That would be fun!. Get someone to video you and post it up for a laugh 😆

You might investigate the weight work I was talking about in post 18. When I was ~60 and weighed 145, I regularly did sets of 30 reps, 95#, 115#, 135#, and I was not any paragon of fitness but I got by. Cycling is an endurance sport. See what you can do, might be interesting. Scale it up to your weight.

I have done high volume most of my life in the weight room. I have also done many training cycles for strength and they are just not trained the same. Also higher volume makes me get big and I need my legs to fit into my shorts lol. For me the higher volume made little difference on the bike. It’s great for fat burning and cardio health. For me it does nothing for bike endurance. Atm strength training is making the biggest difference. I do take a volume day every three sessions or so for a deload day. If the past is any guide I should be somewhere around a 405lb Olympic squat by April 11. Which should lend to a fun time at the sprint tent considering my age and I don’t really consider myself a cyclist.
Once the event is over I will most likely transition back to higher volume work though.

Strength training doesn't increase size or weight. Eating does that. I usually lose weight when concentrating on strength work - it burns a lot of calories. I'm always trying to get more cut. And of course as with any strength work, the last rep of the last set, no matter the rep count, has to be the last because one is pretty sure the next rep would lack form. I thought it helped a lot from 100k on up. Back then, my 1RM squat was about my weight*1.7, done powerlifting style. My usual squat is ATG. Flexibility is good and I like the bounce at the bottom.

When I was restarting serious cycling, 30 years ago, Bicycling Magazine sponsored a 4-person team of over-50 riders to break a RAAM record, which they did. One of those riders could do 50 reps at 450 on the leg sled. Of course leg sled reps are pretty easy compared to squats. Cycling is just very high rep strength work which gives it a strong aerobic component. The idea is to condition the muscles until distance no longer matters. One should be just as fast after 400k as one was at the start, in terms of the aerobic component, i.e. HR and power about the same. That's totally trainable. Been there, done that. A good, i.e. sadistic, RBA will put some ~18% climbs near the end of a long brevet.

For whatever reason, but probably all the weight work, I would win all the hill sprints and most of the flat sprints with my cycling group, almost all of whom were 10-15 years younger than I. We, those of us who are left, are just ordinary cyclists, not racer boys, just folks who enjoy riding a lot. My BMI was 23-24 (still is). It took a lot more time to develop my climbing than it did my sprinting - aerobic ability takes at least 7 years of training to fully develop.

Ya in the past I have preferred higher volume work for the fat burning aspect but never really saw the changes in endurance because I don’t usually do endurance things. Yes higher volume work will make my legs bigger. Maybe not a bad as before in my 40 but in the past it’s been bad enough I needed carpenter pants.
I think the misunderstanding is in what I mean by strength. I am talking about overall power cold off the bench for a 10 sec pull.
I may be wrong but I think you are taking about how strong you are with endurance. For for a short max power output you dont need high volume. In fact it will not produce the power lower reps does. I am no expert but have used several programs and ended up using what I liked from all of them. Like I say I prefer higher volume work, that’s what I have done all my life, but when I want to get strong fast it’s more power lifting style training.

I thought you were training for Sea Otter, which might be a 2 hour ride, depending. Certainly doing what you're doing will produce higher power in a sprint. but not less time riding a 30-40 mile course. Possibly the "least time" solution might be to just lose weight. Hard to say.

I am also training to have some fun at the sprint tent. I have a friend that joined us for this race and he is going to be the limiting factor. So I don’t need to be in top form for the race. I just need to be able to complete it.
We will see if I can catch the endurance bug and start actually training for longer events. The issue is my brother is very light at 135 lbs and his ftp is around 280 so the watts per kg are beyond what I will ever be able to produce. Then I am10 years older as well. I will just hold him back so doing a race with him is really never going to happen unless he is willing to hang with my fat ass.

