100th post, Weight goals, more Brasstown

This is officially my 100th post. I was looking back through my posts the other day and read my very first one. Wow, how far I've come since then. Lost a lot of weight, gained a ton of fitness, bought a PT, got engaged, got a new job, and so on. Here's to ole 100.

I've dropped a few more pounds to 183. And well in focus of meeting my late March goal of 180lbs. I thought that'd be about as much as I could loose, but I can make it to 176 and still be plenty healthy. I'll put a mid-may goal on that one, at least before the VA state crit.

We'll be leaving for Brasstown wed. The weather looks decent, lower 50's and clear the rest of the week. Should be some good riding.

The smack talking has already began for who is going to kill who on the climb. We'll see how it goes. I feel pretty good, but I'm not much of a climber. I would like to make it up the 3.8 miles of Brasstown in 27-28 min, that's a personal goal. I broke down and decided to take my cross bike with a 36 small ring on the front for this one ride. That should help me get up the climb. I'll still not be smack talking anyone, its just not my thing.

2 days to Brasstown....

Less than 3 weeks to the first race....

Brasstown and training

In a weeks time I'll be looking down on this......
Where this took place.....
Brasstown- average of around 10% grade, with sections of 20%. I think its about 8 miles long, the main part of the climb anyway. Not really my kind of thing, but I'm actually excited about it. I don't really have the gearing for it, as I'll be taking my road bike with a 39x25 gearing. It'll definitely hurt, but as long as I don't have to stop I'll be happy. I thought about taking the cross bike, it has a 36x26 gearing, but for our other days of training it wouldn't help me get ready for road season. Around home we have plenty of climbs that have sections of 15-16% grade, but they're only a mile long at the most.

Training has been up and down the last two weeks. Stress at work, and taking care of house stuff while my parents are gone to C-ville with my grandma, spinning out of control into a ditch in my car because of ice, and busting my condenser on my A/C have slowed me down a bit. At least made me more tired. My power had been down a few watts because of it, but the numbers started coming back up yesterday.

I'm really looking forward to Georgia next week so I can ride/sleep/eat and that's it. Can't wait!

First race in 3 weeks.

Cold cold weather

Yesterday morning I saw the lowest temperature I can remember since I was a little little child. 1.9 degrees F. Man that's cold. This morning I woke up to no fire, no water, and another below 10 degree temperature. I'm no fan of hot weather, but it would be nice to have a little right now.

I can tell the riding inside all the time is effecting my motivation to ride. A few months ago I was all ready to go. With racing cross at the least every other weekend, I was getting enough "outside time" to suffer through the training. Now I've got to wait until Feb 14 for my first road race to get back outside. It seems like forever. Every ride I get to do outside is like a little high for my motivation, and the longer I ride inside the more withdraw I go through. Just a few weeks and I'll be back to riding outside. I can't wait!!!

Too, I've been thinking too much about upgrading to Cat3. I feel like my legs are plenty good enough, but I'm afraid of it not happening. Or at least not fast enough. Here's the root of my fear....

I turned Cat4 in 2006, actually the last part of 2005 but didn't race cat 4 till 2006. After a non-successful collegiate season, I hit the Cat4 season probably the strongest I ever was till now. I finished in at 6th in Jeff Cup, out of over 100, and was feeling strong. This is were my head hurt me the most. Rather than set in and wait for a sprint, or attack not far from the finish, I would burn myself out on the front pulling people back and giving everyone else a break. I think had I raced with half a brain I could've upgraded.

Fast forward to June of '06. I just graduated college and entered the work force, better known as the real world. My fitness was alright for the rest of '06, but started going down.

2007 saw almost no racing. I mean 6 races maybe. No training, no racing, and that pretty much ruined the year. That was until I met Ashley.

2008 saw me training more than '07, but I wasn't serious. I was so down about '07 that I couldn't get motivated. By June though, more specifically Tomato Head Omnium, I decided it was time to get back to racing. No matter what. So after talking to MattP, who has now made a mad dash to Cat2, we discussed a training plan that would help us working guys get into shape.

