Better weekend of training

Legs are starting to feel better after vacation in early October. The past couple of weeks, they've felt like lead, and my cardio wasn't up to speed either.

10AM Saturday Ride; Along Beech a Park Police lady yelled at us from the opposite side of the road to form a single line. Not many of the good did, so she turned around and tailed us. No one stopped for one of the stop signs, so she pulled about half the group over. A couple guys started arguing with her and it delayed us about 5 minutes. By the time we got to the end of Tuckerman, there were only 5 of us and we rode at a good tempo the rest of the ride. My legs felt pretty heavy throughout the ride, and I really wasn't recovering too quickly after a hard exertion. Although, my legs started feeling like they were opening up towards the end of the ride.

8:30am Bicycle Place Shop Ride. Wasn't too sure if we were going to be able to ride today, since the forecast was calling for showers mid morning. This turned out to be a false alarm and we almost had the sun come out. Clara Barton was pretty hard because I was either pulling hard or my legs still aren't ready for hard exertions yet. By the time we got to MacA, I was ready to turn left and skip Mnt Gate, but when I say BryanV turn right with the Mnt Gate group, there was no one I was going to skip it. I stayed in contact with the group as they crested MntGate and sat in through the neighborhood. At the bottom of Anglers, I was feeling pretty good, and started a hard acceleration, but got completely bogged down by a slower rider on the right, and had to come to a stop. Loosing all my momentum, I had to put in a really hard effort to re-engage the lead group. Unfortunately, my legs aren't back to full strength, and I bonked about half way up. The rest of the ride, I sat in and tried to conserve my energy.

Towards the end of the ride, Bryan and Super Dave got a big gap and I bridged up to them just before an 6-8 person crash occured. Thank god to my spidey sense. Bryan, SuperDave and I took good pulls down Beech and we went pretty hard along Ross. By the last roller on Ross, my legs were toast.

Great Sunday ride

Riding in the Wind and Rain

Training Log Update;
Rode 45 miles in the wind and rain today. Temps weren't too bad, if you were a penguin. Didn't see any other riders out there.

Did some brutal intervals (5 x 7min @ VM, 5 x 3m @ AC). Legs are really burning but I'm heading to gym for a big dose of weights.

Winter Weight Training

With lots of rainy weather in the forecast, I'm planning on a heavy dose of weight training over the next week with some L2 tempo workouts on the trainer. I'll focus primarily on doing heavy leg workouts, and some lighter weight upper body work to keep toned. Sorry, no specifics on the exact workouts I'll be doing just in case some of my competitors happen to read my blog. Don't want to give away my training secrets.

Back in the day, yeah that's what all the old timers say when they refer to their youth, I use to weight train all year round. I'd do four day rotations: Day 1 chest/back, Day 2 biceps/tripceps, Day 3 shoulders/legs and Day 4 would be a rest day. I did weights for strength and wasn't too concerned about putting lots of bulk on, not that I could. In '90 I entered a bench press competition, and was able to press 275 in the 132 lb class. I don't think I could press 132 lbs today. I trained primarily for hockey, which was my sport for most of my life. Well, at least from about age 5 to about 10 years ago.

I've always enjoyed being physically active. And have definitely found racing the hardest, most competitive sport I've ever competed in.

Ugly Weather means training in the basement

Forecast for the weekend is rain and more rain, so it's looks like it'll be a weekend of basement training. A couple weeks ago, I rode the trainer, and it took a long time to get motivated. So, I'm hoping it won't take as much time this weekend.

I'll probably do a lot of 5-8 minute intervals at threshold. Maintaining a steady power output is so much easier on a trainer than outside. Need to continue building my cardio engine.

Will also go to the gym tomorrow and do lots of leg weights: extensions, curls, leg press, dead lifts. Workout will include my 15 min core workout. Or I might do the Sat morning pilates class. Need to get my core back in strength after the slack off over vacation.

Maybe Sunday will bring good weather and I'll be able to get outside.

Back from Tuscany

After 16 days of doing nothing but eating and drinking a lot in Tuscany, I'm back. Actually, I returned on the 16th. I put on 10 lbs and I'm back to my normal steady state weight of 140. I spent most of the race season at 130.

