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Or "know[ing] when to fold’em."

Yesterday I committed a classic training mistake — not paying attention to the signals my body was sending and pushing through a 75 mile ride that included something like 9000 feet of climbing despite having a really off day.  I knew it was going to be a bad day when I couldn’t maintain my normal climbing wattage on the very first hill, but it was still a bit chilly and I had woken up with a stuffy head, so I managed to talk myself into believing that as the temperature and my body warmed up, I’d pull through it and reach some level of normalcy.  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen, no matter how much I ate or drank.  I could ride tempo, but anything even approaching threshold, let alone over it, was unattainable.  By the time I finally admitted to myself that the situation wasn’t going to improve, it was too late to turn back, and I spent the next 30 miles staring fixedly at my front wheel, willing my legs to keep turning.  Thankfully, the guys I was riding with stopped and waited for me every few miles, just to be sure I was still upright (which wasn’t a given towards the later stages of the ride). 

On a normal day, it would have been a beautiful ride, up and down the Blue Ridge, with the foliage just a bit past peak brilliance. For the moments when I could get my head up and look around the scenery was breathtaking, or would have been had I any breath to spare.

It remains to be seen how big a hole I’ve dug myself; today was certainly a wash and tomorrow probably will be as well.  And therein lies the danger– jeopardizing an extended period of training to complete a ride that for whatever reason, you’re just not up to.

And, yes, about the 60 mile mark, "The Gambler" did start running through my mind.  The sign of a true bonk: you start humming Kenny Rogers’s songs.

At this time of the season, many riders feel a bit burned out.  The usual advice is to take a decent break from the bike, and I certainly think that it is sound.  Indeed, I wound up taking nearly a week off myself when we moved from Chicago to Virginia.  But if it hadn’t been for the move, I’m not sure I would have taken the time.  Rather, I would have returned to early season workouts, endurance rides, tempo and lots of sweet spot (sst).  After the sheer agony of anaerobic intervals and two crits a week, the dull pain, perhaps better described as a pressure on the legs, of sst is a welcome change.

When I was able to get back on the bike, I focussed solely on this type of threshold work — climbing the local mountains at threshold intensity, doing the middle hour or so of rides at sweet spot intensity, and of course, a few sessions of the ubiquitous 2×20.  For the latter two I discovered that to stay in the proper training zone  in this (hilly) area requires me to ascend the hills at nearly a walking pace and hammer on the downhills.  Despite the natural variation of cadence required by the rolling terrain, I have definitely lost some "snap" in the legs and will have to put in some time working on my sprint so that I don’t get gapped in ‘cross starts.

Technorati Tags     training,cycling

Today was an endurance day, so I decided to ride up Afton Mountain. As my title suggests, it was the toughest 40 miles I’ve done in quite some time. Though the numbers don’t suggest an epic ride (133.3 TSS, 170 NP), my body certainly felt like it. At around the two hour mark, I was pretty well fried. After 2 hours, NP was 154, before that 177. Luckily, I won’t be doing any races that are over 2 hours, but the significant drop off certainly suggests a need to work on my endurance.

For those of you interested, I’ve put a link to the ride route below. For a guy just moved from the flatlands of Chicago, 3300 ft of climbing is a lot.

Well, we’ve been in VA for a week now, and I’m still adjusting to the new terrain.  The hardest change seems to be the lack of roads suitable for a recovery ride.  For instance, I had a recovery ride scheduled yesterday, aiming to keep the power ~level 1, low level 2.  In order to maintain that level, I wound up riding up the hills at 5-8 mph.  There were times I was going so slowly I felt as if I might topple over.  I kept repeating the mantra — you have to go slow sometimes to go fast when it counts.  Thankfully, I didn’t see too many folks who might wonder about the guy in fluorescent yellow who was moving slower than the cows ambling by in the fields.  All in all, I think I was successful at maintaining the proper intensity — TSS for the ride was 19.9, IF of less than .5; 115 NP watts.

