So Many Thoughts... So little time...

Here is a quick run down of what is going on in my cycling world...

• My new bike is up and running. It is fast, corners on rails (good for a guy with a broken hip), looks incredible, is lighter than my old bike, and is the first bike I have ever owned that I can really be proud of.
• My current form makes me feel like I don't deserve the bike... but who does... besides Boonen and he is a coke-head...
• My ergomo has come back with some weird readings since the switch to the new bike... I got a freaky high reading in the Union City race for one. We are talking 297 Watts for 3 hours with a 1 hour max of 325 Watts. This is not likely... actually it is impossible. I calibrated it right before that ride... it was only my second time on the bike.
• My theory is that three things happened. 1) my leg got a lot better just prior to switching bikes. This makes a lot of sense if you look back through my blog... the first really good ride where my power came back was actually the day before I shot the albatross. 2) the ergomo BB must have "shifted" during the race and started measuring high. When I rode after that, I did a new offset and it has been correct since then. The offset is well stabilized and I think the numbers are more realistic. I will talk specifics on the numbers in the blog to follow. I did throw out that race from my data... surprisingly I hardly set any records with that race for my all time best power curve. I think I moved up my 1:30 a little and that was it... 3) I have been overcompensating with my left leg... yes, the bad leg. Maybe once it healed, I started using it more and have thrown my numbers off on the high side... long shot, but a theory all the same...
• Back to the leg/hip... no pain... at all... none... I can do no movement that will cause me pain. There is occasional tightness when it rains... but it never rains so who cares. I am 100% and am no longer limited by my leg.
• Regardless of my leg issues, I am not as fast as I was. I am guessing my new FTP to be around 302 Watts based on a few NP returns. At a fat arsed 187 lbs, I have some work to do to get back up to speed... such as lose 15 lbs and increase my FTP by 25 Watts or so...
• I cut off my Euro Mullet. I was growing it in support of Christian's European Campaign and told him so. I wanted to take a picture of it... it was beautiful... like Iban Mayo's from a few years ago, but with less curl and looking very much like a coon pelt... it is gone now and I am slower for it...

Charts to follow...

First Race Back...

I raced in Union City on Sunday. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision. My main goal for the 68 mile State Championship RR was to finish with the pack. The terrain was rolling with a couple of decent hills but nothing too tough. The whole team was up there with just me and Drew racing in the Cat 4/5 under 35 years old race. My longest ride since the injury has been a couple of metric centuries that I have done at a moderate to hard pace... could I go at race pace for longer than that at this point in my training... would my race pace even keep me on the back of the pack for 70 miles? These were the questions in my head going into Sunday...

I raced hard. I felt like I could throw up from the effort for most of the 2 hour and 50 minutes that we were on the course... but that did not keep me from attacking once and spending a fair amount of time on the front. At around 40 miles into the ride, I had convinced myself that I could win the race. By 60 miles in, I had realized that I may need a ride from the wheel truck back to my car. My legs went, but I never quit fighting and achieved my goal... I finished with the pack (which had dwindled from 75 folks to around 25-30 folks by the end) and no breakaways stayed out.

I felt very excited about this race but I was worked over. I was sore all day yesterday (the race was Sunday) and felt a little tired at Tuesday Worlds tonight. It felt great to be back with the team and back competing again, but it is strange to ride in a race that you don't think you have the chops to win. I hope that my goals will be different in a few weeks when we head to La Grange (don't let the "La" fool you... we are not talking about Italy)...

I SHOT THE ALBATROSS!

Rime of the Ancient Mariner... This is an old poem that we read in highschool. The poem has always stuck with me even though I have not seen it in 15 years. It is a story of an aged mariner that tells his story to a groom prior to his wedding. The mariner, while traveling to the south pole, and in tough times, has an albatross join him on his journey. He and his crew celebrate the omen for a while, and then, to his crew's chagrin, he shoots the albatross with a crossbow.

