revchuck 

6x1' VO2 max intervals today, first try at these. Schedule called for five, but they felt kinda easy so I did an extra one. Power was 129-141%, averaged ~100 rpm for each. Something that bears on how easy they felt was the RBI; coach called for ~3', Friel says 1', so I split the difference and did 2'. HR didn't drop much for about 45". I'll probably go with 1:30 for the next set.

All this talk about Garmins dropping data jinxed my 500. I lost a few seconds of power and cadence during one of this morning's intervals, though HR and speed (via GPS) were fine. PM was a Powertap.

Heathpack 

@shovelhd, I get minor data drops on the SRM, maybe 1-2 seconds every few weeks. I'll easily get maybe a dozen of these in a single workout with the Stages, maybe on as many as 20-25% of my workouts. Even that's not a huge deal, unless the drop is in the middle of a super-short interval, then it's annoying.

What is the deal-breaker for me with the Stages, though, is the high incidence of complete data failures- as in a large percentage of the workout is affected.

But hey, I'm not out to convince anyone. I completely believe that my experience is not the norm, Stages would probably be out of business if it was. But the power meters don't work for me, that's 100% clear. Two units, documented problem with Stages since Oct 2014, no resolution, no "next step". The smartest thing they could do is just give me my money back because the continued presence of these power meters in my life is the only reason I keep talking about it. Whatever, I'm still working some sort of resolution with Stages.

Im mi totally the first person who will admit YMMV and I am glad for anyone who has a viable inexpensive PM option like the Stages.

IBOHUNT

Did a 1x30' at FTP then threw in some hills for @revchuck.

revchuck 

happybday29475

Salida 3-Day Race Report

Friday TT:
Not this guy. Owing to my last TT experience, I have sworn off TT's for a while. Oh, and changing my road bike set up to a pseudo-TT position is a total PITA.

Saturday Crit:
I stunk up the entire Arkansas River Valley. Did you smell it? I made a handful of really dumb decisions:
1. Entered the race with the mindset "conserve for the state championship RR tomorrow". Note to self: carpe diem; if you're not in it to win it, don't be in it.
2. Don't know why but I ran higher PSI than normal; the course was bumpy, and I never really settled in.
3. Team with 9 riders cleverly sent 2 up the road early on. First good tactics I've seen in cat 50+/4. I didn't chase because I figured the 2 guys couldn't stay away. Oh, and I was conserving, remember? OK, so not chasing here was actually not a totally stupid decision.
4. Really strong guy jumps to bridge up. I was on his wheel and thought about going with him, but I am conserving, remember? I am a ******* dolt.
5. Strong guy bridges, and rides past, a la Steve Cummings. We get time call outs, and soon he's a full minute up. A full minute! I think about trying to bridge, but no, I'm saving for tomorrow. The other two breakaway guys are brought back.
6. I realize that I'm racing for second. I lose interest. Conserving becomes my goal of the race.
7. I take third in the field sprint, only half-heartedly sprinting, losing to 2 guys that I'm outsprinted multiple times before.
8. Post race, I am disappointed with my result, and even more disappointed with my effort. I am painfully aware that "saving" myself was ********.

Also, I suppose I should be flattered, but it's actually sort of annoying to be a marked racer. Every time I moved, somebody on the team of 9 would shout, "Tom's on the left", or "Tom's moving up", or whatever...every single time. I think it's actually good by them, and they're all nice guys and such, but enough! Especially when some other schmoe has single-handedly put a minute into the team of 9....


Sunday RR; state championship.
6 laps of a hilly course. Slow first lap. Moderate second lap. Third lap, guy who rode off the front of the crit says screw it this is embarrassingly slow, throws tactics to the wind, and goes to the front and just hammers for 1.5 laps; half the field is dropped, and I am seeing double. Fourth and fifth laps, the two fastest climbers (different teams) start stretching their legs on the way up, but it's not too bad and I hang 3rd or 4th wheel. Sixth lap, one climber goes, then the faster climber goes, then I go! WTF! LOL. I am first to the top of the hill. My nemesis is right next to me but I notice that I can hear his breathing over mine. (In hindsight I should have attacked right then, but clearly a) I'm already on the rivet and b) the universe is broken if I'm first up the hill on the last lap leading to a downhill made for fatties like me...) Anyway after cresting the hill is 3 minutes of 40+mph downhill with me at the front. A couple of high-speed sharpish S-curves and I'm first onto the 1' 1% climb straight road to the finish. Since there are guys on my wheel, and since I'm a sprinter, I decide not to make it a 1' effort to the line but instead slow up until I'm in sprint range. For maybe 10 or 15 seconds all 8 or 9 of us slow, but nobody comes around and I'm still on the front, then bang! somebody jumps from maybe 300 yards and I jump but I'm late. First guy to jump fades but the smart guy was on his wheel and went around after an effectively perfect lead out to win. I end up third.

