Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Monday, June 30, 2008

So this weekend was the Georgia Cup series' Rome Weekend. The format of the weekend was a bit different with it being a Omnium (based on points earned with each stage placing a rider earns rather than being based on time as a stage race is) and having a team time trial instead of an individual time trial. Followed by a crit with a BIG climb (at least for a crit) and then a road race with the biggest climb we've done all year. While the event was generally well organized you could tell that both the peloton and the promoters are beginning to suffer fatigue. The field sizes were smaller in all the classes except cat 2/3 and things were a bit more shoestring than they have been.

For me it was a very disappointing weekend in several different ways. Probably the most frustrating thing was that I flatted about 2 miles into the team time trial after hitting a small but deep pothole while riding third in line. I kept from crashing and from crashing any teammates by not swerving to miss the obstacle but....argh... I was just getting the diesel that is my body up to speed after a good first pull and was about to be on the front to push us down the road at the high speed. We had our two minute team just in sight and I was looking forward to using them as a carrot to chase down. Then...bam! and pssssttt... and my race was over.

The thing that was worse though I didn't know it at the time was that after the race and when I cooled down, I felt terrible. I was exhausted and just a bit nauseated. I figured it was a product of a bad night's sleep so after eating, which didn't make me feel much better, I took a nap and headed out to the crit. I was a warm day and the course was as hard a crit course as I had done. I went out for a few warm-up laps and when I got done my legs were shaking and I wanted to be ill. I knew what was going on. The tank was empty. I was overtrained and in a bad way. The crit, as you might expect, went poorly.

For the road race, I decided to play a team role. I knew I wasn't going to make it over the climb with the lead group like my two teammates Robert and Bill so I decided to work hard to keep things together. Surprisingly, I didn't feel totally crappy once we got rolling (the warm-up was another matter) and so I went to the front of the group, blocked wind for my team mates and chased down the two or three breaks that tried to get off the front that looked dangerous. Once I got to the climb, my bad form and terrible gearing choice (don't take a 42/23 up a steep climb-what a rookie mistake) had me go off the back first. My ability to set a pace and hold it and high FTP (functional threshold power) had me pass about a third of the field on the way up. I'm pretty sure that if I'd had a 39/25 on the bike (I was riding the equivalent of a 39/21) and if I'd had the form I had had at the beginning of my two-a-days weeks I would have made it over the climb with the front group and finished top 15 on the second round, even as a fat guy.

So, a disappointing weekend for both me and the team but that happens in bike racing. It's like the song, "That's Life". One month you're on top of the peloton and cruising and the next you're suffering on the back. My mistake was not taking a full week completely off the bike after Union City. I should have known I was done. Instead, I took a recovery week and then did those two-a-days and dug myself a deep hole. So this week is off the bike week. I won't touch the thing except maybe to do a group ride in Macon either Tuesday or Thursday (I'm leaning towards the later). Then it'll be on to the last part of the season. The interesting thing is that most of my goals are finished and met. There's the state team time trial championship which I may or may not race depending on team decisions (we have more riders in our group than the competition allows so I'm the team's associate member so I can understand getting left home) and there may or may not be a individual time trial championship (there's not one on the schedule yet). Those are my last two goals for the season and I'll work hard to do well on those.

Long term I have a series of goals I have to work towards to get set up for next year. I really need to add to my ability to attack and respond to attacks explosively. I'll never cat up if I can't get some top five placings in mass start races and that'll never happen if I don't develop about 200 more watts of power for short efforts. Second is to lose weight. If I can get down to 155 lbs I think I'll be a real force to reckon with on climbs and rolling TTs. I feel like I'm in the place I was the year before I went to Nationals. If I was racing Cat V I would be winning but I need to move into the fours. My power numbers tell me I'm a five when it comes to explosive power and a three when it comes to time trialing. I need to step up a notch and get better. I have the support system finally with a good team that I can race for and who will race for me so now I need to work out my six month goals. One thing I'm pretty sure will happen is that I'll get a coach for next season. I'm gathering names and soon I'll start some kind of interview/evaluation process to determine what's going to work best.

