Sunday, March 23, 2008
Week No 4: Wells Avenue No 2
Well attended race included Brendan and Murat of the Millwork One Racing team. Someone sat up and deliberately let a gap open early on, 12 guys rode away unfettered never to be seen again.. until they lapped/re-joined us about 50 minutes later.. Sickening. Brendan and Murat spent untold laps at the front pulling/chasing/fighting to close said gap, along with other frustrated guys like Matt K., Kyle G., Eric M.. Final sprint included everyone and their brother with two watts left to rub together. Yours Truly is 8th in the field sprint.. meaning I wasted at least five of those who were in the break.. probably more. Brendan hot on my heels and looking as solid as ever after a tough day of racing Saturday at Charge Pond. In our new uniforms we looked pretty slick too. Power Meter numbers tell a promising story- my form today is very close towhat it was in July 2007, based upon today's CP20 and CP60 values. Yesterday's ride was 270 TSS- so the legs were pretty thrashed even before racing started today. Thanks for reading.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Tour of Turkey boosted by five ProTour teams
by Jean-François Quénet
ProTour Teams: Milram (Ger), Lampre (Ita), Saunier Duval (Spa), Silence-Lotto (Bel), Astana (Lux)
Professional Continental teams: Benfica (Por), Karpin-Galicia (Spa), Mitsubishi-Jartazi (Est), Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni (Ven), CSF Group-Navigare (Ita), NGC Medical (Swi), PSK Whirlpool (Cze)
Continental teams: Bourgas (Bul), Team Ista (Ger), Cosmote Kastro (Gre), Atlas-Römers (Swi), Liberty Seguros (Por), Tyrol-Team Radland (Aut), Sparta Praha (Cze), Partizan (Ser), Stegcomputer-CKT (Swi); 4 national teams: Netherlands, Ireland, Turkey, Brisa
April 13: Criterium Istanbul, 79.2km.
April 14: Izmir-Kusadasi, 132.7km
April 15: Kusadasi-Bodrum, 165.9km
April 16: Bodrum-Marmaris, 166.8km
April 17: Marmaris-Oludeniz, 177.7km
April 18: Kalkan-Finike, 100.1km
April 19: Finike-Antalya, 115.8km
April 20: Antalya-Alanya, 136.6km
Monday, March 10, 2008
Word of the Day: "Expeleration"
20 minute warm up
3 minutes FT+10% (for me this is about 270 watts, right now)
3 minutes Recovery
Repeat 2 more times
10 minute Recovery
3 minutes FT+10%
Repeat 1 more time
5 minutes recovery
Let me give you a visual of the meat and potatoes of this workout:
I applied 30 second smoothing so the data isn't so choppy. Please bear in mind that during the intervals, my PT display is set to show average watts, so I don't know when I've spiked or dropped wattage, I'm just aiming to manipulate the average as I go. Also notice the heart rate and how it increases during the interval, peaking at the last second. Not for nothing, but I believe that trying to do this workout with a HRM would attain a much different result in output- not necessarily a bad thing- just different. But that's coming from an admitted sufferer of OCD.. which will explain my infatuation with power data.. Anywho.. As you can see, I'm already tired going into this session. Each interval starts out strong and there's some weakness in the middle and then a strong finish at the end. It so happens that this past weekend was the final two days of a pretty stressful 4 week build, which the chart at the top will attest to.
Long story short, this means that I was not prepared to be a strong contender at either Bethel last Sunday, or at Ninigret yesterday. Fresh legs were needed, and mine were over-cooked. What I seem to have built up over the past 2000+ miles which began on Nov 18th is: cruising speed. Yesterday I can go at a pretty good clip and make average Joe suffer and wince in my wake- so long as the tempo didn't change.. but as soon as someone jumped and the speed of the pack went up 5 mph in an instant, I experienced something I will call "Expeleration™".. which is defined as "an acceleration which causes one to have sensations of riding their bike in reverse and getting spit out the back of a pack of bike racers." So yes, much like it happened at Bethel last Sunday, a certain expeleration™ in minute 10 of Ninigret required me to sit up and question whether I should regret not suffering through the episode or whether I was wise to catch my breath and try again. I soft pedaled to the start finish and cut across the course, taking what amounted to a half lap breather. From then on though, it was game-on. I rode with some [former] AFD and NBX folks- 6 or 7 of us total, and we did a nice rotation for the remaining 40 minutes of our race. I tended to take my pull from the fifth left hander out in back, all the way to the finish. Felt strong. People remarked to me that I was strong, but "what happened in the beginning there?" Seemed to me that Jim Peters, Mike M of AFD (riding a pristine 90's CONCORDE made rom STEEL) and myself did the lion's share of work while others skipped pulls repeatedly. In the end, we were lapped of course.. and I even sprinted for the line just because I felt like sprinting.. and almost took the "field sprint" if you can call it that- the field was shattered all over the course- with no telling who was in what position or who was lapped 3 times.. anyway, one guy came around me at the end.. but it felt good to finally accelerate on my own terms, at my own personal zone 5b.. Afterwards, team mate Brendan and I did a 60 minute tour of Charlestown, rode the old Bob Beal course in reverse.. after that my OCD kicked in again and I resolved to complete 3 full hours of riding so I did another 15 laps on the Ninigret couse by myself, which was more meditative than beneficial to my form.. Brendan was in the lead break for the first 15 minutes of racing and I was so happy to see him up there with Amos and Adam S and other big engines. He had to ease off later on but did a fine job of finishing somewhere in the top 6-8 guys. Bravo.
