Training....In the rain, the snow, the wind, the cold... did I mention the cold? Finally this morning one can get out and see how all the winter & spring efforts pay off. It's been a very different type of off season so one can only wonder...
With the WORS & MNSCS opening races on Sunday, along with the windy & cooler conditions today it'll be interesting to see who shows up to toe the line at the Cable Off Road Classic. In past couple years it's had between 190 racers to as many as 250 when there's not be other races the same weekend.
Anyone hoping for the delightful opening singletrack in the first half of the race...well, you'll have to wait another year. A course revision likely from not enough rider input has the 23 mile course spending an inordinate amount of time on forest & gravel roads without the normal mix of single track. On the positive side, the race will go by fast... very fast (hold onto your lactate threshold).
Mostly it'll be good to see all the guys & gals that I haven't seen since last Sept/Oct and swap stories and catch up. You can bet the Duluth crew will be in their normal stellar early season form (may I be fortunate enough to latch on). If it's a smaller race field and not alot of the MNSCS racers come up today, heck even if they do -- I'm going with my three picks for winning Todd McFadden, the guy just always seems to perform at this race(he's got a 2nd place, a couple 6th places) this could be his year. Then there's Scotty KJ -- fast race, shorter distance if he's previous ailments are behind him he'll definitely be out front at a big portion of this race. Of course, if the hometown Jesrin Gaier been back on the horse training and I was a bookie in Vegas you could give the entire field a significant point spread and Jesrin would still pull out the big W. On the ladies side, again unless a speedy Jenna Zander or Kyia Anderson show up Sara KJ & Diana McFadden would be my guesses this early in the season.
Good likelihood the Cheq. Bay area guys will have one of their best races as a group, each year their abilities, the amount of time on the bike and likely their competativeness grow. I think it's even hard to pick the order of finish among them with Matt Hudson being the wild card. Belknap usually can come off ski season without almost any time on the bike and hold his own but it'll be interesting to see what Mcknight & Hudson have to say about it.
The Cable area will be missing Scottie Chapin but still represent well and the rest of the field is always a question mark as to who will come from Central WI or the Twin Cities.
Good luck & hope to see you all there!!!
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Sunday, April 5, 2009
The BoneCrusher.....
Ever have to live or deal with a problem for a really long time… and no I don’t mean your wife or boss. Cycling is one of those sports whereby if you do enough of it, you're pretty likely to get one eventually. Though I’d love to be an exception to the rule, that’s not the case.
The repetitive motion, muscle imbalances, less than ideal body fit & mechanics, the injuries from a major or minor crash and if you’re not on top of it, an underlying problem creeps into your life slowing and insidiously. Making a home for itself in your otherwise blissful cycling world.
It’s probably even fair to assess that most people, even or especially athlete’s create premature wear on their bodies, joints in particular. It'd be easy to go on a long tirade of how proper mechanics, strengthening & flexibility could save a whole heck of a lot of grief & greatly lengthen one’s time in any sport. Your joints don’t wear out just because they wear out – rather like a set of imbalanced tires on your vehicles, if you put the wear & pressure on an isolated area, instead of the full intended area, it’s not going to last anywhere near the fully intended duration. And like that set of tires, you don’t notice it suddenly. It just creeps into your life slowly & methodically.
So word to the wise, even if you think you’re doing your heart & lungs the best thing in the word by going for a 1 to 5 hr ride (which you are), don’t forget the muscles & joint structures that make it possible and they need care & treatment as well.
About a third of my training time is spent on pre/post care & prevention – warming up & activating certain muscles groups before riding, stretching afterwards. A lot of time? Well, considering the alternative, not necessarily. Add to that the incorporation of strength & balance training each week to areas that don’t get used when I’m on the bike and it keeps me feeling pretty good.
I’ve made more mistakes than most and tend to always learn the hard way, but in time either you get smarter or ….suffer and suffer some more. Secondly, the bad news of all this is you can try & do things perfect but you’re still going to miss some things some times.
Which leads to me to the BoneCrusher…. for 6 months and probably much, much longer I’ve had nagging problems despite all precautions & preventative measures I endure to put in place. Contrary to what I said above, you can think you’re doing all the right stuff, but if you miss a critical area, all the “right” stuff you are doing isn’t going to fix it. Thinking it is – which usually describes me – just keeps making things worse.