For this week it's gardening, working on my on-line course, resting and a few other projects I have in mind. One big thing I plan on doing it reading a bunch. Right now I'm going through a book titled, "Faust in Copenhagen" about the 1932 conference at the Bohr Institute that'll decide the future of physics and it's relationship with the mostly finished work on Quantum Mechanics. I'm only 70 pages in but it's a wonderfully written story. What gives the narrative much of it's power is the understanding that the conference is taking place only months before Hitler will become Chancellor in Germany. I'll try to blog a couple more times and maybe even some of what I write will be about topics other than cycling.

Have a great week and thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Monday, June 23, 2008

As I finish a two week training block, I thought I'd make a few observations about what I learned:

First, I hate two-a-days. Near the end of the block I felt like I was tired and dragging the entire time. I think a lot of that has to do with the intensity of the rides. Since I was going a shorter time, I could go a lot harder but that meant I accumulated more training stress in a shorter period of time.

Second, the TT training I did really, really helped. Each ride I dropped my average watts per mile per hour meaning it took less power to go a certain speed. I attribute this to two things. One is that my body started to adapt to the TT position and did a better job of utilizing the muscles used in the position; namely my hip flexors. Another is that I started to really get my position good and low. The interesting bit is that it seems to take me about 30 minutes of warm up before I can get down that low so that may mean I need to rethink my warm-up for races. Still, at the Thursday night TTT practice I seemed to be able to get down lower than anyone else aerowise, at least looking at our shadows during a couple of the really smooth efforts.

Third, I have absolutely no high end right now. I can really motor for 10-20 minute efforts but ask me to go for 20 seconds and I get dropped every time. This is why I can't win anything other than a TT right now and it's not something I'll fix soon. It's an area I need to work on specifically for the next six months through the end of this season and into the beginning of the next. What that means for riding with the team is that I need to offer myself up as the team diesel to pull for long periods of time as a guy who can work in breaks or as a guy who can pull them back. It also means that I'm the ideal team mate for the TTT.

Fourth, doing the two-a-days really killed my ability to go longer by the end of the block. Sunday, after returning from my Alabama trip this weekend, I tried to go out and do a 50 mile ride. The interesting thing is that I did great for the first hour and then sort of sucked after that. It tells me that I need those longer rides.

So, what's up next? This week I taper into the Rome Georgia Cup event. Easyish rides and lots of rest. My long days of teaching have come to an end so if I can get my body to let me sleep, I should be able to rest up and be ready. We've got a TTT and a road race with a long climb that might actually suit me a little bit. I'm looking forward to racing when I'm not tired and worn out. After that there's a 40 k TT in Alabama I'd like to do in a couple of weeks as a fitness test to get ready for the state championship TTT and a possible state championship TT a little bit later down the road.

Tomorrow is the final for my astro class and a team photo op and then Tuesday's the set up for my second session on-line course. I'm busier than I'd like to be but that'll pass soon I think.

Thanks for reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, June 15, 2008

This weekend was a ride-fest. On Saturday I rode out and met with my mates from the Security Bank team for what turned out to be a one hundred mile training ride. I got to ride a couple of roads that I hadn't ever seen due to thinking they were dirt when in fact they were paved. I also got to tear my legs up for what ended up being a ride filled with harder than expected interval efforts since the cat 3 guys went up the hills faster than us cat 4 guys were used to. Hard on the legs but good for improvement.

For me, the ride ended up down in Macon where I met my wife. As is our custom we went to the most excellent Ingleside Village Pizza. I think there is something inside of me that believes that I'm not really worthy of IVP's wonderful pie because the only time I ever seem to eat it is after I've suffered for four or five hours on the bike. And you know what? It's so worth every mile of hanging on to Stoney's rear wheel while he exorcizes his inner demons by crushing them beneath his thundering pedal strokes (all I know is that Doug said that we were going to do a paceline where we were all going to take minute or so pulls and pretty soon Stoney's hammering along at 31 mph for four minutes at a time...I figure it's gotta be demons...).

