Recovery

In a regular training program, recovery is as important as putting in the hard work.  After beating yourself up day after day, week after week, your body needs some time to rest and rebuild.  Without proper recovery, you will just get more and more tired.  So, a good training program should have some recovery time built in.  My current training program includes three different types of recovery. 

Daily:
After any kind of really hard interval workout, the muscles need some immediate help to recover and be ready for the next workout.  This typically involves fluids, protein, and carbohydrates, and then some stretching and rest.  After working so hard, the muscles are primed to take in these nutrients to aid recovery and rebuilding.  I usually do about three of these really hard workouts every week.  This type of recovery is often provided with some kind of recovery drink, like a protein smoothie.  However, I usually just stick to plain old chocolate milk.  Cheap, tastes great, and I can grab it right out of the fridge without having to bother mixing up ingredients and busting out the blender.  And it contains the 4:1 carb/protein ration that nutritionists feel is optimum for recovery.  My other workouts during the week are less intense, and don't really involve as much muscle teardown and rebuilding, so recovery nutrition isn't as important.

Weekly:
Throughout the week, my training plan is a mix of work and recovery.  My workouts alternate between hard intervals and easier endurance workouts.  So, after those hard intervals, the following day's endurance workout is almost a little bit of a recovery.  It keeps the heart and lungs working, while giving the muscles a bit of a break.  Then, one day per week is a true recovery day, with no work whatsoever.  In my plan, this is typically on Monday.  So, after a hard week of riding, followed by a hard weekend of racing, I take one day off to relax and get ready to start it all again on Tuesday.

Monthly:
In additional to the weekly recovery days, my training plan also includes recovery weeks.  I will do three hard weeks in a row, each building with a little more stress than the previous week, adding to my overall fitness.  Then, on the fourth week, I have a recovery week.  This often includes the same number of workouts, but they are going to be shorter, and somewhat less intense.  My workouts are measured in Training Stress, which I can talk about in another post.  But a recovery week will generally have about half the Training Stress of a hard training week.  I really hate recovery weeks.  After all that hard work, I find it very difficult to rest for an entire week.  I really feel like I need to keep working as hard as possible to continue to build fitness, but I have to force myself to take it easy and trust the system and the training plan.

I am in the middle of a recovery week right now, and it's annoying.  I hate just doing one easy workout per day, and knowing that tomorrow is yet another relatively easy workout.  Today was an easy one-hour ride at "endurance" pace, generally Zone 2 power.  Tomorrow is 30 minutes (30 minutes!!! That just seems stupid!), again at Zone 2.  Thursday will actually be a hard, intense workout, but then Friday is a complete day off.  Per my training plan, my Training Stress for last week was 493, and this week will only be 304.  That's a significant difference in workload.

I am training for two specific "A" events on my season's calendar, and the plan is built around those events.  So I need to continue my training plan based on those events, and don't worry too much about how it affects any of my other races.  So, sometimes I have a really hard week of training followed by one or two races on the weekend.  Even though I will probably be tired for those races, the experience is good, and maybe I can concentrate on helping teammates before my legs explode.

One benefit to recovery weeks however, is that I might actually be in good shape for that weekend's races, even though they aren't necessarily prime races for me.  That will be the case this weekend.  On Saturday, I'll be participating in the Louisville Criterium, and Sunday will be the Air Force Academy Road Race.  These weren't going to be "A" races for me, but because they fall at the end of a recovery week, I may actually have decent form for both of these events, and maybe I can do ok.  We'll see.  Stay tuned.

I'll talk more about this chart in the future, but this is a graph of my training since I started using the power meter in November.

Performance Management Chart (PMC) 3/31/2015

 The Performance  Management Chart tracks my daily Training Stress Score (TSS).  The blue line is my Chronic Training Load (think of it as "fitness").  The pink line is my Acute Training Load (think of it as "fatigue").  And the gray shaded area is my Training Stress Balance (think of it as "form").  The
 blue line shows my overall fitness level, while the pink line shows how tired I am.  When you combine fitness and fatigue, you get form, which should really show how prepared I am for a race.  You can see my fitness generally increases throughout the season, dropping slightly during recovery periods.  My fatigue jumps up and down quite a bit more, spiking during my hardest weeks, and dropping significantly during recovery.  My form is generally opposite of my fatigue.  As I recovery, my form shoots up.  As I proceed through this recovery week, my "form" on the right side of the chart should rise up until I have decent form for this weekend's races.  I may post a new version of this chart every day through this weekend, to see how the graph changes during recovery.

Boulder Roubaix recon

Today, a bunch of us from the Reynolds Roofing / CRJ Racing team decided to get together for a recon ride of the Boulder Roubaix course.  This is a race that takes place in a few weeks on the roads northwest of Boulder.  The course is about half packed-dirt, half pavement, switching between the two a few times per lap.  Each lap is about 18.7 miles, and the Cat 4s do two laps, for a total of 37.4 miles.

