The First Race of the Season

On Sunday I did the Frostbite TT up in Everett. There are three things I did wrong that I will need to correct for the Icebreaker TT this coming weekend:

1. I was in a mad rush to get all ready in time for my start time, and ended up with only 10 minutes of spinning on the trainer, plus 2 minutes of zone 3 before I had to head to the start "house"
2. I waited until the last second to pin my number on my skinsuit, which contributed to #1 above
3. I didn't pre-ride the course, which proved to be a major flaw (see below)

Here's why those things were not good:

1. I really need a longer warm up - I didn't really feel good until I was already 10 minutes into the course, which was "only" a 9 mile out-and-back. I knew this was going to happen, but it still sucks. To correct this, I will show up with at least 30 extra minutes compared to last weekend. Since I haven't done any road races in like 4 years, I just don't have my routine down like I used to (plus, back in the day, both Bree and I were racing, so we could help each other get ready)
   
2. It took me like 5-10 minutes to get the number pinned on, and changed into my skinsuit from my jeans and team jersey I wore on the drive. I already have my number for this coming weekend's race, so I can pin it on the night before. I will still probably change at the event.
3. I didn't pre-ride the course, so I didn't know the location of the turnaround. This coming weekend I will definitely try to get in a pre-ride as part of my warm up, unless the weather is bad, and then I will just trust my teammates (who will be setting up the course) to make a clear turnaround.

The main reason #3 was a major flaw had nothing to do with me, really - for the first 40-50 riders, the race organizers failed to put a cone in the road indicating the turnaround! There was also no official standing at the turnaround, so anyone with questionable ethics could have cut the course. Additionally, an oxygen-deprived rider might not think to look back before turning (assuming they knew where to turn), with potentially disastrous consequences, since the course was open to traffic (although traffic was very light). An official and a crew member to stop traffic are really necessary, in my opinion.

Here's the blow-by-blow:

I did my abbreviated warm-up (struggling into the skinsuit in the back seat may count as a couple minutes of warm up too - but I wasn't wearing my heart rate monitor, so I don't know what zone I was in!), threw the trainer in the trunk, and walk-run through the gravel parking lot to the road. Then I rode at a steady but brisk pace to the start house, saw I had three minutes, so I did a sprint and turned back to the line. The holder held my saddle, and the official counted down from 10 seconds. I had a good start, although I should have been in one easier gear. I very quickly passed the rider who had gone before me, and eventually caught the rider 1 minute in front of me. Then I was alone for a while before I passed one more rider. At about 8 minutes in, I was starting to warm up a little bit, and my heart rate was leveling off at 171-173 bpm. Not long after, I was passed by Dustin Van Wyck, the cat 3 who started 30 seconds behind me. He was flying, but I worked hard to hold him at about 50 meters. Since he and I are in the same category, I couldn't afford to let him get too much time on me, and I hoped I might be able to pass him right back after the turnaround. He and I kept going, and at one point I sort of noticed a few orange cones on the right side of the road, but I didn't think much of it. After rounding a bend to the right, I see Dustin coming toward me, waving his arm in a circle indicating it was time to turn around. I thought "what?" and then shortly thereafter I came to an intersection with a stoplight. Oh no! There was definitely not supposed to be an intersection on the course! So, angered and frustrated, I turned around. For the first minute or so, I didn't go very hard, thinking my race was already over, but as I saw more riders coming toward me, I yelled to them, "There's no cone! Turn around now!" With that, I started pedalling in earnest. Dustin must have been feeling similarly, since I noticed the gap was not as large. I shifted a gear and picked up the pace. On the way out I had been averaging around 24.5-25 mph, but I quickly brought it up to 26.5 and occasionally 27 mph ont he way back. At around 15 minutes into the race, I finally felt warmed up and smooth, and saw I was pulling Dustin back somewhat. I was also passing quite a number of riders (OK, like 3) I was hoping Dustin had gone out too hard, but by the finish I was sure he had at least a minute on me. I sprinted the last 200 meters, and felt like my face was covered with snot and drool, but luckily you can't tell in this picture taken by the spouse of a team member:
I have absolutely no memory of this car just to my left.