I’ve had a chronic mid back, hip & pelvic issues for a long time. Last week it came to head when I had difficulty just walking, let along trying to pedal. It was time to resort to the BoneCrusher. I’ve had massages done, I’ve gone to physical therapists, I’ve incorporating stretching & core training, but sometimes things still get missed or undiagnosed. That’s my entire point, don’t hesitate to get professional help & when it doesn’t work continue to see some other professional until it does.
I spent last week getting crushed, pressed on, twisted & electrocuted, several times over. Went to a sports medicine Chiropractor aka BoneCrusher. And despite my ill-thought notions of Chiropractors, if you find the right one, it can help and you don’t feel like you have to “drink the chiropractic Cool-aid”. I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m fully mended but at least I was able to get back on the bike & pedal with my right leg, and not only that I was able to pound out some of my best intervals this year.
For the most part I’m just enjoying the training process right now. Anxious for racing? Of course, but six weeks is still a long ways to go before the Cable Off Road Classic & the Iola Bump & Jump. Winter still seems to have it firm grip on the northern most reaches of Wisconsin, because if it’s not cold, it’s windy…. Or actually it’s usually both lately. However just like stock markets that go down & down & down, they eventually turn around and go up & up, as does winter give way to spring & summer. Sometimes both just take alittle more patience than one seems to have.
The repetitive motion, muscle imbalances, less than ideal body fit & mechanics, the injuries from a major or minor crash and if you’re not on top of it, an underlying problem creeps into your life slowing and insidiously. Making a home for itself in your otherwise blissful cycling world.
It’s probably even fair to assess that most people, even or especially athlete’s create premature wear on their bodies, joints in particular. It'd be easy to go on a long tirade of how proper mechanics, strengthening & flexibility could save a whole heck of a lot of grief & greatly lengthen one’s time in any sport. Your joints don’t wear out just because they wear out – rather like a set of imbalanced tires on your vehicles, if you put the wear & pressure on an isolated area, instead of the full intended area, it’s not going to last anywhere near the fully intended duration. And like that set of tires, you don’t notice it suddenly. It just creeps into your life slowly & methodically.
So word to the wise, even if you think you’re doing your heart & lungs the best thing in the word by going for a 1 to 5 hr ride (which you are), don’t forget the muscles & joint structures that make it possible and they need care & treatment as well.
About a third of my training time is spent on pre/post care & prevention – warming up & activating certain muscles groups before riding, stretching afterwards. A lot of time? Well, considering the alternative, not necessarily. Add to that the incorporation of strength & balance training each week to areas that don’t get used when I’m on the bike and it keeps me feeling pretty good.
I’ve made more mistakes than most and tend to always learn the hard way, but in time either you get smarter or ….suffer and suffer some more. Secondly, the bad news of all this is you can try & do things perfect but you’re still going to miss some things some times.
Which leads to me to the BoneCrusher…. for 6 months and probably much, much longer I’ve had nagging problems despite all precautions & preventative measures I endure to put in place. Contrary to what I said above, you can think you’re doing all the right stuff, but if you miss a critical area, all the “right” stuff you are doing isn’t going to fix it. Thinking it is – which usually describes me – just keeps making things worse.
I’ve had a chronic mid back, hip & pelvic issues for a long time. Last week it came to head when I had difficulty just walking, let along trying to pedal. It was time to resort to the BoneCrusher. I’ve had massages done, I’ve gone to physical therapists, I’ve incorporating stretching & core training, but sometimes things still get missed or undiagnosed. That’s my entire point, don’t hesitate to get professional help & when it doesn’t work continue to see some other professional until it does.
I spent last week getting crushed, pressed on, twisted & electrocuted, several times over. Went to a sports medicine Chiropractor aka BoneCrusher. And despite my ill-thought notions of Chiropractors, if you find the right one, it can help and you don’t feel like you have to “drink the chiropractic Cool-aid”. I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m fully mended but at least I was able to get back on the bike & pedal with my right leg, and not only that I was able to pound out some of my best intervals this year.
For the most part I’m just enjoying the training process right now. Anxious for racing? Of course, but six weeks is still a long ways to go before the Cable Off Road Classic & the Iola Bump & Jump. Winter still seems to have it firm grip on the northern most reaches of Wisconsin, because if it’s not cold, it’s windy…. Or actually it’s usually both lately. However just like stock markets that go down & down & down, they eventually turn around and go up & up, as does winter give way to spring & summer. Sometimes both just take alittle more patience than one seems to have.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Nice Training surprise….