This is a very popular race in the area, typically taking place every two years.  I think the team is planning on a large turnout for this event, and we decided today would be a good day to do a recon ride, to take a look at the course and understand what we're in for.

We met at the offices of Collins, Rafik & Jacobson (CRJ), a Boulder criminal defense attorney and team sponsor.  Keith Collins, the "C" in CRJ, is also a Cat 4 racer on our team.  Once we gathered the 12 team members who were riding today, we headed up north out of Boulder, and towards the Boulder Roubaix course.

Pre-ride, outside the offices of Collins, Rafik & Jacobson.  Photo: Troy Reynolds

We plowed through the first lap, a bouncy, windy, pummeling course, with a number of rolling hills and lots of turns.  We gathered at the end of the first lap, with many of the riders ready to call it a day, a couple just tired of dirt and planning to do some more riding on pavement, and three of us, including me, deciding to do another lap.  So Keith Collins, Brad Clemmons and I cranked out one more lap of the course, and finally headed back toward the cars.  It was a tough day or riding, but I think very helpful for those of us planning to participate in this race in a few weeks.

I came to the conclusion that I really don't like riding on dirt.  Especially turning.  I always feel like the bike is just going to slide out from under me.  And all that washboard road is really tough on the body and the bike.  One of my bottle cages actually rattled loose, and I had to get out an allen wrench and tighten it up in the middle of the ride.  I definitely feel I am in shape for this race, but I am a little concerned about my technique on the turns.  We'll see.

Replacement bike - Aerocat R509

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I was riding a new bike this season.  Sometime last fall, October I think, I put my Fuji Roubaix up on my workstand to do a little maintenance.  While cleaning around the rear cassette area, I happened to notice a weird little mark on my drive-side chainstay.  I looked a little closer and realized it wasn't a mark, it was a crack, pretty much all the way through the chainstay.  I have no idea how it happened, but I'd put a ton of hard miles on that bike in the three or four years that I owned it.

You can see the crack right through the chainstay, starting at the little drainage hole.

Another view.

As you can see, that thing is ready to snap right through.  I'm glad I saw it when I did.  If it snapped when I was on the road, that would have been big, big trouble.

I looked online to check on warranty information, and saw that Fuji offered a lifetime warranty on their frames.  All I needed was the receipt, which I couldn't find anywhere.  Fortunately, the local bike shop where I purchased it keeps a record of all that stuff, and they were able to help me out.  Unfortunately, they are no longer a Fuji dealer, so I needed to deal with Performance Bike.  They were happy to help, even though I didn't buy the bike there.  I brought them the bike, and they took care of the paperwork and all dealings with Fuji.

Although the process was fairly easy, it definitely seemed like it was going to take a while.  And I was right in the middle of my post-season (or very-early-next-season) base-building period.  I needed to be on the bike, and couldn't afford to be taking weeks off waiting for my bike to get replaced.  My Fuji was a few years old, and was more of a casual bike, not really a race bike.  So, I figured I would start looking for a replacement, and once I got the replacement Fuji, I could sell it to partly pay for the new bike.

Since I didn't have a job, I still needed to be conscious of what I was spending.  I was looking to spend about $2000, probably less.  I looked on Craigslist, but couldn't find anything.  I browsed around at a few local shops, and was thinking of either a Giant TCR Advanced, or a Giant Propel Advanced.  The TCR was more of a lightweight climbing bike, and the Propel is more of a sprinters bike.  Both seemed to be really nice bikes, but neither one exactly met exactly what I was looking for.  I really wanted to step up to a carbon frame, some higher-end components, and probably mid-compact gearing.

After thinking about it for a couple days, I happened to be on Facebook, and a teammate mentioned that he knew someone selling their old bike: a 54cm Aerocat R509, mid-compact gearing, really nice wheels, and SRAM Force components.  It sounded like exactly what I was looking for.  And it was even black and white, so it wouldn't clash with my team kit like my old red bike did!  Oh, and it fell nicely into my price range, too.

It turns out, the guy selling it was our old team mechanical a few years ago, so he took really good care of it.  I gave him a call, and went to check it out the next day.  He was a great guy, and we talked about bikes and the team quite a bit.  I got the saddle adjusted and attached my pedals, and was ready to take it for a spin.  It rode really well, but the SRAM shifting took some getting used to.  I drove away a short time later with a sweet new bike.

The new bike, out for a beautiful afternoon ride in Boulder the day after I bought it.

Since I bought the bike in mid-October, I've made a few changes:

• The front chainrings were pretty shot.  I swapped out the old SRAM 52/38 rings for Praxis 52/36.
• Replaced the chain with Shimano Dura-Ace.
• New brake pads.
• I got a bike fit which required swapping the zero-offset seatpost with my old offset seatpost from my Fuji.
• And some fresh new white bar tape for the new race season.

