Winter Weights and Sprinting Data

There are more articles out there than you'd ever care to read that debate the benefits of weight lifting for road cyclists.  But this chart tells me all I need to know about what lifting does for me.  I did winter strength work (squats, lunges, and box jumps mainly) in the winters before the 2008 and 2010 seasons.  That work appears to have benefited my top end sprint power by about 90 watts in those years compared with 2007 and 2009, when I did no lifting.  I can see no other pattern after peak 6 seconds or so.

Is the effort worth it?  Does the benefit transfer to longer duration power?  I don't know; but at least now I know I do get some tangible benefit for my strength work other than just feeling better.

Macon Cycling Classic

The venue and the weather were perfect for our first annual Macon Cycling Classic crit on Saturday.  Thanks to sponsors, volunteers, and teams that participated.  We're ready to ramp it up again for 2011.

Chad Madan of Litespeed takes a dig in the P12 race.

Bruce Dickman, our announcer, gets a nice thank you from our podium ladies.

Dale Vaugn of the Macon Chain Gang

Slocum Sizes up his Fat Tire Competition

Men P12 Podium - Tony Scott, Jon Atkins, and Benjy Coil

Local women racers Elizabeth Lee, Betty Jean Jordan, and Lauren Clayton

Macon Cycling Classic joins SEW Race Series

The Macon Cycling Classic Criterium, held next Saturday, May 1st, will now be a part of the Southeast Women's Cycling race series.

 

It's also a part of the Georgia Bicycle Racing Association Best All-around Rider Competition and the Lance Armstrong Junior Olympic Race Series.  We look forward to a strong women's field and a great event including food and beer vendors, a first-and-out fat tire crit, a kids race, good payouts, and lots of product primes.  A 5K running event will cap off the evening after the P12 men's event.  Join us for a great race.

TT Basics

I have sucked at TT efforts this year.  It's mainly becuase I haven't trained much on the TT bike (funny how that correlation works out).

Here is a nice summary of an old-school, non-technical method of setting up and training for TTs.  I stole the Andy Coggan quote from Stuart Lynn's blog.

If my goal were to set myself up in an aero position with minimal drag and I didn't have access to a wind tunnel, I'd just drop the elbow pads far enough down below the saddle that my shoulders (acromion process) were within a couple of inches of being level with my hips (head of greater trochanter), move the elbow pads in to where my arms were as narrow or perhaps narrower than my thighs when viewed from the front, tilt the aero bars up ever-so-slightly, and keep my head down. I'd then go out and ride the bike - hard - in that position and see how far foward (and thus up) I needed to move the saddle to where my thigh-torso angle was similar to the "working position" on my road bike. I'd then ride the TT bike for at least one hour - hard! - each week for at least 6 weeks before any race. Sounds crude, I know, but for a flat TT this neandrathal approach will probably get you to within about 1 km/h of your maximal speed.

Since we're talking old school, here are a few shots from my triathlon days in the early '00s:

Il Porcellino

Italian renaissance art in Bradley - It is a replica of Tacca’s “Il Porcellino”. The original bronze was cast/made by Pietro Tacca in 1612 and is in the Uffizi gallery in Florence, Italy. Tacca supposedly created a bronze copy of a Hellenistic marble statue from the 600’s, which was destroyed. It is a copy from Tacca’s original mold and was cast by Giuseppi Benelli in 1857. There are very few of these in the world from the original mold because the Florentine galleries don’t just let anyone get their hands on a mold. The most famous “original” copy is near Mercato Nuovo in Florence, Italy. The date in Latin is cast on the side. It is supposedly good luck to rub its nose. And as you might be able to see in the picture, the nose is shiny from rubbing.
 
Above info compliments of Jake Andrews, Italian Art Specialist, Gray, GA.

Keep it Simple Stupid

I'm brainstorming myself a new training method.  It'll basically be Friel Lite.  It'll keep a three-hard, one-easy weekly periodization cycle, and will have three yearly macrocycles:

• Preseason
• Early Season
• Late Season

and three training levels:

• Easy
• Hard
• Attack

The main caveats: in order to use it successfully you'll have to know what threshold feels like, know yourself, and be experienced in training yourself.  No power meter required.

Friel's plan is great and it works.  But I think I can get indistinguishable results with 30% of the structure.

This is gonna be fun - I get to make up names for stuff.  I'll keep you posted.

Walthall Oil Cyling Team

Fools

Things are strange in Macon - seem backwards and upside down,
not sure what to make of it all - let's take a look around:

Todd says he wants three more kits - John says to make his smalls.
Robert's giving up road races - only crits from here till fall.

Jeff and Drew are halving a Power Tap - need numbers for their new blogs,
Bill's gotten back to just swimming - he's got no more bones for the dogs.

Jakey's lettin his legs grow out - to fit in better with Freds?
Douggie's into the doobie hard - to market the old rich heads.

Chad's given up on that Apple crap - thinks PCs are the Bomb!
Ron cries himself to sleep every night - learning Campy's moving to Guam.

Trey's back up to 15 a week - he's built up a cast-iron taint,
Eddie's Georgia Cup only now - if you're racin the classics, he aint.

Happy April Fools day, Blackshirts.

Go Little Contractors

I haven't had much to say lately, so I've just kept my mouth shut and ridden my bike.  And I've been riding it pretty hard recently, having just entered my Build 1 phase of training.

After about three months of endurance and sub-threshold work, I was very happy to feel the burn again starting a few weeks ago.  As I've mentioned in prior posts, my training is more structured this year than it's ever been.  I've made efforts at organized periodization training before; but the training calendar usually falls apart towards the end of Base phase.  I'm sticking with it so far this year, and my legs have responded well to this point.  It's still very early in the process, so it'll be interesting to see how it shakes out later in the spring.

