2007 spring training camp

I just got back from my first of what I can make an annual training camp. I spent the week in Bridgewater, VA. I really didn't have any particular plans except to just ride, and ride alot. It ended up being a really nice week. The weather was sunny all week and it only rained one evening after I was finished riding for the day. I ended up riding between 2 1/2 and 3 hours a day. Some days I rode hard and some I rode easy. It was a great time and I got to ride more outside in this one week than I had ridden all year up until this point. I'm not exactly sure if this week will help my racing this year but one thing that is for sure. It's amazing what time off, riding your bike, and plenty of sun can do to raise your spirit.

Dismal Dash ITT

It was off to visit my Aunt in VA beach this weekend to do a race in Suffolk, VA. I got there Saturday morning at 7pm after driving all night. I slept for a few hours and got up for a short ride. The rest of the day had nothing to do with biking and was spent goofing around and refueling(eating). The next morning I woke up and saw that it was cold outside. What's up with that, this is VA. It wasn't actually cold, it was in the mid 30s, but the wind was terrible so it felt much colder. By race time the sun was shinning and the temperature wasn't an issue. I started out fine, on a flat out and back course, and made the turn around in 28min 30 sec. I knew the wind was at my back the whole way there because at one point I went to shift into a harder gear and realized I was already in my 53x11. A quick look at the speedometer and I saw I was cruising along at 32mph. After the turn around it was a struggle. You immediately got smacked in the face with a cold wind and all you could do is hold your aero position and keep pedaling hard. I ended up with a finishing time of 1:03:10.50. It was good enough for 6th place out of 42 in Cat.4 and 27 out of 240 overall. It was really fun and it was interesting to do a race that flat. I can only imagine what a road race would be like.

New bike in Race Dress

It's ready for VA this weekend, I don't know if I am.

Jumping into the Blog

Hey, this old dog just learned something new. I'm bloggin' baby. I also wanted to share my plan for more speed this year. I've added a new power-adding accessory to my bike. I found a nice chrome 3" exhaust tip while on a ride. When I figure out how to post a picture, I'll show you my new setup. Do you think it's a good plan?

Well, sometimes I like being proved wrong. Less than 24 hours after wondering if I'd get to ride my TT bike outside before the race in VA I was out on the road. Not exactly ideal conditions outside but I'll take it. I think the bike fit is just about right and the position is comfortable. My shoulders were a little sore and I'm not exactly sure why. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions.

My first race of the season

Well, I committed to my first race of the season. It is on March 18 in Suffolk, VA. This 40k ITT may be my first chance to ride my new TT bike outside unless the weather improves. I guess trainer time can be very valuable but this weather is ridiculous. I actually just saw the sun for the first time today and it looks like if I didn't have to go to work I could actually go outside and ride today. Oh well, maybe this weekend.

New TT bike

I got my new TT bike. I don't have the position quite right yet as you can tell from the picture. It is a really nice bike and much lighter than my Cervelo was. I think I can still get quite a bit lower on this thing.

One month later, I did more power testing today and the numbers continue to rise. I may still have a chance to be less of an embarrassment to Indiana Cycling.

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.

Here I am returning from my first training ride of the new season on Christmas day. I got home just as it started raining. Today I was inside on the trainer after work. I did my baseline power test. I think I had forgotten how bad 20 minutes can hurt. Hopefully we'll have a few more races without rain this year.

Since the Dirty Dozen I've been spending all of my time off of the bike, running, and preparing for next season. The only times I've been on the bike is on Monday night MTB rides. I have been running and doing squats every day after work. I've also been playing hockey on Sunday nights. I start riding again Christmas day and I'm really looking forward to it.

To rest or ride?

I started playing hockey again a few weeks ago for some off-season crosstraining. Now that the racing season is pretty much over except for the Dirty Dozen I have to decide if I should keep riding hard to get ready or take some time off. I had originally planned on riding hard until the Dirty Dozen and then taking December and January off from riding and start running to rebuild some much needed bone density that is probably lost from the greatest non-weight bearing sport in the world (cycling). Now I've started to read on message boards how people have taken the last month off and have started LSD rides already to get ready for next season. I'm not quite sure what to do, if anyone has suggestions e-mail me at caad8@aol.com This post may be boring and nothing anyone else cares about but someone needs to post here.

A view from the trenches (Or how I spent my fall semester racing the ECCC)

Greetings, So glad to be back after a long hiatus from posting. After spending the last 2 months hitting the books for my first semester at the University of Vermont, I have come out alive. In addition, I spent some time racing with the UVM cycling team at a couple mountain races including the University of New Hampshire Men's B race and UMass's Men's A Race at Jiminy Peak. Both weekends were exciting and packed with plenty of short track and cross country racing. Getting out and seeing some of the New England countryside was also pretty nice. Anyways, both cross country courses were well constructed and suitable for a PA boy such as myself, with fast, wet, rooty and rocky, technical singletrack. On the other hand, UMass constructed, very masochistically, a short track XC course consisting of laps straight up Jiminy Peak's ski slopes and right back down again. Painful. In the end, I earned my gold star with a 1st place finish in the Men's B XC race and 6th in the STXC at UNH and 9th place in the Men's A XC and 7th STXC at UMASS. In the end, the University of Vermont comes out on top, winning the Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference (ECCC) title in MTB by 4 points over UMass. Can't wait for 'cross season to start.

Temperatures in the mid 40s, winds of 15-20 mph, and torrential rains. What a great day to start doing hill repeats to prepare for the Dirty Dozen.

