-38kph. The CT with about 200w was only getting me about 29-30kph.

I then tried to do the equivalent of a Take-a-lap drill. Normally at the track the group goes around at about 33-35kph and when the coach whistles the front person jumps off the front and rides hard until he catches up to the back of the group. Usually, depending on how fast you go, about 3-4 laps, 50-70 seconds.

When I tried this on the CT I basically failed miserably. Very hard to moderate the power to something I could hold and then just wasn't going fast enough. Even though the starting speed was only 28 I only was able to push and hold about 38 and just never made it all the way around.

So then I changed the drag to 50% AND lowered the pacer wattage to about 125 Watts... So it was only going about 25kph. Even then I was only JUST able to get around and then die...

Not quite sure what this says about the CT.. We know that the power numbers "seem" low. But here what we see is the speed for both power AND Perceived Effort being to low. I have never failed to catch the group in a take-a-lap drill on the track. Here I failed miserably with lower emulated speed and watts and higher perceived efforts.

A very good workout. I just would like to know if I can believe the numbers or should bias them up. Before it was easy to say that perhaps the Ergomo was too high... But here is some empirical, although still somewhat subjective, evidence that the CT "game physics" is not quite right.

BVC Friday - Back to B

2009-11-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

It was back to the B group this week. I had been racing in the A's just to get a longer workout and fill in the numbers a bit. But there where record numbers out on Friday (16A, 20B, 16C, 6N) so they didn't need any extra people up there, especially people who wouldn't be able to keep up and would be getting lapped, repeatedly...

Even in the B's the low CTL and negative TSB meant I was just doing my thing at the back of the bus. Fun racing. But no real change to do much with my present state of fitness.

Pez on Warm up

2009-11-04T16:09:00.000-08:00

Pez has a good summary of warm up requirements here.

While he is using Cross and running late due to shorter daylight hours etc etc.... One of the studies he references is about tests using a 3km TT.

The results are not astounding but worth repeating:

In summary, any kind of moderate to hard warm-up seems infinitely preferable to no warm-up at all. Therefore, set your departure time and stick to it! Also, do whatever you need to in order to trim and optimize your on-site preparation so that you’re not fiddling away precious time once you arrive.

I know that I always seem to find a million things to do other than getting on the bike and getting warmed up... And typically don't want to fatigue myself and probably then don't do enough Tempo.

Computrainer ERG files

2009-11-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

See here for a large number of Computrainer ERG workout files from Velotraining with a writeup here.

He has ERG workout files for many of the common workouts (e.g. L3 2x20 minutes) and then generated customized versions of them based on your FTP. Where FTP is anywhere from 100 watts to 500 watts. Each workout has an appropriate warmup and cool down.

You can also see the workout chart for each.

This is L3 3x20 @ 76-90%.

JRA - Exploding derailleurs

2009-11-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

Bummer, half way across the Golden Ears Bridge, JRA (Just Riding Along) and all of a sudden the rear wheel skids to an abrupt halt. Upon inspection I see the dérailleur hanging from the chain jammed into the spokes of my training wheel! The hanger broke allowing it to get pulled around the cassette. Fortunately neither of the stays OR the wheel seems to have been damaged. I think just replace the dérailleur and chain ...

Friday night I was back at the track for three hard races with the A's... I'm still really out classed there. I should be racing in the B's.. But the A's seemed to need some more riders to fill things in a bit (pack fodder) and where doing longer races than the B's so I stayed with them to get a better workout. Still bloody embarrassing putting in many many laps off the back ...

I did manage to get some points in the first face. It was a Tempo and for some reason the pack let me jump off the front and take the first five laps... I think they where just being kind and knew that it wouldn't really matter HOW many laps I got... And of course they where right, that got my wind up so I was not even able to hang in with them as they sped by.

Peter Reichman 1943 -- 2009

2009-10-28T00:36:00.000-07:00

Peter Reichman 1943 -- 2009
Long-time cyclist, race director and friend to many Vancouver Velo Vet, BCMCA and Burnaby Velodrome members, Peter Reichman died on October 18.

