Quote of the Day

"The best part about doing a really hard bike race is you get to go to Wendy's or Burger King afterwards."


- Four year old son of a professional bike racer who shall remain nameless for his own protection, but whose kitchen is well-stocked with olive oil.

A short post.

I'd like to write more, but it is getting late and I need to do a good stretch before heading to work. After two vacation days and then a telecommuting day, arriving early to brace for an onslaught of BS is probably a good idea.

Yesterday's training went pretty well. I ran at lunch, my usual 7K through my neighbor's sprawling estate and the conservation land his ancestors were kind enough to put in trust. My HR would not go up, which was a surprise considering my telecommuting diet of coffee and caffeinated Gu. No matter, I went faster than usual.

Last night I met JG out on the road and got in 50K in 1:42 with two six-minute efforts at 40kph on the flats. I only took a minute rest in between while we rolled through Wheaton College. JG was still sick so he just sat on. I might as well abuse him while I have the chance because once he starts training he comes around pretty fast and has been a real animal the past few years since becoming a Cat 2.

All right, so now the season has started and if I'm going to train every day I need more shorts. My two pair of Verge team bib shorts are excellent. The ass is cut nice and big for my 24 inch quads, the leg is long enough for my freakish femurs, and best of all the bib is cut low enough that I can actually drain something without taking them off. The sad part is our new supplier's short have a bib that goes up to the chest. What are they thinking? Yeah sure, rolling up the leg is an option, but I think it sucks. And they make the knickers and bib tights the same way too, so there goes that theory. I really like the Verge's, so I checked out their website to see if I could get some generic ones, but the only stuff they have for reasonable $$$ are "Army" logo. The high end plain ones are like $140 or something. I know I should just bite the bullet, but then I'm sure next year we'll go back to Verge. Ideas? Anyone know of good bibs that aren't designed for Clarence "Long Dong Silver" Thomas? Thanks for reading.

Four hour rest day.

Originally I requested Monday and Tuesday as vacation time from work because NH school teachers KL and the Cronoman are on break this week and I wanted to get in some extra saddle time with them. Logistical problems and predictions of rain made me think about cancelling at the last minute, but with the long drive home from NY Sunday night, keeping Monday was a no-brainer even if it were going to rain. That went well, as it did rain, not buckets, but badly needing a rest day anyway, I was able to hang out with the fräu and do some shopping and just plain rest.

Once again on Monday night, I slept well for a change, and waking on Tuesday the skies were sunny so I figured no way I am going to work. Still feeling pretty burnt from the past week, I had no plan for training. If the weather held out, Wompatuck was a possibility, so I considered doing an easy spin in the morning and then heading over for the world famous Tuesday Night Titans training race. Reviewing my training log for possible causes of my recent fatigue led me to change my mind. My volume has not been all that high, in fact only 27 hours on the bike and 4 hours running for the first 24 days of this month. The first weekend of the month had the Cohasset 10K, so I had gone into that with a very light recovery week of only 7 hours total. The subsequent weeks were a nice gradual build of 8, 9, then 10 hours, which should not have left me so wiped out. ???? Upon closer inspection, knowing that I had been upping the intensity, I brought up a stacked bar chart of time by HR zone for the past 9 days, summarized by day. These charts are a cool feature of the Polar software and allow you to get a quick look at which HR range you have been training in.

What I found was due to BKR, my running workout, my interval session, and the two races this past weekend I had 15 hours in 9 days, with 31% of it in zone 4 (sub LT) and above. Contrasting this with an overall average of 17-19% intensity and I can see this was a very hard week. Races will do that to you. So despite taking two days with practically no training, and two more days with only an easy hour, there was a lot of quality (not to mention driving) during this period and I found myself quite wasted. Having this come on the tail of a three week buildup, modest as it was, contributed to the load (huh-huh) as well.

