Telegram force and ready
I knew this was a big mistake.
There's a new route posted for tonights group ride from Eric's.
There's a fine line drawing my senses together,
And I think it's about to break.
I doubt there's a 21 hairpin switchback climb on this route.
I still don't get why they are heading northeast, when the wind is supposed to come from the southeast. Oh well. It's not my call.
Rochester+bike+clubRochester+bike+clubGunnarGunnargroupgroupriderideclub+rideclub+rideminnesotaminnesotaSoroosSoroosRaceRacecyclingcyclingveloveloEricsEricstourtourDuran+DuranDuran+DuranRacingRacing
Comments (1) Wednesday 07/23/2008 | 10:07 am
2008 RASC Time Trials
Looks like it's getting close to that time of year again. I like to call it lactic burn time. It's time for the RASC fall time trial series. Looks like this year is gonna be a little different.
RASC TT's to begin August 5th, Tuesday.
The 20 mile loop will be the same route as Treadman Duathlon course. The first three Tuesdays of August (Aug 5, Aug 12, Aug 19) will be on this course. The final TT will be a short 3.39 mile Hill TT which starts at the Douglas trail where it crosses in Douglas to the top of Genoa Hill at CR 105. This TT will be on Aug 26.
The results will be scored as follows: everyone can race all three days for the 20 mile loop and one attempt at the Hill TT. Your two best from the 20 miler added to your Hill TT will give your resulting time. Start times will be 6pm and go off in 30 second intervals. Vehicle parking in Douglas at the Douglas Trail lot on 75th.
Not sure if there will be awards, prizes, drawings, etc, but you will have bragging rights.
Tentatively, the divisions will Aero Men, Stock Men, Women Open. We might add an Aero Women division if the attendance can support it. For Men, any addition to you/your stock bike puts you in the Aero division (helmet, disc wheel, aero bars).
Volunteers are needed for timing the races--especially for August 12th and 26th. If you are racing, it's also a good idea to have a working cycle computer as a back up.
RASC Message Board
I think I'll do the Stock division again (I don't have any aero equipment anyway). If you want, you can use the search field to the right and search for RASC and read about last years time trials.
hurthurtRASCRASCTimetrialTimetrialTTTTbike+racebike+racelocallocalRochester+VeloRochester+VeloTime+trialTime+trialracingracingcyclingcyclingbicyclebicycleGunnarGunnarSoroosSoroos
Comments (0) Tuesday 07/22/2008 | 08:33 pm
Nightshades on a warning
Give me strength at least give me a light
I saw that there's a route posted on the Rochester Eric's Ride Blog for tomorrows group ride. In fact here it is:
Looks like a nice, almost 50 miler. Cool. My only thought is that since we know that winds are prolly gonna be out of the southeast, wouldn't it make sense that we ride so that we end with the wind at our backs? Just my thought. But I'm not gonna really say anything being I havn't ridden with this group or met any of them yet. So who am I to dictate where and how the ride goes. I just hope I can hang in the pack.
My rear tire on the geared road bike is so worn that the casing is showing almost all the way around. But I found a not as worn old tire hanging in the garage. A Conti GP3000 that has only a one spot patch of casing showing. I'll throw that puppy on for a while, till I can order new tires. Looks like my budget still won't allow for a new set yet. I'm hoping I can get another 500 miles before I can order some.
Update: Looks like they are changing the route. Maybe someone thought the same as I?
RochesterRochesterbikebikeclubclubgroupgroupriderideEricsEricsrouterouteminnesotaminnesotaMNMNRochester+bike+clubRochester+bike+clubgroup+ridegroup+ridecyclingcyclingbicyclebicyclecyclstcyclstGunnarGunnarSoroosSoroos
Comments (0) Tuesday 07/22/2008 | 12:24 pm
The Union of the Snake is on the climb
Last week wasn't the best as far as training goes. It's not that bad though, cause it was a recovery week. I'm hopeing that I can get my groove back and be ready for (in case I do it) State Road Race.
I'm gonna attempt to ride this week, with the Wednesday group ride out of Erics. I'm a little tired of showing up at RC&F for the group ride, only to go solo.
Maybe if I can, I'll do a group ride a week up till States. That should give me the distance and intensity to bring my fitness level up. Riding solo can only do so much. Maybe I'll even go for town sign sprints.
