Rocky Lied - Banana Belt #3

Everyone thinks if they just tried just a little harder... but it's a mind trick. The body only has what it has, and if it's not enough to keep from being dropped, it's not enough. Rocky lied to us. In the end, if you don't have the ability, you don't have the ability, no matter the state of "heart". 

These are words I posted to my team's forum about my last race, Banana Belt #3.  I got dropped on the second of six laps; just a dismal showing for me.  I have my excuses: I raced yesterday and spent 18 miles off the front, there's the month I took off, the field was small so I couldn't surf up the hills, etc.  As I was talking with my teammate who actually did finish the race, he was saying that, after I was popped off, they went hard to the start-finish, then kind of took it easy for the whole rest of the race.  Of course they did, right?  A 66 mile race will be like that.  Hard in the beginning to shake things up, then easy up to the end.  And this time I was victim to the shakeup.

If only (if only!) I had hung on up that hill the second lap.  If only (if only!) I hadn't given up the chase afterwards and got back on.  Except it's all a mirage.  The mind plays tricks on us.  It is quick to forget suffering, it's quick to forget how extended it is at the time.  You can always wring one last drop out, right?  You can always reach that last quarter of an inch...

And if you could, then the towel is always wet, and your arm is infinite in length.  We have limits.  Sometimes the mind sets those limits, but most of the time the mind is the one cheerleading and the body is the one asked to do all the work.  Bike racing is about finding your limits, your true limits, and extending them.  But extending your limits isn't a matter of will power, it's a matter of training and practicing and racing.  So you train, you practice, you race... and you allow yourself the opportunity to fail so you can continue to improve.

Cornering

I had a pretty good season last year (or rather, for another day at least, this year). The one thing that put a damper on it all was my performance with cyclocross. I was terrible. Cornering was my a-specialty.

Anyway, so I suck. But one day driving home from work, something hit me; I am looking at curves wrong. I am looking to the inside of the curves instead of the outside. I am imagining that my bike (or car, as it may be) is on a string, and that string is attached to the radius of the corner and pulling me around. Thinking about it, there are many reasons why this is bad practice.

For one, the "center" of the corner is always changing. It is never constant except in the easiest of round corners. The second reason is because the "center" of the corner doesn't actually tell you about the corner itself. You have to take the actual radius, translate that to find the center, then translate that back into the radius. Doesn't sound terribly efficient, now does it?

So, instead of eyeing the corner, translating that into a center, and translate it back to a radius to follow on the bike, why not just actually follow the corner? Specifically, why not just put the outside edge of your vehicle on the line you need to follow and let the vehicle go 'round?

I tried this in the car, and lo and behold, it worked like a charm. The outside tire is the tire that follows the most outside line, so just putting the outside tire on the outside line, the car just went right around the corner. No muss, no fuss. Now to translate this to a bike...

A Bit of a New Direction

Powermeters, computers, heartrate monitors, oh my!
I think it's time to simplify...

Selling the powertap. What a thought.

I have alternatively thought that it was an invaluable tool and an overrated money sink.

Every racer, when they start racing, starts as a blank slate. Maybe they were a sort of competitive recreational cyclist. Maybe they were a crossover athlete. In any case, it is pretty rare that they know what kind of racer they will be. Racing is a three legged table; you have your time trialists, your sprinters, and your climbers. If you've never raced, then you don't know where you fall on this plane. Just because you weigh 130lbs doesn't mean you are a climber. Just because you enjoy riding hard doesn't mean that you are a time trialist.

A powermeter is a great tool for determining just who you are. It reveals your threshold power, and it reveals your sprint power.

Also, a new racer doesn't know how to pace themselves. If you've never done a 20 minute time trial, you don't know how much it hurts. Is the two hour group ride going to help your training or hurt it?

A powermeter is a great tool for pacing hard efforts. Turn the dial to "11" and use the powermeter to keep it there.

Over the last couple years, the powermeter has been my coach. I use Golden Cheetah to log my power data and I have a beautiful critical power curve telling me the size and dimensions of the sandbox I play in. I used it to determine that, yes, I can hold my own in a sprint. And, no, I really cannot climb on pace with a real climber, and will never be able to. It tells me I can time trial well enough to be a breakaway threat if I so choose. And it got me on racing out on the track, telling me that I can sustain over 500W for a minute and a kilowatt for 25 seconds.

Lately though, it has been a less used tool. I haven't been riding much with it. It's still useful for all those things, but my personality doesn't jive with knowing, to the last decimal place, my exact abilities. I look at data from a ride and instead of feeling what my body is telling me, I see I haven't broken any power records; or that I didn't work hard enough. I look at the numbers in a breakaway, and if the numbers are too high, I stop the effort and give up. I am not one of those people who is motivated by a number.

