Another Critical Workout

I psyched myself up for tonight's ride. It was 6:45 when I finally rolled out of the driveway- getting cool out too- I used a wool s/s base layer under a l/s jersey and a wind vest and leg warmers. Had just the right amount of ventilation. A long sleeve wind jacket would have been too much. I am sure glad I took that apple with me. On the big downhill that is route 12, I horked it down and that "need a stack of pancakes" kind of hunger went away. To drink- the large bottle had 4 parts Coca-Cola to 1 part water- my favorite. The small bottle was all water. Fully charged headlight- check. Tail light blinky- check. Two spares and a pump- check. Headband to keep the ears warm plus a skullcap in the pocket for later- check (I added the hat after 90 minutes- it was getting kind of raw outside) Now I know that doing the same route over and over is frowned upon by some and considered to be the enemy of fun times.. but I like the predictability. When you put yourself out there with a specific plan of action, a specific amount of work, a specific intensity- better not to screw around with roads and with distances which you're not very familiar with. This route is challenging, varied, and keeps me close to home- I'm never more than 10 miles away from the house, yet it's 57 miles and doubles back on itself for only 1 mile. At any rate- what makes a critical workout, critical? If I need to tell you, then you probably aren't doing any such rides, and to you, a ride is a ride is a ride- they're all equally fun yet regrettably, they're pointless junk relative to getting faster. If you DO know what I mean, then we should agree that it's the one ride on your Mon-Fri schedule that should be the last one you omit from your program, let's say, due to life requirements or other limitations. For some, it could be a smack-down ride in a group. For others, it might be a training race. For me, it's the Tour de Murat- and it's always done alone and in private, and it's always the one ride I think about and plan a week or more in advance. At any rate, what do I know? The stuff that works for me, at least I share it here freely and don't collect a check from you for the privilege. I got home at 9:45. Enjoy the data:

Prospect Park and Wells Ave Race Reports

are not really worth getting into.. but I will give you the readers digest versions:
Prospect: Trusty tubular front wheel goes flaccid about 40 seconds before the start. I go screaming back to the car for my spare wheel- ref said I had "one minute", I'm back in one minute. Field is gone. I take pursuit on the rolling 3.4 mile course. The first lap was supposed to be neutral but apparently my cold-engine five minute TT at 26 mph was not fast enough to close the gap. Go figure. I sit up after 3 miles. I wait. I jump into the race for the next 8 laps. I'm feeling good- I'm feisty- I'm attacking and covering all the eye-popping moves up the big ring power hill. But I can tell that I'm an un-marked man. I didn't sneak into the race- I made sure everyone saw me.. It just felt like everyone dismissed me as down a lap and didn't really care what I did.. Whatever. There was a nasty crash right in front of me- a total freakshow the way these guys started knocking into eachother and tightening their death grip on the handlebars. I was forced to swerve left pretty hard and even then one of the bodies would have had me go ass over head if it had shifted just a few inches to the left. In the closing 2-3 laps, 5 guys were up the road, followed by another 3.. With about 2.5 miles to the finish, final lap, I accelerate, I detach and I try to make it to the end solo- not really sure how I'll be ranked. It's too early. I'm swarmed with still about 500m to go. I shut it down and ride to the finish in the right hand gutter, kind of pissed.. in the mood to actually punish my tubie front wheel a la the black guy with the pliers in Pulp Fiction. After a change of apparel I set out to do about 2 hours of tempo in the park. There's some kind of duathlon going on and there were tri-folks all over the place with their tongues hanging out. I'm using them as carrots as I pick them off one by one and lap some of them repeatedly. I think I did an extra 10 laps after my race so it eneded up being a 70 mile day. It was misty, drizzly and foggy at the start of my race and it stayed that way all morning until the moment that I finished cleaning the bike and placed it in the car. Effing sun finally breaks out at around 11:00. I'm very encouraged by my form on Saturday, which followed a couple days of proper rest Thurs/Fri. Racing on wet roads at 6:30 am in Prospect Park wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The coolest thing was seeing all the locals riding towards the race from different directions, kind of like gang members descending upon a pre-determined war zone. The really cool thing about racing in New York is the diversity. Fully 1/4 of the fields are black guys and another 1/4 of the fields are Latinos. It's a different world and it gives the race a completely different flavor- I like it. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of other Turkish guys in my race- one of whom I know personally. What are the odds?
Wells Ave- all I will say is that yesterday's Wells Ave race was by far the hardest A/B combined race I've ever done. Maybe this is relative to the amount of time I spent sucking wind at the front, maybe it was the very windy conditions, not sure.. but I've never worked so hard and felt so tired with so little to show for it. I attacked a few times just to make it into a workout and on one occasion I was followed by someone with no real intention of trading pulls, even though we had a monster of a gap built.. Oh well.. I think my legs were a little bit cooked from Saturday, but the two main insigators of the winning break- Marvin and my team mate Adam- they both raced Sterling on Saturday! Go figure. Maybe I'm just a sissy-boy weenie who needs a nice tall glass of TTFU. Oh well, we got our man Adam up there and he was good for 5th at the finish. Plus of course our Matt K took the 1/2 way prime and we had our boy Brendan in one of the chase groups up the road as well. Nice work team.. Thanks for reading.