I see. Riding isn't for everyone. It's weird and it takes frigging forever and some serious dedication to get good at it. The upside is that there's probably nothing out there that's as good for keeping one healthy in one's old age. You gotta be light and strong, not the easiest combination to come up with. Running is comparable, but joint and such-like issues complicate the picture. I'm just selling it is all.

Man I wish I had the endurance gene. I really want to get back down to the 160s again. I am convinced I will actually enjoy it more if I can get rid of the extra weight. The problem is I am a sugar addict and I eat about 1000cal in munchies at night lol. Nothing bad for you, a bag or two of small oranges or a dark chocolate bar or both lol. I am lucky I don’t tend to get really fat because most with my eating habits are really big.

You are absolutely right about enjoying it more. You'll also like yourself more, which is important. Take advantage of that male ego thing and make it work for you. Pose.

I switched over to a ovo-lacto-pisco vegetarian diet when I got out of the army in '69. My wife and I got together in '73 and she already had this same diet. IOW we don't eat mammals or dinosaurs, though we do eat the eggs of the latter. That means eating mostly vegetables, which are quite filling and have a lower calorie content per cubic foot. This is also known as a DASH or Mediterranean Diet, with the meat reduced to zero. We don't eat snacks and make that easy by simply never having them in the house. If I feel the need, I'll put a slice of cheese on a piece of whole wheat toast, and I get an apple every afternoon, a couple hours before dinner.. As we've aged, our metabolisms have slowed, so that we now eat maybe 1/3 of what we ate for dinner in our twenties. The rest of the meals haven't changed that drastically, just a bit smaller, same stuff.

What happens is that your body very conveniently adjusts to what you do to it. It learns. The approach to the small dinner is to simply keep making it slightly smaller. If you feel hungry after, you're reducing it too quickly. The night snacking thing is an addiction and needs to be treated like one. One hit of smack and you're right back where you started. Same thing. The only cure is just don't. Easy to say, but it's the same thing.

It's good to have calories coming in during exercise. I always take a carb drink to the gym, and consume carbs on the bike. If one doesn't, one is likely to come home and clean out the fridge. Just keep the hunger at bay, barely. Everyone's different, so you'll have to feel you way along.

The most important thing to start is to switch over to lower calorie foods. Yes, we eat a lot of beans. There are many, many good vegetarian cookbooks. I'm not talking vegan. Because we're always training to some degree, we also supplement with whey protein isolate. Between us, we go through 5 lbs. of whey protein a month. We get 10g each with breakfast and dinner and another 10g when we do any sort of workout. That works for us.

I've had trouble with that kind of thing too. Sugar or very high glycemic foods seem to always drive my hunger even higher until I have had way too much. Then there's the aspect of how habit forming just munching at night in front of the TV is to me. I have a lot better luck dieting if I switch my sugars to pre ride, so I eat some and leave the house and the source before I get out of control. At night I go for dry popped organic popcorn or carrots and sour cream-based dip to satisfy the munch craving.

Those are just strategies I use to start getting off the habit. I do much better when I take those strategies and use them to move into waking very early and going to bed very early just to prevent the late-night snacking. When you make it into a habit you actually get a dopamine hit from it along with the sugar. Sometimes it's harder to break the dopamine habit than the sugar one.

That sounds very reasonable to me. Do you keep track of and target a certain amount of protein daily?

For me personally I have found I need much less protein than I always thought I did. I used to take in a gram per pound of body weight but now it’s around 100g a day but I am not trying to gain muscle.

No. I don't get down in the weeds with my food. A very large reason is that my wife cooks from approximately 600 dinner recipes, almost all of which start with raw ingredients. I value my time and don't think calorie or other counting is a good use of it. However, I remember an interview with Lance where the reporter asked him how he kept track of his calories when he was trying to lose weight. He said, "I just look at the package label." If you're a natural foods cook like my wife and I, you don't buy anything that comes in a package.

