Two cages down

One of the items that makes a cycling power meter so useful as a training tool is it allows you to make objective statements about how your training is going – regardless of how things like weather or terrain may twist your weekly workouts.

But first, let’s look at running as an example to understand what I’m talking about.  Saturday I had my usual tempo/interval run thing.  It essentially consists of a 15 minute building warm-up set, and then straight into three sets of 9 minutes each at a Z4B pace – not quite all out, but pushing it a bit – a steady hard effort.  Each set has a couple minutes of easy jogging in between.  While I can see very clear and steady improvement over the past two months, it’s often hard to determine exactly how much I’m improving – even on the same routes.  In my case, that’s because of the impact of weather (snow and wind as of late).

For example, on Saturday the wannabe-hurricane winds slaughtered me in certain directions – but assisted me in others.  So, my set times were a bit all over the place on the three core interval sets (with checkboxes, Lap 3/5/7):

Now, if I were to try and compare them to the previous few iterations of doing this workout – I’d also have to figure out how to account for the snow on one set, terrain on another, and wind on this one.  Four very different runs.  Yes there’s a general improving trend across the areas I’m most interested in, but determining exactly how much is difficult because the conditions have differed so much each time:

(Click to enlarge – Each frame from Training Peaks, I just combined them all together using MSPaint, would be great if TP had the ability to easily compare workouts for me…hint hint.)

At least in swimming I can see improvement since the pool doesn’t usually have windy conditions indoors (Note, that isn’t my 500y time, it’s just by time I got around to getting the camera out, unfortunately you can’t just simply ‘stop’ the timer on this watch…very frustrating).

Though, this Saturday’s swim (a few hours prior to the run above) was all about technique and drills.  4,200 yards of it to be exact – so not too much for comparison there week over week.  In fact, in this Saturday’s case, had I been pushing it, it would have defeated the purpose of what I was doing (focusing on technique).

(Today – Sunday - some of the pass-throughs were covered in snow and ice still, so I had to hike-a-bike up them)

Let’s look at cycling, by going back to the power meter thing I started off with.  In this case the power meter measures my output – in watts – which means that it doesn’t matter if I’m on the flats or into the wind – it’s all normalized.  Normalization is simply taking the phrase ‘Comparing Apples and Oranges’ and making them all Apple-Orange Juice.  Or something like that.

For example, today (Sunday) I went out for a 45-ish mile ride.  The wind pummeled me many times.  In some cases, I was going 12-13MPH into the wind.  But because my power output was constant – so I was able to validate that despite my slow forward progress, I was still hitting the HR and power zones that I wanted.  You may remember me using this in some races this fall – such as the Iron Distance Aquavelo – to help pace into the wind.

Now, let’s take that concept and spread it across the last 6-8 weeks worth of serious bike training(anything in December wasn’t really truly serious, it was off-season).  In my case, I have the same basic structured workouts each week.  Essentially four trainer rides (one of which – the long ride – I can opt to do outdoors).  Each week on Monday for example I have IT1 (Indoor Trainer #1), IT2 on Wednesday and so on.  Each of those IT’s have a specific structure that’s the same, just slightly building the number of repetitions depending on the week.  This means that I can compare this Wednesday to last Wednesday and see specific power improvements.

I do one to note one really important item – all of these wattages are for a specific set heart rate zone.  Meaning, that this isn’t just a case of ‘let’s see if I can beat last week’s numbers’.  Nope, I have a limiter set by Coach Alan on heart rates – so it has to remain within that range in order to be ‘legit’.

For example, let’s look at this past Wednesday, to a January Wednesday:

They key areas I’m looking at are max wattages for certain time periods.  Now note that because I’m on a CompuTrainer I pretty much control the wattages – so this isn’t an outdoor free-for-all where I could get some really big terrain/car/bus/light/whatever-induced spikes, like today’s ride:

(You can see the larger power fluctuations of being outdoors – simple stuff really – like waiting at a red light for it to change green, and then really pushing it across the intersection to not get run over – compare that to below, for being indoors during a typical IT)

Now we take that same set of key values I’m looking at (particularly 10s, 3m, and 5m sets) and plot it over the last 8 weeks for that given IT2:

Now why the drop-off this past week you might ask?  Well, two things I suspect – one is the week previous I was in Vancouver and didn’t get any bike rides in, so I lose some strength there – just the reality of the situation.  But probably more important is that I was sick coming out of Vancouver – I’ve previously noted how much of an impact that can make.