Peter had been recovering from the "brain event" that surfaced late this summer when riding in the race up Seymour Mountain. A tough competitor and strong supporter of masters cycling, Peter will be missed by the cycling community

REICHMAN - Peter February 6th, 1943 - October 18th, 2009 Peter is survived by his partner Peggy Riley, daughters Kathi (Rodney Galetti) and Kim (Scott Ashe), stepson David Gheriani and stepdaughter Sarah Gheriani, grandchildren Brandon, Ryan, and Sotia. Peter will be fondly remembered by his family and friends. Since his retirement in 1999, Peter has been able to enjoy cycling with the Vancouver Velo Vets, BC Masters Cycling Association, and Burnaby Velodrome Club. A celebration of his life was be held at Boal Chapel, 1505 Lillooet Road, North Vancouver, BC on Monday, October 26th 2009 at 2:00 P.m. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the Lions Gate Hospital Foundation.

Neaves Road - L3

2009-10-27T22:53:00.000-07:00

Out to Neaves Rd in Pitt Meadows. The new Pitt River Bridge open in both directions now, including the bike lane... Mainly doing about an hours worth of L3, then some short hill climbs in Westwood on the way home. Didn't get all the way up Westwood though as the temperature dropped from about 9C to about 3C within minutes when the Sun set. So I went half way up and then scooted across on Panorama Dr. before I froze to death.

BVC Friday NIght - A group - still out the back

2009-10-23T22:49:00.000-07:00

More A group racing.... 15 lap Scratch and 4x10 Points race. Not so many of the really fast young guys... but still 10 people. And fast enough. I'm still fairly weak from my month off so pretty much just out the back. Only lapped once in the Points race though :-)

BVC Workout - Whistle Drill, some SST

2009-10-22T01:12:00.001-07:00

Last night was two SST hill climbs. Twice up Westwood. About 16 and 17 minutes respectively. Not too bad for coolish day (10C) with winter training tires etc. PB this summer was 15 even. About 130TSS points.

Tonight was BVC Workout. Whistle drill for three sessions. Then 10 minutes at SST, then about 15 minutes SST.

The extended time off has pushed CTL way down (hit about 40)... Now pushing back up. ATL has swung and that is pushing TSB negative. I suspect that the next few weeks I'll not be terribly competitive on Friday nights. Especially if the juniors keep showing up. The B group looks better all the time.

BVC Friday NIght - A group - out the back

2009-10-17T19:54:00.001-07:00

So after watching from the sidelines while a nice comfy A group race for the first three weeks... I get out for my first night and think, well A might be ok.. And then Jacob Swingboth and Cody Campbell show up (both National Junior Track Champs...) And me at a very low ebb in training... so out the back was I.

Anyway. I"ll see what the signup is like next week... Dave Kosick is doing well in the B's so maybe that would be a better spot :-)

Back to the track...

2009-10-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

Well actually I was back two weeks ago... nice workout, but then at exactly 15 minutes after midnight... the nose felt funny and by 12:30... cold... That has now done what colds always do caused bronchitis to flair up.

But anyway, not infectious, not really sick. So time to get back on the bike. I did an easy L2/L3 ride on the weekend (Ford Road.).

Tonight was the Wednesday BVC Structured Workout. Two sets of groups of four doing four laps tempo and then one sprinting. Then finished with take-a-half lap whistle drill with the group split into two groups of eight.

Finished with about 20 minutes of SST paceline work. Bruce Denis and a couple of other people, doing 42+ kmh workout. Last four-five minutes moving up to 44.

I've missed the first three weeks of the Friday nighters... Will get back out this Friday.

Home Wind Tunnel Kit at Costco!

2009-09-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

Available now at your local CostCo...

When I saw this at CostCo today I couldn't help think that at last someone was finally making a Home Wind Tunnel Kit for doing low cost Time Trial aero testing... Given the number of Tri-athletes around these days you never know, it could happen.

Alas the tunnel portion appears to be only about 12" across... and at $649 ($449 today with $200 coupon!!!!) probably not quite what I'm hoping for.

Track Racing starts this week, time to set goals for next year

2009-09-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

But I'm taking a week off... at least...

BVC is starting the Fall track series a week or two early this year.... after we pushed the road season late into September and I did the BC Senior Games...

And we are having unseasonably warm weather.... the last few days would have counted as a heat wave most summers in Vancouver...

Sigh :-(

Anyway, I'm staying off the bike until probably next week. Maybe, if the the weather holds I'll do a social ride on the weekend... just to keep the legs limber... Can't actually remember the last time I went on a social ride.

