JRA - Exploding derailleurs

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.

Anmore Tour - Another 3 hours of L2, Lynx

Another long 3 hour ride @ L2. Push up CTL...  Now over 70, five weeks ahead of last year.  Glad the program was L2 with a little L3. The legs felt really really heavy today. No mojo over 300 watts, and even getting up to L3 territory (240 watts say) was hard and got me out of breath. But with a -34 TSB that is probably to be expected.

Climbing up from the Buntzen Power Plant I saw a pair of Lynx's walking up the road. Fairly sure they were a male and female. They had to follow the road for a couple hundred yards and the bigger (male) kept looking back at me to see if I was a threat. While the smaller (female) moved a bit faster to where they wanted to go. There was a bunch of crows circling above them giving them a hard time.

I managed to get some (probably very fuzzy) pictures on my cell phone. Assuming I can find a USB cable for a Samsung I'll try and get them downloaded and uploaded if the Lynx's are actually visible.

I saw a single Lynx on the other road through Belcarra Park last year. And a Cougar near White Pine Beach the year before that. Great to see that they can co-exist so close.

Ford Road - long and cold L2

About 3C but sunny, did Ford Road and then climbed up and over Westwood. Arrived home just after sunset with temp down to 0C. Other than a few bursts (like over the Pitt River bridge) this was L2 all the way. Maybe more like L3 for the last hour climbing over Westwood.

CTL is climbing back much faster and easier than last year, didn't hit 60 until almost mid Feb. Of course not having a broken collarbone helps... But still only a modest 5TSS/week climb.  It would be nice to have CTL > 90 for Spring Series, and since that has been pushed back two weeks this year it means I have seven weeks; 7x5 is 35, 60+35 > 90... 

New FTP!

Good news bad news...

After doing a VO2Max test a few weeks back I decided that my Ergomo's where reading too high. At least WRT to the Computrainer at the Lab.. So I repeated the ramp test here on my Computrainer, using my P2c with Ergomo. And then compared the results... 

It showed that P2C Ergomo was reading perhaps 20% to high in the "interesting" range (200-350). 

So I replicated the test using the Soloist with it's Ergomo. Similiar, although possibly not quite 20%. 

So off to the track and drag home the track bike and test with it... There the numbers matched reasonably well, although possibly slightly low.

So mea culpa... I now have a good explanation of why the numbers on the TT bike where slightly higher than the road bike. And why both the those where higher than the CT or Track... 

I had assumed, since the number from the two road bikes (Soloist and P2c) where reasonably similiar, that they where fairly trust worthy.. Apparantly a bad assumption.

I'll do a separate post showing some sample results and explaining the test regime. The results are that I have reset the K-Factor's on each of the Ergomo's to adjust them down (or up) as appropriate:

1. Track 181 -> 182
2. Soloist 184 -> 165
3. P2C 196 -> 164

This assumes of course that the Lab Computrainer I have is accurate. Not necessarily a great assumption. But the main excercise is not so much absolute accuracy as having the all of the devices I use provide equivalant data. I'll also point out that a) it is a Lab CT, b) it's reasonably new and lightly used (<2years)>

The above adjustments should mean an FTP in the new regime of about 280. I"ll need to do some testing to confirm that one way or another.

The other problem is that CTL/ATL/TSB for the last few months (since I've been back at the track) are off significantly. If the track bike was under reporting as compared to the FTP from testing on the road, then TSS points computed and therefore CTL/ATL/TSB are too low. Especically true on the track where we see short and intense efforts. 

Going forward we'll be ok. But it takes some work to get the past few months corrected. The simplest approach is to simply use the "new zones" feature to set a new FTP prior to each weeks track or road. Moving it up and down to match. The end result was to move current CTL from about 70 to 79.

Today was the first day out on the re-calibrated Soloist... Got rained on doing Ford Road at L2/L3. The legs where a bit tired from doing the (5) ramp tests yestered (start at 100 and ramp at 60w/minute until failure, about 5 minutes...) 

Anmore Tour - L2 with L5/L6 intervals

Anmore Tour, mostly L2 with ana-areobic L5/L6 intervals... 

Anmore Tour Short - L1/L2

Easy L1/L2 ride, opener for tomorrow's RR.

Ford Road - L2

Another slow day. Legs still feel heavy from last weekend and I'm scheduled for a reasonably hard TT exercise tomorrow.

Sunday I'll be spectating (only) at Harris-Roubaix. I don't like the dash along the dyke. It might be a bit better this year as it was resurfaced last year. But still 2km or thereabouts of gravel don't turn my crank. I got enough of that crap when I was doing mountain bike racing.

Ford Road - L2

Easy ride, cold, but dry at least. Front flatted on Ford Road... Still got back before dark.

Ford Road - Tempo L2

Easy 2 hour Ford Road ride.

Conquered Excel 2007, PMC chart and dashboard graphics now back...

Westwood Tour - L2/L3

A couple of easy hours doing hill climbs.

I made the mistake of installing Office 2007 yesterday, which of course broke my excel charting spreadsheets... So no TSB/TSS graphic today, and PMC chart not upgraded. Hopefully I can figure out what has changed between 2003 and 2007 versions of Excel and fix it without too much trouble :-(

Heritage Intervals - L2

Easy ride, rain until late, then had limited time. So just a climb up Westwood and some intervals in Heritage, all at L2 or easy L3.

Computrainer - 3 minute hills and 26mile loop

Started with 3 minute hills (8 reps..) then did the 26 mile loop.

ATL finally moving up a bit.

