A Dream

I had a dream last night. I found my bike, the aluminum Fuji, Tachikoma, all smashed up. The frame had been torn apart, a chain stay was completely missing. What!? How did this happen? I was just riding it a few moments ago! Distress and despair gripped me. "Oh, we can fix that," advised friend-family bystanders. We placed the pieces of the bicycle together. "There, see?" one said.
I looked at Tachikoma. The shattered frame was held together with plastic zip ties, and still missing a chain stay. I picked it up, and its stem and handle bars hung like a dead dog with a broken neck. I felt sick.

---

I've been thinking about this blog, recently. I still get a few thousand hits a month, despite not having posted in something like three years. I'm not committing to anything, but I've got cycling on the mind and I've been riding, so check back here occasionally or just hit subscribe in the upper right; there may be some fresh content coming out as the weather gets nice.

Until then, thank you for reading and keep the rubber side down.

Overtraining and Vacation

Well, I've just put in a fairly brutal week of intentional cycling over-training. I went on hard bike rides and long bike rides. I went on rainy bike rides outside and hours here and there on the trainer inside. I've sent my friendliness factor to spiraling lows--though I try not to show it to the people I care about. In general, I recognize that this does not benefit the training regimen. Well, I wouldn't call this week over-training just yet, it's over-over-reaching.

)image compliments of Joe Friel's Blog

Here's the rub: I'm going to be in beautiful, tropical, swamp-crotch hot Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, for a week and a half, and I won't be able to bike at all while I'm there. I looked in to it--it just looks to dangerous. There is absolutely no regard for the sovereignty of traffic lights, and no one else down there rides. I mean there's guided bike tours and rentals out in the more rural areas of the country, but not in the capitol. Actually I'm there now. I wrote this post ahead of time. But I digress.

Over-reaching is when you intentionally train hard enough to let your fitness level suffer, then let yourself recover to a new, higher level of fitness before you resume training. This happens on a lot of different levels. It can happen several times during the course of a ride--when you are doing intervals or hill repeats, you rest in between iterations. It happens over the course of a training week--you have active/hard days and rest days. It happens throughout your training year, by month, as you have harder weeks and softer weeks. In the macro-cycle, the entire year is building up to your most important races or rides, after which you relax before re-training for an even-stronger next year.

Yea, it's kind of awesome.

Anyway, since I have a forced recovery of 11 days, I needed a level of training the past few weeks that would hurt sufficiently to let 11 days not be too much recovery. So there you have it.

For more information on over-reaching and over-training from the man himself, Joe Friel, I highly recommend Joe Friel's Blog.

The 'Best' Cycling Hill in the Seacoast

Okay, first off, I hate hills. I mean, what we call the "King of the Mountain" sprint is only 41 feet above sea level. It's a joke. We're all about the pancake-flat coastal highways here. Wind? No problem. Hills, on the other hand, present a problem. Hills are important though, and I'll tell you why.

Force. I mean the force which is generated in your legs, not the force which is apparently generated by midi-chlorians in your blood. "Force, or strength, is the ability to overcome resistance," says Joe Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible. "It also has a lot to do with how big of a gear you can turn when you want to go fast." And the only proper prescription for training force on a bicycle is hills. Force, along with speed-skill (how fast you can turn the cranks) is the foundation of power, which is the key to sprinting. So, perhaps counter-intuitively, training on the hills can help to prepare you for sprints on the flats.

It was with this in mind that with a few friends and teammates I set a course for Amesbury, Massachusettes, and Powwow Hill--the highest point in whatever county it's in. Powwow Hill is only 330 feet, and the relative rise on the sub-half-mile of roads leading to the top is 220 feet or so. That means it has about an average 10% grade, which is obnoxious. We only did three reps on it, that was enough to send us home in tears.

My rear cassette is not conducive to hill climbing. It seemed like the other guys had 27's and/or compact chain rings. I just can't take those steep prolonged climbs. Also I have the core strength of an overcooked rigatoni. That means that there's nothing for my legs to push from when applying force to the pedals. This is caused by a severe lack of situps. Another problem is that a tough, steep hill will break me a lot faster than a long one that's moderately steep. I feel like I'd get a better workout on a three-mile 5 percent grade than a half mile at 10 percent, because I could do more repeats. I don't know where to find that within a reasonable distance (15-20 miles from Portsmouth) though.

But whatever. I recommend Powwow Hill if you are looking for a hill that's pretty close and you're ready to get your ass handed to you. If anyone knows better, let me know.

