Riding Outside Again!

After putting in over 260 outdoor miles in January, I had NONE in February, so joining up with a nice sized contingent of MRC members plus one 545 Velo pal on Saturday for a longish ride was quite nice.




The way the ride came off was awkward in more than a few ways: the start time was changed, the route was not well planned or known, the level of effort targeted by the person who posted the ride was overridden by the majority of the participants and lastly, I got shelled about halfway through.

Nevertheless, it was great to find out if all those hours on the trainer, using TrainerRoad workouts, had a positive effect on my performance. Net result: mixed.

On the upside, I was able to sustain a 30 minute effort at 92% FT – not from the beginning of the ride, but STARTING 24 miles in. Of course, I had the help of a large paceline which consisted of a lot of Cat 3 and 4 racers who did nearly all of the work up front to get me to that point.

It was at the end of that stretch, leading up into Carlisle along a series of short, punchy rollers (on a route called, "The Monster Bullet Train") that I hit a (the) wall. Bleh.

After a few minutes of deliberation, we stuck together as a group, but I thought the writing was on the wall. A little while later, recovered, I hit my best 5 min power for the ride heading up Nagog Hill. I don't know where THAT came from. Still: I was last up by a long way and a few minutes later, I thought I had been dropped for good.

I was fine with that: everyone else was in the groove and I knew my way back so I pedaled on, planning to continue for as long as I could at tempo.

No sooner did I start scrounging my "mental radio" for a song to help me soldier on, than I was overtaken by one of our group who was inadvertently left behind after dropping something he wanted to retrieve. Yay: company!

We met back up with the group at a coffee stop in Concord center and I was able to keep up the rest of the way back to Berlin.

So, what is the missing piece of the puzzle, looking at my fitness/training at this point? The usual: climbing.

If I'm not able to get outside and do the real thing, I need to figure out how to properly simulate climbing on the trainer. Also, I need to mix tempo efforts with climbing: all the TrainerRoad workouts give you really easy rest intervals, I should just do tempo during those perhaps.

Side Work

Noticed that I logged 263 road miles (in addition to many hours on the trainer) in the month of January and ABSOLUTELY NONE so far in February. This is due to a combination of the weather (blizzard of '13, rain), a death in the family and ensuing travel involved, and illness (nasty cold had me knocked out for 5 days).

Meanwhile, I did manage to do a long overdue refresh of the Minuteman Road Club website. Nothing special, moved everything over to WordPress to make it easier to take over should I no longer be webmaster there: 

Favorite part is the right sidebar area that has tabbed feeds from Strava, Twitter, Road Results and Cross Results.

On Winter Base Miles

What is it about putting in long miles on icy cold winter days that makes them so satisfying? Is it the unhurried pace? Knowing that you are doing something even most other cyclists would look at you a bit crookedly for?

Fenders. A kind gesture not only for you but also for your buddies.

Up A Notch.

Did a 20 minute FTP test today (self administered via TrainerRoad on my Kurt Kinetic Road trainer). Bumped FTP up to 249 watts from 242 and LTHR to 158 bpm from 152.

Of course, the question is: could I have gone harder? Here's the tale of the tape:

I can honestly say that I don't know. You can see how I ramped it up a bit there towards the end, but it was agony. I do know it was a good thing nobody was home at the time, I was making quite a racket between breathing hard and gasping loudly.

Starting The Year Out Right: New Year's Day Ride

Now, I'm no hard man like some others I know who commute long miles all winter long, regardless of the weather. But occasionally, I overcome my tendency towards la dolce vita and do what I otherwise would think is a little nuts.

And so, with surprisingly very little prodding (or sleep), I took a mostly easy-paced ride with Gary yesterday. Temp was in the low 30's F, wind seemed to be out of the southwest at 10-15mph giving a nice wind chill of about 19ºF.

Video: Team Sky TT training outside Amsterdam

Watch for the water bottle tossed by a passing motorist at the team at 3:20. If you can't stand techno music, mute your sound now.

[via cyclinginquisition.com]

2009 Rehash - 2010 Goals Set

Got a 1 hour trainer session in yesterday and again today - this momentum will help me get caught up on the backlog of Heroes episodes I've collected since the fall. Felt pretty good, considering I hadn't been on the bike or trainer since early November. Sheesh.

Good news is my period of winter laziness was much shorter than last year - as long as I stick to it. Let's take a look back at 2009 and see how different it was from 2008:

• I bumped my total mileage up 9.5% from 2,640 miles to 2,889.
• My total "saddle time" was down 2%, largely due to the complete lack of indoor trainer sessions early in 2009 and the very late start of road work (May).
  
