September 27, 2015

Its been a while since I’ve posted here. I’ve had a busy life. House maintenance has been a huge factor in being able to post, plus our 5 kids are growing up and require various levels of scheduling to get them from soccer, martial arts, band concerts, choir concerts, school and other activities. The race season is winding down and I’ve made a few major discoveries that apply to me this year. I’ve also purchased some amazing equipment and will write more about that in the future. Right now I am planning my off season to prepare me for next years race season. 

I joined a Mountain bike race team this year, Diamond Peak / Calton, Harrison Orthopedics / Trek Mountain Bike Team. This team is awesome! The camaraderie and friendliness of the team members is excellent. The Diamond Peak Mountain Sports bicycle shop is amazing, staffed by excellent, knowledgeable employees. Its always a pleasure going there, weather its just to talk bikes, ask questions about bike tech or to make purchases. I hope to be associated with this race team for years to come.

The 2015 race season was a success for me. I was able to attend more races this year as opposed to 2014. I took second place at the 8 hours of Sundance in the Male solo category. In that race I completed 8 laps in 8 hours 28 minutes. rode 61 miles and had 9900 ft of elevation gain. That was my biggest accomplishment racing wise. 

I purchased a 2014 Trek Fuel 9.9. This bike is the best bike i’ve ever ridden. It is advertised as a trail bike, but it is light enough to compete with any full suspension XC racer. Having the extra suspension travel has really helped with my confidence in descending. This in turn has helped me to push my limits while descending and then has honed my skills. The ENVE wheels are super stiff and contribute to the overall feathery weight of this bike. I will write more about the bike in a future post but for now, I am very pleased with this trail bike for an all around everyday use bike.

In the spring of 2015 I had a profound change in my thinking about nutrition. I’ve put into practice different nutritional plans and they’ve really helped with body composition and endurance. Lowering carbohydrates is the key to my performance. I will definitely expand on that in future posts. 

Performance Update

On January 10th I started using 155 as my target HR. It's getting closer to the racing season, and I feel I need to start ramping up my training. My first ride was a 30 mile flat ride. It's the same one that I've been doing for 2 months. My legs defiantly felt the new pace. It wasn't agonizing pain like a hill climb, just a mild burn. My legs just weren't used to the pace. As I progress in the training I will be bumping my target HR again, and I'm sure my legs will feel it again. I did get 1-1.5 miles an hour faster at the higher HR. 

My second ride was a 54 mile ride. It took about 3 hours and 50 minutes. After about 2 and a half to 3 hours my pace really slowed down. Hopefully with a bit more training at these long rides my pace will stay higher for longer.

I'm not sure of the overall benefits of using the low HR of 145 bpm. I did this for quite a few rides, and was expecting to see my pace increase. I used my iPhone 4 with the Allsport GPS app to track my rides. I went back through my rides and graphed the average  speeds in excel. I expected to see a general trend upwards. I did not. I next graphed the  time of each ride, and I did notice that longer rides produced slower average speeds. That's not unexpected. Perhaps there are other unseen benefits that training at this level has. On the positive side, there are benefits that I can see.

1. I am more able to keep to a certain HR when riding. There defiantly is a learning curve to keeping  my HR at 145. It is a skill to be learned.
2. I was able to get in long 4+ hour rides. I don't know if my leg muscles would have been able to handle a 4 hour ride at a higher HR. 
3. I burned calories. I didn't burn a ton of calories per hour, but I did burn some.

I defiantly take a positive approach to this dilemma. Even if it didn't do any good to my performance, I still learned a lot. I don't know if I will do this type of training next year, but this year it's over. 

I will now spend about 6 weeks doing long base training rides at 155 bpm. I hope to see a general trend of increasing average speeds. 

Last week (Jan 15-21) there was a series of snow storms that mother nature sent our way which made it difficult to get out on a ride. I finally broke down and switched my tire to my Continental home trainer tire and set up the bike indoors. One of the workouts I wanted to try was one legged pedaling. I figured I would just do 10 minutes on each leg and that would be a good start. Ha!Ha! After a warmup I pulled one leg off and set it on the step stool next to my bike. After 2 minutes my leg was screaming! It appears there is a major flaw in my technique. If I could build this technique I could potentially lay down huge power increases. I have ordered a complete wheel to mount the trainer tire to so I can easily switch out the wheels and set my bike on my trainer. I will be doing these one legged workouts once a week to try to build up that technique. Hopefully I can increase my watts output by training these muscles.

Thats all for now kids. 

Winter cycling

This article is about cycling in the cold, or to be more precise, it's about keeping my feet warm while cycling in the cold weather. Around here it was about 26-28 degrees during the day. I was trying to ride 2-3 hours at a time in my base training zone. Keeping my body warm wasn't a big deal. I layered with multiple wicking layers, and a wind resistant outer shell. On my head I used a Sugoi beanie hat under my helmet. I used a Gator neoprene face mask. On my hands were some old Saranac ski gloves. These don't have any gel in them or anything like that, so I do have to keep moving my hands around.  All this was working for me very well, except for my feet. My feet were cold. Not just cold, but extremely cold. Painfully cold. Frost bitten. This is going to be a long winter if my feet were going to be that cold. How do people ride in the winter?

