Category Archives: Cycling

No. 75: A Training Update

11 September, 2012 1:30 AM / 1 Comment /

Hey everyone,

I feel like my training has progressed well over the last couple of months. Two weeks ago, I wrote that I would try to increase the time at which I could maintain 160-165 bpm to 60 minutes (2 x 30 minute intervals). I managed to complete this goal last Thursday without too much difficulty, though I was getting tired during the last 10 minutes of the second interval:

You can see that there were a couple of blips where I lost focus and my HR dropped below 160, but in the end, the intervals averaged out to 163 bpm and 164 bpm, and I’m satisfied with the way things turned out. This week is a transition week for me, so I’ll still be riding, but the workouts will be unstructured and “fun” to allow me to rest my legs and clear my mind before the next phase of training. The week after that, I plan to conduct a lactate threshold (the heart rate at which the activity becomes anaerobic) test, which involves doing a 30 minute TT, with the average HR of the last 20 minutes being the approximation of LT. I don’t have any big expectations for this test, but I think it will be at least 164 bpm because I know I can do that given the picture above. The first of the two intervals I did was pretty easy, and not the lung-busting effort that you’d produce during a TT. However, I haven’t done a time trial since Fayetteville, so I might not be able to get my HR that high, but I think 168 bpm would be a reasonable expectation or even maybe 170 bpm if I can get it that high.

One of the important things about LT is that cycling involves several different types of endurance: aerobic endurance, anaerobic endurance, and muscular endurance (there might be more to the list). Throughout the offseason, I’ll need to isolate these different types of endurance and create workouts to develop each one. LT is the point at which physical activity becomes anaerobic and lactic acid begins accumulating in the muscles. At this point, the body can only hold so much lactic acid before the muscles fail – and it’s crucial in bicycle racing to out-endure your opponents at critical moments during a race, such as in the final moments of a breakaway. I noticed this year that I had trouble staying with the pack during hard efforts, and this is one of the things I would like to work on before returning to racing. Therefore, in order to tailor workouts to fit my goals, I’ll need to know my LT in order to separate workouts (or parts of workouts) into aerobic/anaerobic segments.

I don’t have any plans to do anaerobic exercises yet, because it’s important to build a good amount of basic aerobic endurance during the offseason, so you’ll have enough endurance to work on high-intensity anaerobic workouts later on. Last year I didn’t ride much in the winter, and I think one of the reasons I ran into overtraining problems in the Spring was that I hadn’t built up enough endurance in the offseason. Anyway, for the next month my goal is to increase the amount of time I can ride non-stop at 160+ bpm (or whatever turns out to be right under LT). I’ll keep the total amount of time above 160+ bpm, but I’ll gradually shift the distribution of time of the 2 intervals more towards the 2nd interval. For the next 4 weeks (2 interval workouts per week):

LT Test: 1 x 30 min
1 x 20 min and 1 x 20 min

1 x 20 min and 1 x 25 min
1 x 25 min and 1 x 25 min

1 x 25 min and 1 x 30 min
1 x 30 min and 1 x 30 min

1 x 25 min and 1 x 35 min
1 x 20 min and 1 x 40 min

(Transition week + 2nd LT Test)

I would eventually like to be able to ride nonstop right below my LT for an hour. I think realistically that will be possible at the end of November. I’m planning to do long weeks for base training in November and December (10-11 hours/week), which aren’t long by competitive standards, but they’re longer than what I did last year and what I believe to be a reasonable goal for the offseason.

Weights

Weight training has continued as usual:

Squat: 5×5 195 lb
Deadlift: 1×5 185 lb
Bench: 5×5 130 lb
Overhead press: 5×5 80 lb
Weighted Dips: 5×5 40 lb
Barbell Row: 5×5 125 lb
Weighted Pullups: 5×5 2.5 lb
Power Clean 3×5 90 lb

I’m planning to do most of my gains this Winter and next Summer when racing is light. I realized this year that it’s really hard to make gains during Spring when all the races are going on.

Posted in: Cycling, Logs

No 72: A Few Updates

28 August, 2012 3:03 AM / Leave a Comment /

Hey everyone,

I’ve been very busy lately, but here are a few things that I’ve been doing/working on:

MySQL

I started working with data stored in SQL Server, which was tough at first because the only way (that I know of) to extract data directly is to write queries using T-SQL (Transact-SQL, Microsoft’s variant of SQL). There’s been a lot of back-and-forth communication between me and another IT team across the country, and they mainly communicate with me using T-SQL, so I figured that I would have to learn the language – not just to understand it but to also use it independently in my own work. I started reading SQL Server Bible to get a better idea of the language, but that book involved a lot of database and IT administration, which made it very hard for me to understand. Thus, I decided to take a step back and read a more basic book on databases, but I was torn between reading Modern Database Administration and Learning SQL.