The weather on Tuesday wavered on getting overcast, but by noontime I was tired of surfing the net and blogging, the temps were looking pretty good, and the sun was returning to the sky. Dressing a bit more than I otherwise might for a 60 degree day, I headed out for an easy ride. I thought maybe 2.5 hours, but once I got out there I started thinking more. It has been a long time since I did a ride like this. I don't know if it is "junk," recovery, LSD, or what, but it was enjoyable. The wind was not too bad, and there are plenty of flat roads around here, so I just rolled along in zone 1 enjoying the sunshine and lack of traffic you get during a workday. No pressure, just rolling along at 27k/hour in a light gear. At 3 hours I found myself a half hour from home with the breeze at my back, so I considered cutting it short, but eventually I improvised a loop around a neighboring town and brought it home just over 4 hours. Staying out for another hour crossed my mind, because it is amazing how little fatigue you accumulate when you're not going hard, but since this was supposed to be a recovery day I headed in and relaxed with some good food. Maybe it is not essential training, but if you never ride long and easy all by yourself on a nice day, try it sometime. This bicycle riding stuff is pretty sweet. Thanks for reading.

No -- Sleep -- till Brooklyn

Nashua really. You might have gathered from Saturday's post that sleeplessness has taken over several of my past nights. There could be many causes, and of course overtraining would take a place at the top of the list. However, as noted, my training hasn't been all that heavy lately, at least by volume. For that matter, I am behind in my goals for April, so wtf? The transition to evening workouts contributes to the difficulties, as drilling out some intervals at 7 pm hardly promotes peaceful rest just a few hours later. So operating on 3-4 hours of sleep per night was the norm for me this past week. That is probably not as bad as it sounds, because in my advancing age I have found that 5.5-6.5 hours is my standard requirement. More would be better, but it doesn't happen for me.

The second race of the year, Turtle Pond, arrived on Saturday. The 45+ race started in the first cluster of races sharing the 19k circuit. This meant a 9 am start and a 5:30 am departure from home. The weather was cool but dry up in Concord. There were 62 pre-regged in our group. KL rode with us because as a woman with a racing age of 30, she is now permitted to enter Master men's races where the minimum age is 50 or less. The women's races were in the afternoon, but since we needed to get to Rochester NY by later that evening, racing in the morning made more sense.

The first lap was pretty civilized. At first things bunched up and I felt penned in by the yellow line. The first time up the hill was, after BKR, very reassuring because I was able to easily move around the gasping riders who made up the back half of the field and eventually crest in a nice position. This was my general expectation for the 45+ group, and I don't know wtf happened last week. Going down the first leg of the triangular course for the second time, things strung out and I moved up the side to the front and rolled off to stretch the legs a bit. I ended up with about a 100 meters gap when two riders flew by. At first I was going to just let them go, but one was a former National champ with about a half dozen strong teammates in the dozing field, so I picked it up and joined them, and off we went.

We had at least 30 seconds by the time we hit the hill again. I was able to set the pace and rolled across the finish to take 3 laps to go. I thought we had a KOM competition, so now staying away for another lap or two seemed like a good idea. Later I learned that the KOM was for the 1/2 field only, so no wonder nobody else went for it... Despite the break's relaxed pace, nobody came across from the field. One guy in break had a wind jacket flapping in the breeze, and was unable to do significant work. Me and the other guy made up for it, but with 55k to go and only three guys we weren't burying ourselves. When we got to the second leg of the course again, we were back in sight and my companions were ready to concede. I wanted another first in the imaginary KOM points, as this would sew up the competition, so I drove it to the hill, telling the others of my intentions. It took a bit of effort but I held everyone off to the line and then sat up to be absorbed on the descent.

Of course, it was not long before the real break took off, and our team was unable to cover. At the time I thought this was fine, because so long as the new break stayed away to the line on the penultimate climb, I would win the imaginary KOM. So we were quite happy to let them roll away. With one lap to go the Cronoman went to the front and put in some hard tempo to try to control the gap. I got my butt up there and rolled through just as he pulled off. Putting in a hard effort for a few hundred meters, I suddenly found myself away again with four others. Three of them were willing to chase and one was covering for a team mate up the road. On my limit, I did as much as I could, but there was not much left in the tank. We had the break under 20 seconds at one point, but during the last half lap we slipped back despite some good efforts. On the climbo ultimo, three of the others powered away and my quads nearly cramped and seized as I tried to respond. The field was breathing down our necks, so I sat down and just kept the pressure on the pedals to stay ahead of the field and one of the breakaways to the line, credited with 10th place. KL got 25th. EM finished with the bunch. Later we went to pick up the KOM booty and were turned away empty-handed. Dohhh!

