Rainy Day

Rain today. All day. Not that we didn't need it here in Madison.

This meant no chance to get out on the sweet Madone 5.2 that I'm borrowing from the LBS. Well, I was originally figuring on a tempo ride today, maybe 1.5-2 hrs, but instead I hit the weight room and played around with a new (to me) form of intervals on the trusty 'ole indoor trainer.

I took a soaking walk over to the UW Natatorium today between classes, and was relieved to put on some dry clothes - albeit smelly, workout clothes. Anyway, I proceeded to do an upper body workout with free weights and some simple compound body weight exercises. What???? Upper body for a cyclist? Yeah, I know - it doesn't make sense at first. I'm a firm believer that developing total body strength is a key to being athletic in any endeavor. So, in my eyes, this had it's place. Now, it doesn't mean I'm bodybuilding. In fact, I hope to add as little mass as possible, but retrain some forgotten muscle groups for additional on-bike strength and injury prevention.

So, thoroughly worked out - I went back downtown and handed in an assignment, and finished the rest of my school "work day" by completing some chemistry work and readings for various classes. I came home, and watched an episode of The Big Bang Theory (awesome) while stuffing in a little food (toast with honey, and some of TJ's omega mixed nuts), and getting dressed for my indoor workout.

Over the past season I'd heard a lot from a friend and teammate of mine about SST, or Sweet Spot Training. The idea being that you can build an aerobic base without aiming your intervals directly at high percentages of your FTP/FP or MHR for 10-20 minutes at a time - Instead, the SST approach involves prolonged efforts in L3/L4 zones, closer to 85-90% FP. I read that a good starting point was to incorporate 2-3 15 minute SST intervals with 5-10 minutes of recovery between efforts. In what I've read, this is too short to elicit a major response, but serves as a way of introducing the workout style and familiarizing yourself with the level of effort. So I did 3 15min efforts at ~100rpm, in my 52x21 and 52x19 on my Kinetic trainer. According to the trainer's power curve, this put my wattage near 245-250 for the intervals (about 85-90% of my last tested FTP) . I'm sure this isn't perfectly accurate, but it felt like a good workout - here's how it broke down (time in hours:min):

0-15: Warm up with 20sec spin ups to 165rpm and ILS
15-30: SST at 52x21
30-40: Rest, spin at 39x23
40-55: SST at 52x21
55-1:05: Rest, spin at 39x23
1:05:-1:20: SST (2 min 52x23, 2 min 52x21, 1 min 52x19) X3
1:20-1:30: Cool down, spin

Ok. So, the first interval wasn't all that hard. It wasn't "easy," but felt like a less-stressful LT.
The second one was harder because I got bored.

Seriously, if this SST stuff were to go on for 1 hour straight, I'd fall asleep at a 170 HR. BORING.

The third interval I split into three 5min over-unders, with the progression shown above. I called this SST, because I was at or below SST pace for 2 min, at SST pace for 2 min, and then well above it for 1 minute. It felt more like a tough LT interval. I liked this better than the first two though. To be honest, I think I was closer to LT pace based on my HR, which averaged 165 during the SST intervals.

I have a meeting to get to now, and lots of homework to work on for this week!

Regards, thanks for reading.

Goal Setting

Okay, so the road racing season is over. Sad. Boo-hoo.

As much as it pains me to know that I won't have to suffer up any more power climbs, or dodge any more sketchy riders... It's also a great time of the year to do other things, and take advantage of not having to endure any of the aforementioned, uh, "finer" points of racing.

So, since I've been sick for the past week, and have been without a bike until a few days ago (due to an an unfortunate crash), I have been busying myself with school, chores, friends, and good books. Actually, right now I'm reading a great book - well, really it's more of a pamphlet when you look at it's physical size - called Plunder and Blunder. It came recommended to my by my dad, and covers the rise and fall of the American Bubble Economy from a number of interesting perspectives. The winners, the losers, and the political talking heads all have their say, though the overall tone of the book does tend to bash the regulatory systems that have (in the author's opinion) lead to the collapse of the housing market, and the economic recession that we've been in. Good book, and it gives me some information that I hadn't gleaned off of my great applied econ course from last year.

