April 27 Goon Ride Power file, Google Earth map

The Goon ride was awesome this Tuesday. I had a teammate (Robb) and they were plenty of people letting it RIP! Super Dave was out there and other people much stronger than I. I had 4 days in a row of hotel training last week- rested Saturday- freeride on Sunday, slow power loss tired ride on Monday... then I was ready for the Goon.
We had awesome weather, started off hot, then cooled nicely. What I have done here is link parts of my power file to spots on the Google earth map. NOTE: The Google Earth TIME ELAPSED data points are 4-5 minutes behind the time shown on WKO.

When the ride stopped at East-West Hwy, you can see below the elevation line staying flat, zero Power, cadence and speed. You can also see my heart rate recovering. You then see where the light turned green and cadence and power spike up.





As we grouped up after the light, the pace was a little slow. Then people starting drilling it on the front (Robb and others). A few (2-3) folks were suddenly up the road. I dropped the hammer and launched up (pardon the dramatic language, it was fun as hell). As I bridged to the 2-3 guys away, I spotted one of my UMD jerseys even farther away. I thought, "who could that be?"

I drilled it again to catch that person, IT WAS EVAN! (Ellicott, Indy). I think that the next picture shows a 558 AVERAGE Watt burst to catch up to Evan, somewhere near Wundale Rd.

You can see the HR line (red) come up, the power line (yellow) spikes way up (1185 watts), elevation is slightly dropping (orange), and cadence is whatever (blue). You can see the data points from the Google EArth map: 32 MPH, HR 175, Cadence 94 right after we passed Wyndale Dr.



We all were cruising down past the Park Police station, Evan lead the way (he was on his way home, I think). He is strong as crap, I guess babies do that for you.
Of course I was thinking about the hill. I wasn't sure if I wanted to rest up to crack the hill, or push hard TO the hill to really make it more of a struggle to get up the hill. I decided to make a good attempt at the hill while staying on Evan's wheel. Evan dropped me off right at the curb you hop to go over to the hill. I feel odd being on the front going up the hill, I was hoping to get passed so I could follow a wheel to the super sharp left hand bend...




The yellow dashed line on the graph is at 400W. You can see here the elevation line (orange) creep up, cadence (green) goes wherever, and POWER (yellow) keeps jammin' between 400 and 700Watts; all this while HR gets pegged! FULL SIZE POPUP OF THE CHART BELOW



I got dropped! Super Dave and 4 more dropped everyone. When we got back to the flat, we were chasing. Eventually, the 5 were in sight with Ford Escape drafting off of them. I drilled it to bridge up (once they were close enough) and drafted off of the car creeping up the hill out of Rock Creek. Then the next question was what to do about the Mormon Hill. I knew I'd be tired, but I gave it my all, dropped on the first part of the hill...





From the power chart below, you can see my power drop on the hill as the hill flattens out in the middle (1:08:40). HR shoots up, elevation goes up, cadence goes wicky-wack, and speed is dropping. FULL SIZE POPUP OF THE CHART BELOW




It was then a spirited ride to the "sprint" area. A guy in a sleeveless tri shirt went early, so I went on his wheel, I think then that Super Dave and Greg Abbott absolutely nailed it to the end.

It was a sweet ride, great for me as Bunny Hop appraoches 1/2/3. Ride Data:
Normalized Power: 301W, 1057 kJ, avg HR 145 bpm.

First day back on my own bike, outside, with power, warm weather; I love riding.

I spent last week trying to workout on a hotel fitness bike. I had my polar HRM with worked with the fit bikes they had. I managed to lose 1 pound and keep some fitness.4 consecutive morning on the fitness bike 60-80 minutes each. BY THE WAY, those bikes shut down after one hour.

SUPER MASSIVE POPUP WITH YESTERDAYS POWER GRAPH!

After grouting some tile most of the day, and missing the 8:30 ride, which I hear was awesome, I had to get out. (ALL GROUTING DONE, FINALLY; I'll post on that after we clean and seal the natural stone tile) I had not been on an actual bicycle since Dolan. I was itching to ride.

At about 6pm I saddled up and went out and did the route for the Goon.