So there I was 207lbs, had given up cycling for weight lifting, and hated that I had let myself get this way. So I started training. Pain is the best way I can describe this part of my cycling career. The road season was almost over by the time I saw any fitness, so cross was all I had. I trained like mad until then, and the cross season saw me consistently finishing top 10 through the whole MSG series. An upgrade to CX3 at the start of this season saw me finish 4th in my first CX3 race. Its been an awesome winter as far as racing.

So now here I set in 2009 thinking about what I want to accomplish this year. Cat 3 is an obvious one, I hope to get a promotion at work(should get this one in the next month), get married to the perfect woman(this summer, and can't wait), and be happier in general.

So here I am, 23lbs lighter at 184lbs, a FTP of 340watts, and wanting to race more than ever. So what's the problem? Afraid of failure. I've been a Cat4 for almost 3 years now, sure in total I've only raced about 1 year, but I'm scared of being stuck. The powertap has helped me more with this than anything, cause it doesn't lie. If I'm fast it tells me, and if I'm slow it tells me.

This season will be the one of truth for me. I plan to do a full season of road racing, with a little bit of mountain thrown in. I suspect I'll be nervous the first few races, but I'll come around after the first few. It should be a good season.

Thanks to everyone for reading. Time to hit the trainer....

Confession and a Review

I got back on my intervals yesterday, and the legs feel good. I'm really looking forward to the first couple Greenville Spring Series races. Hopefully I'll get some good results. Ok, here's the confessions...

A few months ago I said I wasn't going to read, look, or even think about any cycling news type publications. Well I'm going to have to take back that statement. I've been reading about Armstrong's return, and though I'm not his biggest fan, this is a big thing for cycling. One can't deny that he is a great cyclist. His tactics are almost unrivaled. It'll be interesting to see how he does after 3 years off the bike. I will say that after almost 3 months of no news, it kind of annoys me how they are still focusing on drug related issues, and Michael Ball. Neither of which impress me. I mean Michael Ball designs jeans?! Sure he's got money, but he must have give up every ounce of man pride he had for that one.

Another confession I have is twizzlers. The strawberry kind. Man those things are good. Before I started worrying about my weight, I could set down and eat a pound of them at a time. Now I've cut back to half a pound.

Finally I have a review. Last week I finished the book 'A Dog in a Hat' by Joe Parkin. As far as the book, it was great. The story was even better though. I could never see myself just up and moving to Europe without a rock solid plan, and he was pretty brave in doing so. Also to see a large number of the other pro's doping, and to just keep riding and not complaining about it, I think that is something to speak of. I kept reading towards a happy ending, such as a TdF stage win or something, but there wasn't one there. In the end though it was a happy ending because he road his bike as he wanted to, and didn't let anything stand in the way. That takes balls.

Training camp in two weeks...

Knoxiecross race results

Saturday was the last cross race for me before road season. The weather called for showers/sunny, well the showers part was right. It soaked everything, from the start to the finish of the race. Here's the recap....

The course was pure mud, with a little bit of off camber technical sections, a log crossing, and a long dragging uphill to the finish in wet mulch. If I were to design a course for someone that puts out a lot of power, this would have been the one.

After standing/cruising around for 30 minutes past our start time, we were off. I found myself in about third spot right off. We went from a field, to mulch, to pavement, to mud all in about a quarter of a mile. Needless to say I road my bike like a little girl for the first lap, probably much worse, but got it together by the second lap. Every lap the mud was getting worse and worse. Our lap times almost doubled over the course of the race.

And that's about it, haha. I got passed by one more guy that was in my field, and finished in at 4th place. The field wasn't that big though, 10 riders I believe. But for my first CX3 race, even if I call it a mid-pack finish, I'm still very satisfied. Had I pre-road the course I probably would've been a little faster over the whole thing, but road a strong race. I can tell a big difference between now and the first of the season.

This was a good way to end the cross season, and my main goal this coming fall will be to upgrade to CX2. I think if I continue training for the road as I have been, cross should be a good season as well. This finish has me excited about road since my cross skills still aren't very good, this means my legs are coming around.