Suffice to say that a lot of weird stuff happens to the mariner as the albatross is avenged... the crew hangs a dead bird around his neck... a ship with a dead crew arrives... his crew dies and is brought back to life by the Holy Mother...

I have forsaken my power meter! It is gone to be moved to my new racing steed and will not be used for the next 5-6 days while my horse is built up. I am still riding every day on the old bike, but the ergomo is sitting in a box before boarding my new frame. The power meter was working in my favour over the last few days, and I hope that this move does not work against me or my crew (Security Bank) over the next few weeks. The last thing I need is the team to hang a dead ergomo around my neck (no support in the US... haven't you heard!), and drop dead waiting for the Holy Mother to save them! Most of those guys are Protestants anyway!!!!!

Good ride... Much better...

I rode Tuesday Worlds last night... most of the guys from our team were taking it easy or were not riding due to the Tour of Atlanta... the racing starts on Thursday. The ride was uneventful and I really did not feel quite right.

I went out today at lunch and really felt pretty good at the start... my legs were a little slow to wake up after last nights effort, but that was expected. My left leg felt strong without thought. Five minutes into the ride, I looked down at my power meter when I was pulling and my power meter said 345 Watts... I thought it would say 270 Watts or so. This kept happening over and over. I started pulling while watching my power meter and was averaging 325 Watts for a few minutes and didn't feel bad. At around 20 minutes in, I look down to see that my NP for the effort so far was 285 Watts. Why not go for a new FTP? Today is as good a day as any...

So I worked hard. It dropped steadily throughout the rest of the ride and ended up at 272 Watts... up 7 Watts in a week. I will settle for no less improvement than that each week from now until I race at the end of June!

Summary of Facts...

Here it is... I have not blogged in a while. The following is a summary of facts/items of interest that have presented themselves since I last blogged...

1. My FTP is 265 Watts. I did a 30 minute test and that is what I came up with. My pacing was bad again, so I think this number would be OK for an hour effort. Once you get used to these efforts (I did one a week through the winter), it is pretty easy to tell what it will end up at for a full hour.


2. Number one really sucks. That is 50 Watts or more less than my FTP prior to my injury and I have gained weight and lost muscle since then. Long road to recovery (see picture to the right)...


3. I bailed out of the Tour of Atlanta... the reasons follow...

• I have found that my TT position is not powerful due to the tightness in my hip... I can't push over the top of the stroke the way I used to


• My sprint is down over 200 Watts for a 15 second effort


• My fitness seems to only allow around an hour at a high level of effort... I die after an hour and cant put pressure on the pedals. Prior to the injury, I was at around three hours...


• My doc says that I don't need to take a hit on my hip right now. It is not fully fused so it would be very bad to fall on it.

So, the first item above takes me out of time trials... the second takes me out of the sprint stage and any chance for a field sprint... the third kills the RR... and the forth kills the crits...

No reason to race at the back of the pack where the risk of a wreck goes up and there is no chance of winning... so I bailed out of the Tour. It breaks my heart... I trained all winter with that race in mind and it was the race of the year for me and our team. If I go out and kill it on Tuesday Night Worlds next week, I will of course rethink the whole thing, but with the FTP I put out today, I am pretty certain that the outcome will be the same.

I have planned to train my FTP for the next four weeks... like I described before... a FTP workout on Tuesday and 5 min VO2 max workouts on Thursday. I now know where I am and lets see how quick I can bring it upward. The amazing thing is that a 210 Watt NP effort is no a L3 workout for me. That was a sleep on the bike type workout for me pre injury... now it is sweet spot training... or close to it. I will, of course, be pushing the upper end of L3 for all workouts between my FTP, 5 min, and long ride workouts. I will be growing my weakassed CTL of 59 by 4-8 CTL points per week to a more respectable number while growing my FTP.

Lightbulb On!

