ABOC Summer #2 with DISC

Or something like that. After yesterdays spinning 'warmup' I felt in a reasonable place for a bit of sprinting action. First up we did some powerjumps on (for me) 86", 2 x 3/4 lap. I lead out the first one with Dino, jumped at the 200 line from mid-30s and sprinted to the line unchallenged. Second one I was in second position and followed Dino's jump down the back straight. Here I was in a good sort of position to go around him, but I just haven't been able to get that move right, and I came out of his draft and just sat there, finishing a bike length back - right where I started!

After that we went up to race gear, 99", and did a motorpaced entry + 150m. I jumped poorly, but still managed to hit 61.4 coming out of turn 2, but couldn't quite hold that down the back straight, dropping back to about 57 which I held to the end.

Partnered Flying 200s, and I lead out the first against Craig. The jump again was ordinary, and I rather dove down in to the lane before the 200 line rather than smoothly coming down and still up around the red line at that point. I actually accelerated down the back straight this time, up to around 57 from 55, and held that to the line pretty well. The next one was similar, following Craig this time, except that I was meant to lay off coming out of turn two, take height, run down in to the slipstream and around. Again I got it wrong, not taking enough space and rather diving back down behind him leaving me with not much of a run. So I pulled back out too sharply, got stuck on his hip and couldn't pull past. Marginally closer than with Dino, but not much!

We finished with another 1.5 lap match sprint, and I was up against Jarrod this time. I was behind him, and had plenty of height when he went with about a lap to go. I was half intending to practice the laying off again, but I just plain had too much speed and muscled around him instead. So not quite the right sort of practice.

One thing that's become enormously more apparent as I've gotten stronger in the gym and on the trainer is that that's not really being transferred to the track very well. I'm almost scared jumping for a flying 200 because my bike handling just isn't good enough, especially at DISC. Or, at least, I've convinced myself that this is so. And I did hit the fence with my foot winding up for the second 200. I don't have a power meter, but I reckon if I did it'd show that I was down a good 10% at least in my jumps compared to on the trainer, and quite possibly more (I mean, I've never trained with power, so I can't really quantify. But you get the idea.) Simply because I'm lacking in confidence and skill. More training I guess! And at least BBN isn't quite so slippery...

My capacity for spinning is bounded...

So here we go, back to training again. And it was a bit of a horrible session really, but I coped better than I thought given my lack of training this week:

:05 2 x 6s HCLR:1 (39x23 : 46")
:10 2 x 7s PG+12 (107") SS (R,L):4
:18 2 x 8s PG RS(80) (93") seated:3
:24 24s PG RS(80) (93") r/up seated 8:100, 8:130, 8:max
:31 30s PGSS (93") seated unpaced
:38 21s PG+8 (99") RS (60) r/up 7:100, 7:130, 7:max

There was supposed to be a couple of HCLRs on the end of that, but I didn't last that long.

107" SSes were very good, especially given the layoff. 147/75.1 starting with the right, followed by 143 (or 159?)/75.8 on the left - happy with those!

93" RSes were also satisfying, hitting 157/71 and then ?/69.4 - almost high enough that I'd be resetting my PG again if it was recalibration time!

Then came the awful bits - the capacity work. The first 24 second effort wasn't too bad, ramping up over 130, hitting a top of about 138 and holding it fairly well the whole way through.

The next effort, 30 seconds unpaced (that is, going hard (if not quite a 100% sprint) from the beginning and holding it as long as possible) didn't quite last the distance - in fact, it lasted pretty much about 24 seconds! I held the speed up pretty well though, over 60km/hr for about the first 18 seconds or so, then fighting it down to about 55km/hr to 24ish seconds before grinding to a halt a couple of seconds later!

One last effort, 21 second rampup, I managed the distance though not the cadence targets - it was more like 100/110/129(max) and the last 7 second effort was rather peaky, rather than hitting and sustaining. And then I was done - I stayed there, trying to get myself in a state to be able to do the closing 10s HCLRs, but just couldn't manage it. If it weren't my first session back, I'd've pushed myself, but not this time. Next spin I'll complete!

Lifestyle Periodisation

It's what happens when life just says: "Look, mate, you're just not going to train this week. Remember on Monday, when you had a couple of hours but were still recovering from Sunday? And Wednesday, when you felt guilty about 'wasting' time at the gym when the house was still a mess? Well, guess what? That was all the time you had this week, my friend."