Unfortunately, the end results put me at dead last (first time I have ever been last in a race - boo hoo), but I did get in a measured (by the race director) extra 0.44 miles. So if I use my overall average, which works out to 25.2 mph, I would have done the 9 mile course in 21:26, which is still near the bottom, but feels a bit better. And, without the disappointment of the missing turnaround, and a better warm up, I'm sure I can do better this coming weekend.

The results have already been posted, so I expect they won't change (I did email the director at the suggestion of a teammate asking for some fuzzy math to adjust my finish time). At least I can't get a worse placing!

Plus, this coming weekend's course is 10 miles, so I've only got another half mile to worry about! I'm hoping I can do a time more like what is posted for last weekend's course (22:29). I should also have a new, mroe aero front wheel I got on eBay by then. I was offered a disc by our generous president, but I declined. Since I can't afford one this season, I certainly don't want to fall in love with the performance of a disc wheel. Maybe next year.

Living Under a Rock?

So, Bree and I got out to a movie tonight thanks to Grandma Jane providing some babysitting. We opted for "There Will Be Blood" since it has gotten good reviews, and Bree said, "Yeah, we should see it." So, we headed over to Redmond Town Center, enjoying some of the wonderful sunshine and 58 F temp. We saw the price of movies has gone up a bit since the last time we hit a theatre. I'm pretty sure I paid around $7.50 for a movie last summer, but somehow while I was living under a rock the price went up to $9.50 (unless you are a senior, and then you only have to pay $7.50). $19 for the two of us seems a bit ridiculous given that we pay just under that for a month of Netflix. I can bet it will be another year before we go to the movie theatre again, so I expect it will be more like $12 a person by then! Sheesh! Anyway, I guess we resigned to hopefully get our money's worth.

The movie is excellent. I can't say I liked any of the characters, but I never once looked at my watch, and was always anxious for what would come next. Daniel Day-Lewis was incredible. I will never be able to imagine anyone else when I picture an oil-tycoon. You should go see it, but be prepared for some shocking scenes. Bree and I particularly enjoyed the dynamic relationship between money and religion, particularly the mild form of religious extremism portrayed in the film (OK, charlatan-style early 20th century evangelical religion in particular).

I guess the experience was worth $19, but we won't make a habit of it.

I had some great training on the weekend, as well as a great birthday celebation for Bree in Tacoma with the Norlanders, my mother, and us. I watched the coverage of the Tour of California on Versus, which sucked (an hour of human-interest crap, and an hour of highly-edited coverage of the prologue - why does Versus think those of us watching the race don't want to see people actually ride their bikes? Instead they show us riders leaving the start house, and then crossing the finish line. Lame!).

All Better - Training Resumes

I've finally beaten the cold out of my system. I did manage to start riding again on Wednesday last week, and did the A-team ride on Saturday. The ride went well, despite a total of 5 flats (five different riders, myself included). I was really "limited" on the ride by my heart rate. Any time I got up to about 160 bpm, the legs would scream and not really allow me to go any harder. I was actually quite fine with my body being self-limiting, as my mind is not as good at this and would have no doubt sent me backward in wellness. So, on the hills I would be slow, and on the flats I would be fine.

On Sunday I went for my first ever ride with my Zune (gift from work - no, I didn't buy one!) and it was awful. The ride was great, but riding with an audio device is annoying to say the least. I'm sure I just need new headphones, since the main problem was them falling out, and me constantly needing to adjust after I twisted my head to check at intersections. I'm going to try it again today for my post-work ride, but with a headband to hold the thingies in the ears.

I did two intervals rides this week targetting different goals. On Tuesday I did five 1 minute intervals on the flats at a high cadence (90-100) at 160 bpm and then five 3 min intervals on a 5% gradient hill, again at ~160 bpm (midpoint of zone 3). Wednesday I had a fun field trip with Emy's class to a children's film festival, and got in a 20 min run in the afternoon. Yesterday I did a 15 min TT simulation interval at a low cadence (40-50 rpm) and ~160 bpm, then a 15 min rest, followed by another 10 min interval of the same, but finishing with the 53x13 and a cadence of 30-40 rpm. Since the first TT of the year is a week from Sunday, yesterday was probably the last chance to get in some power TT training. Today will be an easy spin, and tomorrow will be a long ride. Our team is doing team photos, but it's not at a good time with the busy weekend we have coming up (Grandma Jane is coming to town tomorrow, and Sunday we are heading to Tacoma to visit Bree's parents), so I have to skip the photos in order to get in my long ride.