I'm disappointed that the race came down to my forte and then I got beat at my own game, and again by a couple of guys that in a dead sprint I'm pretty sure I can take. And I also wonder if I should have gone from 1' out. But on the positive side 3rd is still good, and it's remarkable to me that I was the hammer rather than the nail on the last climb.

PS - This race was hard for me. My power numbers were not great, but my suffering was. While the race was at 7500', my numbers might be down as much as 5% from their peak in April/May - despite lots of hard training.

PPS - This might be the end of my season. There are a couple more races, but I've got some travel and stuff coming up and it's been a long season already. I give the season an "A": I only won once, but I was on the podium a bunch, and my improvement from last year was substantial. And, most importantly, I've lost about 20 pounds since March. That's either a) a long-term change with all sorts of health and energy benefits, or it's b) a bonus of approximately 60 pints of Ben and Jerry's. Either is a good outcome!

PPPS - Lucky to have dinner on Saturday night randomly seated next to Allison Powers and valygrl.

revchuck 

Tom - Great report, and great season!

PS - How come you put it in the training thread rather than the race report thread?

Hermes

Track workout this AM. Warmup, accelerations, standing starts followed by two kilo efforts behind the motor with the final lap ridden along. So on the second effort, I get a rear wheel wobble at 35 mph. I ease off and ride off the track with a flat rear wheel. I love tubular tires that are glued on properly. This is my second flat on the track where I just rode off the track without mishap.

sarals 

Tom, what a season, and what a pair of races! Great, great report!!! Congrats on some good finishes in those races and a stellar season.

sarals 

Two different interval packages were on the docket this morning. I overslept by a half hour, so I rushed to get ready and get on the bike. My body did not like that! I was sluggish, sluggish the whole time, although I did manage the targets fairly well. I just felt crappy doing them. Oh, and my body is never very good after a day off. I loose opening really quickly.

sarals 

Since I updated the firmware on my PT hub (thanks to @revchuck), data drops have been RARE for me. The PT hub I have has gone from being a PITA, albeit a mild one, to rock solid. Now that I said that, it will crater. Mark my words...

shovelhd

Congrats on a great season, Tom.

IBOHUNT

Great season Tom!
Bonus ice cream!

valygrl

thanks for the race report Tom... way to hide it in the training thread

Great way to end the season, if it is in fact over for you. I love Salida and always do terrible there.

IBOHUNT

Leisurely rode a couple of hills in the Appalachians with friends last night... just for @revchuck
Best comment of the night by a guy that had never ridden with us.... "I've never been winded on a downhill"

revchuck 

Grrrr...

LAJ

Very well done rapwithtom! This was an exciting year for you, and I'm happy to have seen some of it.

IBOHUNT

spent an hour on the sticks. Made some setup changes to the @sarals recommended Adamo.
Not looking forward to the hilly 37K on Saturday after last Saturdays 40K. Don't they know old guys need rest?

Heathpack 

@rapwithtom, nice race season. It was nice to read about it too, especially at the beginning when you seemed so surprised by it.

I had a nice easy 25 mile Nightcrawler ride this am, just what the doctor ordered. I have had kind of a blah week on the bike. Sunday was the annoying PM failure, then I skipped Monday's recovery ride because of rain (In LA! In summer! Rarity!), Tuesday I was sleep deprived and annoyingly did the wrong set of intervals on the trainer, I didn't even do any actual interval set from the menu of possible workouts, I just did something totally wrong, of course went back and rectified to the extent I could, but that was just annoying. Then rest day again yesterday.

But today was awesome. Just a simple ride at dawn with my favorite people. Nothing really on the agenda to accomplish. Quiet roads. Silvery moon. Coyote eyes. Watching the sunrise. Just a totally satisfying and enjoyable ride.

Tomorrow I'm going to ride the TT bike for the first time, heaven help me. The if it goes ok, a little more on Sat, I'm going to go scout a future TT course. I'll probably bring the road bike too, I think I'll ride a full-effort run of the TT and I'm not sure doing that on the TT bike so soon will be wise. During my fit, I couldn't believe how much more the TT fit was engaging the quads. So I might need a little time on it before I really try any real efforts. We'll see.

Hermes

My plantaris muscle seems to be 99% better. Today, is the final PT session where I will allow the therapist to breakup scar tissue. If she recommends another session, I may go for it since there is no way that I would inflict that much pain on myself.