Reading an autobiography is always more interesting than reading biographies. The author in an autobiography is living the words he writes. The latest book I am reading is Flying Scotsman. Everyone knows the story, but what strikes me is his first, crouching, time trial position on the bike, a big part of the story as it normally is told, is a footnote in the book. He devotes maybe a page to this, and the rest of the book is about how he feels when he is racing and training.

In the section where he is describing his first world championship in the pursuit, he talks about the "groove". He mentally recreates the ride, from start to just before the finish (because the finish only happens in real life). He mentally constructs the feelings going through his legs and body, the pain and suffering, the purposeful ignorance of his body's warning signals.

What he doesn't talk about is numbers. Now then, he wasn't in the era of powermeters; on the other hand, he wouldn't be using one anyway. He didn't even use a HRM. He used a watch and trained on feel. And then he broke the hour record turning a 54/12 gear on a homemade bike.

Last year, I raced exactly one race with the powermeter. In the other races, I didn't even have so much as a cyclocomputer. I didn't even train much with the powertap. I did a few interval sets in the winter, but those were just using gearing I knew on a trainer I knew; I didn't use a powermeter on those either. One of the last races I did, the OBRA crit champs, I was in a breakaway with a dozen or so laps to go. I had no instrumentation on my bike; I stayed away. But how fragile was my mental state during that ride! Had I seen that I was over threshold for that effort, that I was putting out, probably, 350W or so for those 10-15 minutes, I would havepsychedmyself out and gone back to the pack and probably lost the sprint. All it would have taken is the slightest hesitation and lapse in will power, that's how close the pack was on my heals.

I know my sandbox, I know how to pace myself. Time unchain myself from the powermeter.

Stone Soup (or how a little here and a little there wins a BAR)

So, how's this for weird. I sign into the team forum last night and discover that someone is congratulating me for "winning". Odd, being that I haven't raced in several weeks and haven't come close to a good result since the end of the road/track season back in August. Click on the topic and find out that I apparently won the overall Cat 3 BAR (best all-around rider) for the state of Oregon. I knew I was high up on the list... last I heard I was fourth because of the good results at the track and the podium from the OBRA crit. The three guys above me were all upgraded to Cat 2 and standing still, but they had a pretty good lead on me. Apparently what pushed me over was two 'cross races I raced where the B field had only a dozen give or take people in it. BAR points go to the top 15, so even though I finished second to last and last respectively, I scored some points and got myself onto the cyclocross BAR, pushing me to the top of the list on the overall BAR.

It's kind of fun knowing I won something. At the same time, it is a reminder of how close I was this year to breaking through. I was riding well, but apart from a few races, I wasn't getting results. One key moment this year was when I rode away solo from the field one rainy night at PIR. It was a small field and in the cat 3/4 group, but still, I absolutely demolished them; finished over two minutes up after breaking away in the first lap. Up to that point, I had felt good on the bike, and was riding well, but no results were forthcoming. I had high hopes for the Banana Belts; I couldn't finish off the sprints. I was getting absolutely taken to school by the cat 1/2s in the PIR 1/2/3 field. That was the first and only win in a road race this season.

Some things I did right this year. I got stronger. Much stronger. I can win races on a breakaway now; something that just wasn't part of my arsenal last year. The things I did wrong were numerous. I had a hard time finishing off sprints on the road. On many occasions I couldn't get to where I needed to be to contest the sprint, and when I did get good position, I held my guns until it was so late there was no use shooting them; the race was already over.

I never peaked, just kinda keep getting slowly stronger as the year progressed. Basically I raced my way into shape. Old school, I guess. And hills are still mynemesis. I couldn't lose weight.

And now it's back to the grindstone. Two weeks ago, I started training for the 2011 season. Rollers mostly; a solo or group ride on the weekend. And dieting. It seems to be working. It'll take a while for the pattern to become established, but it seems I am losing about a pound a week. There is hope I can hit my goal weight of 170lbs in time for the season start. I opened the throttle a bit in the PV ride over the weekend; haven't gone completely soft over the last couple months. Felt good.

Here's to the new year!

As the World Turns

So, I haven't written here for a while.  Long story short, I've been racing a lot.  The track has been good to me (found that I have a bit of talent for sprinting) and the road hasn't been that bad either.  Finished the season with a good start toward a Cat 2 upgrade on the track, and even a few points toward a Cat 2 upgrade on the road.

Big accomplishments...

Had a really good OBRA Track Champs race.  Upgraded from Cat 4 to Cat 3 right at the start of the weekend, and ended up with three gold medals in the kilo, pursuit, and match sprint and a silver in the points race.  All in small fields though, which tempers the glory.  But hey, my times in the kilo and pursuit weren't terrible, and my match sprint performance was not bad either.