Can the Weatherman Be Trusted?

A third day is just the thing to make a good weekend for cycling in to a rather good weekend for cycling. That is, unless the weather reboot is all doom and gloom. Take Sunday, for example. It was morning, maybe eleven o'clock or so. I still needed to fulfill my endurance training requirement for the week with another long/easy ride. So I ask my roommate if he wants to come along; he just points at the TV and says no way. It was the weather channel. A county-wide severe storm warning scrolls menacingly across the bottom of the screen, and a green cloud covers the entire seacoast area. Awesome! I say, "Sweet, bring it on," and make sure to grab my rain cape before I head out the door. I love a good, horrible-weather bike ride. I figure training in adverse conditions either prepares you for racing in bad conditions, or makes racing in good conditions a relief.

Fully expecting a watery wrath worth of Poseidon, I make my way across the bridge to Maine, and up Route 103 through Kittery Point. It was sprinkling just a little bit at that point. It wasn't terribly cold, and indeed I was overdressed. See, the thing about rain gear is that it's made of non-breathable fabric, so you get just as wet from your own sweat as you would from the rain anyway, if you're not careful with your heat regulation. So I pulled off my arm warmers and left my the rain jacket open, and kept going.

The funny thing was, the farther I went north and in to the storm, the nicer the weather was. In fact, by the time I reached Oqunquit, The sun was out and I was way too hot. I folded up my rain jacket and put it in my Jersey pocket. A day like that is just too nice to seize, either. I decided since the epicness of the day was not going to come from weather, I better get it from distance and exploration. So I turned my bike north, where I have always turned South, on to Route 1.

First, I must say that Route 1 is not made for bicycles, really. I mean, it's got plenty of shoulder--it's mostly safe. It's just not very scenic. It's made for tourists, with little Maine crap shops and all that sort of thing. It's car-scenic. I believe that when you're on a bike, things like mountains and trees and fresh air are scenic. Natural things. Things you can stop and appreciate quietly. When you're in a car, man-made things are scenic. Old ships, big signs, outlet malls, that sort of thing. Things that you enjoy actively, loudly, and spendingly. I had no money and was already quite occupied with the activity of my cycling, so I kept going.

I was sort of looking for a side-road to the right, eastward, towards the coast. Eventually I came to Route 9. Whatever that means. I'm not lost in the sense that I don't know how to get home, but I am lost in the sense that I am in uncharted territory, and heading in deeper. I came along one of those tiny Maine "rivers" that are actually creeks, and the town sign for Kennebunk. I realized later I was only about 28 miles from home, but I was quite satisfied at being the farthest north I'd ever been on a bicycle, so I took out my camera-phone to get a picture of the town line marker.

It didn't work. My phone just kept flashing on and off and giving error messages in various languages. So I didn't get a picture of it. Google Earth has me covered though: Kennebunk Route 9. I was kind of annoyed at my phone not working, and sufficiently satisfied at my exploration, I turned back.

The day turned out to be about 56 miles, and I couldn't have asked for a nicer day. I wouldn't say that the weather report was totally wrong, though. I suspect that the weather at any point from 500-5000 meters from me at any given moment was a torrential downpour; and was was by luck or fate that I personally managed to avoid it. Some kind of reverse Eeyore effect, I don't know. Either way, another good endurance training ride done.

Episode IV: A New Slouch

Part of the response to my cycling race-training panic that I mentioned last week is that I am only riding for myself. If that means getting dropped on a group ride and crawling home solo, then so be it. If that means popping out of the pace line to sit in the wind because I want to keep my heart rate at a steady 164-168, then I'm going to do that--even if it doesn't make sense to anyone else in the pace line. If my training plan doesn't entail a sprint, then I'm not going to take the bait when someone else jumps. It is by taking my training rides for myself that strengthens me for my team and friends for when it matters--in the races.

Now that I am back on my Annual Training Plan, which I had completely drawn out back in January, I know exactly what workouts I need to do to stay on track to be able to bring my maximum potential for the races that are most important [to me]. This week, I need an endurance ride, which I knocked on on that 50-mile bike ride around York County on Monday. Also I need a muscular-endurance ride. Right now, that means tempo. In other words, keeping a steady pace on the bicycle and just hammering it out.

I took this tempo approach at the Slouch this week. I went to the head, got low, got aero, and just started grinding it out. I wasn't hammering or anything--I just kept a steady pace, didn't make any quick accelerations, and maintained a steady power output that was tolerably painful, ratcheting up the pace slightly as we approached Rye Harbor, where we let everyone catch up.