I did one 20km ride on Tuesday, home from school dropoff, in which I at least included a few hill sprints and one 'flying 200', as it were. And now my daughter's sick and I can't even take time away from her (except now, at 9pm - I'm sure I would jump on the trainer now if I wanted it bad enough, even though I got 2 hours sleep last night) to do 45 minutes because she's so miserable.

Next week, theoretically, would be a taper for SSS Round 2. But I'm not sure it's possible to taper down from a week of nothing. So here's the plan. Fri: 1/2 Spin. Sat: Spin. Sun: DISC. Mon: Gym. Tues: Recovery. Wed: Spin. Thurs: 20km road ride. Fri: Recovery. Sat: 'Sharpen'. Sun: Race.

BBN Numero the One for Summer

So, I may have turned up a trifle late. Again. Again I had an excuse - my daughter's school Spring Fair. And it should all be over now. Probably Maybe.

Anyway, did a couple of 1/4 lap powerjumps on my own on 86" as warmup. Not bad, hit a top of 46.5, over 77m as opposed to the 62.5 of DISC. Next up I went up to 99" against Chris Dann for a 3/4lap powerjump - a good 230m or so. I was on the inside, jumping from 35km/hr or so, hit a top of 54.5 some 30m from the line, and crossed at about 52.6 after pulling away from Chris through turn 3.

We then moved on to Flying 200s in pairs, and the first one Chris lead out and took his revenge - I wasn't recovered very well from the powerjump, and after giving myself a bit of space coming out of the jump, just couldn't manage to increase my pace coming around him and basically gave up by turn 4, coasting in behind him, almost coming undone by going underneath him because he slowed coming in to the straight when I expected him to pull away, before remembering that we don't go that way and swinging back up the track. After a bit of rest, I lead out the next one and managed to hold him off, hitting a top of 55.3 and crossing the line, according to my Garmin, at about 28.2km/hr. Amusing things happen on the velodrome with GPS enabled.

Finally it was a 1.5 lap match sprint against Emily, back down to 86". She was (nominally) leading, and watching carefully. I looked for any gaps, thinking about taking an early jump, but was content to leave it later so long as the pace was high enough, and we were tracking about 30 so that was okay. I drew up next to her coming in to turn 1 on the last lap and jumped with the advantage of height. I wasn't quite able to draw past her, though I probably could have dropped down in to the lane by the end of the back straight, but I'm not quite confident about that yet. As it was, after slipping a couple of times up on the blue line, I ran really wide coming out of turn 4 and only just hung on to beat her, hitting a top of just over 55km/hr.

I'm pretty happy with that training, having had a very busy and tiring weekend. Granted, I was training with people who (by Round 1 F200 times) are a bit slower than me, so I could have hit precisely the same numbers and lost each match-up against, say, Nic. But overall it felt pretty good, I was marginally less clueless than in the afore-mentioned Round 1, and I'm feeling happier with not just my jump, but accelerating in the middle of the race, down the back straight and coming out of turn 4. Hopefully Round 2 will be more successful than Round 1...

Unspun

Well, I was supposed to do some spinning this week, but it didn't quite eventuate. Tuesday and Thursday saw me riding out of and in to the city (and will continue to do so for the next couple of months) at... not quite recovery pace. Well, Tuesday wasn't so bad, an average HR of 140 - right at the top of my recovery zone. Thursday though was 162 - or about 82% of MHR. Average. Highest was 195 - just down from MHR by a few beats. 35% of the ride was above 170bpm. So... not quite recovery. Then I spent hours today putting up a... well, they call it a marquee, but it used to be a circus tent. Wielding a sledgehammer in the rain has never been so much fun! So call it an atypical week. Oh, and it looks like I should add an 'excuses' tag...

Judas Priest

Well this one was another virtual repeat - everything's been reset!

Squats back to 120, and I made a point of at least starting with a better back position. I didn't keep it that way though, and still the form doesn't seem great. Not really bad, and there was little upper back rounding, for example. But every time I got down near parallel my lower back would round. But I guess at least I'm more aware of it, and it's something I can continue to work on as I take the weight back up.

Bench I did 65kg again, which actually makes three sessions in a row I've successfully done 65kgs. Time to take it up, perhaps?

