Wee-ridin

I didn't make the crit tonight...The girls are headed to Seattle for 3 weeks so I wanted to spend some QT with the kiddo. We rode around Shandon hitting the park, the park again, EarthFare then Yo Burrito. Her new pink flowered Bell helmet came today so of course we had to show that to everyone too. Lots of new upgrades on the way for her bike....new rear $29 bmx wheel (the rear stock hub is seriously bad), grips, stem bag, horn, bell, water bottle holder. That's gonna be one pimped out WeeRide. I also need to figure out her SS gearing...when we hit a hill I yell out "kick it" and she gives me a good boost, most of the time though she's just free wheeling and waving to people. Oh Yeah...I got some $4.99 MTB slicks too...those should be some sweet rollin' tires (6tpi?). It's all good...

Sunday

I spent 3 hours swimming with a 4 year old this afternoon ...so when I went out later to do some intervals I was pretty shot. The ride out to the fort was good, the ride back was good...it was that middle part that sucked.

Actually I got a few 5 min VO2 intervals in at tank hill before I called it quits and I found a good pacing strategy: ave power for the first minute, then actual watts for the middle 3, then back to ave for the end. That made sure I didn't go out too hard (which I usually do) and then am able to nail the target wattage near the end.

Saturday

We got a reprieve today as it was overcast with some light rain...if the sun would have been out it would have been brutal. I got in 3:19 which was shorter than I had hoped but oh well. I felt pretty good today and tried to take long hardish pulls when I hit the front.

Tomorrow it's time for some VO2 intervals. I wish I had Dick Demol riding behind me in a car...that TT was incredible.

Here's a forum devoted to doping, like--how to do it and get away with it...Interesting?-----> Very Interesting...

Le Beer ride

I wanted to spin the legs around for an hour so Ella and I headed down to join the beer ride. I've got one of those "wee-ride" things attached to my Trek Fuel Mtn Bike. She loves it and it's tons more fun than the Burley trailer. So we met everyone at Cycle Center and cruised up through heathwood where we turned off and headed home...She was fully kitted out with jersey, shorts and a number pinned on from an old race of mine. Fun.

Thursday

Good ride tonight, fast and steady. Not the usual death march since Karl's gone but hardish all the same. I'm feeling a bit stronger but still a couple weeks from where I'd like to be. Thanks to Derek for speed changing my flat. A casual 4 minutes.

Tonight Derek was flying...coming down airbase he thought it would be fun to attack hard everytime he pulled through. I switched the rotation so I was behind him and the times he didn't attack I wouldn't pull off right away and leave him hanging in the wind...that'll teach him! He still crushed us all in the sprint. It's gotta be the mirror...

SST

As a transition day between hard days I wanted to get in a good workout but not trash myself for tomorrow...so time for some Sweet Spot Training. In the 2hr ride I did 90min at 80% of my FTP (which was around 220w) and racked up 104 TSS points (1300kJ). It felt good and was relatively easy to do.

My playlist today was good and made the time go by...started out with an hour of This American Life then some live Clash, Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison, Bjork, The Cure, and Morrissey.

I've heard rumblings that something big happened at the tour today but I'm on a media blackout so I have no idea...I'm firing up the tivo now.

TNWC 7/24

My game plan for tonights race (and questionable fitness) were as follows: follow all serious looking breaks and bridge early before the gap gets too big and pray for a bunch sprint.

It was a pretty animated night with lots of attacks/counters and the pace was kept pretty high. I felt comfortable and didn't miss any serious looking breaks--the legs felt good. Karl was putting the hurt on all night.

At about the 44min mark there was a lull and Ladd and I found ourselves with about a 30m gap and I said "GO!" and we drilled it and opened it up to about 10 to 15s. We worked well to keep it but near the end I started getting fried and on the final stretch I told him to just take it to the line and I really didn't have anything left to contest the sprint. It was a nice finish against a strong field.

The Big News Today!

Lindsay Lohan gets another DUI!!!

Oh.........and Vino drives a stake through the heart of pro cycling...

