Makes You Think

Midseason Cold

We're in the meat of the cyclocross season and I'm sick. It's an 'off the course' skill to avoid getting sick during fall racing. It gets really challenging with kids. During CX season you just have to remember, like anything during a cyclocross race, something is going to go wrong. There's not such thing as a perfect race/season, it's how you recover and push forward that makes the difference.

Shortly after the Halloween race, the next day to be specific, I came down with a pretty gnarly cold. I've been off the bike, miserable, for the last 8 days. I think I'm mostly over the cold so just this morning I jumped on the trainer for a 30 min ride to see how the body would react. So far so good, no violent relapse. I feel ready to start working out but I'm willing to give it a few extra days to make sure, so I don't lose more time due to a relapse or other complication.

Big Ring Parker CX in on tap this Saturday. It's the second team race this year and it's not in the 'Boulder Bubble'. It's a great course and I'm looking forward to racing! See you there.

Feel the Burn!

Halloween cyclocross! I tried to take things up a level since I missed last year. I had a fun race, lots of wild comments from the fans and racers. My results weren't spectacular but I gave it my all and pushed through the mud and pain.

Sadly the family cold appears to have caught up to me and I feel really bad today. Maybe that explains the results? I thinks so. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Summer's Over

I have mixed feelings about it. Could be good for CX. Not so good for fun training rides; back to the pain cave.

Cyclocross 2011 mid season thoughts

Sorry for the lack of updates this Cross season. As you know I upgraded to a new faster category last season, Cat 3. Moving out of the beginner pack was fun because I got to tell stories about how well I was doing. This season things have been a little harder, ok maybe a lot harder. Everyone is fast and at a much more competitive level.

Everything during the race is heavily competed, (the start, the flats, the straights and the corners, barriers) your weaknesses show up. At first I was a little concerned because I didn't have the strength to push by everyone. But then again, during the race I'm racing in larger groups of riders and all of us are about the same level and no one has the strength to just ride away. In the end I'm always amazed at how many people finish right around me. If I could just go 1 minute faster I move up 10 - 15 places.

In many ways the races have been a lot of fun. Tactics start to play an important roll. I go back and forth with a lot of racers and we all know who's having a strong day, and you can't have a strong race every time. I really feel like I've learned a lot about my self and my racing capabilities this year and particularly this season. It's just not always an exciting story to tell.

Little Piece of Heaven

Tuff Start to the Cross Season

This past Saturday I kicked off my 2011 cyclocross season by attending the Queens of Cross race, not far from home. This venue has been kind to be in the past, I've won races (a race) here and generally had good results. This year I was lining up with the SM 3 for the last race of the year. I was nervous but I tried to stay hydrated in the warm afternoon sun and I remember to be patient on that first lap.

At the start, the officials started doing call ups. He must of read off 50 names for the 12 racers there (no shit). Near the end of the list I even got a call up, that was unexpected. 12 guys, he should of just said "line up". Callups are very important but not for the start of this race. The start had a good straight away then a u-turn and back to the first obstacle. I didn't kill myself, I knew they'd have to slow way down at the turn around, and they did. As we started with the first lap I started moving forward, I was feeling good and people were getting tired after the start. I passed about 4 guys as we came into the first barrier. I dismounted a looked up at the guy I wanted to follow, and jumped....

BOOOM

I clipped my foot on the barrier and went flying through the air like Superman! Splat, right on my stomach and elbows between the barriers. I'm sure I let out a nice "uuuugh" as the air was pushed out of my lungs. It must have looked spectacular because one of the coarse marshals was on me asking if I was ok before I even looked up. I actually felt ok and knew nothing major had happened so I jumped back on the bike. But my speed was really reduced. I felt like I had just been punched in the stomach.

My legs had more in them but puke brewing in my belly said, "not so fast dude". I was hoping if I could keep a few of the racers within my sight I might be able to catch them later. In the end I caught two of them, narrowly avoiding DFL. The wheel I was planning to follow before I crashed went on to win the race, he's a friend, it was good. Two bad I didn't lift my foot another inch. I am happy to say I rode every bit of the two huge, steep hills on every lap.

So, there you have it. I crashed on the very first cyclocross barrier of the 2011 season. Things can only get better now!