Now, if you know anything about the Slouch Potato Ride, then you know it's a pissing contest. It's all about the pointless attacks, and doing anything you can to shatter the group. But there was none of that this day. I sat on the front and pulled a steady 22 miles an hour or so through the New Castle loop, about 6 miles on Route 1B. As we approached the first stop sign, someone said "nice pull"--as if it were over--I think not! I kept the same pace, and stayed on the front, all the way down to Ocean Boulevard and another three or four miles before everyone else sitting got impatient with the pace and came around me. I swung out in to the breeze and finished steady in to the wind as the others attacked and sprinted the last 500 meters or so. When I looked back, I saw that most all of the 25-person group had hung on--usually there are maybe five of us or so left by the end.

What happened there was that I had held a steady pace of about 22mph, which was enough for everyone, and not too much for most everyone else. In order to pass me in any meaningful way, one would have to set the pace over 25 miles per hour, which no one particularly wanted, particularly in to Route 1A's coastal wind. This sort of going-to-the-front action sets and controls the pace of the ride. This is also exactly the same tactic that Professional cycling teams like Astana employ to control the race during a stage race. You will see the whole Astana team at the head of the pack, setting a tough pace to discourage anyone else in the peleton from attempting to break away.

Anyway, it was really cool to have most everyone still in a pack when we got to Rye Harbor. Normally we end up spending a lot of time waiting for everyone to catch up, so the guys that get there first have totally cooled down by the time we head back, which is annoying. This time, everyone was right there or close behind, and we turned back in just a few minutes.

We had Rami set the pace on the way back. It really just boils down in to a 25-minute tempo workout if you pull the whole way, but the problem is that it's too easy if you sit in--everyone behind wants to attack. So I just sat at second wheel, so I could rest fairly easy, but also keep Rami clear if anyone tried to pass him, putting him in to their draft. When people eventually started to come around, I was in position to just blast off the front. If they wanted to go ahead, they would have to go hard to catch my wheel, so people were either sitting on me or siting on Rami, and he could keep his tempo. Eventually I just positioned myself right on Rami's shoulder, in order to box in Ben Goss and the troop of followers behind him:

In order to get around Rami, he would have to back all the way off his wheel and get around me first (blue). As soon as I would see him start to drift back to get around, I'd punch it out ahead, so he would have to catch up, wearing himself and anyone else that followed out in a pointless chase (red). If they caught me, I'd just drift back to Rami and drag him back to the front before resuming my position on the flank. Meanwhile Rami's just doing a tempo workout without regard to anyone else--not taking the bait of attacks, and just riding steady. Mind you, I was only working to keep him in the wind so that he could do his tempo workout unfettered.

We held everyone off through most of New Castle, and were in the last two kilometers or so before Rami got irrevocably surrounded by the pack. I punched it off the front to let everyone play catch-up and waste some more energy before the "King of the Mountain." The "mountain" I wouldn't even really call a hill, it's a knoll at best. I didn't bother contesting it, and drifted back. As we came over it, I could see the field had split in two, there were five up ahead by perhaps three seconds at most, and maybe eight or ten in my group in front of me.

Now, there's been contention lately as to where exactly the "finish line" is. Some people insist (wrongly) that it is at the crest of the bridge, where the Portsmouth town line is. The real line is about 400 meters after that, at the second of the three crosswalks, just before the turn in the road. There used to be a line and "LE FIN" spray painted on the road. Also there's a huge "Welcome to Portsmouth" sign which some people might consider. But just to be sure there wasn't any confusion over the last 500 meters, I layed it down hard, bridged the gap and passed the group of five before the first line, and held a gap until the finish. No one followed my move, which surprised me. Ben insists it was because he was so annoyed at being boxed in the whole time, he didn't have the spirit to contest my attack.

This was a great ride. Not because I took the finish. It was a great ride because I got the workout I needed, I didn't feel frustrated, and I rode smart, for myself and then for a teammate. NorEast controlled the ride, and I think that everyone in the back appreciated the steady pace without attacks. Having the majority of the pack hang together is something that never happens on the Slouch, so it was cool. From here on out, I am just going to ride the Slouch as two 25-minute tempo intervals, or to just generally shut down the break-away guys.

