Not to trump the wonderful announcement from our friends John and Susan Lowry on the birth of their son, Augustus "Gus" Lowry, Jennifer and I would like to let everyone know that in a few short months...six to be exact...we'll be expecting our second child. We're all excited, even Nicholas who now gets to play the role of 'big brother'; although I'm sure that he doesn't fully comprehend what this means just yet. Just when we get one out of diapers here comes another, at least I'm not out of practice.
As we did when we were expecting Nicholas, Jen and I have decided that we're not going to find out the sex of the baby. We agree that there are far too few surprises left in life and nothing can be bigger than finding out in the hospital if you have a healthy baby girl, or a healthy baby boy. I'm hoping (and I think Jen is too although she won't admit it) for a baby girl. This will let me have a 'little daddies girl' but also be that overprotective father when she turns 16. Of course that would include way more sleepless nights so maybe I need to be careful on what I wish for. Either way, boy or girl, we're extremely happy and excited to meet this new baby that God has blessed us with.
brian
2.23.2006
2.20.2006
Dreaming of Boone
With the first Stark Velo training camp about to take place next week in sunny Arizona and my jealousy increasing because I can't be there, I can't help but dream about the Boone Camp which is coming up in early April. It's hard to believe that from the first time Scott Thor and I talked about setting this trip up last fall we are now only a little over 6 weeks away from being there. Time sure is going fast and the preparation time needed is quickly passing by.
I imagined it being 3 or 4 people who showed interest in this trip, I never would have guessed that we could get a total of 18 people confirmed. The turnout for this camp is better than most weekly team rides and I think it truly speaks volumes about the kind of team Stark Velo is. I'd like to thank Scott for putting the time into creating a Boone Training Bible for all of us. Seeing the routes with the climbs I'll be facing has added the extra little motivation I need to stay on the rollers a few minutes longer! Now if only the new kits get here in time.
brian
2.13.2006
Problem with the Zipps
I recently built my PowerTap Pro hub to a set of Zipp 415's (303's) and through much distress and heartache, was finally able to test them out after an almost two month ordeal. During one of my OSM rides over the weekend on my rollers, I became aware of some serious vibration in my bike as my speed increased near 30 mph. Now I know a lot of you are saying that there's no way I can ever ride 30 mph on the road....and you're probably true, but in the event that I become super strong, I want to be prepared. I needed to speak with the teams resident expert on gear....Rick Parr. Rick informed me that he had the same problem with his set and that the quick fix was some lead tape to counterbalance the off-weight rim. I also inquired from fellow teammate Tim House who had this to offer:
"Maybe if you can find a rhythm in the wheel hop you can get yourself together enough to pedal to it. Keeping pace with the surge. Bobbing your head and dropping your right elbow in unison to the beat. I will refer to it as the Miner swerve. Use to your advantage. Make up a little ditty to the beat. I am thinking something to the tune of Digital Underground's Humpty Dance.
OK stop what you're doing, cause I'm about to ruin, the image and the style that your used to. The Miner swerve, get your nerve to the swerve......oh do me baby, do the Miner swerve, do the Miner swerve....and so on and so on."
Thanks Tim.
brian
"Maybe if you can find a rhythm in the wheel hop you can get yourself together enough to pedal to it. Keeping pace with the surge. Bobbing your head and dropping your right elbow in unison to the beat. I will refer to it as the Miner swerve. Use to your advantage. Make up a little ditty to the beat. I am thinking something to the tune of Digital Underground's Humpty Dance.
OK stop what you're doing, cause I'm about to ruin, the image and the style that your used to. The Miner swerve, get your nerve to the swerve......oh do me baby, do the Miner swerve, do the Miner swerve....and so on and so on."
Thanks Tim.
brian
2.11.2006
My 2006 Plan
Although the description on the blog says "husband, father, architect and cyclist," my guess is that this blog will deal with more on my cycling than any other facet of my life. A few posts ago, I hinted at my new training plan for the year, with an emphasis on training with Power in lieu of my old strategy which was just to get as many miles in my legs as possible. Its sort of comical to look back now and see that in the past my philosophy was that I didn't want to even try to attempt a race until I had 1,000 miles in my legs. Now I'm understanding that the hours needed to get to that magical 1,000 mile marker are somewhat arbitrary because an hour of riding with my team on Tuesday nights is not the same as an hour of riding with my wife down on the towpath trail. Both types of riding are necessary for my training plan, but a little better organized structure and plan should bring me to the start line a little more prepared than believing in a magical mile marker. (See www.scottthor.com for a great article on this).
It's funny to think but true that when undertaking a certain training plan, you will go into it with full belief that its the right plan for you otherwise you wouldn't be doing it right? It's not until you're well into the program that you know if you're having success with it or not. Cycling is also a funny sport that for most of us, it takes years to develop yourself as a cyclist. I remember my first team rides. We started out in early April and I think I got dropped every time that year except for once, the last ride of the season. It wasn't until this year (my third year with the team) that I could begin hanging with the fast guys and even feel comfortable attacking them. One of my teammates that I see in the same place as me a few years ago is Frank Kolasa. In his first year racing he has made unbelievable strides for a rookie and once he develops some more power, look out that guy will be tough.