I had no idea how much I missed riding! It was one of those super-corny moments; I just felt like a million bucks. I will post right here and right now that my motivation is high, I look forward to racing, I want to train, I look forward to tough trainer workouts, etc. We'll see how I feel by July 1. This is Sundays "Do-Nothing-Feel-Great-Glad-To-Be-Home" Ride. 1:30, average and normalized watts far below threshold. See you on the Goon this Tuesday.

Hotel bike counts as cross training? How to stay sane while travelling...

So, I am on a 6 day work trip on the west coast. I do not have my bike or much time to ride it anyway (this was not the case in January in Santa Barbara). After Dolan, I went home, changed, had a snack and flew to Garden Grove (Anaheim, CA).
This time of year is crucial for growing fitness for bike races. So, I am in a hotel for 6 days and needing to lose weight and work on my fitness. I have outlined what I have done.

1. Bring a Polar heart rate monitor strap, and watch.
2. Bring 2 sets of general workout clothes.
3. Bring a can opener; and iPod with awesome earbuds, check out mine. These earbuds are more like an earplug, they block noise, and they really have bass! You don't have to crank the volume as high either.
4. Get a hotel room with a fridge
5. Walk to a grocery store and buy some healthy stuff for the week. "Bush's Beans; Black beans" have iron, protein, ok sodium, and limited calories. Get a lot of water, find some Muscle Milk or some other protein drink with limited calories.
6. HOTEL FITNESS CENTER first thing in the morning: Get on the bike there, fire up your Polar HRM. Set a goal for calories burned (or avg HR or something).
7. Get on that exercise bike EVERY morning, with music.
8. Eat 1 can of beans for lunch, or something similar to avoid hotel/conference food (IF you must eat with colleagues, get the no-dressing salad, eat your beans later).
9. Have healthy in-room dinners from the grocery store.

There you go. I fly back tomorrow, and get back on my scale at home, back to my power meter, garmin, etc.

GamJams Reviews: Floor Pumps - Topeak Joe Blow Pro

Here is what I like about this pump.

1. It got leaky once and the store replaced it with no questions asked. However, a fellow racer worked at the store and let me swap it.

2. It fills up a HED3 without any adaptor.

3. It holds a right-angle adaptor easily for carbon disc wheels.

4. Tough. This pump travels in a cramped (junky) SUV with me, its gets tossed about a lot. Still no functional hassles.

5. Improvements? At one point, I wanted a super-high PSI gauge for the high pressure tubular on my TT rear wheel. But, it is not necessary. It has a bleed-off valve, I don't think it would work with regular road valves (they are one-way, are they not?)

2 Steves, 2 races, 2 podiums

Big shout out to Stephen Wahl (Latitude; 1st and 1st) and Steve Fife (Bike Doctor; 3rd and 3rd) for being consistent as hell this weekend at Syn-Fit and Dolan. I had a conversation with both after Dolan, my favorite part is how honestly and chill Mr Wahl admitted to "working hard this winter"... love that.

Another shout out to all teams that show effort and discipline, especially in coordinating lead outs (my own team included!)

me too me too me too (Nation's Tri)

How sweet it will be to have Clara Barton Parkway closed to everyone but TT'ing tri geeks?!
I did this triathlon before (yes, with Adrian Fenty) and we cruised up and down Constitution ave- all six or eight lanes just empty as hell.

Rock on.

Good Training and GPS madness

So, if you happen to have a GPS type device, like the Garmin Edge 705, which I have, which is awesome, you can do fun things with it. This image was created by having Garmin Training Center software (free here) dump my training ride into Google Earth (free here).



Each of those little white boxes is a point with a lot of data; time, HR, etc; but NOT power. All you do is open up google earth and also open up your WKO or PowerAgent software and find a time you want to look at, then find that data point on google earth.

Tysons Corner Crit 2009

So Tysons was tough. I am trying to post a chart.

This is an atypical hill repeat from Tysons. One of the harder ones, note the Peak 30s mark.

This was 45 minutes into the race. I FEEL like I did a lot of work to get to the front and then hang out there as the big break broke up and people came back. This was probably one time up the hill where I moved up a few positions.

AVG Watts was 280. Normalized power was 368W.

This profile is the heavier version of this one, put out by a lighter, much lighter rider.

With our comparison comments posted under this entry...

This is the power distribution chart from Tysons 2009