Frisbee's Market, Kittery Point

Cycling up the Maine coast is ideal. There's just something about any 12 miles of Maine coast that is strikingly better than 12 miles of New Hampshire coast. Route 103 north through Kittery Point to York Beach's Route 1A and then up through Cape Neddick to Oqunquit is just a perfect route for riding a bicycle. Route 103's got the rolling hills to make sure you haven't fallen asleep on the bike, then York Beach's Long Sands has a flat open strip that you can really haul on--except for the summer traffic and pedestrians that lack the common sense to look before stepping out in to the street. Also, there's a mile-and-a-half strip of tourists all trying to parallel park their Windstars at once--if you can imagine. As you can imagine, it's a prime area to be smug as a cyclist. Anyway, it's not that bad just yet--Memorial Day is next week.

So Keith and I were going on a one of those long-easy rides I was talking about on Monday, and took the afore-mentioned route. We decided to cut Mount Agamenticus out of the loop by the time we got there--we weren't looking to do force training, just endurance. The sort of training where you just see how long you can go before you start to hurt, not how hard you can go. Pushing back the fatigue barrier is the key element to base training for cycling, and thereby has the greatest training value.

Anyway, I hit the wall somewhere on Route 103 south, after we had about 50 miles or so, and still another five or ten ahead of us to get home. The wall of hunger is a pretty serious thing. It's that line where you are suddenly taken with a knot in the stomach, and every turn of the pedals just makes you more and more sleepy. You might even feel a little bit drunk--the carbohydrates that your brain regularly uses for things like thinking and being awake are in short order in the blood stream, having been used by your legs. You feel kind of like a zombie. Replenishing carbohydrates at this point is becoming paramount.

Fortunately, there just happens to be a convenience store here--Frisbee's Market. It's a family store that has been there for over 180 years, but it very nearly went out of business entirely before being bought by an investor and is now managed by the previously owning family. The significance of this little store [to me] is that it is the only place in the entire United States that I have ever seen Coca-cola in glass bottles. And not just regular glass bottles--small eight-ounce glass bottles. Here:

I've never seen it anywhere else. Twelve ounces [one can] of cola is more than health/carbohydrate-conscious cyclists like us need, and a twenty-ounce bottle is just gross. These bottles are just enough to wash down a made-fresh-daily spring roll and get you rolling again.

So if you happen to be in the area of Kittery Point / Route 103, I highly recommend Frisbee's Market, and 8oz glass-bottled Coca-Cola. Check it out.

General Whining

Well I have to say that so far this year, riding has been fairly discouraging. Last year, I didn't have to ride smart because I was so strong. I'd lifted weights all winter two winters ago. I'd spent hours a day on the trainer. I'd went on epic bike rides, even if in blizzards--no, especially if it was a blizzard. When spring hit I was so ready to rock, I felt unstoppable. I could make totally pointless and inefficient moves, and then sit in for five minutes and be fine again. I could lay down the hurt at the front, and I could beat out any sprint.

Last winter I was distracted and stressed and didn't do any training at all. Now it just seems like my legs hurt deep inside with even a minor effort. I get tired and give in to the pain much quicker than I used to. Every day feels like I'd gone on a hard ride the day before. Lack of training is the obvious culprit, but more specifically, it's lack of endurance training. Long, easy rides build a base of endurance, from which the rest of the cycling skills are built: Strength, Speed, &c. Now, in order to get back on track to where I need to be, I have to lay down that foundation of endurance. And in order to do it in a timely fashion, I'll have to do some intentional overtraining. This is something that needs to be done carefully. Many very long, mostly easy rides are going to be my main thing for next few weeks, with only occasional hard rides, I think.

I don't know, we'll see. This is annoying. I should have just done this six months ago.

My Own Medicine

Okay, last July I wrote about being a hammerhead at casual group rides as something to do, and mildly entertaining. Well. It occurred to me yesterday that it is totally obnoxious.

See, I went to check out the Tuesday recovery ride at Gus' Bike. I brought my 30-pound steel touring bicycle because I figured it would be an easy ride. Well, the tables got turned. NorEast has a new punk new-comer that wants to make you cry, and his name is Evan. Rami's vaguely coming in to form, but doesn't ride often enough to need recovery rides. Another three or four guys were feeling strong. Almost as soon as we head out of the parking lot, Even and Rami turn on the juice, and we're doing 26 mph for no apparent reason. And worse, it's not a steady pace line--everyone's jumping around to the front and semi-attacking and just generally being a meathead. This is how the lead group in the Slouch Potato forms, as well. The primary problem with this is that it leaves gaps in the line. So whoever's in front of me jumps up ahead and leaves a gap. I'm not particularly in the mood to close a gap at around 25 miles per hour so I let it sit open, ever-so-slowly widening. The two guys left behind me just jump around me to catch up.