Before going any further, let me first say that I am not a coach or an exercise physiologist so what I say is my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt as it might not be the best advice for you. The nice thing about the blog is that its easy for you to leave your comments so please feel free to do so. Like most programs these days mine follows the concept of periodization. The first category is called is called "Off Season Maintenance (OSM)", the next is "Endurance/Threshold" then comes the "pre-season race preparation" period.
I'm currently nearing the end of my OSM cycle. This period of training has been going on since mid December and has consisted of approximately 4 rides a week. 2 of those rides are where the real work comes in, the other are rides are longer and at a lower intensity, say L2 pace. In the more difficult sessions I'm doing a 1x20 at 90% of FTP, 2x5's at 100% FTP and 3x30 seconds where I give it my absolute all. Doing these workouts for about a month and a half now I can see an improvement in my fitness as I've added approximately 20 watts to each of my interval sessions.
The next phase lasts an additional six weeks and will be made up of long L2 and L3 rides ranging from 2 to 4 hours and more level 4 work, mostly 2x20's at 90 to 95% of my FTP. As I see this next phase of training quickly coming up, I'm praying for warm weather as I'd really like to be doing those long rides outdoors and not in on the rollers. I can get in 2 hours inside when I'm watching one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, but that's about my limit.
The last phase before my taper week is an additional 6 weeks and that will lead me into the end of May (I'm trying to peak for the Snitger's Classic held in Pennsylvania). This session I will see less days on the bike, but my workouts will be way more intense. Here's where I introduce my body to more pain by subjecting it to some Level 5 and Level 6 workouts, which would be 5x5's at 110% of FTP and 10x1's at 150% of FTP respectively. Of course I can't do these workouts every day, so the remainder of the weeks will be spent doing long L3 rides.
So, that's my training plan looking at it from a 10,000 foot level. I'm not trying to be secretive by not telling you day for day what I'm doing, its just that my plan is somewhat flexible to allow life situations to intervene. Again, as a husband, father and architect there's going to be something that will interrupt my plans but as long as I get in my core workouts for the week, I'm on schedule.
brian
It's funny to think but true that when undertaking a certain training plan, you will go into it with full belief that its the right plan for you otherwise you wouldn't be doing it right? It's not until you're well into the program that you know if you're having success with it or not. Cycling is also a funny sport that for most of us, it takes years to develop yourself as a cyclist. I remember my first team rides. We started out in early April and I think I got dropped every time that year except for once, the last ride of the season. It wasn't until this year (my third year with the team) that I could begin hanging with the fast guys and even feel comfortable attacking them. One of my teammates that I see in the same place as me a few years ago is Frank Kolasa. In his first year racing he has made unbelievable strides for a rookie and once he develops some more power, look out that guy will be tough.
Before going any further, let me first say that I am not a coach or an exercise physiologist so what I say is my opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt as it might not be the best advice for you. The nice thing about the blog is that its easy for you to leave your comments so please feel free to do so. Like most programs these days mine follows the concept of periodization. The first category is called is called "Off Season Maintenance (OSM)", the next is "Endurance/Threshold" then comes the "pre-season race preparation" period.
I'm currently nearing the end of my OSM cycle. This period of training has been going on since mid December and has consisted of approximately 4 rides a week. 2 of those rides are where the real work comes in, the other are rides are longer and at a lower intensity, say L2 pace. In the more difficult sessions I'm doing a 1x20 at 90% of FTP, 2x5's at 100% FTP and 3x30 seconds where I give it my absolute all. Doing these workouts for about a month and a half now I can see an improvement in my fitness as I've added approximately 20 watts to each of my interval sessions.
The next phase lasts an additional six weeks and will be made up of long L2 and L3 rides ranging from 2 to 4 hours and more level 4 work, mostly 2x20's at 90 to 95% of my FTP. As I see this next phase of training quickly coming up, I'm praying for warm weather as I'd really like to be doing those long rides outdoors and not in on the rollers. I can get in 2 hours inside when I'm watching one of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, but that's about my limit.
The last phase before my taper week is an additional 6 weeks and that will lead me into the end of May (I'm trying to peak for the Snitger's Classic held in Pennsylvania). This session I will see less days on the bike, but my workouts will be way more intense. Here's where I introduce my body to more pain by subjecting it to some Level 5 and Level 6 workouts, which would be 5x5's at 110% of FTP and 10x1's at 150% of FTP respectively. Of course I can't do these workouts every day, so the remainder of the weeks will be spent doing long L3 rides.