Perinton the next day could turn into a very long story. The digest version is after another night of minimal sleep, I got to race on a good rolling 10k circuit with about 7 short, steep power climbs, and a small field of about 30 riders, I had good legs but didn't know anybody else and I missed the winning break of four, but then escaped solo in the rain for 5th when most of the field thought we still had two laps to go. The rain was kind enough to soak us while we packed up, but then relent once the long drive home started. Sunday night, after six hours of passing Wal Mart truck after Wal Mart truck (apparently the only socially unconscious sleazebag outfit to make their truckers work weekends) we got back to Nashua. At long last, I slept seven hours...

shutdown -h now

This has been a rough week. My body is displaying all the classic symptoms of overtraining: rapid weight loss, appetite loss, HR won't elevate, tired, yet totally unable to sleep. The only symptom I don't seem to have is a recent history of heavy training. Who knows, maybe it is just age, or maybe the race last week and the running workouts were harder than I thought. This past week, some of the assholes of the world were making my life their toilet, so maybe that is part of it too. After the races, maybe a break is in order. For now, 72 hours away from a computer screen sounds pretty good too. Uptime is only 60 days, but I think I'll power down. Happy Earth Day!

A superstar, but he didn't get far.

The post title serves to pay homage to the Tour of Georgia, in which the TT will happen today, and also because it comes from my favorite 70's ballad that they play over the intercom at Roche Brothers while I shop. Someone I know gets quite embarrassed when I do my impromptu Pips act in the middle of the bread aisle...

Training has been going well, well enough that there is not enough glycogen left in my blood to fuel any philosophical or otherwise thoughtful posts. So write about training we shall. Batten Kill was the first test, and I have to give myself about a C-. My fitness should have been good enough for me to hang longer than I did. It WAS only the first race of the year, and I have yet to stop running, but those are pretty weak excuses. The experience does go to show there is more to fitness than being at race weight, that is for sure. Five minute tests on Big Blue only prove what you can do for five minutes.

The day after BKR I felt pretty good and rode a few hours, not too hard. The next day was marathon Monday, which I totally ignored. Monday night after work I headed over to the sweet Canton High running track for one of my best workouts of the season, 30 laps total, usually around 1:56 laps, but with three 800 meter efforts at 1:38/lap mixed in there. The whole thing took me an hour. Tuesday was an easy am spin and then a massage at night. Yesterday was good, an hour easy in the morning, then an hour and 45 at night doing two sets of 45 second intervals on the Silver City Flyer crit course. The first set I did six and the second set only three, because there is a race on Saturday and it was getting dark and time to head home.

The past eleven days I have over 18 hours on the bike, which although not huge, is substantial, so today I am off the bike save for fifteen minutes this morning after doing my core work. The next 18 days will have at least three if not five or six hard races, not counting Wompatuck, the cornerstone of my training. This is where it gets interesting. I still don't expect to get any results in these races, but I know I should emerge a lot stronger and ready for the summer. I have to start doing the super-hard stuff, which the 'tuck is great for, and also start working on TT stuff. Last weekend I found out the hard way that dreams don't always come true... ah-ha, hoo hoo!

Batten Killed

Yes, the correct spelling, at least according to the signs on the bridges, is the two-word Batten Kill, not Battenkill. My 2006 season, as well as my 45+ road career, began on Saturday at the Batten Kill-Roubaix road race in the insanely picturesque Washington County, New York. As a veteran of Pemi-Valley, Westfield, Buckfield, Stow, Killington, Bow, and of course Putney, when I tell you that this is the the most classic of the northeast classics, you should be shocked. All I can say is Dieter and company have put together the most incredible 87 kilometer bike racing test I have ever ridden.

Not that it went so well for me. Me and the Cronoman headed out on Friday so that we could check out the course. We were both BKR virgins, as were most of the competitors, with this being only the second annual and all. Two-lane all the way, with my not so Nigel Mansellish chauffeur braking through the apexes (apexi?) and lugging the overloaded Mazda up the cols at 1500 rpm, the three hour drive took closer to four. This left no time for lunch at The Common Ground in the People's Republic of Brattleboro, but at least the unique blend of beautiful scenery and rural poverty known as Vermont passed by the windows slowly, allowing me to take it all in. We checked in to our room at the Best Western in Bennington (queue the Brokeback Velo Club jokes) and headed over the border to Salem, New York via a deserted back road along the Batten Kill River that would be great for cycling.