Overall, this bike has been a fantastic change for me.  I really love everything about it.  At this point, it's seen two races in 2015, and I've felt pretty good in both.  At some point, I really hope a photographer will get a good shot of me on the bike, but we haven't had much luck yet this year.

After about 3-4 weeks, I eventually got my replacement frame from Fuji, and finally got around to building it back up a couple months ago.  I'll talk about that in a future post.

Training with power

For the past couple years, I've been using Spinervals videos for all my training.  As you can see from past blog posts, I used these videos almost every time I trained indoors.  They have a huge selection to choose from, so whatever type of workout you want, they probably have something that meets your needs.  I was fairly happy with the videos, but it really felt like I wasn't getting the most out of my workouts.

About a year ago, I discovered some software called TrainerRoad.  TrainerRoad is cycling training software that creates power-based workouts by combining sensor data from your bike with your home computer.  I first tried this software last April, and really liked it.  At the time, I did not have a power meter on my bike, so I used something that TrainerRoad calls "VirtualPower".  "VirtualPower" estimates your power output based on your speed from your speed sensor along with known data for the particular indoor trainer that you are using.  Training based on power is supposed to be better than training just based on heart-rate, so it seemed like a good plan.

TrainerRoad includes hundreds of pre-programmed workouts, and also allows you to create your own.  Because I had been using Spinervals videos, I decided to create some power-based workouts in TrainerRoad that could be sync'd with the Spinervals videos.  Fortunately, some users had already done a lot of that, but I found that I needed to create others.  Soon, there was a pretty good collection of power workouts to go along with the Spinervals videos.  I ended up doing that for most of last year.

But I still felt like I was missing something.  "VirtualPower" was OK, but definitely has some drawbacks.  Because it is estimating power based on other data, rather than measuring power directly, other factors can affect the power number.  For example, if your trainer tension is a little different from workout to workout.  Or if your tire pressure changes.  These factors change the relationship of the trainer to the bike, changing the perceived power output.  A way to avoid this inconsistency is to just install a true power meter on the bike.

So, I really wanted to get a power meter.  Big downside: power meters are very expensive.  Big upside:  everything else.  So, I decided it just needed to happen.  And I had just gotten a new bike (more on that in another post), and I decided that I just had to make the power meter happen.  After looking at a number of options, I opted to get a Power2Max power meter.  This power meter is installed on my front chainring, and measures minute stresses transferred from the cranks to the chainring, and converts that into a power measurement, measured in watts.  Therefore, it is truly measuring the pressure I am putting into the bike.  There are other ways to measure this, too, all involving some kind of "strain gauge" somewhere on the bike.  This could be in the rear hub, on the crank arms, or directly on the pedals themselves.

Here is a quick breakdown on power meter locations, and my opinions on the pros and cons of each:

• Rear hub:
• Pros:
• Relatively inexpensive
• Because it is part of the wheel, your power meter can be easily moved between bikes just by swapping wheels.  I only have one bike for training and racing, so this wasn't a big factor for me.
• Cons:
• Limits you to one wheel option to measure power.  If you train and race on different wheels, like I do, this isn't really feasible.

• Crank arm:
• Pros:
• Cheapest option out there these days
• Extremely lightweight.
• Cons:
• Generally limited to specific crank arms.  You typically buy the crank arm from the power meter manufacturer with the power meter already installed.
• Limited to crank arms with a smooth inside face that the power meter can be installed onto.  In my case, I am using Rotor-brand cranks, which have a shaped inside face that won't accept this type of power meter.  I like my cranks, and didn't really want to spend extra money buying a full set of cranks, too.

• Pedals:
• Pros:
• Easy to measure directly left/right power by having one power meter in each pedal.  Most other options have to estimate left/right power balance using various calculations.  This wasn't too important to me.
• Easily swapped between bikes, just by swapping pedals.
• Cons:
• Significantly more expensive than the other options.

• Chainrings:
• Pros:
• Depending on the manufacturer, this can range from one of the least expensive options, to one of the most expensive.  The cheaper options are about $800, and the more expensive can be a couple thousand dollars.
• Cons:
• A little complicated to install.  Probably easier to take to a shop, where they can do it quickly, easily, and relatively inexpensively.
• Can't be swapped between bikes.  With only one bike, this wasn't a big deal to me.

Based on these criteria, I opted for a Power2Max power meter, a chainring-based option that cost about $800.  A good chunk of change to be sure, but in the end, I think the cost is totally worth it.  I use the same bike indoors and out, swapping wheels between training and racing, and the chainring-based power meter allows me to get power data no matter what I am doing on the bike.

My Power2Max power meter installed.  The power meter itself is the thing with the big "2" on it.  You can also see my Praxis chainrings and Rotor 3D cranks.