So, that's my training plan looking at it from a 10,000 foot level. I'm not trying to be secretive by not telling you day for day what I'm doing, its just that my plan is somewhat flexible to allow life situations to intervene. Again, as a husband, father and architect there's going to be something that will interrupt my plans but as long as I get in my core workouts for the week, I'm on schedule.
brian
2.06.2006
2.05.2006
Importance of Recovery Rides
Recovery rides are great. This morning I had the opportunity to do a little riding with my almost 3 year old son, Nicholas. Being that we live in Ohio and that we're currently experiencing a winter storm, this ride was held indoors in the basement. He's been completely hooked on riding his Lil' Giant tricycle ever since my wife and I took him down to see the Tour de Georgia last spring and since he got "Mike and the Bike" for Christmas. Now he pretends that he's "bike racer man #1" and I'm "bike racer man #2", as we make circles in my extremely small basement. It seems so much smaller now that I'm trying to dodge a drum set, guitars, amps and the washing machine all while trying to keep my mountain bike upright and not run him over. My wife has even gotten into the excitement by sitting on the stairs and cheering and clapping for us. Makes for a lot of fun on a Sunday morning. Anyway, not sure I can consider this a true recovery ride by definition, but anytime I can spend some quality time with my son all while riding a bicycle has to be good for something. For all those wondering, no, I'm not keeping track of the miles.
2.03.2006
Preparing for the 2006 Season
This year I've decided to change my approach to training. In 2005, I logged just over 4600 miles on my bike. Looking back through my simple training log, I can summarize that after subtracting race miles (I raced 15 times) and the Tuesday night team rides (I rode probably 90% of those), I would guess that nearly 4000 of those miles were spent mostly in the L2 zone, a.k.a. endurance rides. L2 is great for the off-season, or if you're a club rider if your biggest goal is doing the local charity ride, but if you're a racer, you need to spend some more time up at the higher intensities if you want to have some success. If races were spent at L2 everybody would be doing it. I came to this realization last season during the Blossom Challenge. I quickly understood that I didn't nearly have enough matches to hang with these guys and that to be successful in 2006, I would need to increase the size of my matchbook.
I had a lot of time to think about that race, along with all the others I've participated in the past 2 1/2 years. My old training plan of just logging in some hours and miles on the bike worked when I was a Cat 5, but to be a good Cat 4 (I'm shooting to be Rick Parr quality, who just upgraded to Cat 3) and eventually upgrade up as well, I needed to put together a plan. My plan quickly developed after some web research and speaking with fellow teammates that I needed to work with Velodynamics coaching services. I'm not actually using a full time coach, but more of a consultant, sort of the way Jan used Rudy Pevanage the past few years....Only on a way smaller budget. Now someone might be asking why I chose them in lieu of some more well known companies such as CTS, etc. It's simple, I'm not made of money and I also liked the idea of having someone local who knew the races, the terrain and was close so when life intervenes in the schedule, I can quickly make changes to the program with their advice. It also helps that Charles Howe (President of Velodynamics) is one of the foremost experts on power based training in the area and that's my new toy this year, a PowerTap powermeter. Together, we've set up a training plan based upon some of my key races for the 2006 season and I'm quickly learning how to train with power. I'll share the plan in the upcoming weeks but as a quick preview, I'm already ahead of where I was at this time last year in terms of fitness. I can quantify this from the team's roller races we've been having on Thursday evenings. Everyone takes 5 minutes on "the" rollers. The goal would be to put in as many miles as you can in that time period. This year I'm already putting in over 1/4 of a mile from my best times last year. 2006 should be exciting.
I had a lot of time to think about that race, along with all the others I've participated in the past 2 1/2 years. My old training plan of just logging in some hours and miles on the bike worked when I was a Cat 5, but to be a good Cat 4 (I'm shooting to be Rick Parr quality, who just upgraded to Cat 3) and eventually upgrade up as well, I needed to put together a plan. My plan quickly developed after some web research and speaking with fellow teammates that I needed to work with Velodynamics coaching services. I'm not actually using a full time coach, but more of a consultant, sort of the way Jan used Rudy Pevanage the past few years....Only on a way smaller budget. Now someone might be asking why I chose them in lieu of some more well known companies such as CTS, etc. It's simple, I'm not made of money and I also liked the idea of having someone local who knew the races, the terrain and was close so when life intervenes in the schedule, I can quickly make changes to the program with their advice. It also helps that Charles Howe (President of Velodynamics) is one of the foremost experts on power based training in the area and that's my new toy this year, a PowerTap powermeter. Together, we've set up a training plan based upon some of my key races for the 2006 season and I'm quickly learning how to train with power. I'll share the plan in the upcoming weeks but as a quick preview, I'm already ahead of where I was at this time last year in terms of fitness. I can quantify this from the team's roller races we've been having on Thursday evenings. Everyone takes 5 minutes on "the" rollers. The goal would be to put in as many miles as you can in that time period. This year I'm already putting in over 1/4 of a mile from my best times last year. 2006 should be exciting.
2.02.2006
Getting Started
Today I'm joining the world of blogging. Not sure I have much more to share than the countless thousands of others out there who are already doing this, but I'll go ahead and give it the old college try.
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