Of course, neither of us had the forethought to actually find and print a map of the course, so we were kind of winging it. Luckily, shortly after entering Salem, we saw some directions painted on the road, and allez we go. Within a mile we were driving over the Eagleville covered bridge. The entire course was well marked, except for one spot in the center of Greenwich where we took a detour. A mix of beautiful, lightly traveled county roads through working farmlands, some flat along the serpentine Batten Kill, and others quite undulating, combined with six sections of "pave" made up the course. Well, not cobblestone pave, we are talking dirt roads. Not just the token mile or two you sometimes see in races either. There were a total of 25-35 kilometers without pavement. Most sectors were in good shape, although the longest two had recently been graded and thus had a lot of loose stones, with just a double-track of tire stripes offering decent rideability. Did I mention that the dirt roads were the hilliest parts of the course? By this I mean over 10% grades, both up and down? These were not straight shots either, we had some turns to contend with. And by the way, there were thundershowers Friday night, but I admit the resulting mud was minimal and could have been much worse.

Saturday morning dawned damp and overcast, but with reasonably warm temps for this time of year. We got there just in time, as shortly after we picked up our numbers, race registration got a bit overwhelmed and the start times were pushed back by twenty minutes or so. By the time we got underway the clouds had lifted and the mercury was pushing 65. The 45+ field had 75 riders pre-registered, but it appeared that only 60 or so showed up. This included several unattached newbies who, to be frank, had no business in this group. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately for them, they weren't in with us for long. We hit the first dirt after only 5k, a mild ascent with a subsequent screaming downhill, and by the time we rolled back past the start (this was sort of a promenade loop) we were down to 40-45 riders. This did not last long either...

The first climb was paved. My Polar data shows it as 1.2k at 7%. To those accustomed to reading the Tour stage profiles, this may not sound like much, but I hit 176 bpm, which is about 3 beats over my max, just staying in the top 25, which was about 5 less than the number of riders who regrouped on the incredibly short descent that followed. By the way, in the middle of this descent, we made a 90 degree turn on to a one lane dirt road. Taking all of two and a half minutes, during which time my heart rate barely came out of the stratosphere, the downhill portion led to a 600 meter long dirt wall of 10%. Your hero was not quite ready for this one, and contact with the dwindling groupetto was lost, just 17k into the race.

Not to fear, Juniper Swamp Road descended for about 8k, even turning back to pavement right where we picked up the course on our pre-drive the day prior. Gathering a few companions along the way, I flew down the muddy path in a tuck at 60 kph, buzzing through the property of a poor farmer whose cattle didn't even have a field to shit in, and instead stood on the swampy roadside across from the farmer's tin-roofed home eating baled hay. Yikes. The group was not that far ahead, and we saw them on the rare straight portions of the descent. When we went over the covered bridge, which quickly led to a long, straight, flat county road into the wind, we were only 10 seconds or so back, and there were about 13 of us chasing a group of only 20. More correctly, there were about four of us towing nine parasites who would not work, even though we were practically there. So instead of a quick downhill chase and regroup, we eventually got about 15k of ragged death rotation into the wind. We did get back on though, but it was way more work than it should have been, and we only got there about a kilometer before the next obstacle, a 3 kilometer paved road grade of a thankfully modest 4%.

Surviving this, the fun began. For me, it also ended quickly. The killer efforts earlier, combined with too much output during the chase, had left me perilously low on reserve strength. Adding stupidity to insult and injury, I also spent what should have been valuable (yet brief) recovery time fumbling with a velcro strap that I had used to secure my only bottle of plain water to the seat tube. This was a good idea, as nothing ruins a race like losing your water on the first giant bump. Sadly, I made it a little too secure, and with my long fingered BMX gloves I couldn't get the damn bottle out, and yo-yo'd off the back while struggling with it.