Phenomenal Lookout Ride

I got a jump on the rain this morning and climbed into to clouds on Lookout. Just me and the deer. It was fantastic.

US Pro Race

It's been a long hard week and I haven't been able to see much of the Colorado Pro Tour bike race that's been ripping through the state. But today I told everyone to go away and I took my 4 year old to the Golden race. We parked in town then rode up to the turn just before the pillars on lookout. My 4 year old muscled it out, it's the steepest point of the climb. We watched them race by then we quickly dropped back into Golden and saw the racers go back through Golden before racing into Denver for the finale. It was great to the pro racers on my roads. They were flying!
Racer sign in.
Had to ride the start after the race.
Chill'n on the dragon watch'n the race on the big screen after it left Golden.

Still Kick'n

Sorry for the long lack of posts. I'm still around and I've wanted to post some stories for awhile but it obviously hasn't happened. I've been spending a lot of time at work writing proposals. I'm not exactly a natural writer so when I get home and think of writing up a story for the blog, I just can't do it. I'm hoping things will slow down a little in the coming weeks so we'll see if I can get this thing going again.

One short story about today. My four year old has been on vacation for the past week (I didn't get to go because of work). When he got back I asked him if he'd like to go to the bike park, meaning the new Valmont Bike Park in Boulder. He, of course, said yes. When I asked him how long he wanted to be there he said "50 hours," so I planed for the morning. We drove out this morning before the heat of the day and had a blast! He was riding everything, I heard him laughing a couple of times as he rode ahead of me. When we got to the pump track he was all over it. He dropped in and didn't come out for almost 30 minutes! Velmont Bike Park is a fantastic park, there were kids and people everywhere. I really believe every city should have a park like that!

After the pump track we went down by the main entrance and ran across a true cycling star, Tim Johnson. He was just hanging out, so I told my 4 year old to go give him a knuckle bump because he was a super fast "mud racing" (Cyclocross) racer. Nate rode around Tim twice while Tim held out his fist, finally opting to be shy. Which I find funny because Nate as asked to watch dad's "mud racing movie" many times, the 9 ball dairies. The movie is about Tim Johnson's season when he won the cyclocross nation championships. So he knows who Tim is, at least on TV. Nate soon wandered off while Tim and I talked for a few minutes about the up coming cyclocross season, before Nate was getting out of sight. Tim's a down to earth guy and I enjoyed our conversation; thanks for asking a local cat 3 racer his opinion about the up coming UCI race, made my day.

Some of you may not be surprised to hear this but, where else can you go to your local bike park and find a nation champion? I think only in Boulder.

I'll post photos in an update.

Rocky Mountain Omnium – Road Race

This past Sunday was the final day of racing for the Rocky Mountain Omnium. It was going to be the longest day of racing, the road race. This race had an interesting dynamic from the start. It was the Colorado State Maters Championship Road Race and because of that there were a lot of new racers that had not raced the previous days. You see, as an omnium it’s like a stage race but the biggest difference is it’s not a requirement to do all of the races. As a result the number of racers at the road race was going to be double what had been racing all weekend. This made planning a strategy for the race, interesting. It also made for races within the race. There was the race for the overall omnium win and there was the race for the day, which happened to be the state championship. Not all the racers are going for the same ‘race’, so you can see it was a little complex.

After losing David in the crit, Tom and I had to think this one through. Tom was in second place overall for the omnium but of course wanted to win the state championship. Dane, the guy currently in first place for the omnium had demonstrated his strengths all weekend. He did a fantastic time trial and won the crit. He was sprinting all over the crit and no one had an answer to that. The road race presented us with an opportunity; about half way through there’s a 10% hill followed by a longer 5-6% hill. Dane is a big strong guy that’s gravitationally challenged, he even told us about his Superior RR troubles with the “Wall”. So, we had to exploit that weakness and get Tom free.

At the beginning of the race a number of the other racers came over and asked about Dave’s crash during the crit. It was nice and very appreciated. People were genuinely concerned. Most of us are fathers and have a day job making accidents something we all want to avoid. The race started slow, my legs were tired before we even got started. We had 50+ miles to go and no one was in a hurry. I was happy to set the pace for a lot of the outward ride. I stayed near the front and when the pace slowed I would move up and keep things going. About 10 miles in the road turned to dirt. The dirt was smoother than the pavement and not a factor at all. I continued to patrol the front, chase anyone thinking about getting away and kept the pace moving.