Prospect Park

I'm pre-registered for the first part of the New York Race Series- doing the 35+ race at 6:30 am tomorrow in Prospect Park. The first and last time I raced here was with former junior teammate Derek Larson- a prodigy of the late 80s who was distracted from racing by a career in the military. Anyway, we drove down to Prospect Park one cold April morning and lined up to start a senior race which included George Hincapie- there weren't enough juniors so they combined us. That was the 2nd ever USCF race that I entered. I did poorly. The day before, I did my first ever USCF event - a junior road race somewhere in the Albany region. It snowed. The cat 2/3 race which followed was stopped due to the white out conditions. There was 3 laps with a big hill. I led out the sprint (surprised?) and one only kid came around and took the win from me. A year or two later (1988 I think), Derek and I had another road trip while still juniors. First to a crit in Wantagh LI where I think Derek flatted and I was 7th or so. We spent the night at my aunt's house in Brooklyn and headed out to Newport the next mroning to do the "Bank of Newport Bicycle Classic". This was back when I still lived in western NY, so Newport was a foreign place to me. Maybe there are some local masters who remember this junior race- that would be cool. I don't remember much about it other than I went off the front with another kid for a few laps. We were given a two place prime- 1st place was a TISSOT watch, and 2nd place was $20. I wanted the cash and it was easy to get.. We were caught on the next lap and a new break formed before too long. Derek knew what he was doing, that's for sure. He knew everyone in the field who mattered. When this break formed he went flying past me to get into it and said "it's TIME!. go NOW!!". I did not have the legs to follow him. He and 6 or 7 kids got away and stayed away. I stayed in the field. Derek won the final sprint and the race. I took 2nd or 3rd in the field sprint for 10th overall. I didn't return to this New England area again until 1999 when I had a career change. They had some really cool long sleeve shirts and posters for the Newport Race that year. I wish I still had mine. When we returned to Rochester, our names were in the sports page of the Democrat and Chronicle newspaper. Derek's Dad called it in while we were still driving home on I-90. Good times.