Finally, as for the bottles in the post title – I managed to somehow lose a screw on the bottom cage, likely due to the extreme rattling from the rough roads and potholes post-blizzard from the plows.

Adding to the suck-factor was that somehow my standard bike tool wasn’t in my bag – so I couldn’t remove the cage and carry-on.  I was super-concerned it would swing out and catch in my shoe or crank – causing a fall (and thus a fail).  I tried to snap it off, but it just bent.  So I ended up bending it into a little egg-shaped thing to keep it out of the way for the rest of the ride.

Then, just a few minutes later as I was storing my bottle into one of my rear cages – I managed to fully snap off the entire cage.  No idea how.  So I just stuck it between my aerobars for the last few minutes of the ride.

With the cages being something like $20 a piece, that’s dang expensive to be out two of them.  I have a Love/Hate relationship with the TACX cages.  I love that I’ve *NEVER* had a bottle pop-out of the cage.  I hate that I’ve managed to have snapped off half-a dozen of them…in training and races.  Big races. If you have any recommendations for cages that don’t cause bottle pops (I don’t want to deal with little straps or anything), I’m all ears!

Oh – one little random tip for you from today’s ride.  If you have triathlon-targeted cycling shoes, you probably have a substantial hole on the bottom towards the front.  This is to keep airflow in the shoes and keep them from becoming all stank.  But, in the winter, this leads to frozen-toes (yes, I have booties too, but I hate them).  Simple solution for the winter – tape:

Anyway, I’m off to one of my favorite places on earth…

Catch ya’ll later!

Friday Tidbits

Food Tidbits:

It’s time for some food around here – so let’s start off Friday Morning with Thursday Morning’s breakfast:

I stumbled on the super-simple recipe the night before on SLB’s blog, and was on the way to the grocery store a bit later anyways.  I substituted fresh spinach for the frozen stuff, merely because I had it on hand.  Interestingly it uses a non-dairy cream cheese, which turned out quite good!

Speaking of food items, I’ve been working on and off this past week on my Immersion Circulator that I talked about a few weeks ago.

I’ve been having a blast with all sorts of fun tools from Dremel’s (you’d be amazed the level of awesome destruction you can do with a Dremel) to multi-meters to soldering iron and hot glue guns.  It’s like back when I was a Boy Scout and the Pinewood Derby competition, except this time with electricity and heaters…and perfectly cooked meats as the goal posts.

Here’s a small gallery of the work thus far, basically ready to go with some initial testing complete.  I’m in the final stretch, but ran into one component that apparently is DOA – hopefully it will arrive later today and I’ll be in business for the weekend!

Sous Vide Project VIEW SLIDE SHOW (11)

Race Schedule Updates:

I’ll be out in Seattle later in March and noticed an indoor triathlon there on March 21st.  It’s a 15 minute swim, followed by a 30 minute bike, and then a 2 mile run around a popular lake.  The start times are staggered throughout the day, so it’s sorta like an individual time trial.  I’m most looking forward to the run – 2 miles is just the perfect distance for pure balls to the wall fun.

But you know what’s even better?  The name of the event:

‘Nuff said.  Clearly I have to be there.  Hopefully they have good t-shirts…

I’m also adding to my 2010 schedule the REV3 Knoxville Olympic Race, on May 9th.  Should be fun!

Sports Technology Tidbits:

A slew of little things I stumbled onto, or were tossed in my general direction.  In no particular order:

- You may have seen the news a month or two ago from Timex about a new GPS based fitness watch targeted at the triathlon crowd – the Timex Global Trainer.  The specs support all ANT+ accessories, so it’ll work with any stuff you might already have (HR, Cadence, Power, etc… from Garmin), all while not looking like a dorky GPS watch.  Anyway, they e-mailed me yesterday asking if I’d like to play with a unit starting in late March – light years ahead of when the actual device release is to the world.  Wootage!

- If you have an Edge 500 – they released a firmware update on Wednesday that enables the workout feature, along with a slew of other improvements.

- If you have any other Garmin device, they also released a new ANT+ Agent (used for the 405/310XT/FR60) for the PC platform, as well as a bunch of updates/fixes to Garmin Training Center (used for all Garmin devices).  They released the Mac platform update about a week ago for both the ANT+ agent and GTC.  You an grab all that stuff here.