As my sig says, I look at my results and then modify if I see deficiencies, which takes almost no time at all. So I simply varied the whey quantity up and down until I found the amount, above which results did not improve. And there are more results than just recovery rate. Too much protein is bad for our kidneys and that shows up in blood tests, which I get once a year. Thus this has been a long-term project focusing on results rather than research, though I've done a good bit of that, too. However it only matters how your diet affects you, not some study participant. We're all different and our workout regimes differ.

Dietary allergies are a big one for me. If I eat right I loose weight. Mainly because I have issues digesting many of the calorie dense things in my diet. I should not eat red meat, wheat, or dairy products. I never have peanut butter. That stuff is disaster for my stomach. I am not trying to eliminate the beef diary and wheat atm so for me getting the allergy food out of my diet would be the most benefit to my nutrition.

Sounds like a plan. No one needs to eat beef and there are many substitutes for wheat. Rice is a good foundation food. Asians have done quite well on it for thousands of years. Rice covered with vegetables with white sauce poured over the top of it was an early foundation of our diet.

Did you know that obesity and food allergies are related? And it's not that food allergies cause obesity, it's the other way around. Obesity may induce or exacerbate food allergies, and losing weight may alleviate them.

"[T]here is a relationship between obesity and allergic and immunological diseases, such as asthma, psoriasis, food allergies, allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis. Obesity undeniably affects their development." -- Morag et al, Obesity and Selected Allergic and Immunological Diseases—Etiopathogenesis, Course and Management, Nutrients 2023.

Ok the bike setup is finally finished and I am in love with my creation. It’s a mullet gravel bike. It climbs so nice! When I say mullet I mean it. Slammed gravel frame with 35c front and 45c rear tires. 10/52 mtb cassette in rear as well. The front is slammed 20mm(crown to axle)with an aero road fork instead of the gravel fork it was designed for. This changes the head tube angle and seat tube angle to more resemble a road bike. It’s really fast and super light. I am very proud of this build.






Currently my biggest weakness is steady state climbing. So this will be my focus until the race. I have a climb in my area and the 8 mile out and back I’m has 1200 feet of climbing. I just can’t put out more than 200watts for a long steady climb. Last time I did this rout I had to stop 5 times to make it. My goal is to make this climb without stopping before race day.

However I can smash the punchy shorter climbed and love high intensity interval work. One benefit I have is home field advantage. I ride the trails the Otter race will be on. I am loving the punchy nature of these trails. I went out with a small group of friends also training for the Otter thinking I would be the weak link and just destroyed them all. Like dropping 500 and 1000 watt short climbed then walking away on the downhills as my bike is so much faster lol.

I am also training a little in the background one day a week for some strength to smash it at the power booth at the Otter.
Smith machine squats are up to an easy 320lb single for two sets paused on the heels. I am also up to 135lb single leg smith machine Bulgarian split squats. My last sprint was a 1sec max of 1708 watts so the power is still coming up. Willing to bet if I changed my reporting to 1 sec from every three that number would be much higher. I'm am not really trying to get stronger at this point and am working on fast twitch and abb/core snap speed. Lots of weighted leg lifts, holds, planks, and knee ups. Lots of single leg work and less squats.

If it’s your weak point then train it they said. It won’t be fun they said. They were right. 🤮
The last two sessions are all about steady climbing and I am getting better. I would not call it fun though.

Ride one up the hill and back. 7stops.

Ride two at the top of the main climb.

The view is pretty good.

Ride two final 5 stops.

Today a small group of 4 of us went out and rode the sea otter corse from last year and it was lots of fun. I am no longer worried I won’t be able to finish and have fun. Should be a fun sea otter classic this year as I will be riding and just supporting a rider.
The one thing you get here is lots of climbing. 3300 ft in 25 miles. I still think I may switch out to a 40 tooth front from a 44.

About 4 weeks out now and strength is ok. I don’t know what I was expecting only giving myself 13 weeks after a 1.5 year hiatus from any lifting or cycling but I should peak ok just under my goal of getting into the 400s. I should be happy my legs are still this good at 43 years old lol.