After some back and forth with BikeTiresDirect, I got my new aerobars for the TT. I'll try to take a picture of the bike decked out. I don't have the $$$ for a disc wheel, or even an aero front wheel, at least for this upcoming TT. However, Bree made me a sweet helmet cover that should reduce drag for my head. I'm scanning eBay daily for any good wheel deals, but the aerobars might be as aero as I get for now.

Superheroes and Giant Tomatoes

I am still recovering from being sick, but since I felt at least 80%, I went in to work today after two days off. Yesterday I was feeling on the mend so I went for a 20 min run. It didn't kill me. Today I rode in to work, and then got in an easy spin after work. It would have been super easy, except for the high winds that wanted me to pedal harder. It was an exercise of will to keep myself in check.

I promised a picture of the new kit:
Hopefully I will have some action shots soon!

Epidemic Presenteeism in the Workplace

My mother in law informed me of the term presenteeism (I may have invented a spelling for it, though) - people who are sick, but go to work since "there's so much work to do and they have to be there!" I have fallen victim to this presenteeism twice in the last two months, and so I implore the workers of the world - do not go to work if you are sick! I'm guessing there's plenty of impetus for a research study here:

What is the cost to the corporation for losing one sick employee for a day vs. the cost of that person working and spreading their illness to other workers?

Actually, I'm pretty confident we don't need a study to indicate that the cost of the single sick employee staying home is far lower than the cost of several sick employees staying home! And, if said employees go to work, infecting others there's no benefit - plus, I don't know about you, but I'm not too productive at work when I am sick. The most I can usually manage is responding to email.

No, putting a sign on your door that you are "sick" doesn't cut it, unless you absolutely, positively promise to never leave your office, and you cover your air vent.

So, I'm home sick today. For all I know I will be sick tomorrow too. Normally, I would still train while a little bit sick, so hopefully that means I only miss today's session (running).

For posterity, here's a recap of January 2008's training:

Bicycle
Time: 40:00:00 (exactly - that's crazy)
Distance: 669.9 miles (1080 km for my one non-US visitor)
Longest Ride: 61.7 miles (99.5 km), 3:58:00 (the hill ride below)
Rest: 4 days of nothing

Running
Time: 90 min.
Distance: 11 miles
Longest Run: 3.5 miles, 30 min.

For February, I plan to get the weekly average closer to 12-15 hours per week, and get that longest ride to at least 80 miles. We got the new uniforms too, but I'm too tired and lazy today to model them...soon, I promise.

Training Actually Works

Friday was a rest day, which meant Saturday needed to be somewhat hard. This last week was my lower volume (fewer miles/time) week in a four week cycle - three weeks of progressively increasing volume and perhaps an increase in intensity, followed by a week of lower volume, but similar intensity. So, yesterday I skipped the team ride to catch my niece's birthday party (she's one), and then headed out around 2 PM. The plan was to execute a "test" I've been considering. The ride from our place, around Lake Sammamish, and back works out to almost exactly 40 km of rolling terrain with no big hills. So, I wanted to see if I could average over 20 mph door to door. A secondary goal was to keep my average HR around 150, assuming this jived with goal #1. I used the first 10 minutes or so as a warm up, ignoring goal #1, but at the 10 min mark, I stomped it up to whatever speed worked out to 150 bpm on the heart rate monitor. Surprisingly, after a short time I reached 154 bpm, and was covering a flat section at 23+ mph. This seemed like a good sign. I rocked the whole loop, keeping my exuberance in check on the hills (didn't let the HR get over 160), and by the 20 mile mark I was still under an hour of riding! The last 5 miles are flat, so it was no trouble at all meeting both goals. I passed the house turnoff at a time of 1:13:00, which actually makes for a reasonably good 40 km time trial over rolling terrain with no aero equipment. I spun easily on the Sammamish Trail for an additional 5 mile cool down, and even with it, when I got to the garage I still had an overall average of 20.04 mph. Needless to say, I was very pleased. This is certainly the fastest I ever ridden this route, and amazingly I finished with plenty in the tank. I think the early season training is working out famously.