How often do you take the winter off, jump back on the bike and can produce mid June wattage stats? Ok, maybe you can’t take the full winter off. But with the undoubtly busy work life… (see blog or two entry below for a clue as to why) not to mention probably the coldest weather in Northern Wisconsin in a decade. It’s not exactly contributed to a vivacious endurance training program. That’s not to say I wasn’t training smart or at least contrarian to commonly accepted training protocol.
For those of you who know me to be a bit zealous about cycling, I did jump on the waxed sticks more than a few times this winter and glide my way through the snow. That was at least until I plowed my head & shoulder into the hard packed trail on a less than graceful wipeout during the Ashwabay Summit race held in Bayfield at the end of January. That rung my bell more than I’d like to admit and curtailed my CX skiing enthusiasm by the end of January.
But really I plowed through getting in reasonable training on the bike & a mix of skiing from the end of cyclocross season & the Iceman right through mid January. At about that time I got a cold/flu and the weather turned ridiculously cold and it was the perfect break of sorts. It led to 2-3 weeks of very little time on the bike or ski’s and for the first time in months I finally felt truly refreshed and energized again.
The entire time however, or I should say since Oct I’d been incorporating 3+hrs each week to a program of core training and rehabbing a chronically sore back. That was a magic elixir. I had no idea how out of whack my body had become with stiffnesses, imbalances, to the point I was a very fit unhealthy person. (Amazing the difference between being fit and being healthy.) Honestly I don’t care if or how that improves my racing this upcoming season because it’s just a beautiful thing to wake up in the morning and fell sprightly & agile versus having to cling to the railing to walk down the steps after I waking up in the morning. Core performance & resistance stretching don’t knock it until you tried it.
Which brings me to that month of February, when winter should be turning the corner. Well, work got even more hectic and my time more limited so I’d either sneak in a long 4hr ride on a rare occasion or knock out something short but in the neighborhood of fairly challenging threshold like intervals workouts. Generally getting in 30-40minutes of harder intensity stuff.
So the last day of Feb, for whatever reason I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve got a 4x10min session of sweetspot intervals that coach Josh Powers put on the training calender. Because I’m into using a PowerTap meter hub that actually measures the power producted recorded in watts, it provides an excellent tangible means of measure current workouts with previous ones. In a way it’s like lifting weights you measure your effort in pounds, this likewise gives numerical means of assessing effort. I use it along with heartrate & perceived exertion to know I’m targeting the desired energy system (aerobic, anaerobic, lactate threshold, etc). So I crank out these “sweetspot” intervals, download the results afterwards and every one is over 300watts – what does that mean? I’ll get to it later. In the meantime, my mind is telling me that’s a pretty decent number given the numbers I’m familiar with. I check against previous similar interval workouts and find that it’s about 1 ½ % less than what I able to down in mid June ’08 --- that floored me! I don’t know how the rest of you do it but generally your mid to early winter numbers don’t come anywhere near those June numbers. Be it that I’m ahead of schedule or have somehow been able to hold such a reasonably high level of fitness, I don’t really care. It is however a very nice surprise to see and with any luck could be a promising upcoming season.
Ok, the watts, what all do they mean? Or what I commonly hear --- what’s a good number? Well, folks, in my opinion it’s nothing like what the bench press is in the weight room. Every number is unique to you as rider/racer. What’s more important than the raw wattage number is the watts to weight, or power to weight ratio. That better defines how well you can actually move the oversized winter rump while climbing a hill on your bike. High power is good but not entirely necessary if you’re more lightweight. My coach & I will joke from time to time how if I could have his weight with my power or he could have my power with his weight we’d be stars on the Pro Tour and it’s true -- we’d match then match the power to weight ratio’s that you see of many pro riders. It’s sufficient to say if you’re in my weight range 160’s, something close to 400 watts for a sustained effort would be ideal for absolutely top end racing. I’m in the 320 to as high as 376 depending on the duration of the effort. If your more or less than that weight your ideal wattage would be proportionately different.
If you’re into the numbers and science of cycling or fitness, getting a power meter can be a super helpful training tool as well as give you a regular tangible ongoing means of measures your improvement.
For those of you who know me to be a bit zealous about cycling, I did jump on the waxed sticks more than a few times this winter and glide my way through the snow. That was at least until I plowed my head & shoulder into the hard packed trail on a less than graceful wipeout during the Ashwabay Summit race held in Bayfield at the end of January. That rung my bell more than I’d like to admit and curtailed my CX skiing enthusiasm by the end of January.
But really I plowed through getting in reasonable training on the bike & a mix of skiing from the end of cyclocross season & the Iceman right through mid January. At about that time I got a cold/flu and the weather turned ridiculously cold and it was the perfect break of sorts. It led to 2-3 weeks of very little time on the bike or ski’s and for the first time in months I finally felt truly refreshed and energized again.
