Men's B Short Track Race, GMSV #2

This past Tuesday evening I raced in the Men's B category race. I've been threatening to do it and now it's done. The weather was hot and the traffic getting there was terrible. The coarse was a little different than last week. Shorter with a lot of the same elements as last week. Still pretty twisty with a few tricky steep descents with a sharp corner at the bottom, a good place to washout. I saw a number of racers crash, nothing serious but it did slow them down.

Mountain Moon Photography was out again and she took some fantastic photos. I have to offer a special thanks for allowing us to download her great images.... Thanks!

Once the race started there was a group of 4 that started to open things up. I made sure I was in there. The leader was never really in dispute but the last three positions swapped a couple of times. Wash out corner proved to be a problem for the two racers in front of me, which enabled me to make their race a little bit harder. In the end, I finished 4th in the race but 3rd in the Men's B category. Yes, the Cat 1 women was killing me in the sharp corners but she didn't beet me by much.
Love that Cannondale Flash 29er hard tail!
After the two racers in front of me crashed, I was in second and trying to hold them off.
Go Buddy Go!

Scotty, I need more power!!
Beautiful day, Fantastic race. Thanks GMSV! There are two more races on the next two Tuesdays, you should definitely go!

Power Loss Update

During my previous FTP estimation test things didn't look so good. I planned to have another recovery week. For the most part I've done that, except for my second place at the GMSV Short Track this past Tuesday. I'm not putting too much weight on that because I did race the C's and earlier this season I said I'd move up, but since my fitness appears to be falling on it's head I stayed in the slower group.

I did another FTP test on Thursday morning and basically saw the same results as last week, maybe a little worse. This past week I've been resting, going to bed early and tyring to do all the right things. It appears to be something else.

I've taken a step back to look at things, these are some possible causes I'm pursuing.

Option #1: Medical - Is there something wrong with me? For those of you that know me, there's obviously something wrong, but I wanted to know if it was something new. Blood work is all clean. Hell, my cholesterol is down 30 points from two years ago (I assume that's due to my vegetarian/vegan diet I switched to at the beginning of this year). Hematocrit is 46.1%. Everything looks good, all the numbers are within the appropriate ranges.

Option#2: PowerTap is out of Calibration - Maybe I'm fine but the powermeter is broke. I find it unlikely because my legs are actually sore after my rides, but I checked. My wife humored me to do some "stomp" testing. Basically you stand on the peddles and have the powertap tell you the torque at the hub. You can calculate what it should be and then you compare. It wasn't the most rigorous of tests but we tested different gears and with different weights. Results were always low, within 1-7%. I'd expect a low reading as the bike was tilting a little in the trainer and we had to hold on to each other a little to stay on the pedal, making the weight on the pedal a little lower than our body weight. Due to how the measurements were performed and the fact I've lost over 15% power, I'm going with the assumption the powermeter is fine.

Option #3: Diet - Since I made the switch to a vegetarian/vegan (when possible) diet this past December, things have been going well. However it's possible something is missing and when training the hardest I'm likely to figure that out. I'm most concerned with my protein intake. Some online references say that for an endurance athlete you should be in the 1.2 to 1.4 g per kg body weight protein each day. After tracking my diet for a few days, it looks like I'm a little short. So I'm going to try and bump it up and see if that helps.

I'll let you know how things workout. My plan for know is to keep riding, maybe start running for cyclocross and make some diet adjustments. The Mt Evans HC race is still a few weeks away, hopefully I'll at least feel like racing. If you have any good ideas I'm not considering, let me know.

Just for Fun!

Last night I did the first race of the Green Mountain Sports Velo Short Track Series in Golden. So much for another easy week. Had a bunch of people from the team come out and race. It was great fun to see everyone! The photo's are outstanding so I thought I would share. All of the photos were taken by Mountian Moon Photography, she did a great job and let anyone racing download the photos for free. So enjoy

This was the start, David (a teammate) took off and I let him. Look at those mountains! We were getting rained on during the first lap.

Bob, Todd and Nuke were chasing.
This guy attacked and passed David, so I started giving chase.
The course has a lot of sharp corners. I was working to improve my flow through the turns and keep my speed.
I finally caught the leader but my chain kept skipping off the middle ring and I had the front tire slip out on me. Ultimately, I lost contact.
I finished up in second place. Not bad for as poor as I've been feeling lately.
I had a great time. I'll be back during the next couple of weeks.

Just Earned Another Recovery Week

FTP estimation test was this morning. It went bad. Basically I average 253W when I maxed LTHR at 163. That's a 15% drop from the last test. So, I'll try anther recovery week.

Taking the Plunge

This is such a cool video


On the cycling side, I'm rounding out a good recovery week. I'm actually feeling pretty good (which doesn't always happen during a recovery week). My plan is to get in another FTP test tomorrow. I'll put the results up and we'll see if there's any improvement.

Funniest Thing I've Seen in a While -

Get ready to cry! Some good adult Humor.

Since they took down the video, you can see it here.