I will be at the track on Friday for the racing... Pick up the results and I got voted onto the BVC Board, first meeting this Friday after racing.

Also time to think of goals for next year..

Need to determine goals for 2010... So I can start working on them ....

Higher FTP for TT
Higher one minute power for RR
Extend RR endurance from 1.5 hour to 2 plus hours

I'm hoping to get more weekly practice TT's happening locally next year and a couple more TT races. That will both help build FTP and benefit from a higher FTP.

The second and third goals would (hopefully) get me fast enough to actually get on the podium for some Cat 4 type races. I was reasonably good at staying with the peloton this year in the sanctioned races, only to get dropped either at the last sprint hill or during the final sprint.

Or just running out of gas, especially on hot days with lots of Anaerobic and Endurance work. Dove Creek RR being a good example.. Pulled everyone around and ended up with leg cramps in the last lap..

It may be an idea to do the "B" group in Spring Series next year. They race between 80 and 120 km (C only does about 60-70.)

BC Senior Games Wrapup - 2 Gold, 1 Bronze

2009-09-19T21:12:00.000-07:00

BC Senior Games finished... results the same as the Comox weekend earlier this summer. I finished 1st for TT and HC, 3rd for the RR. Bill Yearwood was 2nd for the TT and HC and 1st for the RR.

The RR was going reasonably well until the finish. The plan was to follow Dave Kosick and Bill Yearwood through the final corner and then sprint to the finish (about 300m).

Unfortunately we caught up with a lapped rider right at the corner... Bill and Dave managed to get by him but then he turned across me so I had to go really wide loosing all my speed and letting Bill and Dave get (at least) a 30-40m gap...

Then with the bumps and whatnot getting around the obstacles my chained dropped to the little ring and I was sitting there spinning... took a few seconds to find a cog suitable allowing Pat Ferris (I think) to almost get by me... Got a gear with about 100m to go and managed to get back to 3rd just at the line.

Today was the HC... As planned I did it on the TT bike. I knew that Bill and Dave would do well over that distance. Both are strong but don't have as much endurance. I can beat them on longer TT's and HC's (like Seymour, Cypress or Mt Washington...) but 4-5 minutes would be a lot tougher.

The end result was 4:24. Bill at 4:33 and Dave at 4:36.

Neither of them used their TT bikes (although Bill did use an aero helmet.)

So assuming I was correct in thinking 15-20 seconds advantage for the TT bike... it looks like that got me the Gold... :-)

The TT bike was setup with my climbing wheelset (Bontragger XXX Carbon Wheels with Vittoria EVO CS Tubulars) which are about 500 grams lighter than my normal race or TT wheels.. and a 12x27 cassette.

I started in the big ring and shifted to the little ring about .6km in where the grade gets over 3.5%. Then shifted back to the big ring at 1.45km where the grade drops back down below 4%. This worked reasonably well to allow me to keep my cadence up. Overall cadence averaged 89. Which was quite comfortable for the TT bike.

BC Senior Games ITT - 1st 22:13

2009-09-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

BC Senior Games 15.8km ITT today.

Managed 22.13 for 1st 55-59 and best time overall by about a minute...

See here for Bikely Route. This is a reasonably difficult course.

The first 4km goes out from Ferguson Road to under the bridge and back, averaged 40.9 km/h... Hard to get any speed up.

Then it was out to Iona with a tail wind, average 46.2 km/h.

They ran us right into the parking lot with the turn-a-round right where next to where the park toilets are. Caused a certain amount of futzing about getting through the parking lot.

And then crunch time all the way back against the wind... 40.7 km/h.

Overall, 42.7 km/h. 292 PAvg and 293 NPAvg.

2009-09-16T13:07:00.000-07:00

Rich Wharton had a tweat pointing at a Paul Smelders blog post here titled What EXACTLY is happening when you can’t keep up on the CT.

He gives some of the math involved and explains why you can or can't keep up when doing an ERG mode workout.

An ERG mode workout is where the CT attempts to keep you at a specific wattage. You cadence (speed of wheel effectively) is ignored. Just what your power output (watts) is. If you are putting out too much, the CT lowers its braking, not enough and it increases the braking so that you need to increase torque and therefore increase power.