Ninigret Crit No 2

Both the data and the results are a little different this week. (Today we were over 1 mph faster than last week) Where last week we had a large break of about 12 get whittled down to 8 after a crash in which Jayson H broke his collarbone (get well soon, Jayson and John G), this week we had a small break of 3 disconnect somewhat early and survive until the end. Last week, your hero somehow managed to win the field sprint, but this week with less starpower up the road the field sprint was a little different. What I lack in speed and fitness, I try to make up for with reflexes and unpredictability.. but my early jump was not difficult to predict this time- it's understandably hard to resist tagging on when I come around the field kamikaze style with 400m to go.. I had company at the line because I gave a perfect lead-out to Tobi S, Gary A, and Wayne K. This puts me 4th in the field and 7th overall- one spot out of the cash/schwag/whatever. As in the week before, I enjoyed this race immensely. Up the road ahead of us were Bill Y, Ernest T, and someone from Newport with good form. I think Bill won.. well I'd bet that he did anyway.. Thanks for reading.
Note: The chart's all metric!

Cinco de Mayo Chart

Thanks to G-Diddy I did not sign up for S.P.I.N. class and instead I went home after work and hit the road around 6:30 with headlight. To avoid having any fun whatsoever, I deliberately set some goals for this ride, resolved to do a certain amount of work and used a regular route that helps me understand whether I'm adapting properly and getting faster or just doing junky fun miles.. So here's the tsunami of data that you didn't ask for (below), that you do not care about, and that you dismiss as useless relative to having fun. Please click on it and read the numbers because really- I did this ride to impress you. When it comes to racing a bike- satisfaction is a little more of a serious matter than having fun. Those of us who are not 20-something or naturally gifted and who fight tooth and nail to be fast enough to hold the correct wheel at the end of a [masters] crit and occasionally come around it and score a decent result- we require more than la-dee-daa fun rides to adapt and contend. We train pretty seriously. The Jonny Bs and Bill Ys and Ciaran Ms and Mark Mcs of the world do not fall ass backwards into great results. There's a process involved, and when you're in your late 30s or into your 40s, you're shoveling shit against the tide. "Fun" is a relative term. I guess if you're like me and you get satisfaction from reading data which shows you measurable results, this can be considered the fun part of training. When you are not winning races and need some motivation or confidence, the peaks within the data represent 'wins' on some level. It's entirely possible that the race which you blew tactically, or where you got shelled, or where you were pipped at the line for the win, was your best performance ever, but you would never know it without the tools. It's fine and dandy to disagree with this approach. To each his own.

This rainy weather blows

Debating whether to go to the Y for a SPIN class followed by some Nautilus or do I stick to the windtrainer at home.. At least at the Y you get to see people! I should call now before the class is filled.

2009 Blue Hills Classic Race Report 35+

Any of you who saw me race today know very well that I have little to report other than sitting in the field and clenching my teeth to get over the hill six times without getting popped. Today was a relative success, compared against last weekend, when I could not get out of my own way in the Quabbin Pro Race. I have done solo 3-1/2 hour training rides this past week, that were faster than my speed at Quabbin. Long story short, I'm coming off of a huge disappointment from the week before, and expectations for today were not high. Last year this race was only four laps and raced in the cold rain. In 2008, your hero was off the front for about a lap, then dropped, then swarmed and passed by the 35 field.. ditto for the 45 field. Past experience was not a positive experience at Blue Hills. Today we did 2 extra laps! Understandably, I went to today's race with mixed feelings about my chances of doing well. With about 1k to go, I positioned myself aggressively- top 8-12 guys. McMark was on my wheel as I was hugging the yellow line, observing those around me, trying to be ready to react to something. Next thing you know, Mark has sprinted around me, away from us and up the road- instant 5 second gap. There's a 35mph speed limit sign that marks about 2 minutes to go and I can't remember if we were past it yet. I got out of the saddle and followed whichever wheels I could tag onto, making it up the lower half of the climb in the top 10. But that final part of the climb appeared and I was hurting- I had buried myself a little too much, a little too soon. By the time I was up the hill and on the flat approach to the finish, I was pedaling squares and being swarmed on both sides. In the last 100 meters, I passed about 5 guys but was also passed by about 15 guys, ending up right smack in the center of the results- 26th out of 51 finishers. 25 beat me to line, 25 did not. You can't get any more mediocre than that! But all things considered, I'm satisfied. No flats, no crashes, no broken chains, no getting dropped. The hill was a lot easier this year than last, and I have data to prove it. I weigh about 3 kilos less this year, and it has definitely helped me. Here's a comparision between Blue Hills 2008 and Blue Hills 2009:
The dashed line represents 2008, where overall watts were much higher because I was either off the front or off the back- riding alone for the most part. The solid line shows you 2009's peaks for Blue Hills. The charts intersect at the 3:45 duration. Keep in mind that there's a 3kg difference between the two sets of data.
Here's the power distributions for 2008 and 2009. Can you tell which is which?Seems I did three times as much coasting today (0-10 watts) as I did one year ago..