Sunday (today) I wanted to invent a ride that I would offer up as an A-team ride that I could lead. It's a standard loop through Redmond and Woodinville I've done many times in just under 3 hours by myself. I didn't go too hard, either, to recover a bit from Saturday's ride, but unfortunately, again due to the effect of training, the ride is too short. Distance-wise it is about 43 miles, and time-wise it took me 2.5 hours at a recovery pace (or, at least, I kept the HR in the 130's). I'll have to figure out how to amp up the distance by another 10 miles or so.

Still, I am very pleased with how well I am riding. First race of the season is in 3 weeks! The Frostbite TT. I used to be a solid time trialist back when we raced regularly in the late 90's - I'm hoping that Ted is still lurking within. The first race I did as a cat 5 was the pancake-flat 40 km Minnesota State TT, which I won in a time of 1:04:00 (I still have the t-shirt), and even beat the cat 4's who had aero equipment (I had none - just me and my bike). Back then, we were in Minnesota, and the following season we did the bi-weekly Blackdog TT series, although I always did them in the "stock bike" category, which essentially meant a standard road bike with at least 16 spokes per wheel and no aero equipment. The one time I did this course with an aero front wheel and clip-on bars, I improved my time over the 10 km course by over 1.5 minutes! I'm kinda scrambling now to get some aero stuff for the Frostbite TT - at least some aerobars. Maybe I can borrow a fast front wheel from a teammate...

I'm moving my rest day to Monday, now that the season is approaching, which means Tuesday will be the running day. Doesn't really matter since the wunderground.com forecast for this week looks like this:

any kind of training is going to suck. But, it beats snow and ice. If we were still in MN, I'd be lucky to be out on the mountain bike at this time of year...

Tomorrow night we get our new team kits. I'll be sure to post up a modeling shot of me in full Team Cucina Fresca regalia!

Blind Consumerism - Or Bike Geek

My rear wheel has been squeaking and plinking on and off, and I had just been ignoring it. The wheels I have been running were the ones that came with my bike, and aside from a spare front wheel, the ones on the bike are the ones I have available. Well, yesterday, in the cold rain and sleet, the wheel decided it had had enough. The squeak became sort of a constant squeak-grind with the occasional feeling of slippage and clunking after coasting for a while (for those not in the know - wheels are supposed to spin quietly and smoothly). It's probably my fault, or, at least, the previous day's training ride was the straw that broke the camel's back. Wednesday, I did some crazy intervals suggested by Travis, our team president, and cat 2 racer, that involve grinding at a slow cadence of 40-50 rpm while maintaining a zone 3 heart rate. So, on the Sammamish River Trail, I did two sets of 12 minute intervals at a HR of 160-165 in the 53x14 with a 10 min rest in between. They were tough! It also didn't help that after I turned around to head back home, the headwind made it a struggle to keep the HR in a recovery zone! But, since the first two races of the year are time trials, these intervals should pay dividends.

Anyway, on yesterday's ride, the wheel got angry, and I resigned myself to probably needing a new wheel. Here's where the "Blind Consumerism" comes into play. I used to be a bike mechanic. I mean, I got paid to fix bikes, and I should know better, but when I brought the wheel in the Sammamish Valley Cycle (one of our team sponsors, and conveniently 3 blocks from our townhouse) I was surprised when Brian (who is on my team, and works there) said, "I think it just needs an overhaul." Grand total for this operation would be a whopping $30, including bearings. But, they said it might take a couple of days (panic - no riding?), and so I felt justified in buying some new wheel, just so I had a spare rear wheel. I shopped around with what they had, and ended up with a fine Mavic wheel with aero bladed spokes, and a reasonable price. The Bike Geek in me just couldn't help it (there were cheaper options). And don't get me wrong - the wheel is sweet and will be great for the aforementioned time trials. But, today, roughly 18 hours after I dropped off the wheel at the shop, I got a call that it was all ready to pick up. So you see, I never missed a ride due to this wheel. I feel just a little bit guilty for having purchased the new wheel - but it is so pretty! And it spins quietly and smoothly! And, thanks to the shop, so too does my old wheel - maybe it will make it another 4700 miles...