Got a silver medal on a breakaway at the OBRA Crit Champs.  That was fun.  Spent over 10 laps off the front; at 5 to go, had a guy bridge up to me and we ended up finishing just ahead of the pack.  The other guy got first, I got second.

Final decent result was a second place finish at the kilo in the OBRA Masters Track Champs.  I raced the match sprints as well, but I really mis-timed my eating (didn't have anything to eat but a bowl of cereal between 8:00am and 3:00 when the race was over) and didn't win a single match.  I could've done better for sure.  On the other hand, there are a lot of very fast guys in the 30-39 age group I was racing against.  Fast and savvy...  I might be somewhat fast, but I have a lot yet to learn about match sprinting.
_______________

With that, the 2010 season comes to a close, except for cyclocross, which I suck at.  Base training for 2011 is right around the corner, and I am in the process of deciding whether to obtain some coaching.  I want to make a serious run at Cat 2 on the road.  A coach will be useful in this.  On the other hand, Cat 2 isn't a destination, it's a threshold.  The aesthetic side of me wants to cross the threshold on "natural" talent (a better term might be "uninvested" talent); the thinking goes if I can do this, I stand a chance of being competitive on the other side of the threshold with the benefit of coaching.

I also have to decide what I need a coach to do for me.  A "generic" coach I have less use for.  I can pull workouts out of a hat more or less the same as any other person.  A "real" coach would be working with me across multiple seasons and get to know my abilities almost better than I know myself.  That might be too much to ask though, either for a coach I hire or for myself and my own commitments to what is still an amateur sport, regardless of category.

Anyway, it's enough to make my head spin a bit.  Having a little talent is somehow vexing.  It seems the path is pretty clear if you are dominant.  Likewise if you suck.  Having a few little successes as I've had this year makes me want to see where the rabbit hole leads, but it also makes me question how much time and energy to place into the endeavor.  But this is the time of the year (with the non-existent training and the play-in-the-mud 'cross fun) to be philosophical.  Wax poetic and philosophical now, put the head down on the trainer in a few weeks.

December Training Plan

After a lot of thinking, here's the idea. If there is one theme for December for me, it is base. I want a BIG BASE this year. Not the little wimpy one I've been working with for the last couple years.

For the four full weeks of December, with one week nearly over, here's the idea:

Week 1: endurance rides. Two hour roller sessions at high zone 2 intensity. So far I've completed the two hour roller sessions on each Tuesday and Thursday, and there is no obstacles to the roller sessions today and tomorrow. This is be a total of 8 hours at high zone 2 this week.

Week 2: endurance and threshold rides. Tuesday and Thursday will be 2x20min sessions on the trainer. Sat and Sun will be endurance. Hopefully outdoors for 3-4 hours on Sat.

Week 3: same as week 1, but with the addition of a Wednesday endurance roller session.

Week 4: same as week 2, but with a Wednesday, 1 hr "sweet spot" roller session.

My biggest obstacle in all this is schedule. Weeks 1 and 3 are my most free, because my wife works late on those days. Weeks 2 and 4 are difficult because I need to dodge her schedule or sacrifice time with her (which are why the 1 hour threshold sessions are on weeks 2 and 4). This has been a constant battle between my home schedule and my training schedule, as it is with many people. This year though, I am resolved to just make better use of my time in general and communicate with my wife better about her schedule and work around it. I am fortunate that my work hours are relatively flexible. Between the flexibility in my work schedule and my resolve to make better use of my time, I should be set for 8-12 hours a week throughout the year.

With December being devoted to base, January will probably be more of the same, but with some more bias towards threshold intensity level efforts. In the last couple years, I have been trying to mix in different training intensities into different weeks. I have not really been that consistent, more like "well, I should get an interval set in today, so let's climb some hills..." That sort of thing. Better awareness, coming from the last couple years, of what is required in my training and what I can do with the time I have is essential to my training this year.

This year, I am making a theme for the week and running with it. For instance, I want every other week this year to be a threshold week. Something like two hours of threshold ever week. In the winter months, this will be a 2x20min trainer workout. In the summer, it will be one hour at threshold workout done on the time trial bike.

The week in between weeks of threshold work will be season specific. December and January, these will be endurance weeks. February and March will probably be VO2max (1-4 minute intervals with short-ish rest). Between all these intensity specific rides, there will obviously be a fair number of tempo rides/races, and I want to keep one endurance ride going every week through the year.

"A" races this year are the Cherry Blossom Stage Race in April and the Cascade Classic in June. These are more like markers for my training progression rather than actual racing goals. I want to have good form in late-March/early-April (Cherry Blossom + Spring Classics) and again in July/early-August (Cascade + Track/Crits). So the "A" races are not really targeted races per se (I am not even sure I can ever be competitive in a stage race), but more like anchors to fix my training progression in time.