Last night, I forgot to put my chain on the bike. I had one of those @globecanvas or gsteinb (actually more like a gsteina - one of his older weaker relatives) workouts where I rode of 1:10 and did 35 minutes of threshold and VO2. Every time I looked at the PM, it was at VO2. And this is a route that I ride a lot. I knocked 10 minutes off my previous best solo time.

Generally, I always feel good after a track workout that features hard sharp high cadence efforts without to much training load. I told my wife that I was climbing like Froome and she asked me if I was awkward and looking at my stem. i thought that was harsh.

sarals 

@Hermes...LOL!!!

Lots of intervals, or rather, lots of different kinds of intervals lately. It's been interesting!

I made another minor saddle adjustment on the TT bike, which made it just a little more comfortable and easier to ride. It's to the point now where it's noticeably more comfy on the sticks than it is when I go to the bullhorns. Coach said my numbers from the last ITT indicated that I was faster with less power. The elusive "aero" that has been the topic of discussion here as of late is getting better. I might be even a little more less draggy now than that silly helicopter I fly. :0

shovelhd

I am glad you are feeling better Hermes. Sara, keep up the progression.

revchuck 

7x1' VO2 max intervals yesterday, 135-149% of FTP. I felt that last one. Friel calls for 110-120% of FTP for these, but my coach wanted me to go harder, so I did.

I swapped the SRM from the TT bike to the Look. The swap included a new BB and chain, plus re-installing the old (vintage 2002) Zipp 303s. This morning's recovery ride was the shakedown cruise. Damn, that thing is smooth. I'm going to use my 32 spoke wheelset with Powertap for training on the TT bike; I just got disc wheel covers for the rear wheel for races, and I'll use the Reynolds 66 on the front. Having big fun on dee bayou!

sarals 

@revchuck - awesome!!!

Heathpack 

I was supposed to do an intramural club climbing race today, a team thing, chapter against chapter. The course was supposed to be up Glendora Mt Rd, which is 13ish miles at around 5-6%. A few days ago, they changed the course to go up to Crystal Lake, which is 20ish miles at ave 4%, but deceptive because the final 10 miles are ~8% with lots of sustained climbing in double digits. My entire team dropped out, which was fine by me, the whole thing wasn't even going to start until 8am and it is really hot here today and there's zero shade on that Crystal Lake climb. It would have been brutal.

So instead I rode a short local climb with some friends, and figured maybe I'd ride the TT bike for a little bit afterwards. Today's climbing route is a nice one, rollers through a local canyon, then a 7ish mile climb at 6%, then back through the same canyon and coffee at the end of course. The climb itself goes up to Camp 9, which is a fire camp up in the Angeles National Forest. Great route, about 90 minutes from my front door to the top of the climb. Since I was all rested up for this race today, I figured I'd try to ride all the rolling or climbing bits around threshold, so I spent 90 minutes at 97-100% FTP. I felt really good, it was 30 miles, 3000 ft climbing, 0.82 IF, TSS 222.

Here's the view from the fire camp, looking down into the valley from whence we came:



It also worked out that I flipped the Magic Bike's odometer over 10,000 miles today. I've had the bike for 1yr 5mo. I have officially gotten my money's worth. (Ignore the white saddle, please, its off the Madone, I was just testing it on the MB today.)



Part of the reason that I kept today's ride on the short side is that I was thinking I could maybe do a little ride afterwards on the new TT bike. I did the first ride yesterday and it was pretty uncomfortable. The shop had supposedly set the bike up per fit report but once I got home from the ride, I realized nothing was even close. Then a few frustrating hours yesterday dealing with some stripped screws on the (non-carbon) bars that the shop had over-torqued. Eventually got that fixed and improved the fit (there's only so much I can do for now, fit was on a different saddle and lots of the set-up points are measured from the tip of the saddle, I just need to get in for a follow-up fit) so I was interested in seeing how it felt today.

Happy to report: much better. Its definitely a fast bike, just noodling around with only 2-4 min at a time powering it up while in aero and it was 1mph faster than either road bike. Sweet. My fitter has promised me 2mph and I think he might be right. Haha, I got three Strava Top Ten cups on the MUP, including a flat section where I was going 29 mph for 1:30. Whoops. Fortunately it was so hot by the time I got on the TT bike, there was really no one else out there. That second ride was another 10 miles of flat, 0.75 IF and TSS 33.

Totally nice morning on the bikes.

Hermes

I liked mixed technology workouts. My wife and I often take two bikes to a workout and do hard efforts on the TT bike and longer efforts on the road bike.

Yesterday, I helped out at a beginner track session and I still scored a 77 TTS for the morning. I did a couple of hard efforts and standing starts after the session was over.

Today, was a 2.5 hour tempo ride with some over unders.