Hypertrophy?

Not familiar? Its that special, yet very controversial, term for the phase of weight lifting that builds gigantic muscles by lifting huge weights with few reps. More muscle to use during the long, muscle atrophying cycling race season. Sounds like a simple concept, right? Long story short, Ive decided to integrate this style of training into the weight lifting portion of my cycling program. But, I didn't anticipate the massive amounts of pain squatting 200lbs until you can feel your muscles quiver would cause. Especially the next day. When I couldn't get out of my lofted dormitory bed. Needless to say, I was forced to throw myself out in order to start my day. At least the pain from the fall was less than that in my legs. But on the bright side, lifting that much weight only hurts once! and the pain is indeed always worth tearing the legs off of the competition during race season. This is a rough estimate of what hypertrophy will make you look like...

I bonked on a trainer ride today!

I didn't know something that stupid was possible but with me it is. It wasn't from not eating or anything like that. I guess from being sick and the lack of sleep from work I am just a bit worn out right now. I think tomorrow will be some nice easy form sprints.

I was on the trainer for an hour this morning. I was doing the Trainright time trial video. That thing is tough. It makes for a really gut busting effort but there is enough recovery allowed, and the efforts are short enough, to make it manageable. Now if I could just kick this chest cold. I am feeling better today so hopefully this will continue.

Juniors/Espoirs World 'Cross Champs

lots of action in Hooglede, Belgium this morning as the World Cyclocross Championships went down in fine style on a particularly grueling course. The USA was well represented in the Juniors race with a Silver medal by Danny Summerhill. The espoirs was a particularly interesting race due to its complete domination by Lars Boom of the Netherlands riding everyone off his wheel and finishing with a hefty 1:00+ lead on the first chasers. The USA was represented by USGP of Cross U23 winner, Collegiate Nat's winner and fellow UVMer, Jamie Driscol. no word on how he finished as of yet.

Tomorrow morning the Women's and Men's Elite Cyclocross World Champs are being broadcast live on cycling.tv, so head over there for all the wonderful cross coverage you could ever want.

Ride your bike today!

First I want to say congratulations to Alex and the guys from UVM for raising money for a worthwhile cause while getting in some winter hours and getting to see a bunch of crazy folk. Now, my message for the rest of you. Go ride your bike today. Whether it is on a Mt. or cyclocross bike outside, on the trainer inside or on an exercise bike. Just ride and try to remember that even though it may be snowy outside right now, in a few months it will be sunny and warm and we'll be spending long hours outside on many a fun filled ride. Also, remember that all of the time you put in this winter will mean less pain and rust in the spring when you really want to get things going. If you can't go for a ride today then try to get out and go for a run or a walk and enjoy the cool, crisp weather that tries so hard to keep us inside.

The place: Church St. Burlington, Vt, The Event: UVM Cycling 24 hr trainer ride...

So the UVM Cycling team had this crazy idea to have a 24 hour trainer ride in order to raise some money to fund a local bike safety clinic for elementary school students with any additional money going to help the club out. A good idea, right? All us socially awkward cyclist have to do is bring a bicycle, hop into a trainer, and spin our legs for awhile and the mostly sedentary population can be amazed and toss us some spare change. If only things were that easy. For the most part, people were very generous and liked the legitimate cause being supported by a bunch of college kids with big quads. But that was before it began to get dark, and colder, and attract a bunch of sketchy fellows who helped us on the first shift (5pm - 10:30pm) pass the time. This included the various people who came by and asked if we had a solar power generator (yes, thats correct solar power) in the trainer to capture all of the power we generated for later use. I suppose thats what you get for living in an area know for the hippie, alternative power loving population. To this we politely replied that, yes, we were generating many watts over our hours of time on the trainers and that they were connected via underground cables that routed to the local shops and kept them lit and heated throughout the winter time. Nice. This wasn't even the beginning. Another activist approached and told tales of woe such as the funding for breast cancer being 30 times as much as prostate cancer and the unfairness of this. As I left from my first shift, an older homeless man had come and began telling his story of being imprisoned by John D. Rockafeller and truly being an alien in human form with his real body being kept by the Rockafellers and the CIA. He also apparently had organs made from cancerous tumors that he crudely fashioned by cutting them and sewing them into the various organs necessary for survival. The us mint is also apparently being run by the CIA and if anyone sees any 1977 coins or bills, you should hold onto it, for they are worth many thousands of dollars due to the fact they were printed by the same Rockafellers and insiders involved in the Watergate scandal. This was also apparently the year that the world's magnetic fields reversed, the planets aligned and water began to flow backwards. Welcome to Burlington, the city of the future. Thankfully I missed the graveyard shift, when many other wonderful people came by for a visit to Chris Warden and Vinnie Scalia, our two guys holding it down for the night. They were smart enough to bring a video camera to capture the craziness. This included a shirtless tibetan sherpa screaming wildly and breaking his cellphone on the ground, sexual advances of an inebriated young woman to a front tire before dropping trow for a little bathroom break in a nearby alleyway, another lady wildly meowing while pounding on a shop window, and the late-night snow plow passing within inches of annihilating our entire tent setup. A Beauty to behold, I'm sure. Makes me glad that I was completely passed out for that entire time. The next day, I returned to do some more trainer riding and fill in any gaps that people didn't show up to ride in. This allowed me another 4 hours on the trainer to people watch and enjoy the company of my fellow UVM compatriots. All in all, it was successful, free coffee was provided by the fine folks of starbucks, many stories have come from the experience, everything went off without a hitch, and a fun time was had by all involved. Can't wait til race season starts.