Today was something between a tempo ride and a tour. I had set out to take some pictures of a couple of local warm springs near a route I usually due for harder efforts with some climbing intervals. I was hoping to get a shot of an old polio resort from the 40's or 50's. Back then, before there was a vaccine found for the scourge of polio, victims believed that soaking in mineral warm springs had a recuperative effect on arms and legs withered by the disease. FDR picked the appropriately named Warm Springs, GA as the place for his therapy and soon there were little places through the area. One place that I knew of was a small resort north of Thomaston in a place called either Lifsey or Lifsey Springs depending on the year of map you look at. I knew there had been something of a resort at one time that had tried to transition into a place to take your family for a day of picnicking and fun at the pool after the vaccine made polio something of a thing of the past . I was hoping to get a shot of an old sign or something cool near the now empty public swimming pool or at least a look at the spring itself.

My first stop was at a different spring a map had mentioned called Wellingham Springs along a ridgeline connected to Hagan's Mountain (or King's Mountain or Indian Grave Mountain). I found the spring and while it has a pleasant natural pool, there was no old buildings or the like mainly due to the fact that the water temp couldn't have been more than 70 degrees. Not a warm spring and not a cold spring. Still, it was a lovely place whose pool looked like it had been formed when the spring's channel had been dammed by a rail cut. After taking a couple of shots, I headed over to Lifsey by taking an old shake and bake road that I've always avoided (I was feeling adventurous). I got to the old resort and was shocked by how much of it had completely fallen apart since I had last looked it over about six or seven years ago. The public pool was still there but all of the bath houses and such were fallen down and almost completely overgrown. Hard to get a good shot. What was even more odd was that I couldn't get a good sense of where the spring actually was. My research had indicated that it was supposed to have a temperature of around 78 degrees and a higher mineral content and I was hoping that I might be able to stick my hand in the water. After some searching around and following some trails (in my cycling shoes...that's a lot of fun) I found both another pool sort of thing that had water in it that was covered with algae and a large and long trench or channel of some sort that I was unable to find either end of. The pool was surrounded by a rusting chest-high chain link fence so I didn't really want to try to negotiate it. While I'm not sure what either of these were, I have an idea that the algae covered pool is the old warm spring pool that was probably either built on or near the spring. It wasn't like your normal public pool with a poured concrete side and bottom but was formed instead with several concrete slabs that looked like they'd been placed in the hole to form something more palatable to sit on that the dirt basin the spring had carved out. It was hard to tell for sure and I wasn't in a good position to do much exploring in my duck shoes and spandex and lycra (and the aforementioned fence). My plan is to head back when I have some time in late June or early July with good, solid boots and long legged pants to do some trudging around to see what I can discover. If anyone has any info on the town of Lifsey or the spring, feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you know.


On the way home, I did get the picture with the old ladies' bike that you see here. I sort of stopped on a whim in front of a house along the route on the way home and took the shot and I just liked the way it turned out. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Friday, June 13, 2008

This week has been the first of two weeks of two-a-days on the bike. I do this about once every year as a way to deal with the scheduling issues of teaching a summer class that goes into the afternoon and to practice for three race stage races that take place over the course of a single weekend. I'm doing hour long time trial rides in the mornings and then some sort of interval workout in the afternoon or evening. The big thing is that since I'm only riding an hour at a time, I tend to ask my body to go harder during that time with less warm-up. It's pretty intense but it also will mean that I'll bounce back better after a morning TT at a Georgia Cup race in terms of recovering for the criterium that usually happens a little later in the afternoon.

The most interesting part of this has been looking at my power numbers over the course of the week during my time trial workouts. I haven't been as diligent as I'd like working on my new TT position due to trying to get fitness back on the regular road bike. As I've ridden the TT bike I've noticed that I'm feeling more and more comfortable in the new position which is lower and more aggressive than what I was riding at the beginning of the year. This perception seems to be borne out by my watts per MPH numbers. As the week has progressed I've seen the number of watts to go a certain speed drop by about 2.8%. Next week will let me know if the trend continues but 3% translates into about 10 more watts which means a difference of about 1 mph at a pace of 22.5 mph or probably 0.5 mph at a race pace of around 27 mph. That's about 4 seconds per mile or a minute and a half over a 40 km effort. That's a lot and I don't know if the numbers will scale quite that way. Still, I feel a lot more comfortable in the position right now and I'm really hoping that I can realize a 5% improvement once I settle into the position as it now. That's as much as a deep section front wheel or a good skinsuit so it's definitely worth spending time on for the upcoming team time trials and the state championship down the road.