Thanks for reading.

2009 Blue Hills Classic Results

You also get a good look at the mess I make of my car when I race. Good thing I drive a van. Here's the 35+:

The 45+:
Cat 5:
Cat 4:

Ninigret Crit No 1

Having a warranty service call at a school project in New London- ideal to set up the appt for Wed afternoon, because afterwards, I can go straight to Ninigret for the first smack-down of 2009. I'm not alone in getting there early- lots of guys showed up at 5:00 and took off to get a nice 60 minute spin/warm-up before hand. I timed my arrival such that I ended up doing a nice little loop with Dave K, Mike M and Mike C- what could be better? Funny- first half of the ride I can't get the new Ergomo to work- I try everything- no watts, speed or rpms. Then 15 minutes into it I remember that the Ergomo doesn't automatically connect to the data like the Powertap you have to plug in the wire yourself, dummy! Phew! For a few minutes there, I though that my $650 investment had gone up in smoke.. We got back around 6 and I decided to change out of my short sleeve Under Armor and into my long sleeve thermal Under Armor. Temps were 55 at first, but now they were dropping and I was sweaty. More warm-up on the race course while the B's raced- which seemed to really screw up their event- 'A' riders were all over the place, getting in their way.. We lined up at 6:30 with a pretty good sized field- about 40-45 guys. Maybe more. I worked really really hard in the first 15-20 minutes. At the front for some duration pretty much every lap, and for many laps in succession. Primes are being given, but I'm not ever really feeling strong enough to go for any. Then about 1/4 way through our race, right after a prime sprint, about 15 guys roll away and leave about 30 of us behind. The gap is small- if I hadn't buried myself the lap before, I could have jumped across.. but timing was not on my side. This 5 second gap grew and grew and grew until it was basically about 1/2 a lap and they surfed the field until the end. This contained the usual Mark M, Tobi S, Bill Y, Adam S, Gary A and others- didn't get a real good look at all of them from behind as they hit the throttle. There was a crash in the breakaway group in turn No 2 and bodies were scattered all over. I heard that a collarbone was broken, don't know who.. The break was whittled down to 8-10 guys after this (see the deep valley in the HR chart, as we all coasted through to avoid hitting the casualties). I'm happy to go to the front and take some pulls, do some work, maybe get close to the break, whatever. This is a training race. On one lap I decided I'm going to turn myself inside out for about 1 minute and see if I can drag some of the stronger guys with me. My team mate Mike S. is the only one who can follow, and by the time I ease up, I can't even follow his wheel, I'm so cooked (see the peak in the HR chart). Then three other guys blow past me and I try to latch on, but the field was onto us by the time I caught my breath. We picked up quite a bit of time on the break- [that lap], but we weren't really organized and the host team had a lot of guys in the field- maybe they were blocking- I couldn't tell. Later on.. with 5 laps to go I resolved to freshen myself up for the finish and avoid those 1 minute intervals which I so love to do while racing. Sat in and let the HR drop to the low 160s (you can see it in the chart) Last lap, an NBX rider went for it a little past the finish- opened a nice gap. 4-5 guys were in pursuit of him on the back stretch and I followed these wheels after making it through the crunch that was the 2nd to last corner. As it turned out, I had the freshest legs of the front 5 because I accelerated past the pursuers right before that final dog leg corner, passing them on the right and accelerating up to the NBX whose last match burned out about 200 meters before the line. I got myself a field sprint by a few bike lengths, thanks to a good recovery and a well-timed acceleration. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it's one of those things that you NEED after falling apart in a road race and finishing one hour down on everyone. Confidence is built a little bit at a time.. I also took a nice prime. Does your mouth water just thinking about the taste? Thanks for reading.