All of this is just a rough outline of what I would like to see happen. Day to day training will still be done pretty much on the fly, within a general week-specific goal that fits within a monthly progression. This is because I need the maximum flexibility in my schedule. I need structure in the big picture, but flexibility at the day-to-day level. Time will tell if I can pull it off.

Like making a move in a chess game, sometimes you just have to admit that you can't perfectly predict the future. You just choose the move that puts you in the best position after the next couple moves are played; then pick up the piece and play it. Right now, the best I can do is say I want hours on the bike at endurance pace if nothing else. Build a big base while working on my power at threshold - that's how the next month is sketched out, and that's enough for the moment.

After all the talk is over...

...there are still only three things I need to do to have a successful 2010 season.

1. Race. Every chance I get.  
2. Ride more. Find the time to train. Ride in the dark, in the rain. Train in the garage at midnight if need be.  
3. Lose weight. Don't we all. 

All else will follow: the power numbers, results, all of it. All this training stuff is kind of confusing when you start thinking about it too much. The last two posts I've published were all about numbers and I kind of got caught up into it. Seems to be a side effect of reading too much into all the training theories about training "with power".

What a bunch of bullshit. When it comes down to brass tacks, it's still all about time on the bike. Yea, yea, you don't want to "waste" your training time by doing the "wrong" thing. But make it too complicated and you end up not riding at all. Instead, you spend all your time talking about numbers and chasing numbers instead of riding and listening to your body. After thinking about it for the last few days, I am of the opinion that all these theories of power meter training are better left to professional coaches. Leave the rider to riding and not bother with the numbers at all. Except for motivation by way of measuring pissing distance of course.

In previous seasons, the two most valuable things I did were to: 1) spend a lot of time on my bike, and 2) 2x20min intervals. My weak points still haven't changed. My FTP is still my limiter. I still need to lose weight (though I am better off by a good eight pounds over last year). Sounds like I need to do more of the same as I did last year. It's not like I hit a plateau or anything yet.

Furthermore, I have to be patient. It's the first week of December and I'm already starting to freak out about my training plans. I almost spoiled a perfectly good (and rare) lunch with my girl because I was obsessing about a ride at lunchtime because I couldn't pull off my training session last night. In reality, it's simple. Ride a bunch. Do 2x20's as much as I can stand. When race season starts, race. That's it.

More on Training Stress

A few more words on tracking training stress before I get back to bullheaded training.

Turns out my training stress score idea, like most ideas, is not original. "Daniel's Points" is a concept that is very similar to the IF^4 stress score I talked about in the last post. Apparently there was a running coach named Jack Daniels (no relation to the liquor, apparently), probably in the 80's, who made an intensity-to-the-fourth relationship between training stress and, in his case, running speed (which is almost directly proportional to power for runners, since wind resistance doesn't come into account). His runners had a fair amount of success on the collegiate scene.

What I like about it is it builds on the concept of NP in a very natural way, mathematically. Basically, with NP, you are defining a stress function that goes by P^4 (after smoothing to get rid of power peaks). NP is simply the steady state power which results in the average training stress. So, every point in time of the training ride corresponds to a stress that is proportional to P^4. The IF^4 proposal for training stress simply integrates this training stress in time.

Put another way, at every point in time during a workout, your body is exposed to a stressor (proportional to P^4) that it must adapt to. Add up all these stressors and you get an integrated adaptation stress, which is your IF^4 training score. Long, slow endurance rides, necessary to prepare your body for the stress of training, naturally don't score well on this scale - I think this is correct; a long endurance ride will not make you fast, whereas an hour of interval training will. This is in contrast to TSS where a 3 hour ride at endurance pace is given the same or better score as an hour of interval training. Threshold intervals will score equivalently on both scales.

Coggan's TSS is based on TRIMPS (you can google it; stands for "Training Impulse" and was designed for training by HR), which apparently started out as a score directly proportional to the training intensity. When this was found not adequate to describe what athletes were experiencing, another factor of intensity was added, making it an intensity-squared relationship. So, it's a guess with another guess added on.  Not the most elegant thing in the world.

This IF^2 relationship makes for a unique problem with TSS; namely, that TSS is a function of overall workout time independent of intensity. If you just add time at zero power to the end of your ride to make it longer, you can manufacture TSS points with obviously no gain in fitness. The IF^4 relationship contains no problem in this respect, because if you run through the math, it quickly becomes apparent that "overall workout time" cancels out of the equation and you just get a straight-up integration of the stress function.