• For the same reason, I only logged 101 days with rides in '09 while in '08, I got in 112. Can't complain as most of those 101 days were on the road and not trainer sessions.
• Average monthly weight for the year was 172 vs. 2008's 177 lbs. (I'm starting 2010 at 169)

Things I'm happy about as I look back on 2009:

• Went from getting dropped to not only keeping up with the MRC Wednesday night crew but having a few very respectable performances.
• Rode 3 centuries during the year: Climb to the Clouds, Chatham-Provencetown and back, CRW Fall Century
• Regularly mixed in some good core body exercise as well as started to log a few running miles.

Disappointments:

• No Wells Ave. races
• Couldn't afford to buy a CX bike.
• Didn't enter any races
• Got sick in the late fall and stayed off the bike until new year

Ok, enough about the past - what about the coming year? How about a few goals?

• Complete the Harpoon B2B
• Centuries
  • Mount Greylock
  • Climb to the Clouds (set new PR)
  • CRW Fall Century (set new PR)
• Enter 5 Wells Ave races (early season)
• Enter Sterling Classic
• Enter 5 Charlie Baker time trials
• Save pennies for a CX bike and race it in the fall
  
• Make running a regular part of weekly workouts
• Set PR's for 20 and 40 miles

Is that too many? I didn't want to make it too easy!

Mildew and Cobwebs

Two days in a row down in the dungeon on the trainer. Today, I got jinxed by a nice lady at the bank who, just as I was walking out the door said, "Well, it sure is nice that it's not raining today."

And then, of course, it started to rain.

In fact, it has been raining quite a bit around here lately and so I poked about the intertubes looking to see if our June precipitation was out of the norm. Found this page at NOAA's site. Boston rainfall appears to be close to normal, but for Worcester (Maynard is a bit closer to Worcester than Boston) it's nearly 50% over the average for June... and we have 7 days left in the month!

Meanwhile, my daughter is halfway through the fourth Harry Potter book. Along with reading the series so far on her own, my wife and I have taken some turns reading to her. Of course this means that I've read only bits and pieces of each book and can't seem to piece any of it together. As a result, I've been watching the movies while spinning on the trainer. I'm about 2/3 the way through "... and the Chamber of Secrets". Sure beats staring at the dryer.

Playing My Cards Right

Distance: 25.3 mi.

TIme: 1:19:21

Avg. Speed: 19.15 mph

Weather: 59ª, 98% humidity, wind NNE1 (I didn't check the weather stats after the ride)

Song stuck in head: Highway Star - Deep Purple

Set out to do the MRC Saturday loop for two laps. The Harpoon Brewery B2B was also today, so I didn't expect any takers to the invitation to join me, but nonetheless, I would pause at the Stow Plaza Parking lot in between laps to gather up anyone looking to do the second lap with me. I'd missed two days of riding due to a very busy work schedule and my legs felt quite rested.

The weather looked great, considering how lousy it has been for what has seemed like forever. I left the parking lot at 6 a.m., targeting HR at 150 (except for climbs) and cadence to 100 (especially on the climbs). I took it easy the first 4 miles, averaging 18 mph or so and pushed harder than usual up the little steps that lead up and across Rte. 2 on the way to Littleton Station. The Oak Hill climb went very well (10' 18" climb time) and so did the next one up Bolton Road out of Harvard Center.

TRAINING NOTE: I think I've just about nailed down a technique that works well for me regarding pedal cadence and gauging available effort: on a climb, if I'm able to spin up to 95 rpm or better, I seem to be able to maintain at least 90 rpm while in the next smaller freewheel cog. Also, on flats/rollers, if I can spin up to 105 easily, I seem to be able to kick it over kick my speed up a mph or two in the next smaller cog.

The descents back into Stow were uneventful and I seemed to have plenty of power to keep my speed at or above 21 mph all along S. Acton Road. On Red Acre, I really made sure I kept my speed at or above 18 mph by doing mini-sprints up every little rise in the road all the way back to the parking lot.

I got to the parking lot at 7:20 a.m., 10 minutes before I predicted I would, shifted to an easy gear and pedaled around the lot to wait for anyone arriving to do the second lap. As I did so, I really hoped no one would show: today is my wife's birthday and I decided that I wanted to sneak back home and make her breakfast in bed (she is a very late sleeper on weekends). Besides, I want to do a 4 hour or so ride tomorrow, so it made sense to cut it short today from that standpoint as well. Today's ride was on the short side but very good.

When it hit 7:35 a.m., I turned for home and got the scrambled eggs going.