Here is the new System6 Rich got in today. It is equipted with full Ultegra and Mavic wheels, and it's in my size. It is one pretty bike

24 Hours of racing = 7 days in the Hospital

Well to say that August was a boring month would be an understatement. Not paying attention to the warning signs I continued to ride and train during the entire month. I also competed in 2 races, Ole bull Midnight Madness, which is a 12 hour Mounting Bike Race of which I completed approximately 6 hours of due to outlandishly poor conditions, bike malfuntions and feeling poorly. The second was the Seven Springs / Subaru 24 Hour Challenge. This is the one that did me in. Again I was already sick and had been for almost a month. This weekend adventure started for me at about 0700 am. On Saturday Laborday weekend and ending ending around 1700 on Sunday. Despite my physical condition I was very excited about the race. Even though the weather was not good. Conditions didn't matter though, This race is always a blast and I couldn't wait to get started. The race itself was really a lot of fun even thought the conditions got worse as the day progressed. As told by the previous Blog by Brian. Now this is where the 7 days in the Hospital come into play and is probably due to several reasons. Already being sick, continuing to train while I was sick, Racing while I was sick and staying up for 34 hours all lead to the depletion of my immune system. During the 24 hour race I developed a slight abrasion on the inside of my leg and a slight saddle sore, neither of which through up red flags to me. The next day,Monday, I started running a high fever which by Tuesday reached the High of 104 which landed me in the local Emergency room. They're diagnosis was the common flu, take 2 aspirin and take it easy for a few days. Still the abrasion and saddle sore weren't of any concern. Wednesday was a different story though, the abrasion started looking funny and redness started creeping down my leg and by Thursday I had swelling the size aof a baseball on the inside of my thigh and the redness continued down my leg. This fever was also persistent. By Friday I could not take it anymore my condition was deteriorating and I went to se my family Physician who imediatly started me on antibiotics, with the instructions to keep a close watch on things. By Sunday the infection had consumed my entire leg to my knee which meant a speedy trip to the Hospital. The following week in a nutshell. Sunday = Admitted to the Hosopital with a possible Staff infection. 24/7 of the stongest vein bunrning antibiotics they could dish out. Monday = verification of staff infection 103 temp on Monday evening. Tuesday = More Vein burning antibiotics and the ifection seems to be responding. Wednesday = Surgery and still receiving antibiotics Thursday through Saturday = More of the same changing my IV line every other day. Released on Saturday afternoon. One more week of oral antibiotics and recovery. And at least another month off the bike. All I can say is be careful.

Seven Springs review

The Subaru 24hour Champion Challenge was this weekend. It was cold, rainy and muddy. It was also a blast. Now don't get me wrong this was a different kind of fun. It wasn't the laughing/smiling kind of fun. It was the kind of fun that you have when you are so miserable and sleep deprived that everything seems hilarious. My day started at 0730 when I woke up and looked outside to see a downpour that was the remnants of hurricane Ernesto. Then I got my car packed, ate breakfast and headed out to meet Rich and go to Seven Springs. When I was sitting at the gas station waiting I got a phone call from Rich saying that he would be late because his camper tires were low and he hadn't noticed until the last minute. He finally got there and met me at 9:10 and we were off. We arrived at the race venue at 10:30 and immediately started to set up camp. By this time the rain had slowed to a mist but the field where we were setting up had so much water laying on it that my feet were completely soaked by the time we were done setting up. From there I went to the pre-race meeting and to pick up our band that we had to pass between riders at the beginning and end of laps. Nick was volunteered to go first so now it was time for him to head to the start finish line. He headed out at noon and Rich, Mark, and I were still working on setting up camp. About an hour later we all went up to the transition area to see Nick finish his lap and see just how fast (or slow) the course would be. It was truly unbelievable when Tinker came through second. Here this guy is doing a 24-hour solo and he beats our guy by almost 15 minutes. I was second in the rotation, so now it was time for me to head out. I was expected to be the slow guy in our team so there wasn't too much pressure on me. Good thing because I got a flat less than 2 miles into my lap. I finished in 1 hr, 38 minutes. Not a great time by any stretch of the imagination but it was only about 15 minutes slower than Nick and with the flat added in, I was happy with the time. Rich was up next and he did his lap and came back and reported the trail conditions were getting worse and worse all the time. With this Mark was off to complete his first lap. When Mark came back he told us the same thing as Rich that the trail conditions were awful. Nick was off next for what would be the last day lap. I was up next and I got the privilege of passing Mike who had been riding for over 7 hours at that point and was feeling really sick. This was my first night ride ever and I was almost blind with the fog. My lap time went from 1 hr, 38 min for the first lap to a 1 hr 58 min for the night lap. That was the beginning and end of my night riding experience. I decided I was done for the night because my MTB skills and lack of light could end up getting me killed. Rich went out next and did his night lap and said by that time the fog had died a little after you dropped off of the top of the mountain. Mark said he would do the next two laps so that he could get some sleep before his last lap of the day. I took Mark another bottle and a few gels between laps. Nick went out next for his night lap and then Rich went out for his second night lap. I went out after Rich for what would be my last lap. My goal was to go under 2 hours but that was in doubt when I was less than 4 miles into the lap and felt like I was on the verge of bonking and I had no food and only a small bottle of energy drink. It was slow going but it was looking like I was going to make it. Then when I got close to the finish and realized what time it was my new goal was to finish before 10 o'clock so I could get pancakes at the lodge. I finished my lap at 10:03 a measly 3 minutes too late so no pancakes for me. Mark went out after me for our last lap. When I got back to camp Rich had already started to tear down camp. I had something to eat and then I started to pack up as well. There are many adjectives to describe this race so here they are in no particular order: fun, muddy, cold, wet, tiring, ect.