Anyway, like I said, I am keeping track of both this year. I'll watch the IF^4 stress score with the most interest though, because it makes more sense to me than TSS. If training stress can be captured by a single number, it seems the IF^4 has the most theoretical backing and about the same amount of empirical backing as TSS.

At this point in my racing career, I am just curious about these things on an intellectual level. Comes from my engineering background, I am sure. This being my third year, I am just in "watch and learn" mode as far as these metrics are concerned - keeping track of various numbers and correlating them to my race results. I'm sure someone can design a system of training based on any system of keeping track of training stress. The important part, I would imagine, is the athlete's and coach's direct experience in tying training stress metrics to performance.

TSS, NP, IF - Thoughts about Training Stress

Having a little information can be a dangerous proposition.  Lately I've been reading up on things like TSS (Training Stress Score), NP (Normalized Power), and IF (Intensity Factor).  I have a powertap and no coach, so I get to experiment with some stuff.

See, I'm an engineer, which means that I am naturally curious about the equations that come with having a powermeter.  In case you didn't get the memo, there's a lot more that you can do with a powermeter than just measure power.  The biggest thing that's in vogue at the moment is this thing called WKO+, which is a software program developed by a guy named Hunter Allen which takes all that raw powermeter data, condenses each ride into a single number, then does stuff with that number.  The number is the so-called TSS, or Training Stress Score.  You can read about this elsewhere, but basically it's a number that quantifies how hard your ride was.

I hate to do stuff with numbers that I don't understand.  It drives me up the wall to, say, look at an insurance reimbursement summary because it's got a number added to a bunch of zeros that equal to zero.  Not kidding.  I can show you the paper.  It's even got plus signs and equal signs between all the numbers.  Anyway...

So, I hate to do stuff involving numbers that I don't understand.  First off, the whole concept of TSS starts with the concept of NP, or Normalized Power.  This is your power as a function of time, smoothed out using a smoothing function, raised to the fourth power, averaged, and 4th-rooted.  Still following?  Basically it means that there is some function, call it the "Stress Function", which is directly proportional to Power raised to the fourth.  This is actually supported by some data, so it's not all bullshit here.  Basically then, normalized power is the constant power which, if sustained for the time of the workout, results in the average of the stress function.  Nobody's following now, but I'll plow ahead anyway.  I have no issue with this at all.  Makes perfect sense to me.

TSS is basically the amount of energy the rider expends during the ride, "corrected" by an "intensity factor", which is a function of the normalized power described above.  I happen to think that the TSS concept is wrong.

The first clue is that a three hour ride at endurance pace will net the same TSS as a one hour ride at time trial pace.  Maybe, but consider this: take two identical riders.  Set them on an every-other-day training schedule at 100 TSS per workout.  So far so good.  Now, Rider 1 does his 100 TSS as a three hour endurance ride, every other day while Rider 2 does his 100 TSS sessions as a one hour at threshold interval set.  Let them do this for a month, give them a few days off and then set them against each other in a time trail.  Which one wins?  My money's on the guy who did threshold intervals for a month.

But TSS doesn't reflect this at all.  If you look at a plot of their TSS, it is identical.  You'd think that they are training identically.  But it's been well documented by Friel and others that interval training is much better for training racing efforts than just riding around for a few hours.

So here's what I propose.  TSS, when it's normalized to the rider's functional threshold power, becomes the equation: TSS = T*IF^2, where T is time in hours and IF is "intensity factor" which is NP/FTP.  Let's go back to the original derivation of NP.  NP is the constant power which produces the same average "stress function" value as the raw power function.  The whole point of TSS is to incorporate training "volume" with intensity.  Andrew Coggan says on the Wattage Forum that "work" (derived by multiplying NP with time) is the volume component and IF is the intensity; he multiplies these together because he can't really think of anything better to do to combine them.  The big problem with describing his formula in this manner is that IF and work energy are not independent.  They are both dependent on NP.  This is sort of a problem if your starting point is assuming that "volume" and "intensity" are independent concepts.

Now imagine a new TSS* formula which simply multiplies the average "stress function" value, which is proportional to NP^4, and time.  Normalize it by dividing it by the average stress function value at FTP and you get TSS* = T*IF^4, where T is time in hours.  Let's put it to the test:

Rider 1:
TSS* = 3hr*0.6^4 = 39%

Rider 2:
TSS* = 1hr*1^4 = 100%

Isn't this more of what we expect?  Rider 1, following his 3 hour, endurance ride schedule, will be vastly undertrained (61% less) compared to Rider 2.  This isn't a new concept: Coggan himself considered this formulation briefly after noting that data for time-to-exhaustion vs. power (which is kind of like the TSS concept) followed a near 4th power law form.  He dismisses this out of hand though for some reason involving the hypothetical seeming equivalence between the recovery time from a 12 hour ride and a track pursuit effort.