Before the right hand turn towards Burns I took the front. The climb was only a few miles away and I begin to push the pace. There were a couple of turns and I drove through each of them. I continued to push but not too hard, I wanted everyone to chase. I wasn’t trying to get away. The plan was to get the pace high so that when we hit that hill the gravitationally challenged would already be at their limit making the hill harder. I hit the hill and continued to keep the pace as long as I could, then I pulled off and watched the field shatter into three groups. Tom was in the lead group and Mike another teammate for the day was in the second group. Low and behold, Dane (first on the omnium) was in the third group and hurting. The gaps were opening up so I jumped on his wheel and let him pull away. I wasn’t going to help chase until that lead group had some distance.

The gaps opened up and once we got back down to the river valley I was comfortable that the race lead was too far up the road so I started to pull through. We were rolling down the river valley picking up racers that had obviously over exerted themselves on the hill but managed to hang on a little while longer. After the weekend of racing and the effort going out I was quickly running out of steam and ended up getting dropped. I found a new friend and rode in with my new partner in pain Kurt. It was more of a parade to just get it over with, we worked together so we didn’t have to be out there any longer than necessary.

I struggled in about 8 minutes after the finish to see Tom holding up his second place prize. Amazingly Dane did catch the lead group in the final miles, which blows me away. It’s a real testament to his strength. That effort however totally neutralized his killer sprint as he had given everything to get back in the group. So, sadly the strongest finisher may have not won but in the end but the strongest team did. Tom got second on the day but it was enough to win the overall in the omnium. I finished 15th and managed to get enough points for 5th overall in the omnium. The winner was someone that had not raced all weekend. Too bad, he missed out on a lot of fun, loser. (I’m just sad I didn’t get a chance to meet him)

Looking back it was an emotionally interesting weekend. The time trial on Friday was a lot of fun even if I didn’t have the right equipment. I feel like I did well coming in 2 minutes behind people with professional grade time trial equipment while I was full on retro (that’s right Merkx style, no aero equipment). The crit was hard both physically and emotionally because of my teammates crash. By the morning of the road race I had no idea how my body would react. In the end it did what was needed, maybe more. I really enjoyed racing with the team and meeting everyone else in our category. I’d also like to tell Dane, sorry dude but there’s an opening on our team for you anytime, you’re a hell of a strong rider and a great guy. J

Rocky Mountain Omnium - Criterium

This weekend I've been in Glenwood Springs, CO participating in the Rocky Mountain Omnium. My team has had a good group of three racing. It's been a lot of fun. Yesterday was the time trail and the team was in 1st, 3rd and 7th overall. I was in 7th, so today at the criterium my plan was to attempt and keep our lead racers in a good position. I spent a lot of time on the front going as hard as I could. My plan was simple, make it a hard race. Our guys had proved they were fast so I just needed to reduce the field. Things were going well until the last couple of laps. My friend David who was sitting in 3rd place had been riding on the back of the field for most of the race attacked. He got a good lead and I quickly got to the front and tried to block. A couple of racers were yelling at me but hey "come on around, if you can." Adventually they caught Dave and I immediately counter attacked. I was on the front going into a fast corner when there was a crash a few racers behind me. I looked back but I couldn't see who it was. I sat up because I knew I had two teammates back there and if they did crash I wanted to give them a chance to get back on.

The next lap around I saw David laid out on the road not looking good at all. They kept us racing but basically neutralized that corner. We all took it really slow. The ambulance and race EMTs came out and eventually helped him off the road. The race kicked back into action with about 3 or 4 laps remaining. I went to the front and ramped it up. I really didn't feel like racing and just wanted it over. I also needed to help my last teammate Tom. The last laps counted down quickly and I let the race go to sprint it out while I soft pedaled around through the finish and over to the crash corner. David was getting put on a backboard. It sounded like when the crash happen he was hit low and basically flipped over and landed on his head and shoulder. His helmet was blown out and he didn't remember the race. His collar bone was pretty obviously broken and he has skinned up.