This is great as long as you are in a Zone where you CAN keep up... Say the target is 220 watts... Go a little high and it eases you off. Go a little low and it pushes you back up... Net result is you do 220 watts +/- a very small amount for the prescribed time.

But if you are in a Zone where you CANNOT keep up... Say the target is 350 watts, now for the first while things go well. You hit the target and the CT keeps you there... But as you fatigue and can no longer stay at 350 watts, the CT notices and wants you to go up... So it increases the breaking so that you will increase torque.. Of course if that is more than you can do, more likely it will cause you to fall farther back as your cadence slows, and the CT will then increase breaking, and the end result is you stop completely....

This was timely... I missed getting out on the bike yesterday as I had to run out to Richmond to get the "race package" for the BC Senior Games... And it was a beautiful evening... Today I need to do a race tuneup ride for the ITT tomorrow and it is raining... So I may end up on the CT...

Peak Athletic Performance and Vitamin D (updated)

2009-09-14T18:50:00.000-07:00

Of course you say you can always find a study that proves what you want... etc etc...

But as this article by John Jacob Cannell MD points out, Vitamin D is actually a steroid hormone and there are multiple research studies showing that IFF you are Vitamin D deficient (and almost everyone is...) you can improve your performance by getting your Vitamin D levels up to "normal" (as in what you would get if you where twenty again, and working outdoors in the summer at a temperate latitude if you are light skinned or farther south for darker skin.)

See Peak Athletic Performance and Vitamin D

And here is a Citation for Athletic Performance and Vitamin D

Update 2009-09-14: The above is only available behind a PayWall.... I did managed to find another summary and comments from another Natural Health Doctor Blogger.... (this site does require "free" registration...) He points out something I missed early, that Cannell suggests that there is a correlation between Vitamin D and Fast Twitch muscles...

My goal this winter is to, somehow, increase my anaerobic power, which as I understand things means more fast twitch...

Cypress Part Deux HC - 1st 55-64

2009-09-12T17:01:00.000-07:00

An absolutely fantastic day for a fall hill climb.... A nice turn out.... With 13 people in my 55-64 age class.

My time was about 38:30. Should have been about 10 seconds faster. The guy I lead into the very last turn finished 38:20 and I would have been there with him, except I hit a pothole and blew out my rear tubular.. So had to limp up the last 200m to the finish line.

Luckily (didn't know it at the time) another 55-64 rider, Michael McPhalen was right on my rear wheel, so almost lost 1st place... He was only 3 seconds back at the finish...

Michel Pelletier was just a little way back from me most of the way up. He took 1st in the Clydesdale division with 38:44... This was just a warmup for him, he is doing the Mt. Baker climb tomorrow.

Overall I was 22 out of 118 men. So not too bad.

Fastest time up was Sebastian Salas with 29:54.

The course was slightly different from the spring version...

Here are the two bikely maps:

The Chicks race starts at the bottom (Cypress Lane) and goes to to under the Power Lines.

Glotman Simpson started at the works yard and went to the turn off to the cross country area, then followed that up a few hundred meters.

Length: 11.82 - 12.24
Elevation gain: 675 - 681

Very comparable... But with a difference in times.

Time: 38:20 - 36:54

The time difference is due to the first part of the Chicks version being flat enough that the Mass Start gets a lot of speed up on the first 1.5km. The Glotman Simposon race extends past the Chicks finish by a similar amount but you don't get the same speed.

Chicks First 1.5km - 2:45
Glotman Simpson last 1.5km - 4:55

So that easily explains the 1:30 difference in my time today.

So possibly a slightly better overall result than the Spring.

Now it is out to the garage to rip the tubular off that wheel and prep it for a new one. It is the light Bontrager XXX Carbon that I use for hill climbs and I'll want it next week.

Wow - 45 days of racing so far this year

2009-09-08T15:31:00.000-07:00

Just reviewing the year so far.... I'm up to 45 days of racing...

That's counting one for each day or evening of track racing.... and allowing one each for the DoveCreek TT and Mt Washington HC even though they where on the same day.

And still have the Cypress HC, BC Senior Games for road and the Fall Track Season...

Good thing I don't do Cyclocross...

Cherry Point RR - Photo Finish

2009-09-07T12:40:00.000-07:00

A wet but luckily not cold day... Derek Tripp was pushing the pace all day to try and catch Dave Mercer and Ray Morrison (over sixty group) for the overall race...