Food for thought anyway.  Myself, I am keeping track of both TSS and TSS* and will see how well each correlates to my form through the season.

PS. If you don't know who Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen are, they wrote a fairly widely read book about training with a powermeter.

The Puzzle Pieces...

...are falling into place.  For the last two weeks and change, I've been doing nothing but endurance, low paced rides.  A majority has been on the rollers in one or two hour sessions.  Team rides of 2.5-3 hours make up the balance.  Five rides a week with two days off.  I call these "movie intervals".  Boring as all hell, but put a good movie on the TV or a good football game (is it coincidence that the Pats/Colts game netted me my best training ride of the year?) and it becomes tolerable.

My weight is coming under control.  My off-season high was 184lbs.  I am now back down to close to 178 and have hit that zone where my appetite doesn't lead me to pack in the food in response to training.  From previous experiences last year and the year before that, this should result in a solid pound a week give or take for the next couple months.

I feel good about this season.  I feel strong and now that my weight is dropping again, I am reasonably confident of reaching my weight goal for the season.  I am starting with a true base this year, instead of just jumping right into intervals.  My plan is to continue the five day a week endurance rides until the first or second week of December.  After that and through January, I'll add in, with increasing frequency, threshold intervals and the so-called "sweet spot training" sessions to replace the endurance rides.

Important for this year is to train the intermediate intervals in the 1-5 minute range between sprinting and threshold.  I think coaches call this the "anaerobic endurance" range.  I did zero training in this power range last year, and I suffered a bit because of it.  It's not so much that I am not "good" in that range, but by not training, I don't know how to judge effort during those intervals.  Thus, bridging efforts are hard for me because I am afraid of going too hard.  I get dropped on the start of climbs because I can't push my limits because I don't know if I can recover.  I can't accelerate properly out of corners in a crit to allow me to move up and get out of the yo-yo part of the pack.  This kind of training needs to be done closer to the race season.  I will work these in starting in February.

Lastly, I am shifting all my training backwards about a month from last year.   Last year at this time I started threshold work in November and continued it until racing scuttled those efforts in March.  I was burnt out by April instead of being good.  This year, I hope to have a much better endurance base going into interval training, and not be in such a rush to get into form.  I have to bang it into my head that I don't have to have form until racing season starts, and even then, not until late March and April where the racing really takes off.  It's not about flexing muscle in training rides with the crew.  It's about being good for races.  So patience and faith in training is key.  Build up the base and hit the intervals in stride and everything else will fall into place.

Bullheaded Training

An anonomous person on the internet at bikeforums.net asked a general question:

Trainer vs. new wheelset vs. Powertap - What's most beneficial to an aspiring racer?

This person is new to the sport side of cycling and is looking to take up racing next season. Here's my take on the issue, posted in the same thread:

Trainer first. Then powertap. Then wheelset.

Ride the trainer hard and long, doing threshold intervals over the winter. Get strong. Refine your training with the powertap. Get stronger. Then refine your competitive ability with the lighter, more aero wheelset. Getting strong and getting any extra fat off your body will go a much longer ways toward making you competitive than some fancy race equipment.

I liken training to sharpening a knife blade. Right now you are simply a blank piece of metal shaped like a knife. You don't start putting the edge on by going right to the fine grit stone. No, you start with a coarse file. That's your trainer and your first foray into interval training and racing. You file on that blade until you can start getting an edge defined, but you can only get it so sharp. So you bring out the whetstone. That's your powertap. You define the blade edge more and upgrade into Cat3.

Only after you've gotten the blade well defined that you bring out the sharpening steel and really get that blade razor sharp. That's when you buy the fancy wheels and unobtainium 15lb bike and start training with a coach. This might be a several year process.

...Until you are racing at a high level, my belief is that the fancy racing equipment is just a crutch. Other racers have other beliefs, but I think most will agree that successful racing is more about the amount of sweat on your garage floor this winter than it is about a fancy wheelset.

What does this say about me.  I have a Powertap and I have a carbon race bike (which means I have some of the toys), but I believe that success in bike racing isn't proportional to the money put into the sport, but rather the time and effort to get stronger and faster.  The strongest cyclists on the team, simply put, are the ones who put the most time and effort into training.  Some have the toys.  Some don't.  Some have a coach and a highly regimented training plan.  Some make it up as they go.  But the common denominator is that they ride hard and often.  They turn themselves inside out in training so they can see red in a race.  I read books by Bob Roll, Lance Armstrong, and the new one by Joe Parkins.  Amongst the pros, they all share this common denominator.