Powercleans up to 65, and again I felt a nice rhythm - at least, after the first 2 or 3 of the first set. The second and third set went up really cleanly, nice powerful jump and shoulder action, so I'm happy with that.

It should also be noted that since starting lifting (and going low-carb/high protein) I've actually dropped 7kgs or so. Still at least 12kgs to go, but it's heading in the right direction. As noted though, it might make it unlikely that my lifts will increase much over the summer period. But next winter, look out! 2xBW squat, you're mine...

DISC Summer #1 with ABOC

Nice to get back on the track today after lots of spinning and lifting. I was on standby as support for Team Splat!'s Around the Bay epic which left me rather late getting to DISC, and without a partner for powerjumps when he defected to the enduro stream!

Accelerations generally felt a bit soft tonight, especially on 86" but even up on 99". My body just didn't feel right. I hit about 43km/hr in each 1/4 lap powerjump on 86", but felt like I should have been able to get higher.

The next drill was a F150 with a motorpaced entry on 99". I was pretty happy with this despite the sloppy jump, it felt fast and was - an average speed for the 150m of 60.47 with a top of 62.4 after crossing the 200 line at about 59. In fact, even though it was only a 150m effort, my average speed for the 200 (approx!) was still 59.5 - or only just over 12 seconds. Of course, that's with a motorpaced windup and entry, so even though the 150m was unassisted, doesn't quite mean it equates to an actual 12s F200, even at DISC! Still, nice to go fast.

After that, a full F200 though motorpaced the entire way this time. Again my jump was poor, and I came down off the fence too early, but speed was good - crossed the line at about 55, and accelerated all the way, crossing the line at about 61 (and still accelerating!) for an average of 59km/hr, about a 12.2 or so. All I need to do now is to organise a motorbike for my races...

For the first time in ages (well, a month or so) we did a windout, back on 86" (one day I'll get a new chain so I can go down to 82"... one day). Got up to 61.6 on that, which is a pretty decent effort. I don't have my cadence sensor at the moment, but it would have been up around 150 or so.

Finished off the evening with a practice match sprint - again, I didn't have a partner, but this time I formed a group of three with Merv and someone I don't know. Merv took the lead and I was initially at the back, but moved up through the middle, keeping height. Merv jumped from the bottom with about 300m to go while I stayed up the bank, accelerating and watching the other rider behind me. I saw that he wasn't going to come underneath, so I just dropped down around the 200 line a couple of lengths back, accelerated down the back straight and came up beside Merv just before the turn, held him there, then pulled away to win. Which, all respect to Merv, with my speed I should be able to do, though he's a better rider than I am.

What band plays the music of one man collapsing?

That was the story of my weights session today - one man collapsing. My theory about bar position seemed to be largely confirmed, but it was hard to test as I didn't get past 3 reps in any set, even after deloading to 120kg for the last set. I had no physical or mental drive to really push the weight; somewhere between lack of sleep and lack of adequate nutrition the drive I'd had on Wednesday was gone.

That specific issue aside, I learned enough to decide to reset my squat on the basis of form - the issue I have with getting the right set in the lower back is too significant to fix at the limit of my ability, and while I'm pretty sure I could keep on lifting heavier even with poor form, eventually I'll injure myself.

Press was okay, though just 2 sets at 55kg; the weight was heavy but manageable, but again, just no drive.

Deadlift I decided to set the bar at 160kg just to see what it felt like. The first attempt I aborted, but the second attempt went up fine, no hitching and it felt smooth. I set up for a third, but just as I started to pull I decided that there was no point in attempting a perfect set of deadlifts given how I was feeling. Interestingly, watching the video, I aborted the first attempt because I swung the weight out quite a way (a good 10-15cm) as I lifted it up. The second, successful, attempt swung out a little, but barely an inch or so.

So an awful session, but still points of useful information came out of it.

World Track Masters

In other events, David Willmott was unable to defend his title in the men’s 55-59 sprint, taking the silver medal after being defeated by Gil Hatton of the United States in the final.
Wilmott had breezed through the afternoon qualifying, posting the second fastest flying 200 time of 11.558 behind Richard Voss of the USA who set an unofficial new world best time of 11.458 seconds. -CA

11.458 seconds for the flying 200 in the 55-59 year old age group at the World Track Masters. Jeebus! I'd better get training...