And I'm dropped, off the back, good game--that was stupid. Five minutes in to the "recovery ride" and I'm dumped. I was swearing to myself, indignant that my teammates would be so rude to totally disregard the purpose of the ride and ride like total jackasses. I mean, until I realized that jackassery was one of the ideals that I've always upheld. But here I am on this tank of a touring bicycle with giant tires and . . . so yeah, it was frustrating. I resolved myself to bike home alone at my own pace, and the rest of them could put it in their collective ass.

Until I came to the corner to turn on the Route 1A and head north, towards home. Jeff, the Gus' Bike shop owner, and his son were waiting for me. They were just in for a recovery ride too so they decided not to follow the group. What a relief. We took a reasonable pace up the coast and took turns drafting and heading the wind. Eventually, even the rest of the group turned around to meet us. . . .

And then immediately blasted around us. On both sides. Rami cruises by the three of us, in our peaceful little paceline, on the right, basically in the gutter. It was one of the most obnoxious maneuvers I've ever seen someone perpetrate on a bicycle. I mean, other than myself. Because that's totally the sort of thing I'd do almost any other day of the week. So we immediately got dropped again. It was stupid. There was absolutely no purpose in turning back just to hammer again. This time I tried to hang in but couldn't make it, I was in the middle of no-man's land with no desire to catch up, so I stopped and waited for Jeff and his son, but they never came. They had turned around to go home, since their work had been done, and the ride no longer needed them. I biked home alone.

There is one other thing though. The fires of my power core and fueled with fury and rage--things that have been in short order in my life lately. Retribution will be the game at the Slouch this evening.

Goldilocks

Well, so far I've been posting mostly on Wednesdays. I picked the day at arbitrary, mostly. I have Tuesdays off usually, so I can get a post off by Wednesday morning no problem. The other thing that's interesting about Wednesdays is that it seems like every afternoon group bike ride is on Wednesday. The three major afternoon Wednesday group bike rides in the seacoast New Hampshire area are The Slouch Potato from Prescott Park, the Rye Foreign Auto ride, and the Wednesday Night Worlds out of Exeter Cycles.

The Slouch Potato, there's not much left to say. I've covered this Prescott Park group bike ride before. 5:30, Prescott Park, about 18 miles. I'd say that the pack is mostly made of the charity rider crowd, and the pace is pretty easy, but it's not a soft-pedaling stroll. Sponsored by Granite State Wheelmen.

The Rye Foreign Auto ride. Hmm. Maybe someone can tell me where the deuce Rye Foreign Auto is, because the only Google results I can find lead right back to here. I run in to these guys on the road a bit and I like their pace. I think the shop owner runs the ride but CCB shows up and takes it over, similar to how NorEast's Cat 5's show up and take control of the Slouch Potato.

. . . Oh. It's called Rye European Auto. Nevermind. Found it. Maybe I'll check that out tonight.

Wednesday Night Worlds. I understand this is a fun ride if you like riding by yourself, because chances are you will be immediately dropped. This is good news, because I do happen to enjoy riding by myself. My motivation while just out on the road to ride hard by myself is not very high though, so I don't think getting dumped by category 1's and 2's (and, i understand, the occasional PRO) would be terribly constructive for my training.

So there you have it. I feel like Goldilocks and the three group rides. All three are on Wednesday, all three at 5:30pm. Depending on what mood I'm in each week, each may be too fast or too slow--or just right.

Bonk!

Bonk. You know the feeling. When you're too exhausted to go on. That's where I'm at.

While I pull it together, check the blog list to the on the right-hand panel here for other periodic reading you might enjoy.

Picking Up the Pieces

Last September, I promised to get as out of shape as possible and then pull it back together for '09. I'd say that phase one of my plan has gone quite well. I've languished for the last few months, now. Hey, I've even noticed an unfamiliar slight squishiness around the mid-section. "Operation Trash Your Fitness" has been a resounding success!

