Pretty Good Week...

Got shelled on the Tuesday night ride. Went out Wednesday at lunch for an allout hour. It was a hard ride after a hard ride on Tuesday... NP = 297 Watts for an hour. Not too far from my guess at my FTP right now. Took off Thursday- family responsibility. Went out Friday with what was planned to be an easy effort, but wound up riding harder than I thought I would... NP = 280 Watts for an hour.

I went out with some guys from the team this morning and did a laid back effort for 3 hours. Worked through some rotations on the home stretch and those worked me over pretty quick, but the overall ride was good.

I noticed this past week that my seat had fallen around a half inch. I expect it happened on the trip to or from Florida (unweighted vibration on the rack causes it to fall... it has happened before) and I didn't notice it until this week. Maybe this could be some of the reason my legs have felt so strange. When I raised my seat up, it felt like heaven... I couldn't believe the difference. Maybe it will help... who knows...

Either way, I am having fun on the bike again... I am encouraged to work harder and cut weight and try to get back on task. I have porked up to 187 lbs... from around 179 earlier in this season... and I was on the way down then. Diet starts back Monday...

Racer's Edge...

Yes, I have lost it. I cant remember the last time my legs felt good. Actually, I can... it was the first day of the hard training block I embarked on prior to vacation... the one where I pulled my back out. Since then, I have been on dead legs... either tired from a hard workout, or lethargic from a day off, or something else...

When I wrecked out and fractured my femur, I decided to schedule a few adventure races with my team at work. Even though I had started an Adventure Racing Team with the guys at work before we ever dreamed up a local cycling team, I had decided coming into this year to only race on my bike. I wanted to be 100% focused on a great inaugural season with our newly formed race team... 100% focused on riding the road bike as well as I could.

Coming into the best form of my life, I wreck and killed my form... I didn't decide to abandon the bike... I jumped back on it while still on crutches and worked my tail off trying to keep up with whoever I could find. I did, whoever, decide that maybe an adventure race or two toward the end of the race season would be a good fallback plan if my cycling form did not rage back.

Whether the form is here or not remains to be seen... I am participating in two adventure races coming up... a four hour adventure race in Macon followed a week later by a twenty-four hour adventure race in Woodstock, Ga. I have gone out on the mountain bike (first time in 8 months) and on my feet (running- first time in 14 months), and it has been a weird run. I was sore for 5 days after a 3.4 mile run... not exactly normal. My mountain bike skills were very rusty, but I held my own out there.

I rested today and will go out for Tuesday Worlds tomorrow. I hope that the training I did one month ago will kick in tomorrow and give me strong, fresh legs. If not, I will not despair... I will look forward to the races I have upcoming and get ready to compete.

New Finding...

Latest theory on why I continue to get dropped on group rides...

The facts:

• My aerobic system is not far from where it was prior to the wreck. I am probably 10 watts off of my best FTP performance prior to the injury... I suspect continued work on 45 minute FTP workouts and 5x5s would put me where I was in 2-3 weeks.
• My anaerobic system is where it was prior to the injury... I am putting out large anaerobic efforts of equal wattage and duration to my prior-to-injury self

WRONG!!!!! Well not quite, but wrong all the same. I decided as I came back from injury that I would use Tuesday Worlds to train both systems as I slowly increased workload through the weeks. I now realize that this RR format is training my aerobic system (I usually have a pretty good hour effort (NP close to FTP)), but not my anaerobic system.

This came to me as I worked through 8- 1 min intervals this past week. I have not done these since the late winter. I actually had just finished my last week of these when I broke my hip. I found that the first interval was higher than I expected. With almost no work, I went well above my goal wattage with no real effort. I immediately decided that my ergomo was screwed again. Rather than freaking out, I decided to ram through the rest and see if I could sustain the wattage.

The second interval was shocking... a major drop in power... the third was worse... forth, worse... and so on until I finished at what I do my 5 minute intervals at.

So, here is the finding. I seem to be able to light a match as hot as I did before the injury. The wattage output is relatively equal and the duration is equal. The problem is that I seem to have drastically dropped the number of matches in my box. Rather than 8-10 of these type of matches, I have one to two. Why? Because the guys I ride with are strong enough to burn my match through with one major effort... especially when I am trying to work on the front (which I have been trying the past few weeks prior to vacation). I then get dropped and my workout has only consisted of one or two really high intervals... no more...

The good news is that this system is highly trainable with very drastic and quick results in 3-4 weeks time. If I don't get 6-8 of these efforts tomorrow night at Worlds (meaning that first attack forces me to a wattage where I burn through all I got) then I will do 1 minute intervals on Thursday to try to hone in this system ASAP... it may be the key to the whats left of this season...

Return from vacation...

I am now back in Macon. The following is an update on the last week of training...

Ate and drank way too much... gained 10 lbs of water weight from fried food and booze. Both kids got sick so I also didn't get much sleep. I stumbled out to all the group rides that I went on with the dazed look of a college student on spring break who had to meet his parents for a midweek breakfast.

• The actual training was OK, though. My legs were a little tired from the hard training block... I decreased distance/duration over the past week and a half, but added 1 minute intervals and did a few 5 minute interval sessions. All of them were productive...
• I got worked by a few of the flatlanders I ran into. I think they were working against me... I am certain that the pro guy was working against me. Everytime I would come off a big pull, he found his way quickly to the front and blasted the pace up over 30 mph, then the group would tighten up and no one would let me in as I went back through the line of 7-8 riders... even though only 3 of them planned on doing any work... it was weird and it hurt. I was forced to jump on the tail end and then work back up in the wind when I wanted to work again.
• I think the new bike and racing kit is working against me... I always enjoyed being underestimated on my crappy bike and solid jerseys... they never saw me coming and when I rode well... they didn't mind so much. Now, I am afraid, it is the exact opposite. I look the part, but I really suck...