Today marks the beginning of a rest week- just a few active recovery zone 1/2 rides until Saturday- when a Field Test is scheduled to check my FT level. Weather permitting, this will be done on the road, as it should be. Future 08 training will be mostly outside, so establishing the new FT outside is kind of important.
Thanks for reading. Please spare me the "I-am-a-purist-and-ride-by-feel-and-you-suck-because-you're-a-slave-to-an-overpriced-toy" rhetoric. I don't need it. I don't appreciate it. Tongue-in-cheek one-liners are okay..
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Must be nice..
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Franz Wright's words of wisdom
"Letter" January 1998
I am not acquainted with anyone there,if they spoke to meI would not know what to do.But so far nobody has, I knowI certainly wouldn't.I don't participate, I'm not allowed;I just listen, and every morninghave a moment of such happiness, I breatheand breathe until the terror returns. About the timewhen they are supposed to greet one anothertwo people actually look into each other's eyesand hold hands a moment, butthe church is so big and the few who are thereare seated far apart. So this presents no real problem.I keep my eyes fixed on the great naked corpse, the vertical corpsewho is said to be loveand who spoke the worldinto being, before coming hereto be tortured and executed by it.I don't know what I am doing there. I do notice the more I lose touchwith what I previously saw as my lifethe more real my spot in the dark winter pew becomesâ"it is infinite. What we experienceas space, the skythat is, the sun, the starsis intimate and rather small by comparison.When I step outside the ugliness is so shatteringit has become dear to me, like a retardedchild, precious to me.If only I could tell someone.The humiliation I go throughwhen I think of my pastcan only be described as grace.We are created by being destroyed.
-Franz Wright..and now.. you know the rest of the story. I listened to Franz read this piece during an interview on NPR one day, and those last few lines made me want to pull over on the side of the road and put my head in my hands and cry. Those last six words continue to ring in my head and there isn't a day which passes that they don't cross my mind or my lips- albeit silently- to myself like a prayer or a national anthem where your voice is silent but your mouth wants people to think otherwise. As with the poisonous chemotherapy which my dear father is enduring these days as he fights the cancers in his body, so too does the phrase apply to the sport I love, in which stressing and breaking down the body systems causes adaptations which make them stronger and better. So I applied these words to my two blogs, and to the new uniforms of my bike racing team- on the back of the collar. It's hard to make out, but you can see it here, bottom center. To listen or read exerpts of the show which I believe I caught on NPR that day.. click here.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Yeah I love crunching the numbers..
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Ass was handed to me!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
Okay now I'm home.. and I don't feel so bad now that I know that the first ten minutes of the race were harder than the best ten minutes of my best race result of 2007- where I was 12th at New Britain. (Being 12th doesn't sound so great until you consider that I emptied the tank up to the final corner, making it through first, and I held on for dear life while 11 guys managed to pass me on that long sprint- I repeated this in the 30+ race which followed- first through the corner and 12th in the sprint)
At any rate:
Today's first 10 minutes: 228 avg watts, 322 watts normalized
New Britain 35+ 2007: 227 avg watts, 286 watts normalized
So all things considered.. I'm happy about today. I know that I was a little bit shell shocked with the accelerations and a little bit intimidated too, having not really raced since September 16th, where I crashed badly at Bob Beal.. Afterward, I rode down route 53 and 107 and route 7 to get some more saddle time in. Wifey leapfrogged me periodically in the car and then picked me up before we got on the Merrit Parkway.