Rinse, repeat

Not much going on to speak of lately...the weekend was spent at the beach with Chris and Karl which was great. With work, some riding and 3 hours of Le Tour to watch each night there's not much time for much else. Thank gawd for Tivo...I haven't watched one commercial this year (well we had to see the miller one, that was pretty good).

Crit tomorrow...I'm psyched. Haven't been in a few weeks and Karl who's got some serious form right now's gonna be leaving town wed so he'll be especially killing it. Beware.

Sufferfest

Tonights thursday group ride was brutal...Heading down Horrell hill I found myself with Karl and a few others. It was the hardest we've ever gone on this stretch, Karl was absolutely killing it (and us too). All I could do was roll through. He probably did about 40% of the work in that break then rolled away on the climb...freakin mutant!

Down airbase...same story. Karl drilling it and me just trying to hold on. I had langs wheel on the sprint and felt pretty good, got a jump and was pulling away (very slowly...) until Derek came roaring by. Big strong sprinter types are supposed to get shelled on that little rise...not tonight. Derek is about as pure of a sprinter as you can get...think huge thick legs and track pedigree, he's very hard to beat. And he's hard to sneak up on with that damn mirror!

Overall I'm happy with how I felt tonight. I was able to hang in there and know that with some structured training in the next couple of weeks I'll be back in form.

Ladd's doing the Asheville races this weekend with his first TT tomorrow...my prediction: 1st (I should get into sports betting...I'm a genius)

Wattage junkies...you gotta check out this page for some great analysis of VandeVelde's 2006 tour...a 3 week TSS total of 4,711 and a CTL of 150. Amazing.

Wednesday

Decided to work on some threshold today so I did 2x15min on the Velodyne at around 270w. It didn't feel great and was a bit of a struggle to maintain the power due to my loss of fitness over the last 2 weeks but I got it done.

Missed Crit

I couldn't make it out to have Karl and Perry pound on me for an hour...instead of a good solid workout I ate around 3500cal at MoMo's Bistro with my parents who were in town. Things should get back to normal tomorrow. The tour sure has been rockin'......Carbon meet dog--->

A rare ride...

I finally got out today. Did 58 miles with the group and it was mostly mellow paceline stuff. A week off being sick can make a rough transition back to riding but I felt pretty good today...I couldn't really push too much past threshold but didn't really want to either. The plan is to do a solid 2 weeks of hard training to try to get back some kind of form. We'll see. Right now my TSB is through the roof.

Saris has a pretty good series of Tour power related video's with Alan Lim and R. Ventura HERE. You gotta enter your email address to view em. I thought the one about w/kg was good.

Also some great video's from Velonews HERE. My favorites were Chris Horner talking about getting a slice of pizza from the Saunier Duval Car and today's winner Linus Gerdemann saying:

"On zee last K of zee climb, ees vas zooo long und I vas fighting zooo long und I vas always looking at my SRM and zee vatts vas always going down, down, down..."

Also Dave Z's got a lot of good stuff. funny shit.

How do you rate?

Still no riding for me...I'm not feeling 100% and don't want to push it. One thing I gotta make sure of is that I don't get too used to just taking naps after work...sure is nice though!

I found the power file for Christian Vandevelde for today's stage...You can download it HERE. It's pretty cool to see as he did a ton of work today. His FTP is 370w and he weighs 152lbs...that's some crazy shit! To put that in perspective since I basically weigh the same as him--at his threshold wattage I would last under 3 minutes before I died. And today his NP of 306w for 5 hours is what I could hold for maybe 30min (a hard tuesday crit is NP 280w for 50min). Damn...

Here's the description of the file from the WKO+ guys:

An incredibly hilly stage in the last 2 hours, and a chase to keep Cancellara in the yellow jersey, Christian was on the front a lot today in the 2nd half of the race.

After the usual first 22 minutes spent at mach speed, the peloton relaxed a bit and Christian got to spend a couple of hours hanging out before having to push hard. Those first 22minutes were indeed difficult as Christian averaged 358watts normalized for the time.

At the 60 mile mark is when he had to earn his pay though, and for the next 30 minutes, he rides just below his FTP. When you examine this section of the race, you'll find that this is an incredibly hilly part of the race and many of the times that he's pedaling, he's pedaling at this Level 5 & 6 or Vo2 max and Anaerobic Capacity wattage. Compared to the stage on Tuesday where he only spent 7% of the entire race in level 5 & 6, he more than doubles that percentage in today's race.