Now, phase two: Picking Up the Pieces. As mentioned on several other blogs, it's all about the trainers and rollers right now, with the temperature in New England averaging about fifteen degrees below absolute zero during the days, and even colder at night. I've had rollers since last year. I got them 'cause... I don't remember why. They are horrible. I can't handle them. Last week I got on them for literally ten seconds. They are intensely loud, they way the rumble on the floors, even with carpeting, so they have to be used in the attic, since I have a third floor apartment. So here I am in the unfurnished, unfinished, dimly lit attic, staring at the wall. I might as well put a giant clock up there. That and I can't really space out, 'cause I'm on the rollers. So I said "F this," and I ordered a trainer from Performance Bike.I got the Travel Trac Century Adjustable Fluid Plus Trainer. I got a killer deal on it, between it being 28% on the site, plus like 10% off from a coupon code, and a gift card I had, so I got it for about half off.

This trainer is awesome. Super-quiet. I can train in my room without transferring much sound in to the floor. It's got a crank so I can adjust it without dismounting. The fluid resistance feels realistic. It's good to be able to write things like "awesome ride" in the training log. Now I can pop in a movie and watch while I bike. Knocking out two-hour training rides is not a problem.

Also, I've joined a gym with good weights, and I'll get a weight training regimen together before next week.

Phase two is under way!

GC Cycling: Season Two (Episode 1)

Well shucks. It's been a year. Looking back, it was pretty rad. I've got a few races under my belt, completed some of my fairly arbitrary cycling goals from my blog's first post, and met some pretty cool people. I met my goals of doing a century ride and Hey, I even got a medal, and in a stage race at that. I still get real excited every time I think about that solo break move I made with three miles to go.

On the other hand, I wasn't very confident in the criteriums at all. (Criteria?) Getting behind a crash in Salem at the Witches' Cup Criterium and then getting dumped off the back in the Saco Bay Criterium savaged my moral a bit. Criterium-specific training is going to be a major part of my training this year, including hard criterium-style group rides (we're looking at you, Slouch Potato!) and Criterium Sprint training, that is to say sprinting around corners, like on the Pease Bike Lanes.

Also, it seems that my epic trackstand abilities have left me unable to clip in to the pedals with any degree of grace. I fumble around trying to clip in like it's my first time riding a bike. It's because I learned how to trackstand on my old rattrap pedals, so it's no unusual to only clip in once per ride--I just trackstand at traffic lights. Impressive? Perhaps. Useful in a race situation? Not at all. Another one of my training objectives is to practice clipping in till I am confident.

So that covers some of my more-specific training objectives. For general season goals, I'm going for the win, overall at the Working Man's Stage Race. The Central New Hampshire Road Race is, I believe, two weeks later, so I figure I might as well race that one too. I did course reconnaisance for the Central New Hampshire Road Race in Bow last year, but didn't race. It was real hilly though, so hill training will be important. I'd like to make the break and finish top five, on that one.

Here we go, Season Two!

Park Tools PCS-9

Recently, a friend of mine, upon moving to across the continent to Vancouver, was disinclined to bring with him his infrequently-used Park Tools PCS-9 Repair Stand, and I inherited it. I must say, having a repair stand is pretty handy. Previously I'd either flipped the bike over or held/leaned it awkwardly or something like that. My friend has some old tubes rigged up with a tree branch in such a way as to hang the bike by the saddle. The stand will be a great boon for my home-repair endeavors. As much as I love my old bike, Tachikoma, I can't justify the expense of the bike shop to get its many problems fixed. Now I just need some tools. My emergency roadside "everything you need" tool isn't going to cut it any more. Imagine a hospital that had only bandages.

In other news, my roommate got a bike for Christmas. We went for a ride the other day around the Newcastle Loop. If the weather for the rest of the winter stays the same as it has been, winter training should be easy. Snowy days alternating with warm (40-50°F) ones force you inside for personal physical training but allow you go outside as well. At any rate, having another cyclist in the house will help keep me active with training throughout the winter.

One last thing: I've dropped down to winter scheduling for blog posts, as it was last winter. I will be on vacation next week, so do not be alarmed if there is no post; I will in two weeks!

Transition

Periodization. It's a method of training that starts with general training and culminates in specific training. For example, it may begin with a baseline of endurance training and then culminate with, say, sprint training.

This is achieved through a series of peaks and relaxations in training. You might go three weeks of increasing training intensity, then one week of low intensity. This rest week is needed for your body to catch itself up, heal, relax, rest, and get ready for the next three weeks, which will be even more intense than the last three. This goes on throughout the year, building up to the most important cycling events, your "A races".

Periodization is opposed to other paradigms of training, such as racing-in-to-shape or just generally always being fit. Racing in to shape doesn't hand-tailor your training year towards your goals. And keeping a high-performance level of personal fitness for a whole year doesn't allow you to improve very quickly. Furthermore it's basically impossible in New England.