We gathered our things from the race and went to the hospital. He was looking a lot better there. He'll be ok. Likely need surgery on the shoulder and a couple of painful nights with the road rash. Makes me wonder why I do some of these races. I have another hard road race tomorrow but my head really isn't in it. I'm just sad it happened. He's worked really hard to get in shape this year and it was clearly paying off. Keep him in your thoughts.

Winter Park Epic Singletrack Race #1, The Hill Climb

The 2011 mountain bike series kicked off with the Winter Park Hill Climb. I was a little uncertain it would happen with all the snow still on the ground in the high country. But this hill climb is on the service road that goes from the base of Winter back up to the top. They ploughed the road to get service vehicles up so we were in good shape. The road was in perfect condition, all the trails however were still under snow or water run off.

The weather was fantastic. Much warmer than I anticipated. I decided to ride the 29er this year because two years ago when I did the race it was on a CX bike. I felt over geared and needed another gear or two smaller. The climb is just over 2020 ft altitude gain in 5.2 miles. That works out to be an average of about 7% but there are a few flat places, a couple of sustained grades around 10% and two pitches over 15%. Therefore I went with the 29er because it had the gears and it's only about 7 pounds heavier.

There were about 26 racers in my category. I got a center front start. At the start a group of about 10 seemed to leap off the front. I settled in behind them hoping the group would stick around a little while. I was wrong, after about a minute the group started to shatter. I ended up riding around racers as they peeled out of the group. Three racers quickly shot up the road and I decided their pace was too hot for me. I was in fourth within the first 4 minutes of the race. I was truly surprised how quickly the race fell out.

Hill climbs, for me, are a lot like a time trial. Just get give it all you have to the top and tactics don't really come into play. About half way up a racer from my group caught me and we stayed within a few seconds all the way to the top. Right at the final 15% climb to the finish I herd another rider behind me. Knowing if I had a rider pass me at this point it wouldn't be good, I gave it all I had. I ended up finishing 5th. The 3 riders that got away early finished 4+ minutes ahead, the 4th place guy I was chasing finished about 13 seconds ahead and the guy behind me was only 9 seconds back.

Two years ago when I did this race I finished in 48:21. I was hoping I could get my time under 45 minutes. I ended up finishing in 44:00. Pretty good! On a side note I think I was abducted by aliens on the way down the mountain. My butt cheeks felt like someone drove nails into them. Poorly executed annal probe? Time to recover.

Check out the new blog header photo taken right at the top, heading up the final 15+% climb. I was way deep in the pain cave.

New Toys

Mountain bike racing starts tomorrow. I'll have a review on these baby's soon.

Fountain of Youth

Made it back over to the Golden Bike Park for a little refresher after the recent mountain bike clinic. The pump track was dry and ready to roll. I had so much fun. I was planning on a short little ride but ended up riding everything for about and hour. I felt like a kid back when I used to spend all day at the "dirt hills" on my BMX bike. Only this time the kids were watching me rail the corners. See the two sitting in the upper right hand of the photo. One of them had crashed and cut his elbow. (Yes, I checked he was ok. Minor cut but I think he was done for the day. Funny, these two geniuses rode to the bike park with their helmets on then took them off to ride; that's thinking.) They just sat their watching the old man on a 29er cross country rig rip around the pump track. Ha Ha

Mountain Bike Clinic

About a week ago I participated in a mountain bike clinic that the race team was putting on. Lee McCormack worked with us for 6 hours to get everyone dialed in and ready for the season. He did a fantastic job! Lee wrote the book on Mastering Mountain Bike Skills. No really, he wrote the book! The guy obviously has amazing bike handling skills but more than that, he knows how to share them with everyone else. He systematically took a group of racers and gave us new skills. Just step by step by step and boom, everyone got it.

We all had a great time and I would highly recommend you or your group take a look at Lee's clinics. They are well worth it! The weather we had for the day wasn't great but everyone had a great time and learned something new. I'm looking forward to getting out on the trail and practicing my new skills! I'm also hoping the team can get him back for the next level clinic.