Anyway, all of this can only keep my mind busy for so long. There comes a point in every athlete's off-season (usually not too far into it), when they realize they'll need to start setting goals and prioritizing for their next cycle of competition. I've come to that point in the past few days, and have started thinking about exactly what I want out of my next year. So far I've come to a few concrete conclusions, and a few things I can do in the coming months to help myself get there.

First my general goals (in no particular order):

1. I need to maintain my aerobic fitness.
   - I'll swim 3-4 times per week from September through November.
   - I'll fit in at least one long base ride per week. 4-5 hours at a moderate sub-tempo pace. Only as school allows.
2. I need to build power.
   - Weight lifting, starting the end of September 2x per week, progressing to 3x per week at higher weights and more cycling specific lifts starting November 1st. January will be maintenance lifting 2x per week, allowing a transition to cycling specific training.
   - Intervals - TBD after a consult with a coach.
3. I need to manage my body composition and overall health.
   - Simple. Eat a healthy diet. I think I've got this one covered, but I'm going to make a much more concerted effort at watching my vitamin/mineral intake and keep my immune system strong.

Now my more specific cycling goals (in no particular order):

1. I will go under 54 minutes at the state championship TT next year. I feel this is a reasonable goal considering my performance this year of 55:22 in rain/thunder/wind.
   My true goal is to see 52:xx, but 54 seems reasonable for now.
2. I will race category A in collegiate. I'll do this by placing well in early B's races, and moving up.
3. I will win a Category 3 road race or criterium. I will train my sprint, and learn to time my attacks better. I will get to the line first.
4. I will help a teammate win a race. I'll take the wind, I'll block, I'll lead out, and I'll chase down counter attacks. I want to be a part of a team that backs each other up. I'll need to learn some tactics in order to make this happen.

I guess that's it for now. I'm going to get up and go swimming tomorrow, eat some more fruits and veggies, drink some extra water, and get plenty of sleep. Sounds like a good start.

Best regards, thanks for reading.

The Bacon Lung and New Team

So, I'm not sure if I've got a horrible cold, or have joined the ranks of the thousands infected with H1N1. I came down with a nasty sore throat last Saturday night, and felt like complete trash on Sunday and Monday. Then, Tuesday I felt great. 100% great. Now I feel like crud again.

I think I cut my rest short on Tuesday by going out for a bike ride - the Madone 5.2 that I have on loan is just too hard to resist! Ugh, so now I've had to stay home from an A-Chem lecture to catch up on my sleep since I woke up feeling so nasty.

I honestly feel that this is just some nasty cold or sinus infection, since I haven't noticed any real fever associated with it. So that's a plus, though I am of the opinion that if I get H1N1, I'd rather have it done early.

On to something much more interesting and uplifting (yea, I like those feel-good moments).

I recently received a notice that I was officially invited to become a member of the Cat 3 development team on Team Wheaton. I've heard through the grapevine that a number of current team members (who I know through UW Cycling) gave me positive recommendations.
I wanted to extend my thanks to all of them, and let them know how much I appreciate it.

The team had an awesome '09 race season, and I saw a number of the guys on the 09 Cat 3 development team score some great results. Most of all, I was able to witness an outstanding level of teamwork displayed by the team. This was probably the most distinguishing feature in my mind, and put them a cut above the rest of the Cat 3 field. From what I've heard, these guys are good friends outside of racing too, and their coach, Dave, is as good as they come. Needless to say, I'm thrilled to be a part of the team, and I can't wait to race with them next season.

Anyway, I'm off to finish some chemistry and read up on traditional Japanese puppet theatre, bunraku.

Regards, thanks for reading.