Yesterday's Union City RR was my last day in tough 3-week Build phase.  I was tired, but I rode ok.  Now I'm looking forward to a nice week of bike walks while the little contractor cells do their thing on my mitochondria.

Macon Cycling Classic - May 1

Registration is open for our May 1st Crit in Macon - The Macon Cycling Classic, at http://www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=10563.  The race website is http://www.maconcyclingclassic.com/.

The course loops around Tatnall Square Park in Macon adjacent to Mercer University - a perfect venue.  We'll have good payouts, a fat tire crit, music, food vendors, podium girls, a beer vendor, and a 5K at the end of the day - so bring a runner with you.

The race is part of the GBRA BAR series and the Lance Armstrong Juniors Series.

Christian Parrett

An accomplished young cyclist from Macon,Georgia, Christian Parrett, has signed his first professional contract with Team Sprocket Pro Cycling, based in Wales, Great Britain.  The team is led by director sportif Magnus Backstedt.  Christian will be the lone American on the international team.  I'm sure he's in for some interesting adventures.  Best of luck to you, Christian.  Make 'em hurt.

Follow his first pro season at http://www.christianparrett.com/ and at http://www.teamsprocketprocycling.com/.

Albany 2008

At Albany in 2008, our kits and our team were brand new:

We raced as Security Bank Cycling Team then; we're Walthall Oil now.  Most of us were 4s and 5s at the time.  We're scattered over fields from Cat 4 to Masters to Cat 2 now, so it's a little harder to organize a train!  Good times.

And it's ironic that the most noticable burr in our saddle in the 2008 Albany RR, Mr. John Stowe, who single-leggedly chased down all of our attacks that year, is now a part of our Walthall team.  We're glad to have John on board.

Good luck to all the Oilers heading to Albany tomorrow to start another successful season.

Tell 'em bout it Yehuda

Yehuda Moon - try it.  It'll grow on you.

Good Night, and Good Luck

Colin Griffith hangs it up:
Colin's Biking Bits

Hope you enjoy the new phase of cycling, Colin.  I enjoyed reading your stuff.

Tundra TT Winner

Photo compliments of Reality Bikes

Cervelo: P3 vs P2K

I moved all my components over from the P2K frame to the P3 frame and did another round of Chung testing.  I'm not surprised at the results - the frames are identical except for the seat tube and seat stay shapes.

My average of three Chung test days on the P2K was CdA=0.231.  My CdA on the P3 was measured today at 0.232 in perfect, calm conditions - very clean data.  At least I'm finding the method consistent; and apparently I did a good job of getting my setup the same on the P3 as on the P2K (most drag is the result of body position).

Any changes from here on out will be with body position.

More on Chung Testing

It's been impossible to do much testing in the past two months due to weather.  I can't get out there in a skinsuit if the temp is below 55 degrees - it's just too uncomfortable.  And any breeze at all invalidates the data; so that eliminates lots of days.

But yesterday I was able to get another set of data collected on my P2K.  So now I have three data sets with the same setup.  My CdA results from three different days on the same test course are 0.228, 0.230, and 0.235.  Based on n=3, my average CdA is 0.231 and the standard deviation is 0.0036.  These numbers reflect skinsuit, TT helmet, shoe covers, no gloves, Zipp 303 front wheel, and power tap with Kinlin XR-300 (30mm) rear wheel.

My Cervelo P2K frame was slightly damaged in a crash last year, so I'm about to move my P2K components over to a Cervelo P3 frame a teammate recently gave me.  I'll set it up exactly the same as my P2K, except I'll run a Zipp 404 on the front instead of a Zipp 303.  The only difference between the new test setup and race setup will be the absence of my disc wheel during testing.

These aren't my bikes, but depict my old P2K frame and new P3 frame:

I'll be interested to see how much difference the frame change and 303 vs 404 change make to my CdA.

Lyle and I are a Little Different

I've always wobbled in the saddle.  Always.  I've been riding a bike for 25 years and I've always been told that I need to lower my saddle or do this or do that to correct my wobble.

Well I have tried.  Many times.  To no avail.  I studied the issue quite a bit a couple of years ago.  You can read about my ponderings in my 2006 posts: Saddle Height and at Saddle Height/Q-Rings.

A friend graciously reopened that conversation for me the other day.  This time I thought about it some more and decided to check LLD - leg length discrepancy.  I carefully measured my trochanter heights - the height from the floor to the tip of the little bony protrusion on your hip bone.  It's the most lateral protrusion of the greater trochanter in this image:

One trochanter is 35” from the floor. The other is 34.25” from the floor. Hmmmm.  It seems that in LLD speak that's about a mile.

I did some Google work and found lots of people rushing to their doctors and trashing all thier shoes because they had a leg length discrepancy of ¼” or ½”.

I seem to have a ¾” LLD goin’ on.

I’m leaning towards the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it approach; but we’ll see.  I'd like to fix the wobble; and I think the LLD is the likely cause.  But I suspect there's a good chance I'd screw something else up if I started adding shims, et cetera.  And all that would be a pain in the arse, even if only figuratively.

And I haven't had any pain or discomfort, just an occasional snickering teammate.  I can live with that.  Lyle and I don't want to be like the rest of you anyway.

Force Reps

Base HR Distribution

My heart rate distribution for the past 28 days:

Power distribution for the same period:

The next few weeks will see an increase in Temop and Threshold percentage.