Finally, the velcro gods relented and I was able to rinse the Gatorade and Gu (this could easily turn into a rant on how scumbag riders who litter the course with their emptied Gu packets are no better than smokers who toss butts out the window, but since I am way over length now, I will let that go for the moment, but if you can't get your gel pack back in your pockets and insist on tossing them onto the ground because you're too much of a poseur-pro to take the time to pack them out, I hope you starve, crash, and bleed to near death, only to be ripped to pieces by coyotes who start at your nuts and then eat your tongue just so they don't have to listen to your pathetic sopro poser whining as they devour the rest of your skinny, rotting, road-rashed carcass. Even this is too good for you, but regardless, I hope that nothing good ever happens to you again, because you are a piece of shit... ok, back to our story) out of my mouth with fresh water just in time for the turn toward Meeting House road. Meeting House is the longest dirt section on the course. This road and Becker Road, which followed after a very brief section of pavement, totaled roughly 10k and contained seven nasty hills of 30-70 meters each in elevation gain. But for me, the end came not on the dirt, but on the killer climb leading to it. I just popped, falling too far off the pace and losing close to a minute in less than a kilometer.

Of course I kept going (was there really a choice?). At least I could pick my line on the dirt. The descents were a blast, when you weren't watching your life flash before your eyes after being nearly knocked over by a huge crosswind gust while bouncing along at 50 kph. Gel packets were not the only litter on the course, there were several other spent riders wobbling along with me too. Toward the end of the dirt (more like stone/gravel) Becker, I saw the wheel van stopped in the road. As I got closer, the yellow-clad flat victim became recognizable as none other the the Cronoman himself. Damn. Forced to change his own wheel, he did not see me coming, and roared off while I was just 30 meters behind. With a few more uphill kilometers to go, I conserved what little energy I had left and continued at my own pace. This was pretty much the story of the rest of my day. The 80 kph descent from the Willard Mountain ski area (which still had patches of snow on it) road was a blast, and then there were about 20k of flat road before the final nasty 4k/4% sticky dirt road climb that led to the classic paved downhill run into town for the finish. I struggled across the line 20 minutes down on the winner, credited with 35th place, behind the half dozen or so who glombed on to the overtaking packs of other age groups. The Cronoman got 26th, pretty damn good considering he flatted.

No, this was not the result I had hoped for, especially considering I have been climbing well, and that my competition was a bunch of old men. Still, this was an epic race. Without any race mileage whatsoever this year, my body just wasn't ready to produce the repeated max efforts that were needed to hang in this severe of a contest. The effort was race quality though, even the end, but especially the beginning. I know this will be a big help in the weeks to come. Next year... Thanks for reading.

How will I know, why should I care?

Much of what follows was already covered in prior posts. The powermeter incurs my wrath only because I would rather talk about training than about bikes and equipment. That is not to say that I don't like debating about bikes and equipment. Despite my possessing skeptical retro-grouch tendencies, technology interests me as much as it does the next person. However, riding bikes, and racing bikes are a lot more fun than just owning bikes, or working on them.

The problem is, you can't talk about training any more without a lot of science and physiology entering the discussion. This is all well and good, as certainly the application of scientific methods to training has undisputable merit. Science works, although in many cases the scientist tries to understand and explain what the practitioner already knows. Training to be a bike racer, especially an amateur, a hobbyist, is really as much an art as a science. If we approach the problem of building a faster bike racer from a purely scientific point of view, then we would quickly eliminate all outside distraction, focus on the job at hand, and proceed to build what would essentially be a professional bike racer. I'm not about to do that, so no matter what kind of training program I come up with, any outside expert would have no difficulty coming up with a scientific basis for why I could improve more if I changed this or that. I have no problem with this. I am not a know-it-all, I just know everything. :o)

Heart rate monitors, power meters, and even simple cyclometers all do the same thing: gather data and present it to you. What happens from there is entirely your decision. The utility of one device or the other is completely dependent on if, how, and why you use the data. As I have stated ad nauseum in the past, the issue I take with those who propose that training without a power meter amounts to a waste of time is the assumption of the worst when it comes to interpretation of any other data an athlete might use, specifically heart rate data.

Measuring and recording work allows the power meter to provide the most direct and complete comparison of one day's efforts to another, at least in terms of output, or what you did. It doesn't really tell you much about how you got there, or how you felt along the way. Here is an example. Nineteen years ago, I rode the 40K district time trial, this was 1987, so I was "cannibal." My time was 1:02:04. Last year I rode a similar event, on a similar bike (yes, different course) and my time was 1:01:30 or something like that. For our purposes, let us assume the outcome of these two rides was essentially the same. Same bike, same size rider, same speed = same power. No, I didn't have a power meter for either ride, but believe it or not, the watts are there whether you measure them or not. I mean hey, if you don't have a speedometer, that doesn't mean you aren't moving, does it?