Cramping 101

If you race for 90 minutes with severe muscle cramps (racing is probably incorrect- more like "getting your ass back to the car..") such that you can actually see your muscles deform and change shape, and if there is residual pain in all of these muscles in the days which follow, what does it mean? Is this an indication of serious muscle fiber tears? Have I ripped myself up? It sure feels like it. I could easily Google this, but I'd rather hear what readers think about the damage caused by muscle cramps. Maybe if Sunday's race wasn't point to point, maybe if it was 5 laps around a 12 mile course, then maybe I wouldn't have finished, but maybe the damage to my leg muscles would have been limited. (??)

(Final) Stage 8 sprint crash Tour of Turkey 2009

Out of all the carnage of that final 4 km, one of Turkey's finest pro road racers- Mirac Kal- took 9th place. The Turkish National Team's best placed rider in General Classification was Ugur Marmara, at 69th (1 hour 17 minutes back from winner) which isn't bad for a 29 hour, 1200km, 8 day stage race. Heck I lost an hour to the winner of yesterday's 63 mile Quabbin Road Race. Puts things in persepective..
Here's a link to the Cycling News report on the final stage and overall GC

2009 Quabbin Reservoir Road Race

Above is the published profile of the 63 mile race course. Below is my bike computer's interpretation of the profile. Which one do you think I looked at when I decided to race this event? The chart below shows only altitude and heart rate.
All kidding aside, many things about my race were absolutely awful. Fortunately, I also have the luxury of finding the good concealed within the bad and the ugly. This week I increased my training volume way too much, by a factor of 2.35.. and today's lousy performance was not a surprise. The cramping surprised me, and the difficulty of this course surprised me (see above). Let me also add that "Mapmyride" indicates only 3035 vertical feet of climbing. My Polar and my Ergomo beg to differ. Polar recorded 4419 feet of climbing and Ergomo 5066. I hear that District Championships used to do TWO laps of this?? 126 miles?? Good grief that would suck.

17.15 pounds

After 2-1/2 years of riding my LOOK 486, I finally weighed it today. It includes pedals and two cages. I'm impressed with old bike. Looking at BMC frames lately.

Critical Workout

I did a solid ride after work- over three hours. Got home at 9:15. I love doing the backroads at night with headlight and blinky. Feels kind of hard core.. Now that I'm a 'bachelor' for the nest many weeks, I can train with impunity, well into darkness, and not worry about what time I'm expected home. and now that the crap weather of the past few days has passed, it's time to really put my head down and do the proper ratio of work and rest to force the kind of adaptations that I'm after. It might interest some of my five readers to know that I am not using a coach any longer, not since last August. We keep in touch, but I've been the captain for the past 8 months. So here's tonight's ride- and I'll bet it's not too different from the Quabbin Reservoir Road Race route on Sunday.