We were out at the Golden Bike Park for the clinic. It was an outstanding location for the group because we could all work on our skills and Lee could easily see everything and give us pointers. Unfortunately the pump track was a series of lakes, designed without drainage.. really? Anyway, it was a fantastic event.

Trying to stay warm and absorb the knowledge.

Lee systematically stepping us through the process. Our happy little group, ready to hit the dirt.

The weather was moving in near the end of the day but the group was motivated and having fun.

U2 360 Tour!

Think About It!

Human-Powered Health from solve on Vimeo.

Where has the time gone?

Wow, it’s been a long time. I haven’t forgotten you all, I just haven’t had time. Changes at work have caused a lot of extra stress and required more of my time. To keep the family and fitness part of my life in balance I’ve had to eliminate the extras. Sorry.

This past weekend I raced the Front Range 60, a 60 mile marathon mountain bike race here in town. A 10 mile loop raced 6 times. This would be the longest mountain bike race I’ve ever done and the longest single ride time I’ve spent in the saddle in the past couple of years, certainly the longest race.

My plan was… well, I didn’t really have a good plan. Having not race something like this before I had no idea what to expect from my body. I ended up felling pretty good that morning so I just let myself ride. I’m sure I was a little too fast the first few laps but I knew everyone would get tired as the race went on so if I could get in some time early, we’d just see how the last laps went. Maybe I could sustain those gains if I didn’t fade too bad.

The course was basically two parts, the eastern part that had two climbs of decent size followed by the western side with relatively flat fun little sweeping sections along a river. The wind was minimal and helped keep the dust away. The sun and temperature, for the first time this year, had us racing without extra layers. Nothing on the trail was overly technical making it fast. I ran my Kenda small block eight tires with about 30 psi pressure, making them pretty hard to minimize rolling resistance. The Cannondale Flash 29er was perfect for this loop. It was fast and the fork soaked up everything. I had no mechanical issues during the entire race.

In the end, I feel like I did well. I had a mid pack finish which wasn’t bad considering there are no categories other than age and I recognized some of the names of racers from faster categories in front of me. Where I feel I did well was with racers that are traditionally a little faster. Last year some of these racers put ten minutes on me in shorter races. I was expecting that they could put big time on me in this long race. This time however I was putting 5 to 10 minutes on them. Regardless, it was fun and I’ve been recovering this week. I'm just not starting to look forward to the next race.

I'll try to keep the blog updated a little more frequently.

Downhill "Moutain" Bike Race

OMG, watch out for the dog!

I love it when you can hear him laughing.

Midweek Update

This past week has been a rest week and I've had time for my second hobby, brewing beer. Typically I get to brew about once a month. This past week I was able to get in two batches! Ah yes, it's going to be a good summer. My first batch was a repeat of a success from last summer. A honey amber. Its a high gravity/alcohol content beer with 2 pounds of honey in the 5 gallon batch. It was such a big hit last time around so I had to remake it.

For the second batch I wanted to try an all grain batch. This is brewing straight from the grains without using any pre-prepared and purchased concentrates. I had some time this past Sunday so I bought some grains to make a Summer Pale Ale. This was my second all grain batch, the first was ok... actually I drank it because I'm cheep. It was a Hefeweizen that could have used some fruit to make it better, it had a banana color. Ok, it wasn't that bad but I wanted to try again. So I gave the all grain beer making another shot. I'll keep my fingers crossed and let you know how it turns out later.

On the training and riding front, I've been getting ready for the season and I was beginning to wonder if I was getting any faster. That can be a difficult to answer early season. You know, the trees keep you from seeing the forest. Anyway the training has been focused on endurance and base mile training so how do you tell your getting faster when your staying out of the high end power ranges. Well I got one of my answers on my ride today, I tied my best 60 minute average power output from both 2010 and 2011. I guess things are coming along.

Training Camp Complete

So this past week I was racking up the miles with a second training camp this season. I ended up with about 360 miles, 90 of them on the 29er mountain bike. Actually the mileage isn't all that important, what is important is the time I spent in my power zones. 4+hours in power zone 2 (endurance) and another 4+ hours in power zone 3 (tempo). I only spent about 3 hours in zone 1 (recovery), which is really too easy of an effort to get significant physical adaptation. If you include my heat rate (HR) info from the mountain bike rides, I had 7+ hours in my endurance zone. A whopping 1189 training stress score (TSS - nerdy stuff) over the past 9 days.