Computrainer - KTown Long 56k

Another KTown Long 56k. L2. A bit faster than Monday. Slight twinges (cramps?) in calves right at 70 minutes.

I was going to follow with a second short workout (probably 7ktt or similar) just to get the TSS up to about 110...

But after wasting a half hour fumbling the chain to replace a link before getting started... there was a great bang of a flat with less than 300m to go in KTown long... So I called it a day. Let Capp's Westwood worry about it. Have to take the bike in to get a new chain put on anyway...

Computrainer - KTown Long 56k

Slightly longer than Saturday, but also slightly lower pace. No cramping.

Finished with a few short intervals at l5/l6. Just to get the TSS number up.. Still hard to do much at that pace as the ribs don't like me breathing to hard. But a couple of sprints at the end of the L2 workout is doable.

Entire workout (195 watts):

Duration: 1:44:39
Work: 1223 kJ
TSS: 83.6 (intensity factor 0.692)
Norm Power: 204
VI: 1.05
Pw:HR: n/a
Pa:HR: n/a
Distance: 55.818 km
Elevation Gain: 598 m
Elevation Loss: 593 m
Grade: 0.0 % (5 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 74 687 195 watts
Cadence: 10 142 72 rpm
Speed: 12.5 55.9 32.0 kph
Pace 1:04 4:48 1:52 min/km
Altitude: -1 101 50 m
Crank Torque: 0 109.8 25.9 N-m

Computrainer - Dachau 48k

Computrainer Dachau 48k, L2. Slight cramping in calves after about an hour.

Computrainer - 3 minute hills, plus 30k

Another set of the 3 minute hills. Increased to 8 reps.

Then did first 32k of 50 k loop. Reasonably good L2 workout.

Entire workout (32k of 50k loop) (210 watts):

Duration: 1:01:09
Work: 769 kJ
TSS: 59.2 (intensity factor 0.762)
Norm Power: 225
VI: 1.07
Pw:HR: n/a
Pa:HR: n/a
Distance: 31.96 km
Elevation Gain: 932 m
Elevation Loss: 903 m
Grade: 0.1 % (29 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 545 210 watts
Cadence: 6 107 76 rpm
Speed: 0 49.8 31.4 kph
Pace 1:12 0:00 1:55 min/km
Altitude: -175 78 -39 m
Crank Torque: 0 62 26.7 N-m

Ford Road - L2/L3

Michel Pelletier came over and we spent a couple of hours doing some adjustments to the track and road bikes.. Mostly minor changes, on the track bike moved the seat up and slightly forward, brought the bars up as well. Same on the road bike.

Then we did an enjoyable run out to Pitt Meadows, Ford Road. Wonderful cold and dry weather.

BVC Workout - L2/L3, 48x13

Easy workout today, trying out 48x13. Mostly just L2/L3 with one hard L5 5 minute interval. Also did some practice out of the saddle easy sprints (I need to get more comfortable sprinting out of the saddle on the track...)

BVC Workout - misc, good 5 min, 355 Pavg

Three day race this weekend, so didn't want to do any L4/L5 work... So mostly L2..

Did one 5 minute push at +350 watts in a BIG gear, 51x14. This tends to show, I think, that my problems with getting reasonable power out in the VO2Max range is related to cadence. ON the 50x14, about 96", I really had little problem pushing out 350+ watts for five minutes. Every time I move up it gets easier to push out L5 power for longer periods.

I think this is due to my limited range of heart rate. My lactate threshold is about 172, VO2Max about 180 and my max is about 186. I don't have a lot of room, and spinning at higher cadence seems to push the heart rate up without necessarily giving me correspondingly more power.

For TT'ing I can compensate by micro-managing my cadence. But on the track I have to choose one gear ahead of time and live with it. Too big a gear and I may get dropped early in the race. But too small a gear and I may be out simply by pushing my heart rate up to high to early.


Peak 5min (355 watts):

Duration: 5:00
Work: 107 kJ
TSS: 10.8 (intensity factor 1.141)
Norm Power: 354
VI: 1
Distance: 3.783 km
Elevation Gain: 5 m
Elevation Loss: 7 m
Grade: -0.1 % (-2 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 174 615 355 watts
Heart rate: 159 183 177 bpm
Cadence: 90 104 99 rpm
Speed: 41.6 49 45.4 kph
Pace 1:13 1:27 1:19 min/km
Altitude: 35 37 36 m
Crank Torque: 17.1 62 34.3 N-m
Temperature: 18 18 18.0 Celsius

This is still under my best TT efforts, but is getting closer, and again feels more comfortable at this power level.

Silverdale - Upper Stave Falls - Endurance

It was supposed to be 3 hours L2/L3, Silverdale and back via the lower Stave Lake Dam and Dewdney Trunk road... But BC Hydro is doing (massive) maintenance (closed for 4 months apparently...) so I had to keep going over towards Mission and come back via the Upper Stave Falls Dam. Which added another 300-400m of climbing and about 20km... Or about an hour...

Entire workout (156 watts):

Duration: 4:13:45 (4:22:09)
Work: 2369 kJ
TSS: 171.6 (intensity factor 0.637)
Norm Power: 197
VI: 1.27
Distance: 105.137 km
Elevation Gain: 1220 m
Elevation Loss: 1223 m
Grade: -0.0 % (-3 m)
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 560 156 watts
Heart rate: 0 0 0 bpm
Cadence: 24 99 66 rpm
Speed: 1.6 60.5 24.9 kph
Pace 0:60 37:30 2:25 min/km
Altitude: 7 241 78 m
Crank Torque: 0 104.6 23.4 N-m
Temperature: 9 15 11.9 Celsius