Team Roaring Mouse at Early Bird Road Race (Photos)

I couldn't make it out to this RR to do support or take photos, so I was glad to find some good pics of the team kicking off the road race season.

• Dan and Nick
• Hank
• John B
• Nick again
• DP

Thanks to Ammon (@skid) for the link, reposted from the NCNCA blog.

Training Log 1/25: Build 1 done

My first build block is complete, including a good pre-planned rest week this week. And rest I did, with 5 lower intensity rides this week. It took most of the week days to feel fully recovered from that hard ride last Sunday, so I was totally with the program of taking it easy.

Yesterday was more of a fun ride. I did a fairly brisk Paradise loop, at a steadily efficient zone 2. It's a good route for keeping the pace up without going hard. Did the same route today, but as an easy spin, averaging > 2mph slower.

I've been looking at my training stats for some sign of how my training has changed between training phases, apart from the obvious jumps in the Performance Management Chart (line graph thumbnail posted in right column). The volume numbers (hours, miles) generally don't show all that much difference and even the intensity tends to average out to similar levels over the course of a month.

The best way I've found is the HR distribution charts in WKO. The latest shows a much stronger concentration in the mid aerobic ranges, while all 3 of the recent months are much more focused than the racing months, with lots of time spread fairly evenly between low, medium, and high intensity.

Build 1 (last 28 days):

The last 4 weeks have had very little truly low-intensity time, but still plenty from mid-zone 1 (125-130) and the most concentrated zone 2 (135-149) I've done. Zone 3 and 4's been dosed in, especially on the hills. Sprint work was there but isn't going to be visible in these volumes (better seen in power #s).

Base 1 & 2 (December and November):

December was a bit lighter than November, mostly due to a nagging injury early in the month and the holidays later on

November was the kickoff of serious base time, but with a track race and Mt Ham hill climb mixed in for fun, creating some top-end time

Racing last summer (August, June, and May):

August was my hardest month of 2008 by the measure of time spent in zone 5 (170-180+), but overall volume was down due to getting hit by a car before San Ardo. Fort Ord RR and the San Rafael crit were pretty tough.

June a relatively hard month of racing (esp. Pesdadero, Napa crit, and Diablo hill climb), but I got a decent amount of non-race training in, too.

May was my biggest month in 2008 by intensity and volume (in terms of TSS, kj, miles, and hours), but was obviously pretty all over the place, looking at this chart.

Roaring Mouse team camp

The team camp was a great team-building success, I think, with some good off-bike time and great riding. Last year was supposed to be the first annual camp, but it got rained out. Our weather this weekend was excellent.

Mice after Saturday ride

18 of us arrived at the rental house on Discovery Bay on Friday night, trickling in around 8pm. It was a pretty big place on the bay, complete with dock and pontoon boat (which got some use, but that's a story for someone else to tell). The co-op-style food planning worked well. Friday dinner was simple, given the hour, but the breakfasts and afternoon grilling made for some quality ride chow Saturday and Sunday, thanks to DP, Ryan, Nick, and Dan. 

Saturday was a pretty mellow day for me. I hadn't felt like I had time to get the new Leopard bike fully ready Friday night (good call since it took much of Saturday afternoon), so rode the Waterford. When we hit the big hills through Patterson Pass, the pace really picked up. I dropped my chain at the right time, since that got me out of that group and let me settle me down to more of a tempo climbing pace. The group up front looked like it stayed together for most of it, but there were a few guys behind me so I didn't feel hurried. On Altamont, I set a fairly brisk tempo at the front at the start of the climb, and just let the group ride by when they wanted to go harder. I did get in a big attack later on the flats, but generally it was a good aerobic training day and good team fun. Terrence, our recent Cat 2 addition, drove over for the morning ride and hung out. 

I headed into Sunday with my new bike ready to ride and was pretty eager to test the bike and my legs. And after the Saturday night season-planning chat, I also felt like I probably needed to show a bit more strength, given that I've just been cruising along in most team rides (sprints excepted). That was a recipe for going harder than my coach had recommended for the weekend, especially on the Morgan Territory climb. The landscape there was inspiring. Coming up on Marsh Creek Rd we were treated to a beautiful view of Mt. Diablo in stark silouette, from the back side. Then we turned onto the narrow Morgan Territory road and got into the wooded Diablo foothills. The profile is "rollers" that mostly roll up, then it becomes a real hill with lots of pitch changes, some quite steep. 

After Ben did one of his test attacks, I was the one to bridge (@650W avg for 15s) and pulled a couple guys with me. Then a group of 5 formed (Ben, DP, Ryan B, Vlad, and I) and the hammerfest started. DP and Ryan would surge on every roller pointing up, I was maintaining that hard steady pace for my pulls (up and down), and Ben wasn't pulling so much as attacking from the back whenever things eased up a bit. 

After 12 minutes, I took a last pull and told Ryan at the back that I'd had my fun and sat up. I'd been able to recover under threshold here and there and wasn't breathing VO2max-hard at any point. But I knew I'd burned a match and that I'd enjoy the ride more if I took it down to tempo for the remaining climb. Those first 5 minutes were quite hard: 352W normalized power (339W avg). 10 minutes: 326W normalized (306W avg). I heard after that it just got harder, with Ryan attacking on a steep pitch to get away solo for the KOM, with DP and Ben chasing hard. Ryan's not a small guy (@ 6' 2", though relatively skinny for that height) but he can really climb.