Ray Waggoner took my advice and got off the front on the long backside climb with one and a half laps to go. And managed to stay away.

The rest our 50-59 group was down to about five people (and I think an over 60 who grabbed our wheels when we caught up with them.) Two young guys (Shane Savage and someone else) caught us with one lap to go. We simply couldn't stay on their wheel as we went up the long backside climbs.

That trimmed our group down to three, Derek Tripp, Bill Yearwood and myself. Bill lead us into the finish followed by myself and Derek. I jumped with about 300m to go. Probably a bit early as there is a little rise there... Derek managed to get around on the outside for a win by about a half a wheel... Bill and I where within about a half a tire width... Consensus was that I was second and Bill third. Could have gone either way.

The sprint climb was the hard part of this course. 420m, 30m of climbing. Average 6.6% grade, but actually a bit steeper at the bottom and top... We where averaging about 1:05 seconds, about 380 watts average.

Ergomo had a problem, the CPU stopped recording altitude properly after we went through a heavy rain shower in lap four and five. Hopefully it will be ok after it dries out.

Thanks to Duane Martindale for the photos...

David HillClimb - TT and Standing

2009-09-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

Three tries on my short practice David Hill Climb. Twice on the TT bike and once standing up on the Road Bike.

The TT bike comes in as the clear winner... 4:14, 4:22 (with 10 second wait for traffic light!) and 4:26 for the standing attempt. So it appears that TT has clear 10 second benefit compared to standing and "sprinting" the entire way (which in turn appears from last weekend's testing to be slightly faster than sitting.)

I'll try and get some ideas on the Spanish Bank HC this weekend if the weather co-operates... VVV 10k ITT is on Saturday morning. I'll head over to Spanish Banks after that.

For now looking at a profile from last year (we went up it for the Pacific Populaire) it appears that the main part of the climb will be 3.4% over 2km. And the Bikely profile seems to agree with that. There may be an extra few hundred meters at the bottom and top that will reduce overall grade.

The average speed for David HC was about 22kmh. I'm expecting for Spanish Banks will be more than 27kmh. So the benefit from the TT bike will increase.

D3O - new style body armour

2009-08-31T14:39:00.000-07:00

This is an interesting new technology... D3O is an orange goo that is soft and mold able but when impacted it turns into a solid...

Watch the video here as the test subject gets whacked on the head and knees with a snow shovel.

The assumption is that you change a sharp blow from a high load impact on a small point to a low load over a much larger area. Which is standard for body armor. The point being that this may be lighter and more comfortable to wear for many applications.

Ceder Photos

2009-08-30T00:09:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Duane Martindale for pictures...

BCMCA Nanaimo Ceder RR - 1st

2009-08-29T23:54:00.000-07:00

Very nice but long day... Park-n-Ride from Horseshoe Bay, 25 minute ride to the venue... warmup, race....

Ceder is a long 20km course, we do it three times... I got a small gap, 300-400m about half way through the second lap. Ray Wagner and Derek Tripp eventually bridged over and we managed to stay away from the 50's and most of the 60's (who we had just caught)... Never did catch Dave Mercer and Ray Morrison though.

Nice finish, I managed to stay behind Ray and Derek in the last km.... jumped with 400m and finished with about a 6-8 bike lengths.

So 1st in 50-59 and 3rd overall.

Then it was 25 minute ride back to the ferry... As I rode out of the parking lot to head back the rear dérailleur cable broke so I was stuck in the small cog with only the front big and small rings... Luckily no big hills... Luckily it broke after the race...

Training for Short HC in Senior Games

2009-08-27T16:20:00.001-07:00

The BC Senior Games is in a couple of weeks... and it has a short hill climb, the climb from Spanish Banks up to UBC.

Just long enough to be an HC... about 2km at 3.6% grade. Probably, I think, about 4:00 minutes.

The bigger question is how to train for it.. I'm looking for a similar climb close by. It appears that the best I can find is David Ave. Steeper and shorter. But perhaps close enough to simulate.

Using the bike calculator I get the followingUsing the bike calculator I get the following..

I'm not quite sure I believe the time. The only time I can find in my power files for the SP HC was 4:39 in the Pacific Populaire last year. And that was slightly lower for watts, higher for weight, lower temp etc etc...

But certainly it appears that doing 1.65 along David should give me a reasonable simulation.