The next step was understanding how to use power-based training.  To do that, I relied on a couple books.  I won't try to describe everything here, since other people can teach power-based training much better than I can.  These two books taught me everything I needed to know about training with power:  Training and Racing with a Power Meter by Hunter Allen and Andrew Coggan, considered the bible of power-based training, and The Power Meter Handbook by Joe Friel, another excellent book, and an easier read than the Allen/Coggan book.

Some of the best power-training books out there.  Read them.

Now that I had the power meter installed, and had a basic understanding of power-based training, it was time to get to work.  Back in November, I had the power meter installed just in time for the second phase of my Spinervals off-season training program.  The first phase was a lot of base training, for 6 weeks.  The second phase of their program lasts the entire month of December, and is a solid month of hard base training.  Similar workouts to the first phase, but just more volume.  I continued to use the Spinervals videos sync'd with TrainerRoad software, but now I could use actual power numbers.  The difference was significant.

With VirtualPower, I was never sure that I was doing equivalent work every time I got on the bike, because I wasn't sure if my trainer had the same tension, or if my tire pressure was the same as the previous day.  With true power measurements, that was no longer an issue.  If something changed in my setup, that just meant I had to pedal a little faster or slower, or use a different gear, to achieve the power output necessary per the workout.  I continued to train this way throughout December.

After finishing the December phase of the workout, it was time to move to the next phase.  But at this time, I started having second thoughts about Spinervals.  Although they are great workouts, I felt I was missing something.  The Spinervals off-season training plan is somewhat generic, with the same free training plan available for anyone who wants to use it, regardless of their goals.  It involves a lot of volume, and a lot of hard work, but I don't know that it really focuses on what I need.  After using the videos for a few years, it really started to seem to me like they were focused more on the needs of triathletes, not road races.  There are hard workouts, to be sure, but most seemed geared towards long, strenuous work needed for time trials and triathlons, but not the on/off demands needed for road racing, where you need to be able to perform breakaways, catch breakaways, and sprint out of corners and for the finish line.  With nearly 50 videos, there were certainly some workouts that focused on high intensity intervals, but most workouts were based on long, steady hard work.  The free training plan certainly seemed focused on this.

The other problem with Spinervals workouts is that they were created just as video workouts, usually focused on heart-rate training.  In order to use them as power-based  workouts, I would use TrainerRoad with either a premade workout, or make my own.  These workouts were all user-created, and not provided by Spinervals.  The user would open a video, and open the TrainerRoad workout creator, and create intervals that started and stopped in sync with the video, and would have to guess at the amount of power that should be expected for that interval based on things the Coach was talking about.  This wasn't necessarily ideal.

I eventually decided I might need to try something else, based completely on power.  TrainerRoad includes over 400 workouts of all varying intensity, duration and type of work.  And as part of the subscription, they also offer a variety of training plans.  At the time I considering the change, TrainerRoad was also reorganizing their training plans to make sure they were covering everyone's needs.  And based on what they were doing, they were definitely going to provide exactly what I was looking for, right when I needed it.

Around the beginning of 2015, TrainerRoad changed their training plans to provide three distinct phases:  Base, Build and Specialty.  There are a number of options within these phases to allow you to build the plan that meets your specific needs.  And each options is also broken out into low, medium and high volume options, so you can work within your specific time constraints.

• The Base phases are generally all 12 weeks in length.  They offer Sweet Spot and Traditional base plans, depending on how much time you have and how thorough the plan needs to be.
• The Build plans are 8 weeks, and broken out by Short Power (mountain biking, cyclocross, criterium racers), General (road racers), and Sustained Power (triathletes, TT specialists, century riders).
• The Specialty phase plans are really topping-off plans, as a final 8-weeks of work to get you in peak condition for your specific type of event.  These are broken first into Road, Off-Road, Triathlon, and General Fitness options, and then there are further options within each of those categories.  For example, the Road category includes Rolling Road Race, Climbing Road Race, Criterium, 40k TT, Half Century and Century plans.  I understand they also intend to offer a Stage Race plan as well.

I had already completed my base training with my Spinervals work throughout the end of 2014, so I didn't need to worry about that.  I needed to begin my Build plan in January, and so I chose the General Build-High Volume plan.  And once those 8 weeks were completed, I would begin the Rolling Road Race specialty plan.

To plan my schedule, I needed to determine my goal events for the year, also known as my "A" races.  I decided that these would be the Superior Morgul Omnium in May and the Salida Stage Race in July.  Both are three-day races that I feel I could to fairly well at.  So my goal was to be in top form for both of these races.  To do that, I would need to complete the Specialty phase a week or two before the event, so I could taper and be at a top level of fitness, with a low level of fatigue.  So, got out my calendar and counted backwards 17 weeks from the Superior Morgul race, so I could determine when to start my Build phase.  That would give me 8 weeks of Build, 8 weeks of Specialty, and one week of taper.  Based on that calculation, I began my Build phase in the middle of January.