In time, I'd like to get a bit more aggressive with my position by making it lower. At this point that'll take a new bar. There are also some other tricks I've learned about that'll get me a little more speed but the thing I'll need to focus on is what always wins time trails everything else being equal: producing more power for 30-60 minutes. I don't know what my numbers used to be but I feel like I don't produce the power I used to. I'm getting close but I'm not quite there. One more season of training and real focus and I'm confident I can get back.

This weekend will be a team ride on Saturday and a ride out to an old warm springs resort to see if I can get some good pictures of a by-gone era when little resorts dotted the Central Georgia countryside catering to local vacationers and Polio victims. Hopefully there's enough left of the old Lifsey and Wellingham Springs sites to get some cool shots.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, June 08, 2008

Well, it's been a week since I last posted and life has sort of returned to something more normal. There's been no racing, no pinning on numbers, no loading and unloading the car with the odds and ends that go with warming up and providing shelter and all the rest. Instead, this week has been filled with school, rest and chores. That's not to say that there's been no riding. I've done my planned recovery rides and yesterday I participated in the Jordon's annual BBQ and Bass ride. Robert's one of my teammates and he and his wife have a nice route out near their home in Monticello that they invite everyone to ride once a year. There's a rest stop at about 32 miles for beer (hence the Bass) and another at 65 for some BBQ and some more Bass. We finish at 75 miles miles with a final Bass or two for a day's worth of good riding and conversation and goofing off. There were a couple of hard efforts, especially when 50+ year old Bill and Ron decided to make things hard for former pro rider Chad Madan and our Team Director, Eddie after a water stop. The real enemy though was the heat. The temps were in the upper nineties by the end of the ride and that made the ride pretty hard, especially after the BBQ. Still, I had a great time and kind of wish we had a few more rides like that over the course of the year. Training is great but I think doing something like this is really good for the head and the morale.

We're back at it for summer school. I usually teach the System's Solar System Astronomy course first session and this week has been the week we start with having both lecture and lab days. That means that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday we go for five hours. Makes for some long days, especially if your body wants nothing more than a nap and a chance to recover. Still, it's fun to teach some of the naked eye astronomy stuff and my class is only 17 students which makes it a little more manageable to handle the grading load for the course.

This weekend's big project is to deal with the growing bat problem we have. Our house's eaves aren't completely sealed up and so as the neighbors have been driving the bats out of their homes, they've taken up residence here. We should have done more last year but with all of the stuff I had going on it was one of those things that slipped through the cracks. This year, as the smell has gotten worse, I've recommitted myself to doing something. Now that racing is over for a while, I started to make progress this weekend towards driving them out. Hopefully the smell of mothballs will be offensive enough to convince them to look for other haunts. I've placed them in places that will allow the fumes to go right into where they are nesting and I'm hoping today's 97+ temps will accelerate the process. We'll see because I'm not sure what to do beyond that.

The other thing that's wrapping up is my teaching at the local technical college. I decided two quarters ago that I really needed a break from the course and the students. I like the extra money but I'm getting tired of the attitude many of the students have that they should be told what to memorize, regurgitate and forget in order to be successful. It takes a toll on an instructor in a general core course when students only care about their grades. Well, the Tech College needed the course taught this semester for students trying to get into the very popular respiratory therapy program so I agreed to do it but I'm ready to be done. This Tuesday will be the final for that course and then I'll get about three months off. I'll miss the bump to my bank account but I'll appreciate having the one night a week back and the break from the attitudes of some of the students.

So, it's off to do some chores and to stock up the pantry for the coming week. Have a great week yourself and I'll check back in soon.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |

Sunday, June 01, 2008

This weekend was the Union City Mayor's Race. The municipality of Union City is one the southwest corner of Atlanta and has, for the last several years, hosted a two day, three stage race as a way to show off the area and support the sport of cycling. This event has historically been pretty good to me so even though I had just finished a hard long weekend racing the Tour of Atlanta, I decided to do the entire thing.