- I continue to play with the Pool Mate swim watch, which automatically counts your laps and distance for you.  While I’ve found it astonishingly accurate, I’m struggling a bit with the user interface (menu’s, etc…).  As I mentioned earlier, look for a review probably mid-March or so.

- The Timex peeps also sent over to me this interesting article about the NFL NY Giants team using heart rate monitors this offseason to monitor their athletes in an effort to understand if they’re slacking off, or putting in the time.  I’ve got the opportunity to chat with the NY Giants Team Medical folk about the project, so if you have any specific questions – hit me up and I’ll include them in what will likely be an upcoming post.

- The Tanita folks sent over to me a demo unit remote display stand for the BC-1000 ANT+ Scale I reviewed.  Look for me to include an updated section on that in the near future.  So far, so good – it looks pretty on porcelain.  Here’s it doing its duty late Thursday night:

- Finally, I’m contemplating putting together some post on training software options on a Mac.  I get a fair number of requests in that arena, and until recently I’ve been unable to answer them due to lack of hardware.  That issue has been resolved.  Anything in particular ya’ll are looking for?  Any areas you want me to include?  My thinking is something fairly comprehensive, but I’m open to any suggestions.

Have a good weekend all!

Vancouver 2010 Olympics Trip – Day 5 (The final day)

Our last day started much like the previous day – on the slopes of Whistler at Creekside checking out the Super-G, this time though it would be the women we’d be watching.  The crowds came out in full force for the action – with the house a bit more crowded than the day before:

The clear focal point of the day would be Lindsey Vonn – could she take yet another medal?

Now, I’d like to have a great picture of her flying down the course.  But I don’t.  Instead I have a gazillion pictures of Canadian Flags (at 16 frames per second).  Why?   Well, go look at that first picture back at the top of this post.  It’s OK, I’ll wait.  OK, got it?  Good, now note how far back in the crowd I am.  Now note how many people there are with flags.  Now let's assume that 80% of them are Canadian.  This means I have countless shots just like this:

Oh, in case it’s not clear – Vonn is below that flag.  She’s also below this one:

Now why would Canadian’s wave the Canadian flag for an American skier?  Because they waved that flag for every skier, no matter the country.  Luckily, they decided to take a break so I could get at least a few skiers photos:

Despite the lack of Vonn ski-photos, I did manage to capture one solid pic (from that same position at the back of the crowd) of her on the podium, grabbing the Bronze Medal (well, actually, the medals aren’t presented until later that night at the medals ceremony).  She’s on the right:

From there, the Girl and I zipped over to the Whistler Rec Center pool to get a 50 minute swim in before we had to head back down towards Vancouver, winding our way down through some of the amazing mountains up there.

A few hours (and a few stops) later we arrived in downtown Vancouver – to crazy street filled crowds:

Also of note is all the random Olympic-related art-like things that are sprinkled throughout the city.  A lot of it was pretty cool…or at least blinky and shiny:

After a fair bit of walking and wandering we arrived at our final destination of the games – Canada Hockey Place, for a game between Germany and Belarus:

It continues to amaze me as to how much area is reserved for media.  It’s also pretty interesting that each person has their own little TV (with different sports covered, if they choose to change the channel).

Speaking of other interesting things, at one point during the game a puck hit the crap out of one of the walls behind the goal.  Everyone heard it, it was incredibly loud and sharp.  A moment later some of the fans down near the wall started making a bit of a scene.  Turns out, the puck had broken the glass.

This lead to a bunch of little people rushing a replacement piece across the ice:

And from there they removed the metal posts and slide out the broken section – all in a matter of perhaps 90-120 seconds.  Like a NASCAR pitstop – incredibly impressive.

While the Russians take the cake for unusual displays of country affection, the Germans take the podium for largest display of a flag inside a building:

As for the hockey game itself, the school bus sized flag alone wasn’t quite enough to aide Germany to a victory, and Belarus took the win.

With the conclusion of the game we made a beeline for the border – crossing just after midnight and arrive home in Seattle around 2AM.  Later that morning The Girl and I caught a flight back to DC…and back to reality.

Reality has included a full week of training after last week’s ‘easy’ week.  I’ve got some good little non-Olympic tidbits saved up, so look for those on Friday.  Thanks for reading!