In periodization, the end/beginning of the cycling year is the Transition phase. It is the 'winter' of the training year, though it doesn't necessarily fall in winter. If I had a yearly training plan (which I vaguely had at the start of last year), I would be in it now. That phase is coming to an end though. While it's not even winter yet is New Hampshire, it's late February in my legs. The time is coming to get the training plan together.

Some people have a personal trainer, or use a website or software to generate their training plan. That would drive me insane. I can't stand it when people try to tell me what to do, especially if it's a computer. I listen to my body and I do the best I can. I'm self--reliant and more than capable of finding my own direction when I have my own motivation.

That's why I am using my own training plan from Joe Friel's Cyclist's Training Bible. His guide takes you through the process of making your own yearly training plan. It's very open-ended, and designed for real-life people with jobs and school and kids and that sort of thing. And I like that one of the fundamental ideals of it is to avoid overtraining, and while you should push yourself, listen to your body.

So, I've gotten myself a copy of The Cyclist's Training Bible and The Cyclist's Training Diary, so I can pull together a training plan for 2009. Woot.

The Chase Instinct

It's been a couple months since I parked my road bike and took up the little hybrid-cruiser upright-position town bike. It's been cool, just piddling around, not doing any big rides. To be honest, that seacoast century was kind of out of control. One-hundred-twelve miles or whatever it was in one day was about as much cycling as I'm interested in doing. You might say it cured my addiction to cycling.

But the other day, I was cruising around downtown, on the upright-bike, when I saw someone on a road bike ahead of me. I was taken with an almost overwhelming instinct to chase. I was powerless to do anything about it though--it would have been impossible to catch him on my bike.

Chase is an instinct. Animals have it. If you ever see a lion in the wild, don't run. That will set off its chase instinct. CAKE, they say. Chase, Attack, Kill, Eat. The best thing to do in the unlikely event of seeing a lion in the wild is to act casual. Bored, even. Food isn't casual, it isn't bored. Lions know this.

So the next day, I woke up early and knocked out the old loop, down route 1 and up 1A. It felt good. My cardio has gone very awry, but the first stirrings of winter training have begun.

Blood Drive

Cyclists are the one of the most blood-obsessed demographics--just behind hematologists and vampires. For years, cyclists have known that maximizing your blood's ability to deliver oxygen to the muscles was important. Sprinter Della Casa tries to get his hematocrit over 50% (whatever that means) simply for his own amusement. Personally I think that it's easy to get blinded looking at numbers and statistics instead of actual race results--call it junk mileage for your whole body--but that's neither here nor there. I myself am not bothered by the sight of blood at all, in fact I find a nice bleeder exciting. Maybe it is because when I was a kid, a massive bleeding head wound was one of the best (most effective) ways to get attention.

As cyclists, we have high-performance blood. We've been loading it up, maybe boosting our iron, who knows. Iron it always in the back of my mind. But the essential thing is that there's a trade-off to high-performance blood. Blood dopers who use EPO and similar blood-thickening products will have a huge performance improvement while on the bike, but athletes in the top echelons of the peleton have very low resting heart rates, and thick blood can be fatal.

Even for non-dopers, higher-performance blood has its drawbacks. Blood uses iron to bind the oxygen that it moves from the lungs to the muscles, but when your blood cells eventually break down, they leave the free iron in your blood stream, where viruses and bacteria are free to use it for their own nefarious purposes, or it just oxidizes your body cells as free radicals. You can green a gallon of anti-oxidant green tea a day, but the quickest way to reduce excess iron is to reduce excess blood.

Another thing is that here in the low-lands of the New Hampshire seacoast area, it's like impossible to find any decent hills or altitude. Professional athletes head to the Alps, or maybe even the Andes to train in the rarified air. Major travel isn't a luxury that is available to me so I have to find another way of gimping my oxygen supply while training in the off-season.

In order to emulate high-altitude training, I tried putting a bag over my head but I could only do one interval before I passed out. Relax; I'm joking. To get that coveted high-altitude training feel and also to clear out some of the free radicals from summer's iron-boosting, I decided to donate blood. You can file this as another seemingly altruistic act that is mostly based in personal interest, but whatever. People need blood, and I need to get rid of blood, so it works out. If you're in the area and can spare an hour of time and a pint of blood today, here's your key information:

Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Portsmouth
Redhook Brewery
35 Corporate Place
9:30A- 2:30P
Tuesday, December 16, 2008

If you're interested in donating blood another time, check out www.givelife.org--they have a thing where you can look up blood drive times.