Now here I am in the middle of March.  I completed my Build phase, and am now a couple weeks into my Rolling Road Race plan.  A typical week for me consists of six days of workouts.

• Monday: Rest day
• Tuesday:  60 minutes of hard intervals, focusing on some specific type of power output
• Wednesday: 60 minutes of mellow Zone 2 or Zone 3 riding
• Thursday: Another 60 minutes of hard intervals.
• Friday:  Another 60 minutes of Zone 2/3
• Saturday:  90 minutes of hard intervals.  If I am able, I may join a hard group ride instead, to get some race-type experience in my legs.
• Sunday:  Long-ish 2.5 - 3 hours of Zone 2-3 work, just to work on endurance.

My workouts typically involve me sitting on my bike on my trainer in the basement.  Because the workouts require a PC, I bring a laptop down there to show the TrainerRoad dashboard.  But because staring at a graph of my workout for an hour is really boring, I also generally watch a movie.  I could just put the workout and the movie onto the TV, but what I've been doing lately is doing a 2-screen option from my laptop.  The laptop screen shows my workout dashboard, and the TV shows whatever movie I'm watching.  Audio from everything plays over headphones, so I don't bother anyone else in the house.  In this way, I can hear the movie as well as any of the various beeps and such from my workout that tell me when to start and stop my intervals.  I've found that this setup works really well.  And now because of this setup, I am really able to crank through a ton of movies.

As I said, TrainerRoad workouts are based on power.  The software pulls my heart rate, power and cadence from my bike's sensors and displays them on a "dashboard", along with target power and a graph of the entire workout.  As I ride, I aim to hit the power targets as directed per the workout.  Once I am done, the workout is saved, and I can review my performance data.  In a future post, I will talk about how I use my workout data as a part of my overall training plan.

This is what the TrainerRoad screen looks like.  The bottom half of the screen shows a graph of the entire workout.  During the workout, my actual power is shown as a line following this graph.  At the upper left is my actual power and target power.  At the upper right is my heart rate and cadence.  And in the middle is the remaining time in that particular interval and the total workout time.

This is a TrainerRoad post-workout graph.  The blue is the target power.  The yellow line is my actual power, red line is my heart rate and white line is my cadence.

I'm pretty sure this is my longest post ever.  It seems like I could keep writing about this stuff forever, but I'll have to save some for other posts.  Until next time . . .

A few updates

Just a quick note that there have been a couple changes to this blog today:

• Blog name has been changed.  This used to be called "Fit-Brent", and was a blog that was originally intended to track my attempts to lose weight and generally get in shape.  Over time, it really turned into a cycling blog, including my training and racing.  The blog is now titled "HTFU", which is a cycling term.  "H" is for Harden.  "T" is for The.  "U" is for Up.  And the "F" should be obvious.
• I have changed up the header graphic.  This was just a quick, crappy graphic job.  I need to work on that.
• I made the entire page a little wider.  It just seemed pretty narrow before, and required that I use smaller images than I really wanted.  I am eventually going to go back through and upsize all my images, but that will have to wait a bit.

2015 CSU Criterium

This race was my first real test of the season.  Sure, I did that time trial a few weeks ago, but that's not really a race.  This was my first event where I was actually on the course competing against other racers.  It was time to really see how my training has been working (or not working).

This race was a 40-minute criterium on the CSU campus in Fort Collins.

The day got off to a good start, with teammate Aaron giving me a ride to the course.  The race wasn't super-far away, but far enough that it was nice to share a ride and get to know one of my new teammates.  We got to the parking lot adjacent to the course, and quickly met up with a few other teammates.  We had plenty of time before our race start, so we could relax a little and take our time getting ready.  We picked up our numbers from registration, then headed back to the cars.  A few teammates walked across the street to grab some lunch, but I had brought an almond-butter-and-jelly bagel with me, so I just ate that.  (First time eating almond butter.  It seemed like it should taste different, but at least on a bagel with some grape jelly, I couldn't taste the different between it and peanut butter.)

After getting dressed (first time in the new kit!), a group of us decided to head over to check out the course.  With races going on, we couldn't ride the course, so we just rode the sidewalks, checking out the turns and looking for things like potholes and manhole covers, stuff like that.  This was a tricky course with a few sharp turns, and two spots with turns really close together.  We got a good look at the course, and headed back to the cars.

With about an hour before our race, it was time to warm up.  My warm-up routine is almost always just on the trainer in the parking lot, and goes something like this:  Easy Zone 1-2 spinning for about 5 minutes, just to get the legs moving.  Then, big-ring, big-ish cog for a minute, about 80 rpm or so.  Every minute, step down one cog while keeping the same cadence, for about 5-6 minutes.  Spin easy for about another 5 minutes.  Then, do about 10s of seated high cadence spins, at least 110-120 rpm, and 50s of easy spin. About 3 times.  Then do the same thing again, but with out-of-the-saddle sprints.  Finally, cool down for another 5 minutes or so.  Whole thing takes about 25-30 minutes, and really gets the muscles and lungs warmed up.