Another highlight on Sunday was the rolling descent back on Altamont Pass. It was a bit messy on Saturday with 19, but our smaller 12-man group kept it neat. I was kicking up the pace whenever I could for fun, trying to take longer pulls, when the formation allowed. We kept it together pretty well, averaging 27.5mph over 10min. 

The most fun was taking a big pull on Byron Highway. The smooth pavement, flat terrain, and narrow shoulder makes it a good candidate for having just one or two guys do the pacemaking. Ammon took us to the intersection with the Hwy, then I took over, slowly easing the pace up to 22 over the first few minutes to settle us in after the left-turn crossing, then keeping it steady between 22 and 24 for the next 14 minutes. That pull felt great, nice and comfortable in mid-zone 4 HR. We had a light-to-moderate crosswind on the right shoulder. Averages for core 14 minutes: 23.7mph, 275W, 165bpm.

All in all a good end to a good training week. I took an extra day off (Friday, to pack), but the four workouts I did were pretty solid, medium to high intensity. That closes out the third week in this first build cycle. Next week will be a pretty easy rest week, then the intensity will step up another notch, to prep for racing late next month.

Training Log 1/11

This was a big week. Basically I took the workouts from last week's work-free "training camp" and compressed them into a normal working week. And with less volume came greater intensity. 

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday were breakthrough days, for different reasons. This was the first Tuesday workout where I really felt like I was digging deep in true sprint-like seated efforts. No more small gear stuff. The power numbers seem pretty good for seated efforts (averages mostly around 650W for 20s, with the first at 750W) and after 9 repeats, my legs felt a lot like I'd done an all-out sprint workout (ie. felt like lead). Doing them shorter than last week meant I went a lot harder. Looking forward to next week's, which starts the transition from seated to standing sprints.

Wednesday I got up extra early, at 5:30 (went to bed at 9:30) so I could do a longer tempo workout, adding longer lower-power 12min repeats to the shorter reps I've been building since November. The shorter reps now peak out with a middle interval at 95% of my threshold/MSS wattage as measured in early November, so I am starting to do a bit of subthreshold work. These Wednesday workouts are the best example of what I wouldn't be doing without the formal coaching that's great for raising my threshold power. Nice bonus was that I was going pretty quick on flat to rolling terrain, so covered 40mi in 2h 10m. Feels good to cover a respectable distance during the week.

This Saturday was a monster climbing day. My coach, Peter, suggested I move off the headlands and do my repeats on Panoramic instead. It's a great climb for it, and doing the 10m intervals in the middle of a 20-30m climb feels more meaningful, since the interval is book-ended by solid aerobic work that serves as warm-up and recovery between the descents back down the hill. Here again, I've now worked up to doing sections at 95% of MSS. 

And I can't say enough how beautiful the views were from Panoramic. Riding does mean more to me than the numbers, and doing the repeats actually let me enjoy the details of the scenery, coming down the hill looking at the Pacific and breathing in the moist air of the redwoods groves on the way up. Liam and I stopped on Hwy 1 on the way to Stinson to take a picture with my Blackberry, but the lens was fogged up and it didn't come out.

Long week, and I was somewhat tired today. A 3.5hr base ride served a bit as recovery.

Jeff's Early Bird Crit #1 Photos

Jeff took a bunch of good photos of yesterday's Early Bird criterium down in Fremont with his new 55-250mm IS lens. Check them out here. 

I'd thought of going down specifically to take pics, but didn't quite make it. For one, I didn't quite find a nearby ride route that sounded appealing, after looking around a bit on Bikely and MapMyRide. I was looking for something mostly flat to lightly rolling (and without the traffic of something like Niles or Crow Canyon) to do my Sunday base ride. If you know of a good route, let me know. Hoping to get down there next weekend.

Training Log 1/4

My vacation and training camp are done. It was a great way to end a solid year of cycling, my most consistent ever. 2008 totalled up to 7500 miles and 500 hours on the bike. Not a bad way to get back into things. If I keep on my current track, 2009 volume totals could be 20-30% higher.

The trip to Austin was a good time for a rest week. I got in four one-hour workouts, but a touch of sickness kept me away from the longer rides I'd planned for the weekend. But rest I did, and I came out of it feeling pretty well recovered from various aches and pains that surfaced during November and December training. This week's racing (San Bruno hill climb and Early Bird Criterium) reminded me that it's an excellent time to feel healthy.

I put my legs to the test this week, using much of my vacation time for extra training, setting a one-week personal record of 17.5hours and 260 miles on the bike. It was also my first real week for building mid-level intensity, so I'm happy that I came out of a jump in volume and intensity feeling fine. Looking forward to the additional mid-level intensity these next few weeks, evolving from the Tuesday (seated sprints), Wednesday (tempo), and Saturday (hills) workouts I did this week. 

San Bruno Hill Climb 2009 Photos

Josh Chauvet
Originally uploaded by renroublard

I got out of bed just in time to make it down to the San Bruno mountain hill climb this morning. It was extremely foggy and fairly cold. I'd been thinking of racing it, but since I have the week off work, I switched to doing a major training week (likely somewhat more than 16hrs / 250mi), which meant today was the best rest day between two 3-day training blocks.

So I went down to take photos and chat with the guys. I took a ton of photos, posted in two sets on Flickr (here and here). I parked at the park entrance and walked up the hill for 10 minutes, so was somewhere around two-thirds up the course.