So this is my overriding training goal this year.  Less futzing around the edges, obsessing over training plans and equipment.  More hard, long miles on the bike.  Less shying away from a training session because I am tired from work, hungry, or "just don't feel like it".  Eat a candy bar, slap myself into shape; lower the horns and plunge ahead.

Right now I am reading a book by Bob Roll, which is essentially a bunch of his journal entries throughout his career peppered with some stories from his racing days.  He tells of one ride he did when he just plotted out a course for a 6 hour ride in the mountains on a clear and cold early spring day.  He gets out and he's flying.  One of those days.  He is so high on his good form that he ignores the traditional signs (such as a gate barring the road and two foot deep snow) to turn back in the mountains.  Figures he can hike his bike over the pass, through the snow and catch the road on the other side to continue his ride.  He ends up lost in the forest, and after tromping around for hours, finally gets picked up by a couple in their car who know him as a pro.  Finally gets back to his house at 1am after something like 12 hours lost in the snow.

It's not the snow or the getting lost that struck me, but how he just got out on his bike to train.  Just a general route laid out and he put his head down and got to it weather be damned.  The bullheadedness of his training. Seems to me to be something to emulate.

And the New Season Begins...

First workout of the new season: 2 hours last night on the rollers watching V for Vendetta while the rain pored down outside.  I averaged 205W, which for me is smack dab in the center of my endurance zone.  I plan on spending the next three or four weeks with rides that are just like these.  Long, slow; just get my legs turning for a long time and do a real base period of training.

December will bring out the trainer and mark the start of threshold intervals.  Last year, this was the start and the end of my training regimen.  My goal back then was to simply raise my threshold power.  Which I did, but my middle power suffered a little because I never trained it.  I couldn't get to the front of a crit to save my life because I didn't have the 2-3 minute burst to make it up there.  This year, after getting my threshold power to where I want it, which should take a month or two after the base period if it happens at all, I will focus on training my strengths instead of just focusing on my traditional weakness at threshold.

Being that this is still just the start of my third season, I am still building my long term base fitness: the fitness base that takes years to build and is required to undertake still more rigorous training.  This year, I have a weight goal: 165lbs, and I have a threshold power goal: 360W, to be attained by March/April when racing starts in earnest.  Instead of being just a fuzzy wish like it was last year, these are now attainable goals.  Last year, in June, I touched down into the high 160s (169lbs or so) for a short period before regaining 5lbs to even out at 175lbs at Cascade, and my threshold power grew from sub-300W to 330W over the course of the season.  165lbs is not far from my low mark of weight, and 360W is a "mere" 10% increase in power over my last season's FTP.

Combine these two goals, and I should be able to hang with the Cat3 pack even up some of the longer hills.  I won't win up the hill, but to just hang will get me to the finish of a fair number of races which I can win with a sprint.  It was eye opening for me at the Cascade Classic last July when I was almost able to hang with the Cat3 pack at 175lbs and the threshold at 330W.   In fact, I was hanging, but made a tactical mistake that popped me off the back.  I was even mid-pack on a time trial that was uphill for the first half (and me on a standard road bike that saw me losing a fair amount of time on the way back down).  165lbs at 360W will put me at 4.9W/kg.  If I can do that, I might be able to make a serious run at upgrading to Cat2.

But now's the time to get to work.  2-4 hour rides, four days a week or so, are the name of the game at this point.  If I can keep myself from dying of boredom in the winter months ahead, I can reap the benefits with a good season.

A Year Review and a Look to the Next

I left the road season this year in a blur of track frenzy and exhaustion from the road.  I haven't ridden a road bike in a couple weeks and the 'cross season has started with a bang.  What to make of all this in the whole scheme of my amateur racing career?

For one thing, I've matured as a racer.  My equipment, after two years of upgrading and buying, is finally sufficient for all aspects of road competition.  I have two road racing bikes - solid, fast steeds; three specialty bikes (cyclocross, time trial, and track); and my trusty commuter.  All the components on these bikes are sufficient; they are not holding me back.  I feel like I am in a good spot, equipment wise, between top-of-the-line and budget.  That means that until my results catch up to my bikes, I am down to spending only on consumables, clothing, and races.  If I play it right, the sport should be getting cheaper for me.

In competition, I'm racing in the Cat3's on the road, Cat4 on the track, and CatB in 'cross.  I still have upgrade aspirations for the track, and with 'cross I don't especially care, but for road, I am where I will be for the next couple years at least.

I feel like I have room to improve.  Even after being 20lbs less than I was two years ago, I can still stand to lose another 20lbs.  This is make or break.  At 175lbs, I am an average Cat3.  At 165lbs, I'll crush.  This is not idle tough guy talk.  It's just fact.  Right now, due to the off season, I'm 182lbs... but I'm racing (cross) again, and will soon start building my mileage from the current near zero to 10-15 hours a week.  This isn't a fantasy.  I am still, if not fat anymore, not skinny.  But it will take work.  Now that equipment is not holding me back... I simply need to put in the hours.