After the warmup, we packed up the cars, and headed over to the course.  One last bathroom break before the race.  By the time I got to the start line, plenty of people were already on the line.  The announcer was reminding everyone that they still had about 15 minutes before the start, and maybe they should go take a lap around the course, but he wasn't getting many takers.  Since I hadn't ridden the course yet, I decided to ride past the crowd at the start line and take a quick lap.  I'm glad I did.  I didn't do this race last year, so this was a new course to me, and like I said, it's a little tricky.  After a few minutes on the course, I got back to the start line again, where the announcer was still urging everyone to go and ride a lap.  But no one was moving.  I guess people were really happy with their spots at the front, and didn't want to give that up.  This was a sold-out race, with a full field of 75 racers.  One of the biggest fields of any race I'd been in so far.  I was kind of in the middle, which was fine with me.  This was a 40-minute crit, so I had plenty of time to move up once the race started.

Standing around, waiting for the start.  I don't think you can see me in this photo, but as you can see, our team is well-represented.  Photo: Peg Hallberg

We stood around nervously for a few more minutes, until finally we got the whistle to start.  This one started like most races, weaving around a few people who were having trouble clipping in to their pedals.  Then it was off to the races, literally.  We started pretty fast, and some of the turns were a little sketchy.  This tends to happen on the first few laps of these things, as everyone kind of figures out their lines and gets used to the racers around them.  Over the first 10-ish minutes of the race, I managed to move myself up in the group, so I was probably in the top 20 of the field.  That seemed like a good place to be.

Riding in the pack.  That's me in the yellow and black kit on the right. Photo: Peg Hallberg

At around minute 20, halfway through the race, I decided to move up closer to the front, and try to get myself into the front 10 or so.  As we cruised the slight downhill around the "Oval", I managed to pick up enough speed to somehow end up off the front of the race.  Not exactly where I wanted to be with another 20 minutes of racing to go.  The idea behind racing is to hide from the wind, behind other riders, until you are read to make a move.  So, here I was, at the front of the race.  I'm hoping someone at least got some good pictures.

As we passed the start/finish line, the announcer was ringing the bell to announce a prime.  A prime in a criterium is a mid-race lap where the winner of that lap gets some kind of prize.  They do it to add some excitement to the middle of the race, so it's not all about the finish.  Maybe cash, maybe some swag.  In this case, I heard them say something about a gift certificate.  I assume for some restaurant in Fort Collins that I'd never get a chance to go to, so I wasn't very interested.  But as we pushed on with the lap, with me still off the front, I could hear my teammate Josh Gottlob behind me, encouraging me to push it.  I guess he wanted the prime for some reason.  If I could stay on the front for the next couple minutes, maybe I could help him sprint for the prime.  So, instead of slowing down to get myself back into the pack where I really wanted to be, I pushed on with Josh on my wheel for the rest of the lap.  We sped around the Oval, coming around the turn and heading up the slight uphill to the start/finish.  I push on as hard as I could, dragging Josh along with me.  With about 100m to go, Josh came around and sprinted for the line with one other guy.  From my vantage point, it looked like a photo finish, but I heard the announcer yell the other guy's name instead.  Too bad, I thought we had it.

Josh and I.  I just led out Josh for the prime sprint. Photo: Peg Hallberg

That lap killed my legs a bit, so it was time to rest for a while.  We still had almost half the race to go, so I could ease myself back into the pack to give my legs and lungs a break.  I slowed up a bit, and merged myself into the group at around 20th position.  After another few laps, we started getting the countdown.  Five laps to go, then four.  The pace started to pick up some more.  With two laps to go, I really should have made my move.  But I stuck with the pack until the bell indicating the last lap.  I started to move up a few spots when I could, but the turns were so close together it was really hard to gain position for the first 2/3 of the lap.  We made one final right turn, then headed towards the Oval and a slight downhill.  The pace really jumped at this point, and I pushed as hard as I could.  But I'm pretty sure everyone else was thinking the same thing.  We were really cooking it around the oval and towards the finish line.  I was still embedded in the group, but had two teammates, Josh and Ray, in a good position ahead.  As we hit the straightaway, I jumped out of the saddle, put my head down, and sprinted to the line.  I'm not sure, but I think this was the first time I was actually sprinting in a race.  If nothing else, it was the first time I think I did it well.  I crossed the line, spent, and felt pretty good.  My first real race of the season, and I was right in there at the end, sprinting across the line.  The results posted after the race indicated I finished in 15th, but the results online show me at 16th.  Not sure what changed.  But since I didn't finish on the podium, and there were no points available for this race, it doesn't really matter.