If the lack of recovery type rides is a drawback, it is far outweighed by the ability to roll out my front door and do nearly any other type of workout.  Yes, it’s been difficult to find the flat, steady roads that are conducive to 20′+ SST type efforts, but I’m sure with a little searching, I’ll find a hill (or a mountain??) that will provide the appropriate distance.  As an added bonus, the hills makes the time spent training more efficient.  On my "long" day on Sunday, I rode for all of 2.5 hours, less than 40 miles, but managed to rack up 150 TSS points.  By comparison, my highest TSS total from one ride in Chicago was 155 and that was 45′ longer.

I have yet to ride with a group.  I’m curious to see how my level of fitness compares to the riders from around here.  I suspect given the extra weight I’m carrying, which has pushed my w/kg at threshold down to 3.44, I’m going to struggle.

Technorati Tags     training

Prerace routine and not getting caught up in the numbers.

My usual prerace routine involves an easy spin, a 7′ tuneup/test and a quick wipe-down, lube and check of the bike. Today, my team mate and I had the luxury of preriding the course, which is only 10′ from our neighborhood. It’s a flat, 4 corner crit. The only areas of potential interest are 1) out of turn 2 with a few meters of false flat at the beginning of the back straight. If you come out of the corner hard enough, you might be able to get a small gap. The rest of the backside is slightly downhill, making turn 3 really fast. 2) turn 4 into the finishing straight –again seems to be false flat and if the wind is coming from the south, this could be the (only) hard part of the course. It’s a long way from the turn to the line, so you’d have to be an animal to hold it, but it’s worth trying to avoid the usual chaos that is a Cat 4 field sprint.

The last 2 weeks I’ve set new season bests during my 7′ prerace tuneup. Today, I was down a bit, and initially panicked. Can I really be losing form just before the most important races of the year? But then I realized that all three average powers were within 2% of each other. The accuracy for a PT is claimed to be 1.5-2%, so I’m calling them all a wash. I may not have improved in the last three weeks, but I have certainly maintained the same level.

My moment of panic illustrates the danger of combining powermeter data and an academic (all right, perhaps geek would be a more appropriate term here) — the potential for overthinking. Overthinking during planning and training is not necessarily a bad thing; as long as you actually get the training done, all that thinking had done is kill a few hours. However, in a race overthinking is a serious problem, one that I still haven’t quite solved. All too often when the crucial moment in a race happens, I hesitate. Usually, I justify this hesitation in my head by thinking I’m following the cardinal rule of bike racing — CONSERVE ENERGY. But what’s the point in conserving energy and finishing 20th when you could go all out and may be finish top 10? Conservation might be a good idea when it comes to the environment, but in the last few laps of a crit, it’s a sure way to mediocre results.

Tuneups and testing
This season as my race prep I’ve adopted a slightly different protocol recommended by my coach (Joshua Barton at Wenzel) a 7′ tt.  I do the workout around a park near my neighborhood that has only 2 real corners (and only 2 4 way stops to blow through).  Because it’s a flat, completely open park, I can see cars coming from quite a way off and adjust my line and speed accordingly.  It’s long enough to be an aerobic workout and I make sure not to start too hard, so that I’m sure I’m targeting only aerobic energy pathways.

Because I do the same routine week in and week out, I figure it’s also a decent test  of form. The only problem lies in the cornering — if I need to slow down a lot for the corners, I’m off the gas for a few more seconds and thus bring my average power down for the duration.  I suspect I could hit higher numbers if I had a 7′ straight or out and back course.  However, the course resembles a mini-crit and if specificity is the key to successful training, I suppose this routine more closely mimics the kinds of races I do. 

Still, the past two weeks I have set season bests for the 7′, an encouraging sign that my form is coming around.  Now, lets see if that translates into some results on the weekend.

Technorati Tags     training