I did 3 tests on the David HC today: 4:34-4:25 ... so I think a good test. The 4:25 number was staying up in the sprint position for the entire climb. Almost 10 seconds faster even though more aero.

Are you getting enough Vitamin D?

2009-08-27T13:37:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you are out on those long and solitary training rides in the country... I listen to podcasts... Not too loud so I can't hear traffic and just some human voices to keep me sane..

One of them is Security Now! featuring Steve Gibson, normally expounding at (very) great length on various security (for your Windows system generally) issues. Always at length and in depth.

Another popular one is ABC's (that's A for Australian) Ockham's Razor. A short weekly podcast given to lectures by scientists (yes real actual scientists...) and other educated types. The point they are intended to illustrate is Ochkam's Razor, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one (that simplifies it but that suffices for a description..)

By coincidence both of these podcasts had the same or similar topic a few weeks ago. Ockams Razor had Prof. Christopher Nordin presenting a short talk entitled "Preventing osteoporosis", (listen or read here.) One of the main suggestions being that Vitamin D supplementation would be greatly beneficial (and save millions of dollars a year in hip replacements alone in elderly patients if supplementation was started in mid-life.)

Security Now! had a change of pace with Steve going over at great length what he has found out about Vitamin D and its possible role in our health. (listen or read here.)

The main point is that there appears to be an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency. Mainly due to less exposure to sun as people stay indoors and cover up more and use sun blockers when outdoors. But also because as people age it becomes much harder to get sufficient Vitamin D as your skin becomes less able to produce it using sunlight.

The second point being that there appears to be wide spread correlations between low Vitamin D and a large number of different ailments. As suggested in the Ockham's Razor podcast osteoporosis (from lack of calcium which in turn may be due to low Vitamin D); possible links to flu, Seasonal Affective Disorder, autism, various cancers etc.

Finally that the only way to get sufficient Vitamin D is through supplementation (especially as you get older). And that like treating Anemia with iron, you need to do blood testing to ensure you are not too low (more supplemenation) or too high (less.)

I have trouble with Anemia and yes, there also appears to be a link between that and Vitamin D...

There are some other interesting points concerning the type of Vitamin D to supplement with (you want D3, D2 is converted by your body to D3, and you need more of it.) And the amounts. The current suggested allowance of 400 IU appears to be far too low (possibly set from amount of Vit D in tablespoon of Cod Liver Oil, known to prevent Rickets and not cause any problems.) The conservative safe upper limit is suggested as 2000 IU.

The good news is that Vitamin D supplements are cheap. Steve quotes about $10 to get a 120 6000 IU pills. Take one every three days. Literally pennies a day..

Why don't we hear more about this? One of the problems is that Vitamin D supplements are cheap and patent free. So big pharma has little or no interest in studying the subject.. Unless they can come up with something they can get a patent on they will not spend money or doing trials or studies. So this research must be publically funded and done on a more ad hoc basis.

So, are you getting enough of Vitamin D? The answer could be important to your overall health.

Live long and prosper.... take your Iron and Vitamin D pills.

PezToolbox: Toolbox: Time Trial Basics – Part II

2009-08-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

Pez Toolbox has another good article on TimeTrialing here.

They go over a number of basics to practice. As always some good advice.

Canadian Track Nationals - Silver

2009-08-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

Andy George proved to be the better over 50 go-to-guy yesterday... We had a very small turn out. Only five riders. Three local, one from Vancouver Island and one from Ontario.

Andy had the best pursuit time (2:36 vs 2:41 for me...) Then managed to stay on my wheel for almost the entire 25 lap Scratch race, to take first with me a couple of bike lengths behind..

They shortened the points race to 40 laps (originally billed as 50). It proved to be cat and mouse the entire way. With me on Andy's wheel or him on mine. Early on Dave Kosick gapped us and nobody bothered to track him down. So he took the first two sprints. With Andy and myself duking it out for 2nd and 3rd... I almost got the 3rd sprint with a jump that got a bit of a gap. But Andy got me at the line by about 5-10cm...

It didn't seem to matter if I went first or followed, I couldn't quite match his finish...

Anyway, Silver for the overall. I'll have to work on the sprinting for next year.

No power file for the race as they don't let you use bike computers... :-(

I'll have to add a workout with guestimatted TSS for the day.