I started my quest for warm feet by searching on the Internet. A quick search for "winter cycling" led me to several websites. The best seemed to be www.icebike.org. This is a website dedicated to winter cycling. These guys seemed to know what they were talking about. In their "Tested on ice" section there is a whole bunch of tips about what to do about cold feet. As I read through, I was disappointed because I had tried almost everything they suggested. I was using merino wool socks. I was using Gator neoprene mountain bike shoe covers. I didn't want to have to put foot warmers in, I thought that might get expensive.  The one thing I saw was somebody suggested removing the insole because the heavier socks might to too tight for the shoe and this might cut off circulation. I did notice that my feet were tight in my shoe. I realized my circulation was being cut off to my toes. So my next ride I took out the insoles. 

About 20 minutes into my 2 hour ride, I was disappointed yet again as my toes started to get cold at first then really painfully cold by the end of the ride. The next day i had a shopping trip planned. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and get toe warmers. I was surprised they weren't that expensive for Little Hotties adhesive toe warmers. I grabbed a box of 30 pairs. On my next ride( and every ride after) I used them. Again 20 mins into my next ride, I could tell where I was headed, toescicles.

 I went back to the website and one suggestion was to move the cleat back from the ball of the foot, but I knew my cleat was back all the way already, so that wouldn't help. A quick look over at my shoe confirmed- no, whats this! There it was, my cleat all the way up front. I checked my other shoe, same thing. My cleats were under the balls of my feet, possibly cutting off the circulation to my toes. So I got out my allen wrenches, and started adjusting the cleats. While I was  there I thought about the employee Butch at Skyline Cycles who told me to tape the bottom of my shoes, so cold air didn't get in. So I got the gorilla tape out and laid it down in the footbed trying to cover up the whole footbed. Now it was time to test the new setup. I wasn't very hopeful, I mean how can moving the cleat that much really help? 

Before I changed my cleats.

After I changed my cleats.

So I put my woolie boolie 2 socks on from DFeet, attached the toe warmers, and put my shoes on. I put my shoe covers on and away I went. 20 minutes into the ride I could still feel my toes. 1 hour in and my toes were getting cold, but not freezing. By the 2 hour mark my toes were cold yes, but I didn't really notice like on my previous rides. I think moving the cleat back helped immensely. Come to think of it, in the summer on long rides sometimes my feet would go numb. Having my cleats up towards the front may have been causing a lot of problems. 

During my quest for warmer feet my girlfriend convinced me that I should order winter specific cycling shoes. I found the key after I ordered, but before they arrived. I was happy to see my Shimano MW-81's show up. After one 2 hour ride with toe warmers and wool socks, but no shoe covers, my feet were finally warm. I did order the winter shoes 1 full size bigger to allow heavy socks and warmers inside without cramping. After I have more miles and time with these shoes I will write more about them, but for now I feel confident that I'll be riding all winter long in the years to come.

My Training Rides

For this post I am going to talk about what I actually do on my training rides, and record some info about my physiology.

I am riding my road bike right now. My mountain bike is “put away” for the winter. I do this for several reasons. The mountains in my area are very steep and hilly. Sometimes changing from an agonizing climb to serious elevation drop very quickly. This prevents me from keeping a heart rate steady in the mountains. This doesn't fit with my train goals right now. Also the mountains have snow in them right now, and they get muddy with just a little bit of snow. I don't want to fight the mud and ruin trails, or fight to keep my bike clean. With my mountain bike “put away” I can also get major repairs done. Like fork rebuild or just diss-assembly and clean/service without any interruption in my training plan. So I am riding my road bike right now, which is a 2010 Giant Defy 3.

My training rides right now are pretty boring. I do either a 2 or 3 hour ride keeping my heart rate below 145 BPM. Its just that simple. Those are my “rules”. It seems simple in concept, but in practice its a little harder to do. First thing is finding a suitable place to ride. It can't have too many hills or stops as that would tend to send my heart rate up through 145. There is a farming area west of me with long straight roads, very few hills and light traffic. This is where I'm doing most of my training rides. Its a nice place to ride, but the roads can be bumpy. The next hardest thing for me is keeping that damn HR below the target. This is the first time I've tried to do a “Base” training and my mind knows I can push so much harder. After 8 rides at my new rules, I'm finally starting to anticipate my HR against my exertion level. It is a skill that you learn, just like anything else. I can see how a slight incline only 100 yards long that only goes up 10 feet in elevation really changes my HR. My last ride had a average HR of 138 bpm at 3 hours. I'm hoping to bring the average HR for a session closer to my target HR. I know I get above my 145 target, but not for long. Things like an intersection or hill will make it jump for a few seconds. I am getting better at keeping it lower though.

One thing that I have noticed is my average speed has come up after only 8 rides. My average speed after my first 3 hour ride was 13.36 mph. My last 3 hour ride my average was 14.32 mph. This isn't definitive, but its encouraging to me. I hope this trend continues. That would mean for a given HR I could produce more watts,which is my goal. To produce more watts fro any given level of exertion. I don't have a Power Tap, that’s just not in the budget, so I just have to use the next best thing, my HR.