It’s been a stagnant 2 months for me and my technical skills haven’t progressed much (actually I take that back – I did improve quite a bit because I had to use MSAcess quite a bit to manipulate data for reports), though I did reinforce them through the use of VBA and CRAN for my existing projects. Last week, I finally decided to read Learning SQL because it’s not so hard that I’m completely lost reading it, but it’s challenging enough for me to learn something. The book covers the MySQL variant of SQL, which is nice because it’s open source, so I don’t have to pay $8,000 to use it (like I would with SQL Server). The author says that all the SQL code should work in SQL Server and other platforms, so I don’t have to worry about incompatibility.

Fitness

It took me a long time to get back in shape, but I’ve finally gotten around to riding somewhat consistently over the last month. I started out with easy miles just to get used to riding again, and then recently I’ve been doing some long intervals right under lactate threshold (or what I think to be my lactate threshold) at 160-170 bpm. I started doing 2×5 minute intervals and I gradually added on five minutes to each interval over the last month, and yesterday I did 2×20 minute intervals at around 165 bpm:

As you can see, I still have a lot of work to do. A few months ago I was able to generate 230-250 watts of power at the same heart rate – but if you look closely you can see that I can maintain a heart rate above 160 bpm for a longer period of time than I could in March, so it looks like I can do some things that I couldn’t do before, but at the same time, I’ve lost some of my power output. I’m not too concerned about that because I’m planning to start racing again at the start of next season, and I can worry about high-intensity efforts later.

I’ve been reading Joe Friel’s The Cyclist’s Training Bible and in that book he stresses the importance of improving your weaknesses during training. I know that I have a lot of weaknesses, and I’ve decided to work on them one at a time throughout the offseason and next year. Building a base – or aerobic endurance is what I believe to be my most important weakness, so I’ve decided to keep increasing my interval times until I can hold 160 bpm for 60 minutes (2×30 minute intervals), and that will take me about two weeks. As soon as I’m done with that I’ll conduct a lactate threshold test, and then take a recovery week and work out a training schedule from there.

Posted in: Cycling, Logs

No. 55: Come and Take It Road Race 2012 – Race Report

3 April, 2012 2:09 AM / Leave a Comment /

Hey everyone,

I woke up at 4:00 AM to drive out to Gonzales for the Come and Take It Road Race last Sunday. It wasn’t in the most ideal time or location for me, but it was just far away enough for me to not need to spend the previous night in a hotel. There was only a criterium on Saturday, so I decided that there wasn’t enough racing that day to justify booking a room, though I would have considered doing so had there also been a time trial. I really looked forward to this race since I had a good result last year and produced good numbers during my training rides the week before. Unfortunately, I woke up all sore! I hadn’t expected that at all and it looks like I overtrained on a 3-hour joy ride around Houston the day before. Nevertheless, I decided to race anyway and after I arrived, Philip Shama waved me off at the start line and wished me good luck.

The race started off at an easy pace with a slight crosswind. I had two goals for the race – the first was to stay in the front, and the second was to stay with the pack. When I wrote about Walburg, I mentioned that some races were decided by physical strength whereas others were more tactical. I think this race was a combination of the two, with more emphasis on the latter. The race took place over a loop divided into 4 sections. The pace was pretty easy for the first half of the race as it was slightly uphill with maybe just one or two half-hearted attempts to break away from the pack. I made sure to stay front-to-mid pack the entire time, but the echelon formation made it difficult for me to maintain my position for long. For this reason, riders constantly found themselves in the back as the peloton rotated. On the third leg, we cruised along at about 25 mph and I took the chance to eat a gel. One of the juniors put in an acceleration and it took Abe Covello – the guy I was following – by surprise and a gap opened up between us and the pack, but I leapfrogged him to regain contact.