So let us say my average power on these two efforts was 275 watts in each case. That is nothing more than a guess. However, in 1987, as a lad of 26, my average heart rate was over 180 bpm, whereas the middle-aged me last year only clicked out 164 bpm. Think about that. If we had power meters and no heart rate monitors, I could look at these data and conclude that absolutely nothing had changed in 19 years. Yet clearly my body sees the situation differently (never mind that my eyes don't see well enough to read the power meter or the HRM!). For these reasons I know that I am not done learning. I have no experience training a 45 year old rider. I have lots of experience training a younger guy, but all that is useless to me now...

"I am not a robot"
    -Tom Boonen

Someday I am sure I will own a power meter, but right now the expense of outfitting multiple bikes, obsoleting all my back wheels, and adding weight to my race bike doesn't make sense to me. Like HRMs, PM's will undoubtedly become more reliable over time. I don't need my rides compromised by some finicky electronic nightmare. The HRM is cheap, can be used on (and off) every bike, and it does my training diary for me. Maybe it doesn't let me accurately measure my ability, or compare day to day, but I can manage without that. Like I said, the watts are there whether you measure them or not. You don't need a power meter to train with the concept of power. You just need a hill or even a trainer with a rear wheel speed pickup. The faster the wheel is turning, the more power you are putting out. For that matter, I doubt you will find too many graphs where power output and heart rate are going in opposite directions.

In the end, it is all just data. What it is worth to you is all your deal. After 20 years of using heart rate monitors off and on, I think I can interpret the numbers quite well and find the data very useful. It is still not telling me what to do. How you feel, yes PE, ultimately determines what you are going to produce. *Your body sends lots of distress signals at crunch time during a race, and no scientist will ever be able to fully explain the incredibly complex process of what separates those who rise above them and win and those who capitulate and give up.


* This sentence was inspired by a passage from Tom Doughty's Complete Book of Long Distance and Competitive Cycling (Simon and Schuster, 1983). The complete quote was:

"In fact, it is the mental aspect that often decides who the sucessful racers are. For example, often there are riders in the field who aren't really competing. For various reasons they know they can't win, so they race for other goals--for training, for experience, for fun, for the feeling of accomplishment in completing the distance. They may be good cyclists and they may take an active part in the race as it progresses, but when the crunch comes they can't or won't disregard all the painful distress signals their bodies are sending. Other competitors, though, will react in the opposite way--they realize that when the going gets tough it's time to get going. They excel when a challege is thrown at them, when attacks begin late in the race or a really hard part of the course looms up. This test of a rider's ability to repsond when it would be so much easier to let up is what bike racing is all about."

Weight, weight, don't tell me

The tax dragon has been slain; normalcy returns. It is only money. At the end of the day, paying my tax bills did not change my life much. I suspect the same is true for most people. What does this have to do with bikes and weight? Taxes and bike weight seem to have one thing in common: less is more. At least that is what we have been conditioned to think. The financial press overflows with articles on how you can reduce the amount of income taxes paid, as if your ultimate financial goal should be to pay less taxes, rather than simply being happy, healthy, and secure. The cycling marketing machine treats weight similarly. Why is it so important?

You cannot read too much related to cycling without finding mention of the topic of weight. Bike weight, rotating weight, and yes, occasionally even rider weight. As a marketing topic, weight presents the ultimate talking point, because unlike taxes, weight will always be asymptotic, never reaching zero. Lighter can never go out of style. Sadly, cycling is about marketing. Think about the Tour de France: what might be the largest sporting event in the world has no paid admission. How do they pay the bills? Marketing. The same thing goes for the Pro Tour teams, which are known only by the name of the sponsors who are using the the sport as a marketing vehicle.