So now that it's over, I feel good. Tire but good. I'm on a recovery week this week. Workouts consist of a little intensity but short rides. Rest is as important as the workout. So I guess you could say I'm consolidating for the next work phase.

Actually the weather was really nice last week. Unlike the high winds we've been having the past few days. Made me laugh when I saw this video, looks like some not so fun spring training along the Colorado front range. It's hard to motivate yourself for this kind of a ride everyday.

Training Camp #2

This week I/my coach has bumped up the training load to get in a big block of base/endurance miles. I could really tell a huge improvement in my fitness after the first training camp. This camp has a bigger training load.
For this training camp I have traveled... nowhere. I've taken, no time off work. I have and continue to try and squeeze in the riding time around everything else. So far it's working but I certainly couldn't keep this up longer than a week. Thankfully the weather has been incredible and I've been out and about. I've been commuting to work and taking the long route back and forth. I love riding by gas stations, $3.30 :).
Since this past Saturday I have over 13 hours on the bike and over 200 miles. About 70 of those miles have been on the Cannondale Flash 29er the rest on the SuperSix. Really that's not the important part, what's important is how they've been paced; at a quality endurance level (200-220 W). My base fitness will be larger than ever before, the theory is it will give you a foundation to build on later in the season. I'll let you know.

Work Life ImBalance

Sorry for the lack of posts. Life has been...... complicated. Over the past couple of weeks I've had a big deliverable due at work that required a lot of extra time. The work was hard and long but my group made the deadline. So, life is slowly returning to normal.

During those weeks l had to strip life down to the basics; Family, Work and Health. There weren't any extras. Unfortunately I had to miss a few workouts because there's only 24 hours in the day. I do have to give an extra special thanks to my wonderful wife, she also made sacrifices and really helped me get through it all.

The training is coming along. I'm spending most of my time doing endurance type rides. I do feel like my base endurance is getting good. I'm certainly ahead of where I was last year, not only in my power output but also in how I'm feeling. I really noticed in my rides this weekend were I was able to get out for long hard rides with out excessive fatigue. Not sure I'm race ready but there's time.

More updates soon.

Weekly Update - Training Camp

This past week I’ve been at a training camp. Unfortunately I didn’t get to travel any place exotic or warm. Basically, for the past two weekends and the weekdays between I’ve increased my training load to simulate a training camp. The plan was for multiple days with longer rides all at an early season pace or endurance power and heart rate. These area basically well structured rides at a prescribed level to help the body adapt to the endurance demands of the up coming training and racing season. These rides are not super intense but they aren’t sitting on the couch either. It’s a workout and over time it gets very tiring.

It began almost two weeks ago on Saturday with a long ride out around DIA. About an hour and a half into the ride we came across a “storm wall.” When we left for the ride that morning there was 20% chance of snow, it was blowing in fast and we were at our furthest point out. We quickly decided to turn around and almost immediately it started to snow. Fortunately we had the wind at our backs and the return trip would be a little faster. The snow kept blowing and soon it felt like and looked like we were in the middle of a blizzard. By the time we made it back into Denver there must have been 3 inches of slush on the roads. Snow was sticking to my glasses making it extremely difficult to see. My moral was quickly shrinking as my shoes slowly filled with icy cold slush splashing up from the road. We ended up with about 8 inches of snow and a winter storm warning, information the Nation Weather Service could provided that morning.

The remainder of the week I was stuck riding indoors, in the nice warm pain cave. After the snowy cold start, I was ok with some dry warmth in the basement. It was a great mental incentive for a week of riding indoors. Basically my life that week was to wake up early and ride, clean up and get to work, come home eat dinner, help clean up, spend some time with the kids, help put them to bed, clean up and go to bed. Obviously I couldn’t give up my professional or family duties during the training camp but overall I think it went pretty well. I sat down with my wonderful wife before all of this and she was very supportive and helpful during the entire week.

I’ve been recovering this week and off at some travel for work. Hopefully this effort will pay off in the future. Either way I feel pretty good and remain motivated.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

"Alberto Contador cleared of Clenbuterol charges"

Cycling News had this article.