We reached the fourth section of the course after an easy right-hand turn, and at this point I made sure to stay in front so I wouldn’t get left behind by any surges in the pack. This last portion was mostly downhill with a crosswind and few short climbs. We continued to rotate for about 5 minutes in echelon form, when all of a sudden, a 787 rider who was pulling in front crashed! He just suddenly down…his bike just fell over and he ended up in the ditch. Usually you can see it happening because someone gets nervous and overreacts – but in this case I don’t think the rider did anything wrong and it was probably just a horrible accident. I later heard his rear tire exploded and that caused him to go down (he’s okay though, and only suffered minor road rash). The riders remained calm after that accident, and we regrouped and continued to rotate in front. When it was my turn to pull, I held the pace steady at 24 mph for a couple of minutes. However, as soon as I finished my pull, a rider from the Ghisallo Foundation, Matt DeMartino, launched a vicious attack with 10 k to go, and another rider followed suit. The two of them opened up a gap of maybe 30 meters and we struggled to pull them back. At first, I thought we would easily catch them, but the two of them stubbornly held on after 3 or 4 riders tried in vain to reel them in. I heard another rider yell at me telling me to chase, and at that moment I decided that they posed a threat so I gave chase. I almost used all my energy trying to do that, and after my pull, the pack spit me out the back and a gap of 10 meters formed between me and the peloton. The referee pulled up to me and asked me if I was OK, but I was so tired and too busy gasping for air that all I could do was say “urrghhhh” and motioned for him to pass me. I saw that Abe dropped as well, and at that point I decided to muster enough strength to get on his wheel, and used him as a launchpad to get back to the pack. Abe managed to make it back as well, and at that point we caught the 2-man breakaway in front.

At around 4 K to go, the pack was all together. After I recovered, I worked my way back up to the front and I found myself second wheel with 1 K to go. Unfortunately, about 300 meters to go, the guy in front of me peeled off and I was exposed for about 100 meters before the start of the uphill sprint zone 200 meters from the finish. So, when I arrived at the foot of the hill, I tried the best I could to launch myself but I just couldn’t find the energy. Instead, I probably did an effective leadout for whomever followed me, and after the pack swallowed me up, I soft-pedaled to the line and finished at the back of the pack.

Analysis

I wasn’t too thrilled with the end result, but I regained confidence in my ability to stay with the pack. After the race, Brian told me that the ideal position to be in before the sprint zone was fifth man – not first. That was a big mistake as I had wasted too much energy 300 m before the finish. Also, one thing happened this year that didn’t happen last year – a strong, late-stage attack. I was really impressed with Matt DeMartino’s effort to get away from the pack, and I didn’t think he could have held it for as long as he did, but looking at the data, he managed to stay away for about 8-10 minutes:

The attack started right before my heart rate reached 160, and finished right before it dipped below 170. Now, in training, I managed to keep a heart rate of 170 for a longer period of time – for about 16 minutes:

If you look at the maximum 8-minute average for power, I actually managed to produce a higher average power output during training than I did in racing – 271 W during training and 260 W during the breakaway. However, it was so much harder when I was racing, and I just barely managed to regain contact with the pack. Why did this happen? If you compare the graphs of these two 8-minute averages, you can see that the variance of power was much greater during racing (top) than during training (bottom):

8-Min Max. Avg. Power during the race

8-Min. Max. Avg. Power during training

From the graph, you can see that during training, I never went over 500 W, and only above 400 W a handful of times. However, when racing, I hit a peak of 700 W, went over 500 W several times, and 400 W even more times – but had a lower average power. From here, you can see that volatility increases effort. I need to find a way to incorporate this volatility into my training schedule since it’s more race-like. One commenter a few weeks ago suggested that I do over/under intervals and I think this is a great way to simulate this type of scenario.

Other than that, I felt like I improved a lot on handling. I wasn’t afraid to stay in front this time and I didn’t feel nervous at all in the pack, even when I made physical contact with the other riders several times, and when the 787 rider crashed, I didn’t lose my cool. Anyway, I have at least another month before my next race, or maybe even two if I have to take time off for studies, but I can’t wait to be back. This week I’ve decided to do recovery rides since I overtrained a little. After that, the intervals will continue.

Posted in: Cycling, Logs / Tagged: , , , , , ,

No. 54: Spring Training

27 March, 2012 1:58 AM / Leave a Comment /

Hey everyone,

I didn’t race this week, but it looks like the rest of my teammates had a lot of fun so I kind of regret not going, but I did get some good training in despite the lack of good weather/suitable courses. On Tuesday, it rained, and on Thursday through Sunday there was an art festival at Memorial Park, so the Picnic Loop was closed to bicycle traffic. This means that I couldn’t do my structured intervals as planned, but I went out anyway and rode from Memorial Park to Highway 6 and back again, keeping the heart rate at about 160 bpm and the average power above 200 w.