In America, when you say bike race, most people would immediately think of the Tour, or the American guy who has won it a bunch of times recently. Because of the events of the last seven years, the American general public is now seeing some Tour-related marketing of non-cycling products such as computer services or pharmaceuticals. (wait a minute, maybe those are cycling-related...) I can understand that outside of towns like Fitchburg and Altoona, the public has never heard of any race but the Tour. Within cycling though, you would think the participants would understand that there is more to bike racing than a three week tour through the Alps and Pyrennes each summer. Yet you would never know it from the products riders choose, and the way they are marketed to them by the cycling industry as a whole.

In the Tour there are mountain passes climbing thousands of meters. The athletes who compete for the overall earn salaries of a million euros per year or more. Product endorsements (marketing!) are worth far more. Hell, the salary would be non-existent too, were it not for the signage literally pasted across the rider's asses. So the Tour exists for one reason: too sell stuff. Winning sells more stuff than losing, so winning is important. Weight is hard to carry up alpine passes, so in the Tour, light weight is very important to these people. You might be able to justify a pair of $6000 carbon rims if they are going to help you earn $10 million dollars in marketing-related income.

Pan the camera to Phred Q. Trekrider, out for his Saturday morning ride through the suburbs. Getting ready for the Cat 4 races later in the spring, Phred massages the pedals on his Madone 5.9 SL with his hairy legs. Phred has read the ads; he knows the light weight of his $5000 steed is giving him the edge he needs. Phred might have more than a few extra pounds around his middle, but who cares? Phred has disposable income, and after watching the Tour the last few years, he knows it is best spent on a lightweight bike just like Lance's. But this bike is getting a bit old. Phred bought it almost a year ago, right after win #6. Technology marches on. Phred started out on a Trek 5200. Nice bike, but hell, with Ultegra, it weighed almost 19 pounds! For races like Ninigret and Wells Ave, that would never do. In fact, Phred would buy the newest Trek Yellow Jersey signature edition, a $500/ pound beauty that came out this year. No though, not yet. Phred has heard the marketing buzz. Next year, Trek will come out with an even better model, the Lance DNA, one on which the man himself ejaculated all over the top tube right before the clearcoat was applied.

Maybe Phred doesn't really exist, but there are legions of riders and racers out there who think just like him. What is good for the Tour must be good for us. Light weight at any price seems to be the mantra of the racing public. Light weight at the expense of durability. Light weight at the expense of safety and piece of mind. These days every race seems like the Boulevard of Broken Wheels. Hell, Hincapie broke his steerer tube in Paris-Roubaix, a race without hills. Did the weight saved really make any difference? Does all this light stuff that requires constant maintenance and frequent replacement really make your cycling experience better?

The irony is the same deep-pockets cyclists driving the Zipp revolution are also the ones buying the Power Meters. I guess once you drop 8 grand to get your bike down to 16 pounds, you need to spend two grand more to get the weight back up. Maybe worrying about the rider weight, and the power the rider produces is the key? You never see a car ad talk about the weight of the vehicle, just the horsepower, right? We train for fun, so power improvement is free, theoretically.

So is is power, weight, or both? Fitness of fortune? I guess all of the above IS the answer. Personally, I can't have it all, but somehow, despite not training too much, I have my April weight down to record lows, approaching my summer level. Maybe this will make up for the fact that my bikes weight 2-3 pounds more than the rich guys, and that much of that weight is rotating. It would be sweet to beat them. There is no point in being jealous, after all, it is only money. Keep riding, keep smiling, thanks for reading.

Crunch Time

Late winter and early spring were good times. It had to end. March training was very enjoyable -- low stress, no immediate goals. April has always been a bit of a sophmore jinx for me. The past few years (hey, I have been back to training for a full two years now!) I managed to put in more hours than March, but this has not always been the case, and may not be this year.

This week it is taxes. And work. With a few races looming, some restraint needs to be shown during the week too. Then we have rain. Fear not, I have managed to keep up with reading your blogs, and there are plenty of stray thoughts in my head that just haven't made it to the keyboard, but they might. The entries will probably continue to be sparse for a few more days.

All is not lost. Last night I did "1984" intervals on the trainer, aka "2 minutes hate." These were 2 minutes on, two minutes off, with the off period only partially so, and with the on periods alternating between big gear/lower cadence (~85) and not so big gear, higher cadence (~105). I made it through 3 of each for 6x2 minutes total work. The races come early this year, so this month's focus will be on more hard stuff. Gotta go.