GunnarGunnartrainingtrainingcyclingcyclingbicyclebicyclebikebikeSoroosSorooscyclistcyclistRochesterRochestergroup+ridegroup+rideraceraceEricsEricsWednesdayWednesdayMinnesotaMinnesotaBike+ClubBike+Clubgroupridegroupridemnmn
Comments (2) Monday 07/21/2008 | 11:17 am
Tuesday Fast Group Ride
So I showed up for the Tuesday night fast group ride, fully expecting to do a 45-50 miler, hiding in the group and taking a few strong pulls as interval work. But this is kinda hard to do if no one shows. I don't know what the deal is, but everytime I show up this year for a Tuesday night ride, no one else does.
I left the shop thinking I'd put in a tempo zone3 ride for about 50 miles. I headed out on 19th street, accross West Circle to 60th ave where I headed south to Country Club road. There I went west again to 3, and south to Salem and Rock Dell.
Climbing out of Rock Dell towards 30, I see a rider up ahead. Of couse I'm a sucker for the challange of attempting to catch a rider that's ahead.
It took a bit, but I was able to catch the rider about a quarter mmile after we crossed 30. We exchanged hello's, I think his name is Jim. I'll call him Bianchi Jim as he had a nice carbon Bianchi with a SRAM force group and Mavic wheels.
We decided to ride together, side by side. It was a little tough as we were riding into a SW headwind. But when we turned east on 6 was when the suffering began. Talk about half-wheel hell. It's the typical guy thing going on. Which is good, I wanted to ride hard, but also bad, I wanted to be able to take breaks in a pack.
Incase you don't know what half-wheeling is, it's when you're riding with someone and one of you keeps ever so slightly keeps upping the pace bit by bit, and is characterized by being a half a wheels length ahead of the other. It can happen on a ride with two riders, or in a group with two lead riders. It's called half wheeling, but it doesn't have to be a half a wheels length for it to be happening.
Now It's not that Bianchi Jim was intentionally doing it to me, nor I to him, but the pace was pretty high and I welcomed to soft pedal through Stewartville. I think it was just the typical testosterion induced competition that tends to happen when riders get together. A kinda challenge and testing of each other.
Once out of Stewartville, we picked up the pace again, and then really ramped it up heading north on 20 up the hill by the cemetary. I was struggling at this point to keep the pace. I could have attacked fine (not that I would have) but keeping a steady hard pace like that was brutal.
I enjoyed the company of Bianchi Jim, and the workout was just what I needed. Yet I was pretty stoked when he turned left at St. Bridgits instead of going east to Simpson.
The rest of the ride was spent limping and licking my wounds. Well maybe not that bad. But I did ride at a much slower pace, and lower heart rate.
Training Info
That leads me to some cool things about training. It's going along pretty well. I'd like to be getting more miles and racing in, but I guess we all would, right? You gotta keep a balance.
But anyway, below is an updated chart showing my TrImp goals vs. Actual TrImp scores. As usual click to see it bib.
And here is my CTL, ATL and TSB scores from the begining of the year through this week.
Here's the same thing focusing on only this week with the previous 2. With the TrImp scores.
O.K. That's all normal stuff. Well there's some new metrics to keep track of in training when using a PMC (Performance Manager Chart).
The ATL, CTL and TSB have been explained before in this blog. use the search to find those postings. But there's a couple things going on with those that I should point out. In the CTL column, I set up a conditional formatting rule that outlines the cell with the highest CTL value. It just so happens that after yesterdays ride, yesterdays CTL value is the highest so far this year.
In the next column you'll see that the TSB cells are darker for values higher than zero. That's just so I can see at a glance if I'm in the positives or the negatives.
The next 4 columns are new. The first is the CTL ramp. I have mine set up as a rolling score that takes the difference of the todays CTL score minus the one from a week ago (7 days). So it's the amount of rise (or drop) in CTL (your long term 'Chronic Training Load) for the past 7 days. A large rise means that you really upped your training load (volume and/or intensity) from a week prior, as zero rise only means that the load has remained the same, and a negitive rise is that the load was lower (than the week prior). So a recovery week may see a large negitive number, a build week may see a big rise, and a maintence week may be zero.