As we cruised around the course one more time to cool down, I caught up with Ray and Josh.  Turns out they finished 2nd and 5th.  We didn't end up on top, but we were right there making a race of it, and keeping things interesting the whole time.  Another racer rode up to me and complimented the team as we were cooling down, and it seemed like the announcers were always calling our name, both in my race and in later races.  I'm sure part of it is the new kit.  The fluorescent yellow and black really pops, so it's easy to pick us out of the crowd.

I'm still waiting to see if I can find any other photos of this race.  I'll update this post if I find something good.

So, another weekend of racing down.  Two races, two good results.  The season is off to a good start.  Looking forward to Louisville in a couple weeks!  Stay tuned . . .

Race:  CSU Criterium
Category: SM 4/5
Result: 15/75

2015 Frostbite Time Trial

Once again, it's been a while since I've updated this blog.  Looks like I haven't written anything since September.  Sorry about that.  And I really intended to keep this updated regarding my training regimen and stuff.  Probably not the whole "here's what I ate today" thing again, but definitely a riding/training log.  That just didn't happen.  And it's not because I didn't have time.  As I posted back in September, I had been laid off from my job at the end of July.  And I'm still jobless now, unless you count stay-at-home-dad as a job.  Fortunately, my wonderful wife has a fantastic job that's keeping us going, while I do my best to manage the house and kids.

I have made a lot of changes since last season, which I'll get to in future posts.  For now, I just want to talk about the first event of the 2015 road season, the Frostbite Time Trial.  The Frostbite is an 11.4 mile time trial along a very slightly rolling frontage road next to I-25 just north of Fort Collins.  I did this last year, too, placing 5th in the SM5 race.  This year, I'm a Cat 4, so the competition was going to be tougher.  But I have put in a lot of hard work, so I was very interested to see how I would do.

As a bonus, my kids were also interested in racing this year!  This weekend, my daughter was out of town at a soccer tournament, but my son decided he would take a shot at the time trial.  His start time ended up being around 9am, and I was at about 12:30pm, so we were far enough apart that I could watch him do his race, and still have plenty of time to warm up for mine.

We got up bright and early to head north.  The drive was more than an hour, and we wanted to have time to really wake up and have a good breakfast.  We got to the parking are right around 8am, with plenty of time before his 9:10am start.  We wandered over and picked up our numbers, then started to get him ready for his race.  To show what a poor manager I am, I somehow managed to forget to bring his helmet.  Not sure how that happened.  It seemed like we had planned for everything else, but I forgot something that important.  Fortunately, I had decided to bring a couple of my own helmets, my Limar aero TT helmet as well as a new Giro Synthe that I bought for my road races this year.  I managed to tighten the Giro enough that it would fit him pretty well.  At about 8:55, we rolled over to the start line, took care of the "junior roll-out", then got him in line for his start.  And at 9:10:30, he was off and rolling.  There was only one other rider registered in his category, but he apparently didn't show up, so it was just Connor, quickly followed by a lot of older, faster kids.  I knew he could ride 11.4 miles, but until now we had really only been riding, not training, so he wasn't going to do it very fast.

Connor, warming up on the trainer

Connor, at the start line

After he left the start line, there wasn't much I could do until he came back, so I went back to the car to check on a few things, chatted with teammate Andrea Koenig for a few minutes, and then wandered back to the course to wait for him.  As I stood there, many of the Pro/1/2 racers came flying by, eventually followed by the Juniors.  As all the people around me were cheering for their kids as they crossed the line, I patiently waited for Connor.  Since all the other juniors there were older than him, and had probably been riding for a while, I expected he was going to get passed by everyone.  And he did, but that's ok.  I watched these kids pushing hard across the line, and kept looking up the road, waiting for that familiar Connor-shape to come around the corner.  Eventually, I was able to see him a couple hundred meters away.  I cheered him on as he approached the finish, the only kid left out on the course.  A few other bystanders were cheering for him, too.  As he passed by at the finish line, I ran over to meet up with him.  He was looking pretty haggard.  He really looked like he'd had the crap beat out of him.  But that's what you're supposed to look like after a time trial, so that was good.  A few of the 11-12 Juniors came over to congratulate him, which was nice.

Connor on the course.  © Dejan Smaic, Sportif Images

We slowly made out way back to the car, and he did his best to catch his breath.  Finally back at the car, he could relax a little, and change back into his normal clothes.  He was definitely happy to be done.  So, while he recovered from his race, it was time to get ready for mine.  My start time was 12:32:30, giving me a couple hours until my start.  I was aiming for about 30 minutes of warmup, so I still had plenty of time.  Our new team kits hadn't come in yet, and we were asked not to wear the old kits if possible, so I just wore some older generic gear I had sitting around.  Connor helped me get my number pinned on right, I had a little food, and just generally got all my stuff together.  At about 11:45, I hopped on the trainer for my warm-up.  I don't have a specific timed warmup that I do, but typically spin really easy for a while, then start stepping down gears for about a minute per gear, then ease up and spin easy for a while again.  Then, I'll usually get in a few really hard sprints of about 10-15 seconds, then spin easy again until time to head over to the race start.