Vancouver 2010 Olympics Trip – Day 4

Day 4 started early, way early.  That’s because we had to make the 2-3 hour trek north up to Whistler, from Vancouver.  The trick is that in order to get to Whistler you have to have a valid permit to clear the checkpoint.  They’ve closed the mountain road up there to general traffic – only those with permits (people staying in Whistler) are allowed during daylight hours.  So along the way we had to get a pass from the little office before we could go past the checkpoint, thus adding a bit more time to our journey.

With our pass secured, we made a beeline to the Men’s Super-G event, held at Whistler Creekside.

While the crowd was pretty sizeable, there was still quite a bit of wiggle room so you didn’t feel too squished in the standing area (where we were).

The race got off to bang with one of the very first athletes flying across the finish line…quite literally…in a spectacular crash.  He was fine and dandy and even gave a wave upon completing his journey.  Unfortunately because he lost both skies while on course, he received a disqualification.  Too bad…

Here’s a few frames I captured of it – there was a Canadian flag in the way, so you’ll have to pardon that, and the red line you see is the finish line:

Despite being standing room tickets, the view was great – and the Olympic rings they stuck up on the course side is pretty cool:

A short bit later American Bode Miller came down with a fairly respectable time, snagging the lead for a bit:

One thing that’s probably not mentioned on NBC during the evening Olympic Coverage is the food options from the food stands.  In short, it’s the same as what you would have seen at an old stadium concession stand about 15 years ago.  Hot dog or pizza anyone?  I had a number of hot dogs (even veggie dogs), but the Peanut M&M’s were my favorite:

Another interesting tidbit is that at every event venue you’ll see the flags of all countries participating at that venue.  So in ski racing, it’s quite a few flags – but in sports like Hockey and Curling, it’s only about 8 or 9 flags.  Below is the timing shack, with the flags on it:

After 63 racers had come down we had the final results.  In reality, you pretty much know what the results will be after the first 20-30 athletes, as the last half of the field has a lower ranking and goes later.  Most of the skiers there are from countries that don’t have strong alpine skiing programs, but do manage to get some racers through the qualification process.

Bode didn’t end up taking the Gold, but he still made it onto the podium, so that was cool:

After that, we grabbed the lift back down to the main base area, before taking a bus back to Whistler Village.  We had actually found a last minute condo availability for a single night up in Whistler Village, so we decided to do that vice driving back and forth to the RV in Vancouver for two straight days (we had back to back tickets in Whistler).  Cost-wise it was a wash, since bus tickets run $250 per day for the five of us.

Later on that evening the Girl and I went go go check out Skeleton.  What’s Skeleton you ask?  Well, there’s Bobsled (remember the Jamaican Bobsled team…well, they didn’t qualify this year), then there’s Luge (where they go down on their backs, feet first), and then finally, there’s Skeleton – where they go down on their stomachs, head first.  In the hierarchy of sliding sports, I present you the following nutcase scheme:

(Look, even the little mascots in the sleds aren’t thrilled – if you look at all the other pictures they have, they’re smiling)

And just as the athletes are nuts (or have significant nuts), it attracts some nuts as well:

The venue itself is really cool, the finish area is a massive sweeping turn that winds 180* around the main spectator area:

But, you’re allowed to walk anywhere you’d like along the course as it winds through the woods – so we did just that.

Along the way at a brief break in the race we got to see the track workers spraying water on it to form a fresh layer of ice.  You’ll also notice below the tiny laser beam timing system on the track above the blue line – which gives splits/intervals as the sled flies by:

Eventually we made it to the top, and got to see the start of a few racers – very cool:

The area got pretty crowded, so we worked our way back down towards the finish area, stopping along the way to watch the skeleton folk zoom by.  It’s amazing how close they let you get to the course – you literally could give these guys a High-5 if you wanted to.  Though, it would hurt like hell at 100MPH.

Some of the sweeping turns were the most impressive, like this one:

I ended up using a version of that for the new banner image, in case you haven’t seen it yet.

After quite a bit of walking we made it down to the bottom – just in time to see some of the final men’s racers compete…and The Girl having fun with her mittens…

The Canadian would end up taking the gold – which was pretty cool.  We finally made it back to the Condo around 10PM, pretty late – but a day full of awesome stuff.  Tomorrow, our last day, we start the day’s event in Whistler before going back down to Vancouver for one final event.