Fat Boy

Just shy of 100 miles (98 or so) with my peeps. It was a pretty good day on the bike. I spent a lot of time on the front and felt pretty good all the way home. My legs got a little tired, but never enough to let up all that much. Good training for my next big race, which isn't until October or November.

carpediemracing 

Did a 17 mile 10 mph training ride Saturday evening.


Picture by teammate Joe T. I hit 28 mph to catch up to him once, top speed with him was about 20-22 mph (I pushed him to 24 mph once to launch a Madison style attack).

It was him, his two kids (tandem stoker and trailabike), teammate Dennis and two kids (stoker, trailabike), two sig others (on their own bikes), me, and Joe's son on his own 20" wheeled geared bike who is in the picture.

The Missus and Junior were at home. Next time. Can't wait to get Junior out in a trailer and on the trail. Scary thing is the 8 year old on the geared bike was just 6 and change when he started on it. That's only 5 years away for Junior.

Fat Boy

Those are the best!

ovoleg

Did some sprints today. Thought it was a fluke when I hit 1400W 2 months ago but I was able to do it consistently 3 times today and all of the others were in the top 1300's. I'm a sprinter that sucks at sprinting cause I can't get to the line and use it...ugh. Maybe next year.

rbart4506

Club 15km TT night... Set a PB once again, 22:17

Weather was near perfect, temps in the low 20c's and light winds...

After this weekends ass kicking at Provincials this was a good reminder that yes I am still improving. Actually quite happy since it's late July and in year's past I have always peaked in mid-June with my TT times...

jsutkeepspining

All that matters is what you can hit at the end, not the beginning. You can win sprints on 1000 if everyone else is so tired they cant hit their true max


I enjoyed a nice group ride today. Not too hard, but more than enough after spending 6 hours in the car driving back to D.C.

Also Chappy, i know you're heart broken over me not calling you while i was in D.C, but unfortunately i had no time to spare. Between fixing up my sister's apartment, and the college tours i was a bit booked. Also i didn't have my bike

Jandro 

Rolling business meeting this morning. 90' z1.

caloso

Local 5k run last night. Good fun.

thechemist

I will hit ~34hrs this month which is great for me. I had a solid 1hr@zone4 sunday and monday was a hilly ride(3,500ft) for almost 3hrs. Yesterday off, Crit today rain pending.

Flatballer

ZCI yesterday. Felt pretty strong. Ended up doing 5.5 intervals or so, 2nd one got stopped halfway through by a jackass driver who got the cops called on him for brake checking me.

ovoleg

Yep therein lies my problem. I'm usually cooked at the end with bad positioning which doesn't help.

MDcatV

so then why are you doing sprints? get stronger. your power meter isnt a high score machine.

shovelhd

To some, it's all about the numbers.

Like something else in life that's enjoyable, it's not how hard you can hit it, it's how long you can make it last.

MDcatV

wisdom!

Jandro 

"Run" and "fun" in the same sentence? I don't understand...

Rotating 4-man lead out sprint training this morning that was pretty well ruined by the Team In Training (or some similar thing) goons coming out to the polo field track much earlier than usual.

Lots of TT bikes, skinsuits and aero helmets... going 16mph. Fun times. We called it early and rolled around in z2 a bit.

Even though we only got a handful of rotations in, I feel like my form is getting better. I can jump harder and stick to wheels I wasn't able to stick to earlier in the season.

edit: figured I'd explain our method and see if others do similar things. A train of 4 riders:

Rider 1 initiates the leadout and ramps it up to > 30mph (the back section had a pretty good headwind today, so we could only really get up ~32mph) and pulls off at the 'sprint point'
Rider 2 hangs onto Rider 1 but doesn't pull off
Rider 3 initiates the sprint with ~300m to the 'finish'
Rider 4 jumps with rider 3, with the goal of coming around him and 'winning' the sprint
Rider 2 has to try and respond to the 'attack' and grab Rider 4's wheel. Same thing, they try and come around if they can.

1 lap cool-down and everyone rotates. Really fun.

shovelhd

You do that on a running track?

mattm

Shouldn't Rider 2 come around Rider 1 to keep the speed up?

Anyway I feel like workouts like this are of limited value. Group/hammer rides are one thing, but they aren't the same as structured training and it's best not to try to mix the two.

Structured training is best done solo - at least that's what my coach (Friel's book) says.

waterrockets 

Going out on a limb here... https://maps.google.com/maps?q=polo+...olo+field&z=16

Jandro 

Not a running tack - they have a compacted dirt 'running' track that goes around the upper bowl of the polo fields. The cement track around the polo field is for bikes 99% of the time and a very popular place for racers in SF to train. We also get there around 6AM to further cut down on traffic. For the months we've been doing this, only in the last week or two have we encountered more than 1 or 2 other riders on the 0.7mi track.

rbart4506

My wife and I discovered that when I stopped working with her coach. Before, our plans matched up pretty close so we'd do some training together or at least ride to the training spot together. Now it's basically only when we are doing recovery/endurance rides...

It's actually kind of funny because we'll leave the house together many nights and one will turn right, the other left...

Jandro 

Yes, sorry, my explanation wasn't clear, Rider 1 pulls off and rider two keeps the pace high, with Rider 3 coming around when he initiates the sprint.

To be clear, the goal of this training isn't to increase your speed/fitness/power, it's to get used to responding to attacks, sticking to a wheel in a sprint, and overall sprinting form.

The comment about getting faster is most likely due to my overall fitness increasing as well as working on my jump both solo and in races.

Also, this was the scene shortly after 7AM. SF OutsideLands will likely be taking over for the next week or so. Time to do some hill climb intervals for club training!

mattm

I can dig it. The only "problem" I have with that is that you're doing these leadouts in an ideal situation; relatively rested, all friends, nobody else trying to do a leadout or get into your train.

The problem being that you get really good at leading out your friends or sprinting around them on the polo track, but that has little to do with the end of a race and how they often play out.

In a real race is where you should "practice" these things - that's the best training for this kind of thing there is.

But I'm not your coach, so carry on.

Ygduf

surprised myself today. new time pr on benchmark climb. I didn't start with the intent of a PR or even getting close, I just sat with the fastest guys. Ended up being 2 of us at the end, and the other guy did 85% of the pacing.

https://app.strava.com/activities/71243943#1391226661

Creatre

Solid power on that segment. Not just raw but even with your weight w/kg is solid too. GJ!

Ygduf

yeah, I'm heavy like 80kg right now. ideal would be 77kg, but I'm always after that last 5-7lbs.

anyway, 43/6900 is good. getting a surprise PR is amazing considering how many times I've tried for PRs on that climb, etc. It's a good day and gives me hope going into Patterson that I can, if not repeat my win from last year, at least get a respectable placing.