It just occurred to me after posting the below post, that I am being a little too hard on myself (not much, but a little). I have been so disappointed in my power numbers in comparison to my old numbers, but I did not think of the mathematics of the issue...

My old threshold was around 314 Watts. My new left leg threshold as reported by the ergomo is maybe around 255 or 260 Watts. I had told myself that this is a 60-70 watt difference in what my left leg is able to produce, but it really is not. Since ergomo takes your left leg wattage and doubles it, the numbers are closer than they appear since only half that number is produced by the left leg anyway.

If my threshold measures at 260 Watts on my screen, than my left leg is putting out 130 Watts. My right leg only had a 2.5 week break and has been working really hard ever since I got back on the bike. I would not be surprised to find that my right leg is putting out 300 Watts for FTP or 150 Watts with a right leg only measurement tool. Add those together and my actual FTP is closer to 280 Watts in a race... not good, but not too bad.

I know this will be obvious to everyone, but for some reason I was using the double number in my mind when thinking of how bad my left leg sucks... I don't have to make up 60-70 watts, only 30-35 Watts... that sounds much better...

Normalized Power Pothole

Click the graph to enlarge... if you want to see why a grown man will cry...

This is what my mean maximal normalized power chart looks like from before and after the injury. It is pretty ugly and I cant seem to change it. Yes, there is a 70-80 Watt difference in my performance across the board... and that is the good part of the graph. If you want to see something really ugly, you should see the MMP graph for average power. It shows clearly that of all the things that are lost, my sprint is by far the worst. My 5 second has gone from 1250 Watts to 830 Watts and my 15 second has gone from 1046 Watts to 572 Watts. I don't mind telling the competition my weakness because there are so many weaknesses and I don't really have competition anymore because I cant race...

The poor sprinting does not bother me as much. High power output has been difficult on my bad hip. When I move above 500 Watts, I can feel that it puts pressure on my hip in a bad way. My main frustration is with my threshold power. I went out this week to do an FTP workout. I had set a goal to hit 300 Watts for 18 minutes and build from there... longer and harder each week. I held 270 Watts for 5 minutes before I crumbled. Of course, I went out way, way too hard. I told myself that I felt great in the first minute when I averaged 320 Watts... and you know where it went from there. I guess the thing that bothers me is that I don't feel that I am challenging my cardio/resp. systems right now. They are falling back to meet my hip with every passing week without stress. Then I have the weird left leg injury thing going with the ergomo. God knows what that means in reference to FTP. Should I set a new FTP for myself based off of left leg only? I think so. Should I sell the ergomo and buy a powertap so I don't have to worry about my left leg anymore? Yes, I think so, but then again, that might be the worst thing to do. Then I wont know how bad my left leg is and I might overcompensate with my right forever.

I abandoned my previous training program because I just could not get it together to complete the effort. It all based on FTP and my FTP is yet to nailed down. I plan to determine my left leg FTP this week and will use that for all of my retraining workouts from hereforward. I will do an all out 30 minute effort and use my HR monitor as a guide for the first 10 minutes and then go as hard as I can after that. That will be my new FTP and I will possibly quit being a crybaby and start working toward a solution to this problem... such as getting better. Since my fitness must run through the bad leg, that is how I will train... I think I have convinced myself that I will stick with my ergomo... If I can fight through FTP workouts again now like I did during the winter, I can track my progress and use that for inspiration. The first one is the hard one... setting the baseline at such a low number is painful and discouraging and difficult to pace... all at the same time. I will do it Tuesday... just like over the winter... I will track my speed, too... that will help me to relate my left leg to overall output and keep up with those efforts...

The doc says that my femur will be clinically healed at around 12 weeks from the injury. It has been 6 weeks. He said that in 3 weeks, it should feel back to normal. I am walking without the cane now and really can walk without limping if I am not too tired.

I love to ride, and thank God that I am able to do that... but I miss the thrill of the race. Will I be ready for the Tour of Atlanta in three weeks? It looks like a long shot, but one I have to work towards...