Another result

Notched up a second place today at the Heffron Criterium. Was a good hitout after 2 weeks of practically no riding... Everyone else must have been feeling the same as the pace was pretty slow.

A few laps in I decided that i'd go to the front and do some time trial efforts to keep the pace high and put some pressure on the backmarkers... That certainly worked - but it also inspired a few others into doing some high pace turns.

What started off as a snail paced raced - ended up turning into a real stoush, 4 laps to go and the attacks were flying thick and fast - I kept getting on the right wheels staying in contact with the leaders.

Bell lap comes and the pace remains solid - by this stage there was only 10 riders left, i found a great wheel behind this behemoth of a guy who provided a fantastic wind break... The funny thing with a sprint when you are 4-5 riders back is that you never really know if the cards are going to fall in your favour and whether the road will open up for you at the right time..

Around 150 to go and the rider behind me starts his sprint - i decided not to take his wheel which would proved decisive at the finish - the massive wind break in front of me decided to jump on that exact wheel and start his sprint - he was moving well away from the field - and dragging me along nicely - but there just wasn't enough road left for me to get my sprint going - still a second place was reasonable - especially considering the lack of training.

Normalised power was only 290w - 36.5km/hr.

Check out the size of that guy!

Gears ain't gears, ain't gears....

About a month ago i climbed the notorious Mt Kembla just south of Wollongong. The climb statistics aren't that impressive, 9km at an average of 4.5%. However 4km of the climb is either flat or downhill, making the remaining 5km at well over 9% average gradient!!

As usual i ran my usual 53/39 chainset with 27/12 cassette. Things started ok, but pretty quickly i found i was in my lowest gear and my cadence gradually dropped from 80 to low 60's!! Needless to say my ample bulk was hauled at around this pace for most of the grueling ramps... After i finished the climb i promised never to attempt this climb again until one of two things happened.

1. I was fit enough to turn my lowest gear at a minimum 70-75rpm.
2. Change my gearing so that my minimum cadence was 70-75rpm.
   

Later that week a set of shimano R700 compact cranks were installed on my bike. Now with these cranks, and a 27 tooth rear gear it is plausible to scale a wall... In fact my good friend Elliott who followed the Giro D'Italia recently used this exact combination to scale the incredible Monte Zoncolan with its average gradient of 11% and intermediate ramps of 15-25% !

After tinkering with GearCalc Pro I found out a few interesting things.

1. 39/27 is practically identical to 34/23.
2. 53/12 is slightly slower than 50/11.

So now, with a trusty 50/34 compact cranks matched to a 23/11 cassette i have identical top and bottom end speeds BUT the 23/11 ratio spreads are much tighter. This, I hope should optimise my cadence/power control when climbing and time trialling and hopefully gain some extra time.... Tomorrow is a morning time trial up Mt Keira where my recent best times have been around 23minutes flat. It will be interesting to see how far under that number i can get with this gearing.

Inclement Weather

Sydney has been hammered by rain and floods for the past 4 days - most of Sydney looks like this...

Apparently there is more to come!!!!!

So training has been limited to the evil windtrainer. The boredom, sweat and heat conspire against me so I struggle to get more than a 1 hour session on this evil device.. Coach had planned some TTI sessions (time trial interval) which would be perfect for the wind trainer.

• 5 x 5minutes @ 300w
• 2 minutes rest in between

That may look easy, but on a windtrainer its a whole world of pain. Yet I managed to get out the full 5 intervals...

.WKO file with 30 second smoothing.


Tomorrow should bring better weather - with a time trial simulation of 1hr @ 300w inbetween a 3 hour ride... I'm looking forward to clear skies as i'll cry if i have to complete that session on the windtrainer!!!

In the beginning....

Thought it would be a good idea to keep an online diary of my cycling achievements and document progress (or lack thereof) that i am making training with Power under coaches Alex Simmons and Ric Stern.

I've been training solidly for the past 4 months now with power - averaging around 8 hours a week (about 220km) which is the most that i am able to get away with at the moment with a hectic job, wife and 1 year old daughter.

Still my results thus far are better than when i was training longer hours and more miles, but without the guidance of a coach or power measuring device.

I notched my first win of the season 2 weeks back in a 28km criterium run by my local cycling club Randwick Botany CC. Hopefully the first of many yet to come. Here's a shot of the dash for the line, i'm far right just taking the win by a nose on the line..

I've also tried my hand at a few of this years early OPEN races - but have found the jump in level a little too much to deal with at this stage in my cycling life. This should hopefully change with more miles in the legs and some nice increases in power.

My FTP (functional threshold power) current sits at around 300w, with a MAP (maximum aerobic power) of around 420w. I'm a porky 84kg, which makes those impressive numbers, rather unimpressive... my goal is to get as close to 80kg as possible.

Thats enough for now :)