"According to a number of Spanish newspapers, the competitions committee decided to rethink its verdict on Friday last week based on article 296 of the UCI’s regulations, which says that an athlete can be exonerated if they prove that they had inadvertently ingested a banned product through no fault or negligence on their part."

Now if a rider has a bottle of supplements then I understand how it can be shown to contain a banned substance that is not on the label. It's simple and straight forward, the supplements are tested and proof is provided that he/she inadvertently ingested a banned substance, as long as it wasn't on the label.

Someone please tell me how it was shown that a steak Contador ate last July was tested for Clenbuterol (a substance banned in cattle in the EU). How can proof even be provided that shows he inadvertently ingested a banned product from this beef? Just for the sake of argument, if Clenbuterol is banned from use on Cattle in the EU what percentage of beef from France or Spain contain Clenbuterol (should be 0%).

There is no way I believe any sort of burden of proof was met in this case. I think someone dropped a chain. Maybe Floyd Landis and his outrageous claims aren't so crazy.

Colorado Cross Cup Champions

Feels good to be apart of this!!

January Training

Last month I made the decision to get a coach to help me with, at least, the off season this year. I opted to try a coach to help take some of the guess work out of training and to free up my time trying to figure out what I needed to do. I've read all the training books and have a good idea overall on what's needed but were I think I need some help is assigning day to day workouts. Mixing things up to keep it interesting while accomplishing my goals. Now that things are in place, I figured I'd give you some idea of how its going and what kinds of workouts I've been doing.

First, my goals for this off season are to set the foundation for another good racing season this summer. Specifically, I would like to build/improve my aerobic foundation and loose 5-10 pounds from last years race weight. I don't want to become a winter superstar doomed to flame out early in the season, so I plan to be conservative with my workout intensity while still achieving the physical adaptations I'll need later.

To start with, it's January and long miles in the cold or on the stationary trainer can be mentally painful. I try to avoid anything on the trainer over about an hour and a half. If it's longer I try and ride outside. The trainer is an excellent way to control excursion and it makes it easy to correctly dial-in rides at a prescribed level. The majority of my time has been spent at an endurance level, meaning hard enough that it's a workout but easy enough to sustain it for longer periods and repeatable everyday. These aren't sitting in front of the TV and spinning away workouts, they are slightly uncomfortable working up a sweet with the fans on kind of ride. On average I've been working out about 8 hours a week, with the longer rides being on the weekend. Scheduling for me has had me riding early in the morning before work. Since it is January, this allows for a repeatable week-to-week schedule to be established.



So far I think things have been working well. I haven't had a lot of trouble completing the workouts. Having someone look at the data is modivation to not cut corners and complete everything as planned. Due to the nice weather we had a few weekends, I've actually been able to complete a few longer workouts than planned. With a few suggestions I've really been able to improve my workout warmups. Looking back over my training the past year, this January has been one of my highest output months in miles, time, TSS, and KJs. I feel fine, I'm not too tired and I still have a lot of motivation. More importantly, I talked to the wife last night and told her the numbers and asked "have I been riding too much? do you think it's had a negative family impact?" She said no and wouldn't have guessed I'd been riding any more than normal. I'm calling things a success so far!

Stay tuned!

Sit'n by the campfire

This past Sunday evening I finally got a little time for my second hobby, Brewing Beer.

I've had a nice little recipe sitting around for a little over a month. I am fond of Belgian beers, especially Trippels. This one is a high gravity (high sugar/alcohol content) beer, it was an easy beer to brew with simple ingredients. I'm looking forward to giving it a try, but with all the sugars it will be a little while before it's ready.