Long time, no post!

I feel like I should have a lot to say today, since it's been so long between this post and my last one. Where to begin....

Okay, so school is back in session. This is my fourth year of college (senior year!) and I'm pretty excited about the classes I'm taking. I've been having some issues with the UW-Madison system however, and am trying to resolve a credit transfer problem regarding an Intro Biology class. This University feels that despite my having taken coursework in physiology, ecology, genetics, animal diversity, biochemistry, molecular biology, and three semesters of biochemistry lab work (phew!), that I still need to take an intro level course which covers all of this material again.

It all stems from the 10 credit Intro Bio requirement that Madison has for College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) students. They give credit for AP, but it only covers their first semester (5 credits) of material. Now, AP broadly covers the same material as both semesters of the 10 credit Intro Bio requirement. Not as in depth, I will admit, but when you consider the previous coursework I have from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities (where I was exempt from intro biology), it becomes pretty obvious that I have had this stuff presented to me in the college format before. So, I'm in the process of going point by point through my previous syllabi (?) and highlighting each of the topics covered in previous courses which overlap with those to be taught in the second 5 credit intro biology class here at Madison.

Okay, so beyond that - it's shaping up to be a great year. I'm taking a fascinating Indians of North America course, and have a professor who appears to be pretty engaging. I've also met some good people in the discussion portion of the course.

One of the more intriguing classes I'm taking is the Introduction to Japanese Culture and ahem civilization. Why the pause before civilization? Well, our professor had us discussing the interesting connotations that each word (culture, and civilization) brings to the table, and made a valid point about just how loaded of a word "civilization" is. I won't go into the details here, but suffice to say that I won't throw the word around quite as casually in daily conversation any longer.

On to bikes.

So, I finished up the year with a pretty stellar (for me) performance at the Wisconsin State Championship Time Trial in Brighton, WI. The event was put on in the midst of a pretty spectacular thunderstorm, but despite the weather, some great athletes turned out to strut their stuff (and by stuff, I mean their P4's and TTX's).

The course was FAST despite being dangerously wet, and swept by gusty winds for the majority of my ride. It's just a bit shy of 40K, with some rollers and very gradual ascents. Overall, a pretty flat course. This was my first 40K TT, and I wasn't expecting too much, but I didn't want to let the skin suit (thanks to the family), TT bike (thanks to the boss), and fast wheels (thanks to my coworker Terry) go to waste. So I lined up and gave it the gas. I took it out pretty fast from the gun, but remembering some mistakes I made in a shorter TT earlier in the year, I settled into a pace that was uncomfortable, but maintainable. Coming around the first lap, I managed to pass 4 guys, and felt good. My pace was pretty consistent, and I was questioning if I took it a bit too easy around the first time. So, I thought "what the heck?" and gave it a bit more juice. On the back stretch I got caught up with some other guy who kept trying to pass me on the short uphills, only to get dusted on the flats. Once I saw the final turn in the distance though, it was 110% to the line. The afterburners kicked on, and I tried to gradually build into my VO2 max pace over about a minute, and hold on to the line. Once the finish was in sight, I dug into any/all reserves - I wouldn't call it a sprint, but I managed to cross the line doing a good 33mph+. I know I was nearing my Max HR, because I started to get tunnel vision after I crossed the line. Glad it's over. Time: 55:22

I'm going under 54 next year.

After that I managed to score a few tips from Ryan Baumann, and put in some longer miles before school started up. Then, on a ride with the aforementioned local pro - I got hit by a car. Long story, but now I'm looking into a new ride. I'm pretty much settled on a 2010 Madone through the Trek Store. They're a great shop, probably one of the best sponsors I've ever had, and are staffed by some of the most knowledgeable, and genuinely helpful people in the bike community. Give 'em some business. I'll post something more when I get the bike and have a chance to ride it more!

Peace - I'm off to listen to some Cat Stevens and finish some reading for next week.