Weekend Update

Of the sidebar, that is. Yes, lame choice of title for the post. Sorry. Sunday was the Cohasset 10K Road Race. Part of the reason for taking it easy this past week was to have fresh legs in an effort to break 40 minutes. A month ago, having run a 6:18/mile pace in the Brockton 5 miler, I calculated that all I had to do was hold close to this for another 1.2 miles and a sub-40 would be mine. Things did not go quite as planned.

The reduced training load week went OK. My running shoes had accumulated almost 200 miles on them in the past few months, so Friday night I bought a new pair of Saucony Hurricane 7's. They are an upgrade from the Jazz shoes I used to run in. New shoes generally give my old legs new life. Saturday my plan was to do nothing or ride short, because the forecast was for rain all day. Well, it ended up being gorgeous around here in the afternoon, though windy, and so when JG called to go riding, I went. We ended up doing 2.5 hours on the flats, 75% zone 1 and 25% zone 2, not hard, but enough to tire me out, maybe taking some oomph out of my running legs too.

Sunday the race was set for 1 pm. Cohasset is about a 45 minute drive from here. Morning races are easier because you just get up and go. For the afternoon race, of course I was trying to get things done in the morning so as not to waste the day. Around 11, I was getting my bike stuff ready so that I could go for a spin down after the race. A quick check online to see if I could print out a registration ahead of time revealed that registration closed at noon! WTF? The race was on. Flying down there, first trying a shortcut that only got me lost, then running into a detour where the road was closed, I didn't roll into Cohasset Village until 12:15. Luckily, the noon reg closing was just a hoax, probably designed to prevent a last minute crush. It worked, because for such a big race (800+ runners) registration was fast and easy.

Lining up in the second row, just behind all the guys in the GBTC kits and the other serious folks, my new shoes felt good and I was stretched and ready. The weather was quite warm, but in my rush I didn't pack shorts and so I was one of the few in tights. No worries. The race started slightly downhill, then turned onto a flat road toward the ocean. I was unimpeded and went out fast. After a few minutes I checked my HR and it was only 157 so I kept going, even though I was already suffering. We turned left at the harbor and at the first mile marker I saw 5:53. My inexperience in running was about to bite me. By now I was a bit above LT (at least my cycling LT, I am beginning to wonder if my running LT might not be a bit higher). At this point I was with a few other guys who seemed pretty steady. The road was pretty flat, and was protected from the water by houses. Mile two took 6:18. Still faster than my goal pace, and in hindsight probably too fast. In my best runs my splits are always pretty even.

The third and fourth miles were where the problems started. Mile 3 brought a fierce headwind right off the water. Occasionally we would pass a $10 million home with a privacy fence and get a bit of shelter, but for the most part it was a constant gale. The rollers also began here. Running past the marker at 19 minutes flat meant my 3rd split was 6:48, way off pace, and suffering, my HR in the high 160's, 5-9 bpm above LT. I was hurting. Mile 4 was more of the same, although slightly less wind but much, much bigger rollers. We turned up away from the water, now with the wind at our backs, up the biggest hill on the course. Now I felt warm, and almost missed the wind. This was also a road I was unfamiliar with.

Mile marker 4 did not appear for 6 minutes and 58 seconds. I still thought I had a chance to break 40, because I had some time in the bank from the first two miles, and because I was certain we had gained enough elevation that some downhill had to be coming. Instead, I got another lesson. Mile 5 can best be described as a sine wave with an amplitude of 10 meters and a period of 300 meters. These were the kind of rollers you would barely feel on a bike, but for running they totally sucked. The downhills were not long enough for any recovery, but the upsides were hard enough to take the life out of you. Near the end of mile 5 there WAS one big downhill, but it was short and steep. Passing mile 5 at 32:50, I realized I was 1:20 slower than Brockton and a sub-40 was going to take a miracle. Somehow I did manage to revive my pace, and on the flat run in to the finish I kept decent form. Only a few people passed my, which is less than usual. Through the final bend, when the clock came into view it already ready 40:07, and I still had a way to go. Oh well. I crossed in 40:26, which was still a PR by over a minute.

This was not a course for a fast time. Especially not today. My average HR was 166, so hopefully this will help me in long TT's later on this year. Gotta go, out of time.