Spin Harder

I know that for many aeons I've held that spin is nothing to get excited about. And it's not, really, because it's not Real Life. Still, sometimes one needs something on those sunny spring afternoons of the soul...

Not that today's session was without its own share of controversy. And it started mildly enough - doing the same program as 2 days ago, I recorded just 182 in the second HCLR and 137/70.3 in the 106"SS. At this point I was wishing that I'd gone lift heavy things instead.

But I gritted the teeth and slapped the thighs and gave it everything for the 116"SSes. And recorded just 72.2 for the first one. Well, I thought, ain't nothin' to it but to do it and pulled out a 133/74.4. Excellent! But, thinks I, that's so close to 75, surely I can do better? And too right I did - 74.5, in fact. Hmm. Not quite what I had in mind. Curses! So I huffed and I puffed and I blew my way to 135/75.3km/hr. Woooo! First time above 75km/hr on the trainer, so I reckon that's worthy of being happy about. No, it's not a KKRM, but hey, it's what I got, oright?

This got me thinking though ("Oh no!" goes up the collective groan.) Last time I managed to go faster on the rolling starts, no? So... let's see what we can do! So as not to bore everyone to absolute tears, I managed a catching-my-breath 72, solid 74.8 and 75.1, before one final effort... and that's where the controversy begins!

See, Garmin Connect just shows max speed/cadence in a lap, which is handy. Golden Cheetah, on the other hand, gives the actual second-by-second values from the unit. According to Garmin Connect I hit 136/76.2. Woot! But Golden Cheetah gives a top of 123/71.97... and 135/70.00km/hr. Eh? So... well, actually, so what! Maybe we get excited about a photo finish for the gold medal. For a PB on a trainer? Not so much. Any way it adds up - is good.

Then for shits and giggles, 24 seconds of HCLR goodness, hitting a top of 203 (and this one does seem to be accurate!) in the last 12s effort. Noice.

Oh, and after much analysis and reflection I'm of the opinion that the problem with my squat can be traced back to having the bar too low on my back. I've been wondering about it for a bit as the weight gets heavier, and I know that I'm always trying to shove the bar as low as I can manage to, thinking that that's the way to do it. And at lighter weights, that's okay - but as the weight gets heavier, it wants to go further down my back. So I have to lean further forward to keep in balance, and rather than attempt to keep my chest up, I'm allowing my back to round to keep the weight on my back - and occasionally rolling it forward. To a position, in fact, probably closer to where it's meant to be - on the posterior delts. Not underneath them. Which is part of the reason I was hoping to get to the gym today - to test my theory. Watch this space come Friday...

Surprise!

Right when you least expect it, a secret spin session gets snuck in while you're almost looking the other way... the essence of track sprint, really! But I wasn't about to be caught off-guard, oh no!

:05 2 x 6s HCLR:1 (39x23 : 44")
:10 2 x 7s PG+12 (107") SS (R,L):4
:18 4 x 7s BGSS (116") seated L,R,L,R:3
:30 4 x 6s BGRS(20) (116") seated:3
:42 2 x 12s HCLR:2 (44")

Deceptively simple, no? And I do like a good strength workout. But that's not because they're easy - they're just a different kind of hard!

HCLRs: 186. Takes a little while for the neurons to start firing properly, to start spinning rather than stomping really quickly.

107"SSes... a bit ordinary really, 138/71 is a good few percent off my best. Not actually bad, as such, just not particularly good.

116" SSes... well, there's no immediate comparison, but back a few months ago doing these I was getting numbers around 117/61. Today's 4 efforts produced a very consistent 130-132/72.4-73.7 so again, numbers on the trainer clearly improved over the last 6-odd months. I wonder about the interpretation of such results in the current context though - should my BGSSes be faster (and only 6rpm less shpinny) than my PG+14SSes? Am I strong, but not powerful? Or is this exactly what Perko would do, only plus 20% or so? Email time...

Interestingly (perhaps) for once my RSes produced very similar results to my SSes in the same gear, and very marginally higher - a top of 131/74, and still accelerating (if only just) at the end of the 6 seconds - 7 or 8 second efforts would have seen me hit 75, I reckon (at least for the first three. The last one I might have hit 26 and then fallen off the bike, exhausted.)

