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.

Happy New Year

Hey all, winter has finally arrived and I'm ready for it to be over. I'm finding myself still motivated to ride but that may change with the appearance of the white stuff. The past few weeks have been busy with family activities and work around the house. I feel like I've gotten a lot of things done and I've tried to be helpful and focused on the kids when I have their attention. I've also been taking this time to re-energize myself for the new year.

I did manage to find some videos of my cyclocross victory this past year. They're fun to watch, at least for me. Make sure you turn down the volume, it was windy that day and its obvious in the video.

Lap 1: this is taken after almost a complete lap, Todd was leading the group and I was right there. Check out my remount, it's perfect! I didn't even look down, just boom and I'm peddling away. A good sign for that day.

Cross at the Rver_ SM35+4 end of Lap 1 from Dale Riley on Vimeo.

Lap 2: This is shortly after I attacked (there are some riders warming up before I came through). I thought the guy just behind me would catch me for a couple of laps but then he was gone. I think he finished 5 or 6th, allowing me to ride off to victory.

Cross at the river - SM35+ cat 4 end of Lap 2 from Dale Riley on Vimeo.

I'll be looking to identify my 2011 goals in the coming weeks, the races I'd like to target and the training I'll do to reach them. I'll put them up here.

Red Rocks

One more nice day for the year. Almost everyone was out for the "company" ski day. I got out for a couple of hours too. Red Rock has been repaved! Nice
It felt fantastic to get in a ride.

What a Ride!

North Cheyenne Canyon Park. It's been a few years since I've been here but I've been riding this park for the past 15 years.
Fantastic memories and a terrific day! Amazing! I loved every minute of it!