Before I forget, let me salute my friend Ted S. for doing the 40+ and later also doing the P-1-2-3 with me. He looked as cool as a cucumber and seems poised to have a great year in 2008.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Nerves
Ronde de Bethel
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
A Clue! A Clue!
Below are exhibits 'A' and 'B'.
Above, notice the damage which was done in the Bob Beal Criterium crash of 2007. The pain I feel [on rides over 3 hours] occurs between 3 and 6 o'clock relative to the scar's position. Sometimes it feels like I can put my finger right on the spot that's injured or overused.
Below, left cleat of my shoe with a suspiciously extended float limiter. With the screw extended so far towards center, my heel's movement to the outside is quite limited. In contrast, the right cleat has quite a bit more float in it, in both directions. As you can see the crash has shredded the cleat a little bit and possibly spun that limit screw to where it shouldn't be. I never noticed it until tonight.. that my left foot had such a small amount of float, that is..
Monday, February 25, 2008
3:40 and time to replace the 357s
3:40 is the duration of Sunday's ride.. which also included team mates Joe, Scott, and Michael plus the "older Adam" and Kip. All good men and a pleasure to ride with. I rode to Prov Bike for a 9:45 intercept and we took off from there into western RI. A nice tempo ride for much of the time.. we took it easy on occasion and other times we throttled it full gas up some of the rollers.. Good times were had by all.. No crashes and no flats.. and we rode over lots of ice and snow!
The batteries used by the Powertap hub are No 357s- two of them are in there, both dead, which makes sense since they're rated to last 2500 miles and I just turned 5300. It did record data intermittently but was kaput by the time I got home. Yeah the knee hurt some more after I completed the 3rd hour. Was also tight for the first 20 minutes.. It's quite vexing to NOT KNOW what the fuck the exact problem is in there. I need to see a specialist and don't know where to begin. Maybe I should ring my PCP and get a referral. Otherwise I'm going to try seeing an A.R.T. (active release technician) That and I also need a root canal, for a tooth that supports my bridge.. again. Last time the surgeaon drilled right through the bridge and patched it back up. Yeah, when-it-rains-it-pours. Have a fine Monday!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Acutely Chronic.. ?
During my spin tonight I played around with rotation of my foot on the pedal and found that rolling my shoes to the outside of the pedal/lifting the arches gave a weird sense of relief. Could be all in my head, but I think that Lemond might be onto something with his "LeWedge" cleat enhancement. I might try these with my next cleat replacement, which will be soon. Additionally, I want to try some remedial insoles- the kind with the self-applied knobs underneath. Sometimes it feels like my shoes are giving me too little arch support, like my arches are just floating and tiring out my whole foot/ankle setup. Any experience out there with insoles (over the counter and custom) or LeWedge??
I believe my saddle height is optimal. I checked with my heels on the pedals, I checked my knee position at three o'clock. It's all within prescribed limits. My saddle is tipped about 3 degrees forward because having it level cuts circulation to my crotch. This puts a little more pressure on my hands though, and I've had them go numb on those "triple header" crit days where I do the 30+, 35+ and then the Pro-Am. My chrome handlebar tape offers little padding or relief, so maybe it's time to put something a little more forgiving on there.
So as of this date, I have 103.5 hours of training since my season kicked off in mid November, covering a total of 1651 miles. Since January 1st, I have 59 hours and 957 miles. Relative to 2007, I think it took me until the end of May to reach this point.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Conspiracy Theories: Intensity, Duration or RPMs?
"Well, let’s see.. your FT is 241 watts from your last test, then you go and do 218 NP for this ride today… uh yeah it’s gonna hurt – that is like 90% of FT! Even if you are underestimating your FT by a little since it is on the trainer, you are riding considerably more aggressive today – and it was supposed to be an endurance ride. Yesterday was a little to the high side of endurance but pretty much right on the money. Now I know you hit some hills a bit today so the variability was there (hence the bigger difference in NP from AVE watts), but it seems that when you ride with others you guys are getting into competing with each other out there. Your NP was almost 20 watts higher today than yesterday – that’s quite a bit. There are some high intensity efforts too – like the 1:20 effort at 410 watts at 1 hour 40 minutes. Your also running a rather low rpm which is going ot make sore legs and not good for that tendon. Late in the ride – 76 rpm??? Before that 84 rpm for almost an hour? Your not on the fixed gear so why so low? Yesterday your cadence was up there for the first half and then drops off too – what is going on? Are you dropping really low on the hills? It looks like that may well be part of the problem – climbing at 65-75 rpm – way too low. Take a look at these files and let me know what you see there relating to where you rode."