Hanging It Up

It was about this time last year that I hung up my bike in the garage and called it a season. I'd had enough of biking, it was getting cold out, the roads were going to be icy soon, it gets dark at like two in the afternoon, and . . . really I was just all biked out. I've felt the same way now for several weeks--with the exception of the Seacoast Century and maybe one training ride leading up to it, I haven't done any significant cycling in quite a few weeks.

But then, in January--in fact, right when I started this blog--my interest in cycling sprung back to life of its own accord. It's in my blood. It may go dormant for a while, but I don't fear that I've completely lost interest for it like I have with so many other hobbies in the past.

I have a barely perceptible tingle in my metaphorical throat, which in the coming weeks I fear/hope will turn in to a full-blown fever, for which the only prescription is more . . . biking!

Seacoast Century Prep

Tomorrow I ride on the Seacoast Century, the 100-mile loop around the Seacoast area of New Hampshire including York, Maine and Newburyport, Massachusetts. How they made a 20-mile strip of coast in to a hundred-mile ride, no one knows for sure, but they did, and they bill it as the flattest century anywhere.

I've wanted to do this ride since last year, when I saw it coming through town a year ago. I was really confused/aroused by the sight of literally thousands of people on bikes at the time, and sort of just followed them to there they were going. Of course I started much later in the day, and it turned out that they weren't going anywhere. The crowd sort of just thinned out and then I was left like 20 miles from home, having already ridden 60 miles, totally exhausted, and slightly lost. And that was about a week after I'd quit smoking, so it was pretty intense. To date that is still the longest ride I've ever done.

So far, 60 miles seems to be about "the right distance" for me. We'll see what another 40 miles does.

In the meantime, I'm going to be eating spaghetti with a shovel. It's going to be awesome.

In Conclusion . . .

The Portsmouth Criterium, on Sunday, September 21st, pretty much marks the end of the road racing season, at least in New England. After that, cyclists have to look other ways to pursue their athletic endeavors in the off-season.

From what I've seen, there are three schools of thought here:

1. Cyclo-cross. Cyclo-cross is just like road/criterium racing, but with mud and beer and no semblence of team tactics. So pretty much exactly like category five road racing.
2. Cross-training. In New Hampshire, the predominant winter sport is definitely skiing (or snowboarding). Personally I don't see the point in alpine skiing. You spend about half the time on the lift and end up getting way too drunk. Then on the way down you just sort of stand there and say "wee!" I much prefer nordic skiing. They don't have nordic snowboarding, though. Maybe I'll invent it.
   
3. Transitioning. If you have a periodized your training plan for the year, then you have a couple weeks of "Transition." That's the at the end of the season, after the last race, and lasts until the starting baseline of training begins again, some time in winter, depending on when you plan to do most of your racing. Take this in-between time to just relax.
   

Though it looks fun, I'm not terrifically interested in Cyclo-cross. If last winter was any indicator of what this coming winter will be like, then we're sure to have an abundance of snow, so cross-country skiing should be no problem. But this transitioning thing, I think there might be something to it. The way I figure it, the fatter and more out-of-shape you get in the winter, the more style points you get if you can get your game back by summer.

So there you have it. I am going to do my utmost to get as out of shape as I possibly can, starting on the first day of autumn, and then see if I can make it back to the best form of my life by next July.

Reconnaissance

One of my goals when I started cycling this year was to complete a century ride, 100 miles. We could only manage about 60 miles in May for the Tour de Cure on account of the weather. So I've registered for the Seacoast Century--a 100-mile loop about the New Hampshire Seacoast to include York Beach, Maine and Newburyport, Massachusetts. This is coming up in just two weeks, on the 20th, the day before the Portsmouth Criterium.

Yesterday I went on a training/recon mission with a couple friends, a 60-mile loop down the seacoast to Newburyport and back up through Amesbury, Exeter, and Greenland. When we stopped in Newburyport, we all said, "wow, this ride was a lot faster than I had planned, I was hoping we'd go be going slower." It's funny. There seems to be some dynamic to the ride that it goes faster and harder than any of its participants want it to.

And the other thing is that my heartrate was pegged while I was sitting in at like 20mph, which is ridiculous. I have been slobbing about the house way too much the last month or so, and lost all my endurance. So, this 100-miler should be interesting.