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!