Recipe: 2006 World Beer Cup Gold Medal: Dragonmead Final Absolution clone
Extract:
10 lbs Pilsner Light malt extract LME
1 lbs Amber DME
1.5lbs Belgian Candy
12.4 total pounds of fermentables

Hops: (IBU came out at 23 but you can range from 20 to 25)
2 oz. German Hallertau 3.8%AA 60min
1 oz. Styrian Goldings 3.4% AA 30min
1 oz. Saaz 2.8% AA 3min

Yeast:
WLP500 Trappist Ale Yeast

The description from the brewer:
Final Absolution Belgian Style Trippel
Dragonmead's signature product! This is the ultimate Belgian style. The very high gravity of this beer is balanced by the smoothness of its finish. Banana and Clove aromas come from the Belgian yeast strain combining with the generous dose of Belgian Candi Sugar. The Saaz hops help to give this beer a balanced bitterness with no noticeable hop aroma. O.G. 1.085, ABV 8.5%

It'll be in the primary for about two weeks, then to a secondary for almost a month. Spring is going to be great this year!

My 1st Team Ride of the Year

The first team ride of the year is always a little concerning for me. It seems like I’m always trying to get back into the groove of things and get out for longer rides come January. Most of the road racers on the team have been riding base miles for a while and have a good level of fitness already. As for me, I’m just coming off the cyclocross season and a break, so I feel disadvantaged. I’m always worried I’ll be too week for the long haul, destined to be dropped.

This past Saturday was my first time back with the group. Actually I almost missed it but found out they were taking a route that went near my house. So I hopped on the bike and rode out to meet them. Fortunately I met up with them without any issue, it allowed me to get in a warm-up and prepare myself mentally to ride in a group. There is a basic etiquette you should be know so you don’t wreck the entire group. There were about 30 racers out on Saturday; it had been at least six months since I’d ridden in a group of this size. It was a lot of fun to see all the familiar faces as well as some new ones. The pace wasn’t too high and I could carry on a short sentence conversation between my gasps for air.

It feels so good to get out on those warm winter days. Everyone has a huge smile on their face. They know the indoor trainer waits for them but to escape it for a day and get out with your friends is especially exciting. I know I had a great time. As an added bonus I was able to hang with the group, until the end when the bigger surges started up for the ‘finish.’ I descided to pull the plug before the sprint.

I hope the weather is warm this weekend.

Watts Up?

Now that 2011 is here I’ve been trying to identify some race goals for 2011. To be honest I haven’t had a lot of races tickle my fancy. The funny thing is I still find myself having a lot of motivation to race this year. I just can’t find those races that I’m yearning to put everything towards. The ACA road race calendar is out and I see many familiar races that I’ve been interested in and raced in the past. The Winter Park Mountain bike series has also been something I’ve picked at in the past. I’ve never felt like I’ve done incredibly well at any of those races, they’ve just been fun races to keep the fitness up. Sure they were hard and I buried myself to do well but in the end it was never a focused goal. Cyclocross and its concentrated race season has always allowed me to be a little more focused.

Right now I feel like I’m going to go back and target many of the same races I’ve done in the past, only this time I’m planning to have more fitness and ultimately be able to improve my results. I’m still debating with myself on what the race schedule will be but right now I’m thinking I’ll hit a few of the longer road races and then do a few mountain bike races. Probably do the entire Winter Park series and maybe try a longer endurance event, more for the fitness and to see were I fall out than anything else. To some extent I may be setting myself up for failure by not going all in on a few target races but we'll see. I certainly want to see my power output (aka fitness) continue to rise and above all I want to achieve that without burning myself out or my family's patience.

So this past Saturday I got out for a power test on the bike to see were I was at. I wasn’t super diligent about testing last year but I did have a pretty good idea were my power levels and abilities were. I hadn’t done any testing during cyclocross season and based on the outstanding season I had I was expecting to see some improvement. I went out and tested my all out 12 min, 6 min, 1 min and 15 sec abilities. My goal was my highest measured outputs for this in 2010 (I didn’t use a powermeter during CX so this was basically my Jan through Aug numbers). All of my best performances were produced bay in May of 2010, leading up to the Morgul Bismark Road race and actually my 6 minute power max came during that race. To my great surprise I beat everyone of those 2010 power numbers! (Except the 15 sec number, haven’t been sprinting much in CX or training for it).

12 min average was up 3 watts, 6min average was up 8 watts, and my 1 min average was up 12 watts!

So that gives me a little more motivational fuel. I’m better now than I ever measured during 2010. Now I have to be careful, keep building without becoming a January superstar and blowing myself out. I feel like the early spring races are a crap shoot, I want to be ready a little later in the summer.

We’ll have to see how it goes.