The stages consisted of a rolling 10 mile individual time trial, a long criterium and this year's edition of the Georgia State Road Race Championship. This combination made for an interesting group of racers at the event. The three stages were scored as a stage race as well as individual events based on overall time. Since many racers in the area opted to focus on the road race at a mostly vain chance at the state championship jersey, there were only about 35 of us vying for the overall stage race victoy as you have to do all three stages to qualify.

I did OK on the opening TT with a five place finish which, once the one stage guys were removed, placed me fifth in the overall. My lead over the fourth place rider was huge so all I had to do was finish with the pack and I couldn't lose any places. The guy who won the TT didn't race the ToA so he was fresh and thus he crushed the rest of us in the TT so there was no way for me to catch him. So the other two stages where protecting a place but also trying to see if I could ride aggressively.

The crit was at 5 pm in the afternoon on the same day as the TT as the weather was super hot and windy. IT made for a sufferfest riding around the access roads of the local mall there in Union City. I had decided to ride hard to see if I could get a break together and had talked with a couple of other guys about joining me to see if we could do something. The problem I have in these races is that no one will let me get a big gap because they know that I'm a pretty good time trialist. What I was hoping is that if I got a couple of other teams' riders with me, maybe they wouldn't chase. When I went, I got a great jump but no one came with me so after a lap and a half, I was reabsorbed into the group and spend the rest of the race riding around at the back of the group for a pack finish.

For today's road race we had a full 75 rider field. Almost none of the guys racing had a chance at the jersey and it was pretty obvious that several of them had no idea what they were in for. The race was a 70 mile course over a moderately rolling course that wasn't very selective. My team had worked out a deal with a couple of other large teams to each put a rider in a breakaway and then not work any more to bring them back. The plan actually worked pretty well except that the leader of the overall wanted a shot at the jersey. He almost single-handedly brought the break back after it was away for 45 minutes. My team mate Bill C. was in the break and did a huge amount of work but it was pretty much for nothing in the end. Still, he raced to win instead of racing not to lose as did my teammate Robert (who won the ToA) in attacking the field six times. Everyone was happy to pull them back but no one was willing to risk going with them. In the end, the race came down to the expected sprint which left it to just a few guys who are genetically gifted with a lot of fast twitch muscles. The biggest stress for me was the crash early in the race that had the rear wheel of a bike bounce off my right shoulder. I stayed upright but it was a bit unnerving.

A couple of notes are in order here at the conclusion of this racing block. I can't begin to express how great it is to actually race with a team that cares how I do and remembers to include me in discussions. I've been racing for six years and this is the first time I felt like I had something to contribute to the team. I didn't do much this weekend but I received a call from a teammate after the crit to see if I had held onto third and telling me that the team would support my goal of finishing on the podium. Hanging around the Security Bank tent has been a great experience. Being included in the kidding around and teasing, getting the well-wishes of my team and congratulating my teammates when they have done well makes the racing so much sweeter. Related to that, a shout out to my teammate Trey who raced his first race back from a hip broken on a training ride and who hung with the first pack and motivated the race. Also, if I'm going to contend for anything this year, the races have to get harder. I don't have the top end to make an attack stick if the racing continues this way. I guess I'll focus on time trialing as best I can and starting training to create a 30 second and 1 minute burst that'll give me a way to separate from the pack on an attack and hang with the strongest riders when they go.

As for me, the racing schedule of the last eleven days finally caught up and I had no high end. I could motor at time trial pace for the whole race but I couldn't go with the really fast moves. I finished 30 seconds back from the main group but managed to hold my spot in the general classification and take 3rd in the race overall. So in the last eleven days I've stood on the podium twice in stage races, once for a TT and once for a Team TT. Not a bad couple of weeks. Now I get 4 weeks off to first recover and then train for the Rome Georgia Cup event. There's a team time trial there and hopefully we can go out and dominate that again and put in a good team performance in the races. Rome is hillier than almost any place we've been so maybe the racing will get a bit harder and the sprinters will be taken out of the equation.

For the next week, recovery rides. I'll download all of my favorite podcasts and spin around the area listening and maybe snapping a few more shots for you all.

Thanks for Reading.

The Physicist   Link Me    |