On Saturday, I drove back down to Clear Lake to ride with the folks at Space City Cycling Club. I really looked forward to this ride since I hadn’t done it since I started racing this year. In my opinion, it’s one of the best training rides in Houston since some of the best cyclists in Texas ride down there on weekends when they’re not racing. The pace usually speeds up to 30-34 mph at the beginning, and I almost always get dropped before I hit FM 517, but this time I managed to stay in contact until that point. I felt really good until I got boxed in by a bunch of people who couldn’t hold the pace, but I’m pretty sure I could have held on if I had paid more attention. This is actually a really important factor in racing because you need the ability to accurately gauge other riders’ fatigue in critical situations so you know whom to follow and whom to avoid. I tried chasing in vain at a pace of 32mph, but after I got tired I decided to work with a chase group and I did some long pulls of 2-3 minutes at 300 watts each. After 1:30:00, I measured my average power at 220 watts – about 7 w more than I had done at Fayetteville. 7 watts doesn’t sound like a lot, but it could mean the difference between hopelessly dropping off the back and staying in contact until the finish.

Coming back from the halfway mark, I felt fantastic. I kept doing the long 300 watt pulls at around three minutes each until I got a flat tire. Thankfully, a group of three guys helped me fix the flat, but 10 minutes later, one of the riders who helped me also flatted. It took a while for me to feel comfortable again, but at the end of three hours I averaged 207 watts – that’s a higher wattage over a longer period of time than both Walburg and Mineral Wells. I’m feeling optimistic, considering that this was just a training ride, and that I only averaged 173 watts on the same ride 2 months prior.

Average power isn’t everything, however. Sometimes the ability to maintain a high output for short periods of time during the right moments matters more. On the other hand, if you can maintain a greater number of peaks for longer periods of time, you won’t have to worry so much about timing your efforts correctly. In reality, the best racer will have both a superior level of fitness and an acute awareness of the overall racing situation. The physical fitness comes from good preparation, but the ability to time your efforts correctly allows you to conserve energy for those crucial moments when the pack surges. Without racing knowledge, your physical ability will never manifest itself during the moments that matter. I think that’s what separates the winners from those who are strong but not smart, and vice versa. I don’t consider myself to be strong or smart (yet), but I feel that I’m getting better at both and I’m looking forward to racing at Come and Take It this weekend. My finishes during the last two race weekends were really demoralizing, but when you’re down, you really have to keep at it – you have to take a moment to reflect on what went wrong, and then do the things in training that you weren’t able to do before. One main weakness in my training is that I don’t have specific goals – when I train, I come in with the attitude, “let’s do these intervals and see what happens,” but the problem is that it’s not focused or goal-oriented. Tomorrow, the weather looks good and I aim to do two 4-lap intervals at 170 bpm, while reducing the amount of rest between them from 4 laps to 3 laps. It’s harder than what I’ve been doing previously, so it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

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No. 53: Fayetteville Stage Race 2012 – Race Report

20 March, 2012 2:44 AM / 1 Comment /

Hey everyone,

I just came back from Fayetteville Stage Race and there were some good things and bad things about that race, with more of the latter. Unlike Mineral Wells Stage Race – where placement was determined by a point system (where you get points based on your stage finishes and the person with the most – or least number of points depending on how they score it – wins the overall classification), placement would be determined by cumulative finish time where the person who finishes the race in the least amount of time wins. Unfortunately, none of this ended up being relevant to me since I dropped out on the very last lap of the last stage.

Preparation

I couldn’t train enough because it rained a lot over the last two weeks. I do have an indoor trainer but you can’t really train at the same intensity or duration. It’s not that I didn’t get any better since Lago Vista, but I didn’t improve enough or gain enough endurance to match the physical demands of Fayetteville. Here’s a snapshot of my last training session before the race – 3 x  7-10 minute intervals:

HR vs Power 15.03.2012

Splits 15.03.2012

And here are the splits from the last time I did this workout:

Splits 07.02.2012

I’ve written a table comparing the average power output between the intervals:

Comparison of Power Between Workouts

There’s some good news about this – I was able to increase my power output by about 12% from a little more than a month ago. This isn’t exactly a fair comparison because my heart rate was also about 5 bpm higher this time – which means I tried harder – but that’s also good news because I didn’t know I could sustain a heart rate that high. What I’d do is I would start out the interval at around 150 bpm, and then work my way up to 170 bpm midway through the first lap and hold it there for the rest of the interval, averaging about 167 bpm for the entire interval. I still need to do two things though – I need to decrease the amount of time between intervals and focus more on time-based intervals instead of distance-based ones. I plan to focus on the former these next two weeks. For example, tomorrow I will do 2×4 lap intervals but only rest for 3 laps instead of 4 laps between the intervals (found out this morning that it would rain…I’ll try this on Thursday).