12s HCLRs to finish off and by then my neurons were properly firing, and weren't so roasted as to have gone on holidays - top of 191, and held for 7 or 8 seconds at that 'suspiciously high cadence' as Golden Cheetah calls it for the duration of the interval.

So there we have it. Brief stats here. Satisfactory, but, well, it's spin, hard to get excited about it at the minute!

Sword Master

I've been thinking about training, and life, and how the two of those fit together. Where I'd like to go, how I might get there, and how to stay focussed along the way.

And then I remembered this comic. I feel a bit like I'm still in panel 1. But maybe I'm actually in panel 4, and the slap's just around the corner... 

Please note: this is not my image, and I've included it here just to illustrate a point and to encourage you to go read Oglaf.

Here's to working on understanding, unlike our poor dimwitted hero, the lessons I'm taught along the way.

Oh, and go read oglaf. From the beginning. You'll be wanting to send me a line to thank me for the tip.

Erm... still Slayer!

Finally I got back in to the gym and did a full workout! Nearly two weeks since I've been in the gym at all, and two and a half since I did a full squat workset. So prudence was the order of the day, as I repeated that workout with the exception of resetting powercleans to 60 kg - a 20% reduction to ensure I get back to a point where I have good form.

Speaking of which, my form was a bit ratty for the squats. I got them all up, but watching the video is a bit wince-inducing. Mind you, doing them in the first place was too, so it's not that surprising. There was one squat in each set that I didn't get correct depth on, so to be picky you could probably call it a miss. More importantly though I was having quite some trouble keeping my back in its appropriate arch, and a good 11 or 12 of the lifts had some amount of rounding, 3 or 4 fairly significantly to the extent that the bar was rolling up to my shoulders. A couple in the first set were largely due to what might be called inattention, as I wasn't quite in the right groove. It's been a while, after all. After that though, it was primarily a matter of muscular fatigue, as my back muscles struggled to keep good tension under the repeated loading.

Bench at 65kgs was fine, which isn't terribly surprising in a way but at the same time, is good. Mind you, my benchpress is in exactly the same spot as it was 2 months ago. Or closer to 9 weeks, actually. That's... kinda disturbing!

Powercleans I was happy with. Only 60kg, it is true, but it gave me the chance to really focus on my form and it felt very smooth. After the first couple of reps I really got in to a great groove, everything felt like it was firing at the right time, and although the weight was noticeable, I could have caught them all on my head without bending my knees if I'd wanted to. Which, erm, I didn't. Odd that.

Wreaking my rewen-ge

Turns out I was supposed to do a repeat of the recovery spin today, but I didn't check my email so instead I popped by BBN for a bit of redress. Maybe it's difficult to actually wreak rewen-ge on a concrete track, but not so difficult to do to oneself!

I was momentarily thrown off plan by happening to bump in to the same chap from back in April - who's bought a new track bike and is looking for some racing! So it was nice to chat, but I really wanted to get out there. I was trialling straps on my pedals for the first time - they felt good when on (though they're only cheapies, so I don't know how long they'll last) but getting in and out of them is going to take some practice!

Anyway, after a bit of a warmup I did a couple of half-lap powerjumps (which at BBN is... well, about 165-odd metres, because I went from pursuit line to finish line) on 86", hitting only 50.9 on the effort from ~30km/hr. Bit low, I thought. I then switched up to 99" and did the same, from ~10km/hr and ~30km/hr. Hit 52 this time from 30, which again, felt a bit low. Not by an order of magnitude or anything, but still. Enough to make me concerned that perhaps I wasn't going to make much headway on looking for an improved F200 time.

But I headed out from the chute, and wound it up over the abridged BBN F200 distance. On Sunday I jumped late from... actually, it's hard to tell! Certainly above 40. But it's a rather gentle 'jump' in the garmin record. I crossed the line at about 49 and eventually hit a max of  54.5km/hr before gracefully curving back down to 51kmh, for a time of 14.185 at an average of 50.76km/hr. I don't have such precise timings, of course, for today and a direct comparison is meaningless because of the different conditions - there was all but no wind today, for example. But I can say that I jumped from just on 35km/hr, crossed the 200 line doing pretty much smack on 50km/hr, hit a max of 55.3km/hr (and held above 55km/hr for 5 seconds or so) which decayed back to ~51 again by the time I crossed the finish line to record an average speed of conservatively 52.99km/hr, generously 53.67km/hr and most likely 53.5km/hr. Which makes for a F200 time of somewhere between 13.587 and 13.415 seconds.