And here's the thing.  I have time for that too.  The first year I was racing I was terribly inefficient with training time.  I drove to lots of team rides instead of riding.  I hesitated and watched TV for an hour before hoping on the trainer or rollers.  I scrubbed training rides due to weather instead of simply bucking up and getting out there.  Second year, I am more efficient, but still not as efficient as I could be.  Much of this is simply about knowing what to do and doing it.  Hesitation and uncertainty is the bane of my life.  But with experience, training becomes smoother and more efficient.  I don't need half an hour to get ready anymore because I know with my eyes closed what needs to be in the car and/or in my pockets.  I know what to eat, I know what to drink.

So, the plan for next year, subject to change.  Currently I'm kind of idling myself, merely developing my handling skills and keeping myself sharp by racing cyclocross.  November 1st rolls around and I start ramping up the indoor trainer and weekend rides.  This rolls through January on a gradual ramp; a 12 week program to develop my functional threshold and lose weight.  In February, the long outdoor rides start.  I want to be doing 4-5 hour rides a couple times a week.  I'm not certain the logistics of this yet, but I want to be doing about 15 hours a week on the bike at this point.  Just steady miles to build base with FTP interval sessions in between.  The racing season starts at the end of February.  At this point I start trading training miles for race miles.  I peak first for the April spring stage races.  I want to weigh 170lbs at this point.  At the end of April, I take a couple weeks break and start building for another peak in July.  I peak in July for the Cascade Classic stage race.  I want to weigh 165lbs.  I end the road season with a generous helping of crits and track racing.

That's the plan.  I now know my body, and I know I've executed parts of this plan over the last couple years.  It's year three and it's time to put it all together.  The goal is to be able to win in Cat3 road races.  I don't suspect I'll get the points to upgrade to Cat2, but I want to show myself I have the potential to win in the P/1/2 field in the next couple years.
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As an aside, I almost scrubbed the last sentence of the last paragraph above.  Is it going too far to even state that I'd like to win a P/1/2 race?  I dunno.  Aim to the sky to skim the trees?  Is it a fantasy?

Let me put it to rest.  I can roll with the big boys on a sprint finish.  All that's needed to win a P/1/2 race is to make it to the end with the field.  I won't be the best'est mountain goat.  I won't be the strongest TT'er.  But I can sprint and that's my ticket in the big boy races.

Self Massage

Sounds naughty, doesn't it.

Up till now, I haven't fully been on board with the whole massage thing. I mean, it seems like it's for prissy men or pro cyclists; I don't consider myself either. The epiphany came right after the ride today, as I was preparing for my shower. I remembered an article I read somewhere that said that leg massages for cyclists should be done by doing a "smoothing" action from the bottom of the muscle (closest to the foot) and moving up the leg towards the heart. So I did this a little bit. Lo and behold, some of the soreness from today's ride went away!

Discovering this, I reasoned that this would be more effective after my shower and leg shave, and with some lotion so the massage motions won't burn the skin. After showering and shaving, I did the massage on my quads and calf muscles... and no more soreness! Beautiful. Not that I'm not still a little tired from the ride, but the soreness is gone. And it's something that will be imminently helpful considering I have a stage race coming up in a week, where getting the soreness out of my legs as soon as one day's stage is over might be considered important.

It also really highlights one of the reasons why competitive cyclists shave their legs. The self massage isn't a full "pro" massage by any means, but it certainly feels better without hair on the legs. So, two mysteries of competitive cycling: massage and shaving, I now better understand.

Drafting

There is nothing cheating about drafting. Riding with someone on your wheel is a responsibility and riding someone's wheel is a gift. Friends regularly take responsibility for each other and give each other gifts - it's what makes them friends.

Ever wonder why the camaraderie amongst roadies? It's because of the drafting. The guy in front must take responsibility for the guy in back, and the guy in back must trust the guy in front. It's that give and take which forms the bonds of road cyclists and why road cyclists have a different vibe from, say, mountain bikers, and why, yes, sometimes roadies come off as a bit insular to newbies. It's all in the trust/responsibility dynamic of drafting. If one person can't be trusted in a pace line, he gets sent to the back where he can't do any damage while the rest of the guys rotate their pulls.

And even if it's just you and a friend, draft without guilt; just trade off every couple minutes to keep everything on an even keel. And if one of you is significantly stronger than the other, have the weaker one ride the stronger one's wheel a larger percentage of the time and the effort of a fast ride is apportioned evenly according to ability.