I did the Thrasher Hill ride the next day after my return, and boy was I hurting. I can't believe how quickly you loose fitness/form. My legs hurt, my lungs hurt, my chest hurt, my neck hurt, my triceps hurt. My whole body just hurt. I completely popped half way up Anglers and just struggled to keep my legs turning the rest of the ride.

On Saturday I did the 10am ride and I felt much better then on Wed., but no where close to how I felt during the summer. I had no snap and my legs felt pretty heavy after high intensity.

On Sunday I did the Bicycle Place Shop "A" ride. Legs are starting to feel a lot better, but still need to work on the cardio.

So what's my plan for the rest of the fall and winter?

• Keep the extra 10 lbs on, enjoy eating whatever I want.
  
• Train through the winter at a heavier weight than my race weight.
  
• Get my legs and cardio back into semi-good shape over the next couple of weeks.
  
• Build a really strong cardio engine through the end of Dec.
  
• Spend Jan and Feb cutting weight and start doing high-intensity workouts.

Fall Training Starts with Recovery and Getting Fat

After a long race season starting with winter training and then 34 races from early March to mid Sept, I am finally taking a break from riding and training. This Saturday, Justina and I will be heading to Tuscany for two weeks vacation. This will be our fifth year staying at Villa Fontelunga (www.villafontelunga.com) and we will also be celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary.

We fell in love with this region of Tuscany and really look forward to our return. It's very relaxing and we usually only go to our favorite towns: Sienna, Montepulciano, Montalcino, Cortona, Pienza, Orvieto. Maybe this year we'll visit some places we've not been to before. We also look forward to eating and drinking great food and wine.

I won't be riding at all except for an occasional ride on rusty old mountain bikes or the stationary bike at the gym. I plan on eating/drinking a lot of great Italian food/wine so I'll be returning fat and out of shape. The best way to start fall/winter training.

Murad: Waste of Time

The Cat4 Murad RR sucked. What a waste of time. There were too many riders taking up too much space, not riding hard enough and no way to get around anyone. The pack would speed up going downhill and totally bunch up going up the rollers with no room to get around anyone. Event on the flatter sections, the pack stayed totally bunched up from centerline to curb. Officials weren't enforcing the center line rule and lots of riders would pass up the left side on the sections of road that didn't have a yellow line. A huge crash collected about 25 riders after the final turn due to extremely poor course management by the officials. An ambulance was parked in the left hand lane. They should have red flagged us along River Rd until the ambulance was cleared or at least neutralized us until we cleared the ambulance.

Anyway, he's a race summary.

Bryan Vaughn, Artemis, went down in the first turn after completing the first lap. I was in the back and was thinking about slowing up to help him back to the field since he was trying to win the BAR. When I saw Mike May drift back, I decided they had enough fire power to bridge back up and decided not to help.

The course was not selective at all, and the pace was never too fast. I rode in the back with the motorcycle guy and two other guys for the entire race. We pretty much talked the whole race. The erratic riders, and there were many of them, made me really nervous so I never ventured to the front. I was planning on trying to move up later in the race.

I sat on my teammate, Conor, wheel for the first couple of laps and he was looking good, but then all of a sudden he started loosing contact, let a gap form, got his nose in the wind and that was the kiss of death for him. I had to jump around him to stay in contact with the group. Actually had to make a couple jumps around riders as they started slipping off the back.

The final lap picked up a bit but wasn't too terrible fast, never felt like "oh my god, I'm going to die". Rounding the final corner the motorcycle alerted us in the back that there was an ambulance on the left side of the road attending to a Cat5 crash. I don't think the riders in the front were alerted to the ambulance, because as flew around the corner and started fanning out across the road, they had to bunch back up in order to get around the ambulance. About 15-20 riders down, but a group of about 15-20 riders got through clean with a big gap. This final K was probably the hardest part of the entire race. The wind dramatically picked up and even in a draft it was hard to keep pace. I sprinted around two riders, and just beat out another rider at the line. Yeah, how stupid was that, sprinting for 30th place? I have no idea where I finished.

All I know is I'm really sick of Cat 4 races. They are such a joke, too dangerous. Next year I'm only doing Masters races.

After the race, Fabrizio from ABRT got punched by someone from Coppi. How stupid is that?