Stage 1 – Road Race

I felt optimistic coming into the race and I felt really good on the first lap and I didn’t have any trouble matching the accelerations and the only thing that really bothered me was this one rider who kept shaking as if he had trouble controlling his bike. I tried to avoid him but I ended up spending most of the time within 2-3 bike lengths of him. The first half of the lap was mostly downhill with a short climb (KOM) near the beginning and the second half mostly uphill. I didn’t find getting up the hill very difficult – it was mostly the few minutes afterward trying to catch my breath that was psychologically difficult. Said attempted to join a breakaway but the pack later reeled him in…nevertheless, he managed to stay in the front and continued to do a lot of the pacemaking. Sometime after the second KOM a couple of riders broke away from the pack (I later realized one of them was a semi-professional triathlete – Sean Schnur who ended up winning). Said ended up doing the bulk of the chasing but no one wanted to cooperate. I finally got sick of staying near the back with the guy with the jerky movements so I decided to move up to the front and help Said a little with the chasing. Unfortunately, that ended up being a really bad decision as there was a series of stair-step climbs immediately afterward and I ended up getting dropped when the pack surged.

I felt pretty stupid about that…it was the last hard part of the race and I think if I waited until after those climbs to bridge up I would have been alright. Instead I got dropped with just a quarter of the race to go and ended up 8 minutes back. Before the finish, I saw a Bike Barn rider trying to catch me but I managed to stay away from him at the line. Afterward, Said said he was frustrated since Bike Barn didn’t help him out with the chase – after the results came in, it turned out that half of the Bike Barn guys dropped early on and finished behind me…if that’s any consolation.

Anyway, here’s the data from the first stage:

Heart Rate v.s. Power for Stage 1

You can see the point at which I dropped from the pack. It’s where my heart rate fell precipitously at about 1:35. I spent a few minutes at 170 bpm at 1:25, working my way up to the front of the pack. Once I got there it dropped a little but still stayed above 160 bpm. At around 1:32, it went back up again to 170 bpm for about 3 minutes until I couldn’t hold it any longer. As soon as I got dropped, I saw an average of 213 watts…definitely the hardest 1:30 effort I’ve recorded so far, which is good news, but also bad news since I got dropped.

Stage 2 – Time Trial

The second stage was an 8.9-mile time trial – the second TT for me this season. I think I learned from my mistakes last time so I decided to be more conservative at the beginning so I could put a harder effort towards the end. The first 2/3 of the course was relatively easy (which is still really hard since I’m going at 170 bpm) since the course was mostly rolling downhill with a tailwind. I kept a steady pace of 25-30 mph at about 250 watts. The last third was really difficult for me – it was mostly uphill into a head wind and there were some points where I was only going 10 mph. My legs were really getting fatigued and I was scared that I might have gone too hard at the beginning but I kept it steady until the finish.

Fayetteville HR (Purple) v.s. MWSR HR (Blue)

The blue curve represents my heart rate at Mineral Wells whereas the purple curve represents my HR at Fayetteville. You can see that I indeed started more conservatively but managed to sustain a higher heart rate from about five minutes onward. In addition to that, I averaged 247 watts at Fayetteville against 220 watts at Mineral Wells – a 12.27% increase over the span of 3 weeks. Instead of finishing last like I usually do in time trials, I beat 6 guys in my category and 5 guys in the category above me. It’s nothing to brag about but it’s a sign that I’m getting better. I felt relatively good about the wattage and HR as I hadn’t held 247 watts or 167 bpm over 25 minutes before (the longest recorded time at that intensity was the training data at the top of this post).

Stage 3 – Road Race

I don’t really have much to say here – I was so fatigued from the day before that I didn’t have the legs for this day. I dropped out midway through this stage and I only managed to average 140 bpm. I dropped a little bit further out from the place I dropped on the first stage but instead of continuing at 200 watts I really couldn’t pedal at all and if I continued I would have risked injury. This wasn’t a good way to end the weekend, and I felt really demoralized afterward, but I feel a little bit better and more motivated after resting today. Said had a good finish for 7th place. For a more action-oriented race report, you might want to check out Cat 4 rider Jack Mott’s race report.

Recap

The races at this point of the season feel a lot harder than those of a month ago – the following table compares the watts and bpm of the last three road races I completed:

If you only look at the average heart rate, you’d think that I put in a similar effort at Fayetteville and Walburg, but it was much harder for me. Here’s a graph indicating the points at which I surpassed 170 bpm at Walburg:

And this one indicates those points at FSR:

You can see that I surpassed 170 bpm about 5 times at Walburg over the course of 2:10 whereas I surpassed that mark 9 times over the course of 1:30 at FSR and probably would have needed to do that 4-5 more times had I stayed with the pack. So, the difficulty is definitely ramping up. It’s disappointing results like this that sometimes make you want to give up, but as long as those numbers keep going up I’ll stay motivated to keep trying.

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