Here's what I think: To answer Todd's concerns about the cadence of Saturday's ride dropping in the 2nd half, that's mainly because the first half of the ride was flat- no hills to climb or descend. The second half of the ride was comprised of riding north of route 102 from where it crosses route 1 in North Kingstown all the way to route 117 in West Warwick. Non stop rollers, some of them are kind of hard. Considering that yes, I do tend to grind over a climb instead of spin, my cadence is lower. But then I also coast a bit down the other side, and since my PT is recording zeroes, the average drops even more on the hilly terrain. Moving on to Sunday's ride with my team mates Joe and Brendan.. I had the same average watts riding with them as I did on Saturday, but as Todd points out, my normalized power was 20 watts higher on Sunday- primarily because of two things:
-we hit a LOT of rolling hills for the entire ride
-I climbed a LOT of them out of the saddle
For those who don't know.. Normalized Power is the "if all things were somehow equal, your watts would have been: x.." kind of thing..
Now.. conspiracy theory coming up.. This past week I did two attempts at a Field test (Sat and Tues), I did intervals Wed and Thurs. No pain noted whatsoever in any of these zone 4 and zone 5 efforts. I thought my knee had cleared up completely, I really did.. But then when I go for a three hour endurance ride with about 30% tempo and some rolling hills (I took it easy on the hills btw).. the knee falls apart. This is a clear indication of two things:
1. My knee is well conditioned for hard efforts
2. My knee protests when the duration is abusive (3+ hours), not the intensity.
To wit, I did a lot of out of the saddle climbing on Sunday with my team mates. This is because the knee pain would almost dissipate completely during hard efforts out of the saddle. Seated and spinning hurt a LOT more. This all stands to reason because it's the first time in a long time that I'm doing three hour rides, back to back, week after week. I've also found myself to be more powerful when rpm is 100-105, and I've been favoring higher rpms for that reason.. But I've paid a price.. Think about it: A three hour ride at 80 rpm means 14,400 pedal revolutions. Do the same ride at 90 rpm and it means 16,200 revolutions, a difference of 1800, which can mean the difference between a knee feeling fine and acting up. On rides of over 3 hours, I might need to stick to doing the cadence which is less stressful on my knees. All of the evidence points to high cadence or high duration rides being the cause of my pain. If what coach says is true, lowering my cadence is what's causing the damage. I don't think cadence makes as much difference as the overall number of pedal revolutions of a long ride.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Stressing the system
Sunday's ride was 3:35:38 and covered 61 miles
Tendon is still problematic, but much less so than a month ago.
Didn't have to nurse it this weekend and it wasn't a limiting factor, but the inflammation could be felt. It's actually much worse after the ride is over, especially walking down a flight of stairs.
I got a taste of this tonight at the PPAC. My son and I were seated upstairs to watch the "Go Diego Go!" performance. Coming down the stairs I was grabbing the handrail. WTF? Am I going to need one of these before I'm 40?
Friday, February 15, 2008
REI Clearance Sale
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Introductions: Brendan and Scott
Two of the riders who have agreed to team up with me have also recently begun to write blogs of their own. I salute their decision to put themselves out there:
Scott Sullivan
Brendan Hanrahan
Pay a visit and spread the love.
New comment on Field Test "Do-Over" result
CP20 on 2/12: 251 watts, 24.5 mph, 8.191 miles covered
gewilli has left a new comment on your post "Field Test "Do-Over" result":
what is your margin of error?
statistically what does 12 watts mean?
what is the variance?
you want science?
you can't HANDLE science.
You want to USE science?
USE science, don't just use numbers.
Is 12 a meaningful difference indoors?
IS it from a 1-2 PSI difference in your tires on the trainer?
Is it from a 2-4°F difference in ambient temperature?
Is it from a 1-2 hour extra sleep differential over the last 3 days?
Is it due to eating better the 24 hours leading up to the test?
Is it due to being better hydrated?
better music?
better mentality?
or
is it the legs...
12 watts.
out of something around 300.
what % increase is that?
You say you want to use the science. But. Are you actually using science?
(hard tough questions - you may know the answers to them all - i'm still just trying to help you understand why i feel these are rather pointless toys)
Field Test "Do-Over" result
I'm happy to report that I added 12 watts to my functional threshold, relative to the last indoor field test I did on Jan 9th. When you train hard and see measurable improvement, it really fires you up.