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.