My bike for this race is my regular road bike, an Aerocat R509.  I don't have the money for a real time-trial bike, so I just do my best with the equipment I have.  I have clip-on aero bars that I use in time trials, to improve my aerodynamics.  Also, because of my different position on the bike, my seat position is also a little different.  To accommodate this, I have a separate saddle and seatpost that I use just for time trials, with a mark showing the height.  So, when switching from road race to time trial, I just swap the seatpost and attach my aero bars and I'm good to go.  It's not as good as a true TT bike, but it does the trick.

At 12:15, I headed over towards the start line, with my son in tow.  Since it was just the two of us there, he was told to just hang out with the officials at the start/finish line until I was done.  I rode around a little bit, keeping my legs moving until about 2-3 minutes before my start time, and then found my place in line.  First race of the year, and I was a little nervous.  I'm not really sure why.  Time trials are pretty straightforward.  It's pretty hard to screw up; just go as fast as you can.  I think I was just nervous about my fitness.  I had been riding the trainer so much, I had only been comparing myself again myself for months.  It was finally time to see where I stood against my competition.

At 12:32:30, I was off.  I feel like I got a pretty good start, out of the saddle to get some speed going, then settling in and slowly shifting down to a comfortable gear.  The first half of the ride heads south, gradually downhill, and in my case, into the wind.  This was my first time out on the roads with my Limar "Speed Demon" aero helmet, and it was surprisingly loud.  It was actually annoyingly loud.  The wind was just screaming in my ears for a little over 5 1/2 miles.  I was keeping a steady power output of about 305-315 watts, and a speed of about 22-24 mph.  Not terribly fast, but I had a headwind, so I just had to trust my power numbers to keep me on track.  I could tell I was doing ok, because I began to pass some of the riders who started ahead of me.  And I was passing them pretty quickly, too.  I worried that maybe I was going out too fast, but I knew if I kept my power steady that I could hold that for the entire race.  Since it's an out-and-back race, you have the opportunity to see your competition coming the other way during the race.  I eventually noticed teammate Keith Collins on the other side of the road.  He had started a couple minutes ahead of me, so I assume that meant I was getting close to the turnaround.

At around mile 5.6, you come to a cone in the middle of the road, and a few race marshals cheering you on.  Do your best to keep up some speed around the cone, get out of the saddle and push it hard to get back up to speed.  From there, it's another 5.6 miles north, and uphill.  Fortunately, I now had the wind at my back.  I stuck with the same power output of about 305-315 watts, but now my speed was anywhere from about 27-34 mph.  And I was still occasionally passing other riders, which just feels good.  At some point, with a few miles to go, I managed to get passed by one rider. So, with one other rider definitely faster than me, and a teammate who was also likely faster than me, and about 18 other riders out there, I wasn't really too sure of my chances.  I was just hoping for a top-10 finish.  I would be satisfied with that.

About a half-mile from the finish, I started to really push it, eventually cruising at 450-500 watts with a couple hundred meters to go.  As I hit the 100m-to-go mark, I saw my son cheering me on from the sideline, along with Keith.  That was really nice to see.  I pushed through the finish, almost plowing into a group of riders who were just sitting in the road chatting.  I rode around for a minute, trying to catch my breath and get all the spit out of my mouth.  I met up with Keith and my son, and we slowly made out way back to the cars.

I got changed, got the bikes locked back onto the car, had a little something to eat and drink, and then we made our way down to registration to check the results.  As I walked over, we saw Keith was already there.  "You finished right behind me!  Third and fourth!" he said.  Holy cow, that's not what I was expecting.  Seriously, I would have been happy with a top ten, but a fourth place in my first event of the year was pretty amazing.  I finished 25 seconds off the podium, behind Keith.  Third place would have been nice, but looking back, I just don't think I had another 25 seconds in me.  I think I have it everything I had, with nothing left in the tank at the end.  So, as I told my son after his race, "You can't do any better than your best".  And I think I did my best, so I can be happy with that.

With kids sports starting now, I've got some parenting duties for the next few weekends, so I'm not sure yet when my next race will be.  In the meantime, it's back to training.  I'm about to start the last phase of my training for this season, building up to my "A" races, so I'm expecting a whole lot of hard work for the next 8 weeks.  Stay tuned.

Note:  If I find any photos of me during my race, I'll add them later.  Nothing yet...

Race:  Frostbite Time Trial
Category: MM 40+ 4
Result: 4/21