I had an exciting day of power testing on the trainer today. I have gotten stronger although I'm still weak. Afterwords, I went to Indiana to visit Rich at work and I got to see the new carbon rush that he got in. I didn't think I'd be that impressed with it since I already own a rush but I must admit that I though it was a really nice looking bike. I wish I would have taken a picture to post here because the Cannondale catalog does not do this bike justice. Oh well, I guess I can take a pic next time I'm there if I remember.

trainers and rollers

Today was supposed to be a 3 hour+ base ride, the winter weather decided to make the roads wet. In light of the fact that i had just spent about 3 hours cleaning my bike on monday, i decided to take to the indoor training tools and some tv, newspaper, and videos to pass the time. Thankfully, it was a suprisingly easy time with and hour and a half on both the trainers and rollers. Can't wait for the roads to dry so i can get back outdoors.

This morning I decided that since I had the day off I would brave the cold and head out for a ride. I got out the cyclocross bike and headed out for an easy 30 miles. Unfortunately I only made it about 1.5 miles when I go a flat tire.(I hate cinders) I decided that since I was still relatively close to home I would walk home instead of standing beside the road and freezing while I was changing my tube and I didn't want to continue the ride with no spare tube and debris all over the road. So I walked home and decided that instead of going back outside I would stay inside on the trainer and do the Trainright Criterium video. I have a love/hate relationship with these videos. I hate them while I'm doing them but love how I feel when the video is over. So although I didn't get the workout I wanted this morning the intervals from the video probably helped me more than the slog through the snow would have. Just another note on the snow today. I have completely forgot about how nice of a winter it has been and I'm already ticked off at how much snow sucks and how much hate it. I can't wait for summer!

I just got back from a 47-mile ride on my new bike. It's official, Rich didn't change things around just to screw with me, thank you Rich. I do believe that blue is faster than silver. I just hope that red or black wouldn't have been faster than blue but I don't think it is possible that any color is faster than blue. I met up with Brian Wieczorek about 18 miles into the ride and rode with him for about we parted ways to go home and avoid the rain that is supposed to come but has yet to arrive. Now comes my favorite part of training�.rest, recovery, and post training meal.

Here is a better picture of my beautiful new Six13. This may just be the nicest bike ever :-)

I spent an hour and a half on the trainer this afternoon on my new, blue Six13. It is a beautiful bike. I'll clean the mud off of the front tire and put up another pic. I got there from wheeling the bike from my car into the house. Anyway, 1.5 hours is the longest I've spent on the trainer this year and I don't like it. I would have much rather been outside but really didn't want to get rained on.

Let's play "What did we learn today?"

I learned that doing intervals at a prescribed power level (and holding it at that level for 8 minutes) is sooooo much easier when done on an indoor trainer. It's a bit odd being able to get outside to ride at this time of year.

Happy New Year!

Today we had our annual New Year's day ride. We had a pretty good turnout, I think there were 11 that showed up. For some reason I got the crazy idea to ride from my house to the ride and then ride home. I thought that people would probably want to do a ride around 20 miles so my total day would be around 55-60. We ended up riding 28 miles so my day ended up at 68 miles and on the last 10 miles of my ride home I really felt it. I was completely bonked. But now that I've had a few hours to recover I feel great. It was a great time and I got to see some people who I normally don't see all winter while we're in hibernation from riding.