Next are the Rolling TrImp totals. These are broken into 3, 7 and 28 day totals. Here's the way I understand it. Your body can only handle certain level of training before it breaks down so much that recovery can't keep up. Imagine that you put in a killer hard day, like a 150 mile ride a the hardest pace you can imagine, with the most brutal climbs mixed into it. You da that ride, and you are in so much pain that your legs wont go the next day and you loose any motivation to ride. That would be your single day max that you'd ever want to ride. Let's just say that max trImp score is 100 (nice round number to make it simple). Now of couse you can ride below that max, at say 80, and do it again the next 2 days before feeling that dead feeling. Then your 3 day break even point is 240. From that you can figure that maybe you do a really hard ride of 90 one day, if one of the next days you ride 60 and the other day you ride 70 you're still only at 220 and shouldn't feel overtrained yet for those three days.
However, say you try to keep training like that for 7 days. You'd prolly start to get burnt out. So maybe your 7 day break even point is 500. As long as you keep your load below that you should be ok. And the same goes for the 28 day (or 4 week) break even point.
So for me I have set as my brak even points 500, 750, and 2400 for 3 day, 7 day and 28 days. Now I have no idea if these are right for me or not and I'll be playing with the numbers throughout the year.
Now again I have conditional formatting, to highlight cells showing that I am approaching that break even point.
Of course then you can chart out the rolling totals. Like what's showing below.
That's all for now. Maybe one day I'll offer up the spreadsheet for download so that you can try it out and see what you think.
tuesdaytuesdaygroup+ridegroup+ridefastfastsuffersuffertrimptrimpCTLCTLAtlAtlTSBTSBbreak+even+pointbreak+even+pointrollingrollingtotaltotalaverageaverageovertrainingovertrainingcyclingcyclingheartrateheartrateHRHRmapmaploglogSportTracksSportTracksgarmingarminedgeedge305305RideRideraceraceracingracingcyclistcyclistBianchi+JimBianchi+JimSRAMSRAMForceForceBikeBikeHard+PaceHard+PaceRochesterRochesterStewartvilleStewartvilleSalemSalemSimpsSimps
Comments (0) Wednesday 07/02/2008 | 12:32 pm
Not gonna be racing as much as I originally thought
It's simply a matter of budget. Dollar/fuel budget and time with family budget. Dollar/fuel budget seems simple to grasp, right? The cost of fuel to travel to races (even if only 50-100 miles away) is getting higher and higher everyweek. A quick calculation gives me an average fuel cost of $45. per out of town race. Suddenly I'm spending $75 to go race my bike and that doesn't include food and snacks along the way.
Then there's the time away from family budget. The cost rises considerably if I bring the fam along, as they need to eat and stuff. Then what do they do as I race? They can watch, but if it's a roadrace, then they may see me pass the start finish area 2 times. Big whoop. What do they do for the other hour and 50 minutes I'm riding? Ok, if it's a crit, they can watch me go around and round for 45 minutes. It's a little more exiciting, but not really by much.
But then, if I don't take them, then pretty much a full day of my weekend is spent away from them. 3 hours travel time, plus 2 hours racing, plus 1/2 hour waiting for results, plus 1/2 hour for gassing up and B.S. and that's pretty much a day.
So, there's a slight chance that I'll do Northfield and State Crit, though if I don't do Northfield - then I'm not doing State's. I wanna have at least one crit under my belt before I attempt State Crit. I would hate to be so squirrely that I take out a group of riders in a crash at States.
More than likely, the only other USCF race this year will be State Road Race. It's really too bad Rochester Velo isn't putting on a race this year, as I'm sure I'd be doing that. But I guess I'll be attempting the Fall TT series they put on, as well as trying to do some more group rides.
GunnarGunnarSoroosSoroosracingracingracerracerraceracecyclingcyclingbikebikecyclistcyclistMCFMCFRochester+VeloRochester+VeloBike+ClubBike+ClubGroup+RideGroup+RideMinnesotaMinnesotaState+Road+RaceState+Road+RaceState+CritState+CritCriteriumCriteriumTeamTeamCostCostGasGasFuelFuelfoodfoodfamilyfamilyGunnar+t+SoroosGunnar+t+Soroos
Comments (0) Monday 06/23/2008 | 11:33 am