I decided to switch from smith machine to free weights for the final build up. I have been told smith machine lifts are not the same as free weight and easier but for squats I have found this to not be the case.
315 felt very light so I decided to go up another 20 to 335 but with a spot this time. It still felt light. I could have gone to 355 but that’s way ahead of my schedule. I should be at 355-375 lbs squat by the event.

My FTP is completely unknown. My brother has averaged 188w and 204w normalized on some of the harder rides we have done and he is 135lbs soaking wet. I out weigh him by 55-60 lbs so I assume my normalized ftp is somewhere around 220-240w. Not bad for only 13 weeks and once a week training.

I have stopped indoor training. I hate it and I am getting more from my once a week rides on the older sea otter courses. This weekend I have a 25 mile ride planned with 3000 feet climbing. Next week will be a shorter 20 mile ride then about a week out I plan to run this years race course.
This years corse will be 30.4 miles and 3700 feet climbing.

315 and 335.


The corse for this year I think.

If you can put out 1800w in sprint, you're like 80% there! This course is about interval power and recovery. So you've got that down. I've come back couple times since my 1-2-P days and found smart training gets me back into tip-top shape quicker than brute-force:

Thanks. I like that workout plan. Lots of options.
I am having a blast on this course with the rolling nature of this area. I have lived here since I was 6. My only real weakness is the long climbs because I am fat. I have a short local rout that’s only a 6 mile loop and climbs 1200 feet in one mile of that rout. That climb has changed my abilities. First time I stopped 7 times. Second time was 5 stops then three now none. I have found that I don’t need to train more than 1-1.5 hours a week on the bike with every third week being a hard threshold effort. I know I will hit a wall with this amount of training but until I hit that wall once a week riding is working. I have a full time job as well so that makes it hard some weeks.

My 1744w sprint was three or four months ago when I could not squat my body weight without cramping. Now I am knocking on the 400lb door lol. This also shows it’s not just strength that makes a sprint. It’s genetic almost completely.

I love the rolling parts of the fort ord area where the sea otter is held. My cycling friends can destroy me in steady output but I work there ass in the rollers. I love interval training. My brother hates that I can climb a short hill at 800-1000 watts, push my heart rate to 185+ and still recover on the short downhill.

When a friend of ours wanted to ride this race with us I was able to step down my training. He can’t hold my power so I am already well above him.

What no know one wants to admit is this is genetic. I have genetic advantages towards interval efforts because I did those type of sports as a kid until I was 17. Also I have the speed gene. Like I was really fast as a kid. 4.1s 40 and low 11 in the 100.

My FTP came up from 140 to 240 in 12 weeks with only once a week training. My brother wants me to continue and start pushing it and see where my ceiling is. If I am able to get to a 350w ftp and also get back down to the 160lb range I may try and actually race this next year.

I am going to be surprised at the sprint booth this year. I have not done more than two sprints since I started training. Mainly I don’t want to brake anything on the trainer so I stopped doing sprints on the trainer after another broken master link (3rd one) I should be able to hit the low 1700s pretty easy but I have no idea since I have never been on a watt bike. This is just for fun.

350W at 160 lb is 4.8W/kg which is a seriously ambitious target, requiring a LOT of dedicated effort and you might never get there. Not trying to put you off, just being realistic. I would aim for 4W/kg as a starting point, which is 290W at 160 lb. Even that is a major challenge, but more realistic.

Genetics only give you a potential ceiling. You still have to train to even get close to that ceiling. That’s why exact same guy doesn’t win every single sprint. It’s not like running sprints where you can predict results by timing 440 times individually and assemble results in spreadsheet.

Bike sprinting is 80% mental because of chess strategies. I’ve had pipsqueak weakling hobbits pass me up at finish-line because they were drafting me for last km. The faster speeds are, the greater the benefit of drafting. And setting up behind just right person 2-3km out makes huge difference. Especially if there’s team leadout happening and you can just follow train hopping from wheel to wheel. My most glorious sprint was beating Davis Phinney one time when they were training in S.B. Just couple of events in row lined up perfectly! including moon and at least 5 planets!