The Machine of the Hour
Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.
– Mike Tyson
The one thing everyone should always plan for is that however well-conceived a program might be, things will never go to plan.
The high level plan for my Festum Prophetae Hour Ride was as follows:
Suffice to say things did not go exactly to plan. The frame “needed” to be repainted because it got scratched by TSA coming back from NAHBS and my OCD kicked into full swing wanting to have it painted in VLVV colors. And Dan was having a hard time sourcing the hubs and rims he had spec’d for the wheels. Delays ensued. I may also have gotten distracted and lost track of the prescribed schedule and dependencies like having the frame in-hand in order to accomplish point V above. The frame made it back to me on Friday of last week and the wheels are in my flat as I write this, waiting for a final layer of glue before having the tires mounted.
I got less fat and in better shape before falling off the training wagon last week due to a tight work schedule. I quickly became more fat due to a wholesale refusal to reduce my alcohol intake to compensate for not training as hard as I should be. We call this phase of training “tapering”.
Since the bike isn’t even assembled yet, it follows that I haven’t done the time on the track, although @Haldy and I have used his crazy voodoo spreadsheet to determine a good gear choice based on my super-secret personal distance goal. As far as the rollers go, well those were sent by Keeper @Marko just as the weather started to get too good to justify riding indoors, so I’ve only spun on them a handful of times instead of the @Haldy-prescribed 2 hour sessions, twice a week. But I really couldn’t be bothered with that when I was laying down mad tanlines. (Rule #7 tends to be a priority when you live in Seattle. The struggle is real, people.)
Life is boring when things go as planned; chaos makes for interest. So here’s my new plan for tomorrow: Show up to the track early, get a feel for how fast I’m supposed to go, get used to holding the pace and get over the nearly irrepressible fear of falling off the track before diving head-first into the Pain Pool at 2:05. Try not to blow out the guns before the starter pistol goes off.
So head on down to the Jerry Baker Velodrome at 2:05 and heckle me. @Packfiller is driving over from Spokane to commentate (i.e. take the piss out of me) and we will be streaming the ride live at http://ustre.am/10hJX.
Special thanks to Don Walker, Café Roubaix’s Dan Richter, and fizik’s Nicolò Ildos for their support and sponsorship in provide the bits and pieces.
Eddy, may your strength flow through me and compensate for what a twunt I am for not Training Properly. Vive la Vie Velominatus, and may you each suffer on Festum Prophetae as the Prophet did for us.
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View Comments
@RobSandy
The velominipper is now convinced that the roller warm up is the way to go.
Some weeks I'm able to work from home on a Wednesday so drive him down to the TT with the rollers, don my hi-viz gilett do my bit as a marshal. Other weeks he's told that if he wants to ride, he's got to ride there and back himself. It's not that far away, 9km.
Tonight, I drove him down there and he knocked 26 seconds off his previous PB to go round in 28:43. He's got it into his head that he only gets PBs when I drive him.
The fact that it was a lovely still warm evening, similar to the one the last time he knocked time off, seems to be lost on him. As does the fact that I've driven him down there a bunch of time when he hasn't gone that quickly.
It's also become horribly apparent that I really need to get my self down there and ride. He's only going to be a minute or so behind me now.
@chris
Mind games. Like wearing your fastest socks, putting on left shoe first.
Once it's in there it's a cert and done deal. Logic and reason no longer factors in the issue.
@Teocalli
That's a great motto!
I need to work out how to get my legs ready for short crits now. Raced last night and felt shocking all the way through. Tried to get involved in the sprint but I was boxed in so had to go all the way around the outside and blew up on the final corner, but really I didn't have the legs.
What I don't understand is I can ride for over 2 hours with my HR a couple of beats below threshold and feel really good, but ride a 25 minute crit with an average HR barely in Zone 4 and feel absolutely shocking.
I should be a good crit racer with my kick but I just can't make it happen at the moment.
Doesn't help that every single 3/4 racer around here think they are a sprinter so sit in until a lap to go where the pace explodes and the whole bunch try to get across the line at the same time. Scary.
@Teocalli
Maybe the next time it's nice still evening I'll find a way to have him ride down and then turn up the car, pull my bike out and tell him he's my minute man.
It'll mess with his head but he'd ride his skin out not to have me come past him.
@chris
That sounds like a loose loose (for you). To persuade him that he does not need the lift he has to take out time on you (i.e. you have to let him do so). The trouble that then it's The End.
@RobSandy
http://www.bikechaser.com.au/blog/the-cycling-corndog-diaries-how-to-win-a-crit-race
@Teocalli
Phase one is lose lose but the long term is win win. He gets over the idea that he needs to be driven to an event that is 9km away (win #1), he gets faster as a result of clearing the mental clutter that superstition causes (win #2), he does take time out of me which will galvanise my fat arse into action to get properly fit so that I've got a chance of holding him off for a few years (win #3 - the biggie).
@RobSandy
I know numbers are not everyone's cup of tea but I've recently come across a new data point which may be relevant ... W Prime (usually W').
I did some lab testing earlier this year as a volunteer in a study with a researcher who specialises in critical power and power models, so she knows her shit.
In the study I had the highest Critical Power (CP) of all the participants, basically equivalent to FTP type of power over 15-20 minutes or longer.
However I had good but not the highest Maximal Aerobic Power, which is basically your 3 minute capacity. People with lower FTPs were able to put out more power, and would probably beat me in a crit.
What's important is the gap between your CP and MAP - the smaller it is, the sooner you go into your reserve tank and the smaller that tank is. In other words you've got fewer matches to burn AND you need to burn them more often.
W' is a relatively recent and not fully researched number but it is effectively your burn rate. I can sit on 320-330 watts and my W' stays pretty level. Go up to 340 watts and it starts to decline, go up to 360 and it becomes a steeper descent at about 3-4% per minute, and at 450+ I'm losing 20% every 20 seconds.
I've attached some screen shots from Golden Cheetah, which calculates W'. It's the second line in red, below the power in yellow. You can see it barely moves when I'm training at threshold, it steps down when I'm doing unders and overs (and actually comes up slightly at just below threshold) but the Z6 efforts are like a shark's tooth.
That sounds obvious - we know the harder we go the faster we run out of energy. But it's interesting to be able to put a figure on it and work out a rate. Her next study is going to look at the relationship between W' and sustainable power.
Anyway the takeaway was that if you have a relatively low gap between CP and MAP you're probably more physiologically suited to long sustained efforts than to repeated short intense efforts e.g. crits. That's why I've been trying some TTs lately.
@sthilzy
Thanks for that.
I am in principle aware how to play a crit tactically, but it becomes very hard when the whole rest of the field just want to sit in and wait for the sprint. One of my team mates got told off by some guys from the NFTO race club for not chasing when another of our team mates was off the front. What?
Then virtually the whole race got involved in the sprint. No thanks.
I think our latest plan is to keep attacking off the front until something sticks (i.e. everyone else gets sick of chasing).
@ChrisO
That is interesting and probably accounts for some of my crapness. But to be honest I come out of a lot of crits feeling really fresh - it's not a physical problem. I don't think I'm far behind in terms of fitness or power, and I can beat some of our Cat 2's in a straight sprint.
I just consistently get caught in the wrong position at the wrong time, so if I'm sprinting I'm doing it from the back of the bunch, on my own in the wind, coming around the top of the banking rather than in the wheels on the sprinter's line. I've got a Cat 3/4 crit every week until the end of August now, so that's plenty of time to practice positioning.