Once his work is done for the team and putting Cancellara in the front group, Christian is popped from the peloton going up the La Croix d' Liberation and he shuts it down for the day and cruises to the finish 11:15 down on Pozzato.

The question that I am wondering is whether or not Christian is as fit as he was last Tour. Based on today's file, I am going to claim that he's not as fit as he was last year. Last year, he had many rides where he averaged over 380 watts for extended periods. With the hard chase today and then him blowing up on the last climb, I am revising his FTP to 370 watts, down from 380.

energy

forget gatorade...I need some of THIS

sicko

I came down with a nasty headcold on the way back from KY (thanks Chris & Karl) so I've been taking some time off the bike and generally just taking it easy. I may skip the Crit if I'm not feeling any better. I had planned a break around this time so it all works out...I'll start ramping it up again next week.

CTL's a risin'

Did 2 1/2 hrs with Jules today and the legs felt incredibly good. Effortless 230w for long stretches. It's amazing what the difference in recovery is with a CTL of 78 TSS/d as opposed to 50. More of the same tomorrow...

The Cogganism rings true: "the more you train, the more you can train"

the data

Here's the graph and numbers for the July 4th ride...nothing that spectacular or interesting to speak of, just a big day and some big TSS numbers. Today I slept till 10:30 then took an afternoon nap. That was nice.

Tomorrow Jules and I are gonna do 3 hrs through some horse farm country between Louisville and Lexington. There's some stellar riding up here.

2:53

The Fab 4th ride was today so it meant a 4:20am wake up and drive to Tryon, NC. Thank you Jittery Joes Espresso Blend...

500 or so people started the ride this morning and the first 15 miles felt like a Cat. 5 race...I was totally gripped with people swerving, dropped chains & bottles and a general high degree of sketchy-ness. I made my way to the front and sat about 20th wheel for the rest of the day...that was much better.

The TSB don't lie and I felt incredibly good today. When we got to the lake Jay and another dude took off and when they got out of sight the pace dropped considerably...one major factor was the guy in the break with Jay was on the same team as some of strongest guys there (Bianchi--Boyd's team) so they didn't do any chasing. So the lake loop felt relatively easy. One nice thing about staying near the front here is there's no accordian effect around the whoop-de-do's and you can go fast through the turns (thanks to karl for that advice).

Over Camp "Old Indian" I stayed with the front group and just cruised along until the watershed. Once we turned uphill I tried to be in a position behind Boyd and his boyz because I knew he would drop the hammer and I at least wanted to be near the front. He set a moderate tempo for the first half then drilled it. I lost contact with the 20 or so Cat 1-2 types and just kept climbing at my own pace. People were getting shelled right and left.

Funny...once I got dropped a Mini Cooper came crawling by with 3 guys "motorpacing" (if you want to call it that at 12mph!). Of course I jumped on the train and he pulled us up for 5-10 minutes until a final steep spot popped me again.

I got over the watershed just as a group of 10 riders caught me (with Toby S. and Jamie from Harrells). Man, that's a fun descent...I got on the front and drilled it...then just sat in the back for the last couple of fast miles. Jay finished second at 2:49 and I came in at 2:53 and overall I'm pretty happy with the way I rode. Karl was sick so he just rode along then waited for Chris at the watershed. A healthy Karl today would have made a big difference in my comfort level! (and the outcome)

The Fab 4th ride is great but it's even better due to the nice lunch (and Cokes!) they provide at the end and the showers, massages etc. Lot's of Columbia folks were there today as usual, and it was nice to hang out after the ride. I'll be in Louisville till Sunday (those 5 hours sitting in the car didn't feel too good...).

Monday

Went and did a loop in the fort today...an easy hour and a half. The legs didn't feel that great but came around at the end. I'm gonna skip the crit this week and just do an hour with some openers, usual stuff. The bad news is that Karl's sick and most likely isn't gonna ride on Wed, that sucks as it's nice to have people around that you know. On the other hand that's one less person to drop the hammer on the watershed!

The PMC chart is updated through today....