Next up, training camp.

Last Cross Race and Training

Tomorrow we'll head down to Knoxville, TN for my last cross race of the season. I had planned to race two cross races this month and one next month, but with the team camp and Owen Cup coming up I opted to do those in prep for road season. It'll be my first race in the CX3 field, so I'm excited to see how it will go.

I've dropped a few pounds again, getting down to 185lbs. Only 5lbs away from my goal of 180. I might be able to go a little farther, but I'm sure not too much farther.

As I wrote about before I have two different FTP's that I train by, for definition of FTP go back a few posts, I have one on the road and one for the trainer. My road FTP is now set at 340watts, while my trainer FTP was 305 and just got bumped up to 310 this week. Based on the past difference of 12% in road to trainer FTP's my road FTP should be right at 347watts. Until I get out on the road and make sure this is accurate I'm not going to change my info on the right side of my blog. I'll know more after training camp at the end of this month.

Now why did I type FTP 6 times in the last paragraph...well this will be the third test to see what relationship I have between my road power and trainer power. When I started this escapade of not believing I wasn't "cool" enough on the trainer to put out the same watts, I was determined to prove I could raise my watts on the road by raising my watts on the trainer but at a lower wattage; man that was a lot of watts for one sentence. So far I've proved just that, and hope that by a third run of data I'll be content. The reason for the power being lower on the trainer is in this post.

If I do prove that I can in fact raise my fitness this way, which I am 99% sure I will prove, the next step will be to test how to adjust my trainer riding to parallel my road riding. I'll test some weights on the rear wheel as well to the flywheel on my kurt kenetic trainer. Of course this part of the test is not really that important, I just want to know if I can do it.

My relationship may be different for different trainers, so keep that in mind. Too, I've spoke with people that have no problem with producing the same wattage on the trainer. Almost every one of these individuals have a heavier flywheel on their trainers, this is why I believe they can produce the same wattage.

Is it bad that I probably do more engineering work/research at home than at work?

Overall training it going well. I feel good in the legs, and in the mind. With my head screwed on straight I should go pretty well this season.

Back from New York

Ashley and I got back yesterday about 6 pm. After it took us 12+ hours to get up to Binghamton, it only took 10 to get back. That's with stopping for a set down dinner. I've made the trip in a little over 9 hours before, but was just fortunate that I didn't get arrested.

We had a good time. We didn't really do anything in particular, rather than eat, lay around, and catch up with Ben and Hill. On Friday we did run up to Syracuse for a day around the four story mall they have. I'm not personally a big fan of shopping, but this mall was impressive. I picked up a new pair of jeans, on sale for $25 bucks, and a book written by Joe Parkin titled 'A Dog in a Hat'. I've only got to make it through about 4 chapters, but so far its one of the best books I've ever read. It probably wont get any major book prizes, whatever they are, but he wrote the book as I imagine I would've. Only no misspellings or improper grammar. Its a book that I think even people that don't like cycling would read. That good...

Thanks to Ben and Hill for keeping us up for the last 5 days. Usually we only get to see them once a year for around a week. But we got to see them twice in '08. Thanks guys.

Today should see some training. However, as the day went on yesterday my voice kept getting worse and worse. Got home from New York and saw I had blisters in my throat. I started some antibiotics last night, and they seem to be hurting my stomach, but hopefully I'll feel alright by this evening for a bit of intervals.

I thought about changing up my intervals at the first of the year, but I like what I'm doing. I might add some more intense intervals towards the middle of Feb or first of March. This will be an attempt to peak for Jeff Cup.

One more thing. While in New York I dropped off a few spare parts I had laying around to Beng-i-man. In return he gave me a older set of rims he had used for track racing. He said he thought they were sub-300g rims....well he was right. 280g's each is what the scale said when I got home. Now I wouldn't ride these on the road, I have to be realistic as I weigh 185 lbs, but can you say track wheelset? I'll lace these bad boys up to a set of 36 hole track hubs, and be on the way to building up a track bike.