Plan B

The incessant precipitation this week has required me to train indoors- no commuting to work and no Ninigret Crit last night. It's been weird adjusting to training without power data! Monday I did an easy one hour crotch numbing spin on the rollers. Why not the windtrainer? because I want to get a mileage reading and for this to happen with my Polar HRM, the front wheel needs to be in motion! Yes the true colors of my OCD shine through. No worries. Better men have done worse.. So Tuesday I decide to add a little bit 'o intensity, but with a HRM on rollers, I need to be in the 53x13 just to get my heart rate up to 160. So I'm trying to adapt to the situation.. I decide- let's hit it HARD for 1-2 minutes and wind up the heart rate to 160, then soft pedal it back down to 140 and repeat. This is a JOKE! Training by heart rate is effing medieval IMHO. Heart rate takes forever to catch up to the effort on the pedals. It's like Rain Man.. who would answer questions posed to him two hours ago or whatever, you know what I mean.
So on Friday I expect for my new ERGOMO Pro system to arrive with matching carbon cranks. I got them for a song, from an Ebay seller who accepts returns within 7 days- no strings. I know I threw the dice big time on this one, but the features of the Ergomo computer were too good to ignore, and the price was a no brainer. Plus I was tired of racing on a rear wheels that others have accurately described as an "anchor". Now the very light and hardly ever used Easton Tempest 2 rear wheel can finally populate my race bike instead of hanging in the garage.
Last night- I'm hoping to ride the bike home and it begins to pour.. at 3:00 pm I call the YMCA- the 5:45 SPIN class is full, so I add myself to the wait list. I don't wait for a phone call, I just GO, and as luck would have it, there was one no-show. I did a solid one hour of SPIN averaged 218 watts and 160 bpm. Today I'm feeling it. Saturday I will be doing a loooong easy ride to try out the Ergomo. Sunday we're racing the Quabbin Reservior Pro race. It's going to be a nice hot race. Thinking back to the last Pro-Am road race I did- the 2006 Topsfield race. That year my fighting weight was a lean 165 pounds, and I was using my current LOOK 486 bike, without Powertap- I had the matched pair of Eastons on there. My approach for Sunday is to just make the best of it and enjoy the ride. No pressure on myself to perform. I'll save that for the A races (criteriums) coming up later on this summer. We have a couple of guys on our team who are capable of winning on Sunday and it's going to be exciting..

2009 Rick Newhouse Criterium

In the 35+ race, I won the Best Prime Ever, by attacking before the 2nd to last corner and holding off a pursuing Eric Marro. More on the contents of this mysterious brown bag they call the "Men's Vitality Prime" later.. This could rate as the highlight of my day at that point but there is more to tell. Our humble team scored The Big Slick. A very in-form Matt Kressy took 2nd in the 35+ (by winning the field sprint) and then took a commanding win in the Pro-Am race which followed. I'm in NY today but I'll post some pics of the results later on. The other highlight of my day was attacking the 'field' before the final corner and almost making it to the line for 11th- but one guy stuck to my wheel and easily came around my dead legs just before the line. I was suffering in the Pro-Am race which followed- we had our man in the break and the attacks to bridge across wore me out enough that I cracked with 8 to go. Still a great day!

Brown

Holy smokes everyone on Thayer Street is in stripper mode.
It's a sea of pasty white skin..

Karma

I just shipped a pair of Mavic Cosmic Carbone SL wheels to a guy in Japan, using a cardboard box that originally came here from Taiwan with 1/2 dozen Specialized floor pumps in it.

Next: Rick Newhouse Criterium

Looks like some decent weather for racing on Saturday. I'm in for the 35+ and the Pro-Am which follows it. Training has been low volume but high quality these past many weeks. More than anything I want to have a great time and not crash. Last year I raced on a slow leak on the rear tire and was lucky to crack top ten with it. Maybe this year I'll have better luck. You know me- I'm not 'skilled' enough to avoid an unpredictable flat tire! Hehe..

Good luck to all you Battenkillers. Bike shops are licking their chops in anticipation of all the equipment failures that will be checked in next week for repair.

Gaaaah!!

I just agreed to sell my 12,000+ mile Powertap wheel! Need to find a nice matched pair of wheels to replace them with- preferably Zipp 404s! Who's selling? Has anyone ever heard of 50mm "Blackwell Research" carbon wheels? There's a matched pair on Ebay I think I can get for $1250 or so.. I think it's far eastern stuff rebadged here in the states, but what isn't these days???