That's still a little slower than I'd be happy with. But I'm much more satisfied with that as a measure of where I am than with what I managed on Sunday, conditions notwithstanding. And there's useful info there, too - accelerating after the line is okay, but by 5km/hr? Probably a bit much. So jump should probably have started earlier - more like the start of the clubrooms, perhaps. The question, of course, is could I hold the speed all the way to the line in that case. Crossing the 200 line at something closer to 52 and holding the same sort of pace as in today's F200 to the line would see me riding something more like a 13.28. Which is closer to where I feel I should be at the moment. Wouldn't necessarily mean I'd win any more races, because there's a whole lot more to it than speed over 200 metres, but it's a start!

SSS Round 1, 2011

Well, that was rather a disappointing day. Short version: Slow F200, last qualifier in B-Grade, lost all three races. But, you know, it's me, so there's a longer version...

Let's approach this in terms of lessons learned.

i) Sunday is race day. Not, races go from 12ish to 4ish, but Sunday, the whole day, is race day.

I arrived late after attending to assorted family matters which left me with little time to warm up, check my bike, or get myself in the right frame of mind. With the wind on Sunday, gusting strongly up the back straight, actually getting out there in a couple of different gearings to check how they felt was important, rather than just guessing. As it was, I guessed 92", and that was probably too small. My tyres were low, too - only about 90psi at most. I hadn't ridden at BBN since last year so I was rusty on the right lines, places to jump, etc. and in my F200, I jumped too late though my line was probably not too bad. Result was a F200 time of 14.185, more than a tenth of a second slower than my time from Round 6 back in April, before I started training! Yes, it was a slow day, but that's an awful time.

ii) I need to be more active in my races.

By this I mean not just in terms of moving around more, or being more aggressive, but thinking more and being adaptable. In my first race against Nic, I was following and wanted him to keep the lead, be dragged up the back straight protected from the wind, then coming in to corner 3 to run up the bank, down in to his slipstream with pace and around, as we've been doing at DISC. But the key point came much earlier than that...

 

At 59 seconds I threw a bit of a fake, just wanting to get him thinking, maybe get him to jump. What happened though was that he went for it, going all the way down the track (and off it!) while I just swerved back up. And sat there. And sat there. And waited for him to get back on the track, get out of the saddle and accelerate while I wasted my height and the advantage that I'd gained from getting him going the wrong way. Eventually, I responded but too late - I wasn't quite able to get on his wheel and couldn't accelerate around. I was closing, but was never going to get there.

iii) I need to kick harder.

I've improved since last year, it is true. But the main point really is that I wasn't kicking as hard as I could. This I think is part experience, part confidence, and part bike handling skills.In my second race against Ed, I decided to take the lead and gradually wind it up so as to try to negate his acceleration a little. I felt that I controlled it fairly well, and brought the pace up. But I always expected him to come alongside. Watching the video though, just as with Nic he's still out of the saddle and accelerating at the point where I'm in the saddle and not confident to get out at that cadence.

I had the legs to accelerate more, but needed to be able to get out of the saddle. He sails past, and I keep plodding along.

iv) I need to be aware that I'm racing against another human being!

In my race against Ian, I decided to try to sit behind him in his blindspot. Fine, but I didn't think it through too much further. I let him get too much space, dictating the pace, and then I neglected to take advantage again.

At 42 seconds, again I threw a fake with nothing to back it up. I rolled down the bank not when Ian was looking forward, but immediately after he'd looked back at me again. After doing that, I just sat back up behind him, lost a bit of ground, and he jumped. Somehow I was caught off guard, he got the gap and won by that margin. As someone commented at the end - I'm a bit of a one-pace sprinter. Or, at least, that's how I raced. Too timidly.

Obviously there's much more to it than just 4 lessons. But I think that those are some of the important aspects to take away from these races. I was clearly off my best, for a number of reasons. What I need to do is work on those aspects and come back stronger next month. And, clearly, losing weight is now the more important aspect than gaining strength, and the ability to apply strength on the track is more important than getting bigger numbers on an ergo.