2010.01 - Week 1!

Well this is my first week with a 'real' training plan.

...and i'm sick. Two days before the start I started to get aches in my knees and lower back and a killer headache. Feeling better now.

Monday- Scheduled: rest. Actual: rest. cha-ching!

Tuesday- Scheduled: 30 min low intensity. Actual: sick again, but walked at night for 30 min. good enough!

Wednesday- Scheduled: 1:15 low intensity. Actual: doctor and sleep. feeling better though.

Thursday- Scheduled: 45 min low intensity. Actual: 1 hour mostly low intensity. I got a little too excited early on in the ride (hey, it'd been a week since i last rode!). I slowed down eventually once my lung started burning. Apparently i'm not completely recovered from my random illness yet.

Distance: 17.57 mi

Time: 1:01:12.62

Speed: 17.2/33.7 (avg/max) mph

HR: 154/172 bpm

Friday- Scheduled: 30 minutes moderate intensity spinning. I'm trying to raise my max cadence on the rollers as well as my 1 minute average. Actual: Same. I'm hoping to upload some garmin info soon so whomever can see the workout in graph form. I really like this workout, 1 min on 3 min off for 5. I think this is one of my major limiters in my kilo. I always would start out with a great cadence, but then it would drop off about halfway. In these workouts, I could get to 30 seconds, but then it became very difficult to maintain cadence. Coincidence? I think not. I'll have to keep on doing these for a few weeks.

Saturday- Scheduled: 1:15 low intensity endurance. Actual: well it turns out i'm going in to the city all day, so hopefully some rollers at night. edit: not so much.

Sunday- Scheduled: 45 min low intensity. Actual: again, not so much.

Conclusions: I'd call this week about a 50% success. However, being sick, I think that it could have been worse. Next week I'll have to modify my plan a bit as I'll be heading to the OTC from thursday to sunday for my race mechanic's certification.

2010 Season Goals

Also last week I completed my annual training plan. one of the first steps in completing this is to determine goals. For this upcoming season I have decided they are:

-1:15 kilo at either opening weekend or states*
-Top 10 opening weekend
-Top 10 in a cat 4 road race**

*As it turns out, my brother's wedding might fall into the same weekend as states, so I might only have one A race for this season...in april. it'll be a short season for me.
**I'm not really sure how good of a goal this is. I don't actually have any cat 4 races set into my schedule right now, and if i did, they'd all be B or C races since I'm just focusing on opening weekend and states* this year.

LTHR test

Alright, well in the end of november, I completed two separate tests to determine LTHR. The first was as close to a half hour TT as I could complete on LI without having to stop. It ended up closer to 20 minutes, and I think I started out too fast. The end result was an avg HR of 183 bpm. With a little factoring involved, I figured that puts me around 171-175 bpm LTHR. On 25 november, I completed a graded test which revealed an apparent LTHR of 179-180. Thanksgiving day I tested this by riding at around 180 for a long stretch at the end of our thanksgiving ride that we hold around here. my legs were toast by the end, so i figure 180 is a bit high. I figure I'll just set it as 175 for now until I can get more data.

Base Update

Alright, just a quick update for updating's sake. Been doing lots of base. Finally bought Friel's book. Realizing now that my garmin HR zones don't match up with Friel's at all. Looks like I'll have to do a LTHR test one of these days. I've also been riding the rollers on the occasional off day. Still trying to get myself in gear and actually ride more than 2-3x a week. Though this early in the training season, maybe it's for the best. We'll see.

A Look to Next Season

Alright. Well. As you might notice, there were no updates about my progress last season. That's because absolutely nothing noteworthy happened. Well, except for winning my age group in the Tour of Missouri Amateur Sprint Competition. It sounds more impressive than it was, trust me. At least I got a plaque signed by Cav and Thor out of the deal.

Anyhow, my plan now is to put this past season behind me and start training for next season. So far I have come up with the following:
-I have already begun base training. Being unemployed, this will consist of many LSD rides, with a little bit of tempo thrown in for good measure.
-Hopefully at least one day a week will be AR on the rollers. this gives me the benefit of not twiddling along busy roads as well as working on my balance/spin/the whole 9.
-As it stands, I'm thinking a double peak season sounds pretty nice. Hopefully late April and early August (what a coincidence, just in time for opening weekend and state champs for track...)
-Yes. I'm still a cat5 on the road. No. I'm not proud of it. Yes. I am determined to rectify this as soon as possible.
-I'm slowly giving up my euro "train by feel" tendencies and have started using an HRM. Zone 3 is a lot slower than I thought. This is good to know.

Today I rode for 3:13, just about 50 miles, solid zone 3 workout. It's a start!

Saratoga Springs and Training Thus Far...

Last weekend I managed to make it to Saratoga Springs for a tour of the Serotta factory. I have to say, it is a very interesting place. They seem to have very high attention to detail, though some of their manufacturing methods seem unneccessarily complicated and I still question their method of table-ing (tabling?) a frame as opposed to the new accepted method. Regardless, I think I might have to look into saving up for one.

I am almost done building up my rain/cruddy weather bike. Which couldn't be done soon enough, because all of last week was solid rain. Training has been mostly nonexistant, though I did get a decent ride in today. My new goal is to get at least some minimal amount of riding in every day. Hopefully I can start riding to work again as well.

Track Opening Weekend

Well by a strange turn of events, I managed to make it to opening weekend. And as an added bonus, didn't come in DFL. In fact, I was slightly impressed with my results, considering how little I've been able to train. I managed fifth in the kilo, despite completely losing track of my lap count and thinking I was one lap ahead of where I was (I advise against doing a kilo on a 400m track-2.5 laps gets very confusing). That really was the only major result. I ended up sliding to 15th place, being one point short of getting 10th. Looking back, I probably could have gotten that point in the last race (a miss and out), but I dropped out early because the field was racing very sketchy. We even had to reride as one guy broke his collarbone after the second lap. Needless to say, I didn't want to suffer the same fate on my birthday with my family watching.