The entire time however, or I should say since Oct I’d been incorporating 3+hrs each week to a program of core training and rehabbing a chronically sore back. That was a magic elixir. I had no idea how out of whack my body had become with stiffnesses, imbalances, to the point I was a very fit unhealthy person. (Amazing the difference between being fit and being healthy.) Honestly I don’t care if or how that improves my racing this upcoming season because it’s just a beautiful thing to wake up in the morning and fell sprightly & agile versus having to cling to the railing to walk down the steps after I waking up in the morning. Core performance & resistance stretching don’t knock it until you tried it.
Which brings me to that month of February, when winter should be turning the corner. Well, work got even more hectic and my time more limited so I’d either sneak in a long 4hr ride on a rare occasion or knock out something short but in the neighborhood of fairly challenging threshold like intervals workouts. Generally getting in 30-40minutes of harder intensity stuff.
So the last day of Feb, for whatever reason I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve got a 4x10min session of sweetspot intervals that coach Josh Powers put on the training calender. Because I’m into using a PowerTap meter hub that actually measures the power producted recorded in watts, it provides an excellent tangible means of measure current workouts with previous ones. In a way it’s like lifting weights you measure your effort in pounds, this likewise gives numerical means of assessing effort. I use it along with heartrate & perceived exertion to know I’m targeting the desired energy system (aerobic, anaerobic, lactate threshold, etc). So I crank out these “sweetspot” intervals, download the results afterwards and every one is over 300watts – what does that mean? I’ll get to it later. In the meantime, my mind is telling me that’s a pretty decent number given the numbers I’m familiar with. I check against previous similar interval workouts and find that it’s about 1 ½ % less than what I able to down in mid June ’08 --- that floored me! I don’t know how the rest of you do it but generally your mid to early winter numbers don’t come anywhere near those June numbers. Be it that I’m ahead of schedule or have somehow been able to hold such a reasonably high level of fitness, I don’t really care. It is however a very nice surprise to see and with any luck could be a promising upcoming season.
Ok, the watts, what all do they mean? Or what I commonly hear --- what’s a good number? Well, folks, in my opinion it’s nothing like what the bench press is in the weight room. Every number is unique to you as rider/racer. What’s more important than the raw wattage number is the watts to weight, or power to weight ratio. That better defines how well you can actually move the oversized winter rump while climbing a hill on your bike. High power is good but not entirely necessary if you’re more lightweight. My coach & I will joke from time to time how if I could have his weight with my power or he could have my power with his weight we’d be stars on the Pro Tour and it’s true -- we’d match then match the power to weight ratio’s that you see of many pro riders. It’s sufficient to say if you’re in my weight range 160’s, something close to 400 watts for a sustained effort would be ideal for absolutely top end racing. I’m in the 320 to as high as 376 depending on the duration of the effort. If your more or less than that weight your ideal wattage would be proportionately different.
If you’re into the numbers and science of cycling or fitness, getting a power meter can be a super helpful training tool as well as give you a regular tangible ongoing means of measures your improvement.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Steinbeck had to be talking about Charlie Farrow....
Ever read that perpetually smiling guy's blog? If anyone considers me to be a bit overboard on the cycling... it pales in comparision to C.F. Only he could verify if the below quote speaks volumes of his character.... I'm somewhat suspect, but given his recent years of ultra endurance efforts, it does provide a sliver of credence. What do you think Charlie?
"For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness."— John Steinbeck, “Travels With Charley”
"For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness."— John Steinbeck, “Travels With Charley”
Training...
Despite the bumps and bruises from the occassional falls when that February thaw occurred, and weather since that's far colder than it should be -- mid winter biking seems to be pretty much on track.
With any luck the coming weeks should make for some awesome sno-mo trail riding. Warm days & cold night will pack down that surface and make for some blazingly fun conditions.
I'll get a bigger posting coming up one of these days soon.
With any luck the coming weeks should make for some awesome sno-mo trail riding. Warm days & cold night will pack down that surface and make for some blazingly fun conditions.
I'll get a bigger posting coming up one of these days soon.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
If I hear another Facebook comment…
I understand everyone & there brother is on Facebook. Good. I’m happy. I’ll peek over someone else’s Facebook shoulder to see what you’re up to in the crazy third person way of saying things.
If you want to track me down…. Try Google. I’m here.
If you want to track me down…. Try Google. I’m here.
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