Another thing I noticed is when I did my 3 hour rides, my speeds really fell off after about 2 hours. I hope this will start to change as I do more 3 and 4 and longer rides.

There are some measurements I want to post about me. Remember this is for my use also.

Body mass: 184.2 lbs

Stomach fat: 17 mm

lowest resting HR: 53 bpm

Ave speed for week: 14.49 mph

Hopefully you will be able to see my progress as I journey toward more speed. That’s all for this post, I will be posting soon, because I couldn't talk about all that I wanted to this post. Check back soon!

From The Performance Experiment.

After some thought, I have a better understanding about what I want to do with this blog. I am going to outline a little more about what content I am going to have in this thing. Its going to be my training journal, and also a place someone else can find info on training. I do most of my research on the inter web thingy. I will try to post the links to the actual website, and give credit to original authors. When I research on the web, I generally take advice of someone who practices what they are preaching. If Todd Wells says he does this kind of training but a scientist says that’s wrong, I’m gonna believe Todd Wells over the scientist. That doesn’t mean I wont have scientific research papers referenced here, but I am gonna take a World Champions advice over a scientist. My experiment isn’t going to be completely scientific for obvious reasons. I don’t have control groups, and the research will not be applied over a wide range of subjects. It’s gonna be a bit subjective. Maybe really subjective. My overall goal is to be faster on a mountain bike. The overall goal is objective, sort of. My race placing is the true goal. This appears to be objective, but its not. On any given race the best races in the world can show up, or the worst. My placing should change accordingly. I will compare times from previous years, but weather and course changes could come into play. Obviously if I start winning with the same general group of guys, where I was a middle pack racer before, then I can call that an improvement. 
 
I like numbers and graphs. So I’m defiantly gonna have some charts and numbers in this blog. I’ll try to compare training rides and look at average speeds as an indicator. I’m gonna be posting heart rates (HR). I’m gonna be posting nutrition info, and weight info. I’ll probably do some posts on managing life while training. I plan on doing a post based on mental preparation and toughness. I work as an industrial mechanic, so I’ll do some articles on bike repair and maintenance. I might do some product reviews, although the budget is pretty tight (right now) so I can’t go out and buy a bunch of thingies and try each one and compare against each other. I will be including my opinion in here also, I don’t claim to be a reporter or news source or scientist or anything other than a guy who races mountain bikes and writes a blog. 
 
One more thing, I am not going to schedule posts to be published at any certain time interval. With training and family and kids and life in general I don’t want to hold to a certain schedule. I hope I don’t get to sporadic with my posts, but I also don’t want endless posts about my training that hasn’t changed in weeks.  There may be months at a time when training just doesn’t change much or there were not any significant events to write about. That’s about all I have to say about summarizing where I plan to take this. I hope you find this blog useful. 

Lazy day

I woke up today and within a few minutes decided not to go for a bike ride. I had scheduled a 2 hour base ride keeping my HR below 145 bpm. I know it seems early to be skipping a workout, but I have a couple of reasons. The first is an incident that occurred yesterday. During my run my right calf started hurting. It felt like a cramp, so I found the nearest telephone pole and stretched it out for a few minutes. I continued my run starting with a little bit of pain, but it eventually went away. So I thought. After I got back home it didn't take 10 minutes to start hurting again. It was getting very stiff. Now I feel like I have a massive knot in my calf. I tried stretching it and massaging it all night, but it still just plain hurts. I want to give my calf a chance to rest and heal. So this is the first reason I'm not riding today, the second is I want a Lazy Day. I have to be careful here. Wanting too many of these leads to not enough workouts and slow performance, but a Lazy Day every once in a while can give my body a chance to rest and recover. And the final reason: The Weather Channel on my iPhone claimed a chilly 26 degrees outside. I'll save my workout for a warmer day, or until I get that second rear wheel for my indoor trainer, which I'm currently shopping for. Thats all for now, remember don't take too many Lazy Days.

First post.

So this is my first post. As the description says, I will posting about what kinds of training I will be doing, how long, what intensity, and so forth, and the performance its gained me or hasn't gained me. My athletic performance is, in my mind, an experiment. My body is an experiment. So I will be taking you on a journey into (hopefully) my athletic performance.  With that being said, today I ran 5.4 miles in 1:02:36 while keeping my average heart rate at 160 bpm. This is significant for me because I am in my base training season. This was probably the lowest ave. HR for running that I've had. This loop that I ran has a significant hill near the start that always spikes my HR. After the hill there is a little flat then a long gentle down hill until it levels out again. For cycling, during base training I am trying to keep my HR below 145 bpm. I've done 3 rides so far like this and I am getting better at keeping my heart rate up near the threshold yet stay below. This is also significant for me because I have never really trained with that low of a heart rate. My experiment this year is the base training. In future posts I will post my race times from previous seasons, as well as training times, and ave speeds, and other stats. This is also my first blog, so actually creating and maintaining the blog will be a learning process also. Until next time good luck to you all.