Cappucino Rider

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. And we usually get better with practise. I practised putting time trials bars on my bike these past two weeks. I'm really good at it now. Last night, after two glasses of wine at the Pane & Vino restaurant, while having dinner with Alberto and my ex massage therapist Alex, I mounted the bars and not one swear word.  Two weeks earlier Alberto had asked me from the lounge room if I was ok. I think he was too scared to come any closer in case I would have thrown the tool kit.

Alex was just passing through town on his way from Europe back to Cairns. I didn't know he was in town so it was a great surprise. I finally forgave him for buggering off to ride his bike around Australia. He only ever got to Cairns in those two years since he left. We laughed when I told him I had finally moved on and found myself a new massage therapist because chances are he won't be back in a hurry. (If you are looking for a good massage in Cairns, he is currently working in Edge Hill)

Oh, the time trial... well, the time trial bars went on the handlebar and came off the handlebars a few times over the past two weeks. First they irritated me. I couldn't mount lights on the handlebars - too crowded. So some early morning rides didn't happen. Instead, I rode the Fixie to work. Not ideal time trial training but that's what I felt like doing. I then took the bars off but it turned out, it wasn't just the bars. The motivation to time trial wasn't really there either. Maybe I was brewing something already. Maybe I just wasn't committed.

Sunday I slept in and rode to town to meet Alberto for a coffee. It was a great morning, the morning after Cadel had won the Tour. The coughing started not long after we got home. Then my burning lungs turned themselves inside out for the rest of the week and there was no way I could get on the bike. By Friday I finally felt I could breathe again and my lungs were actually inflating when I sucked air so I mounted the time trial bars again for the race this morning.

Who was I kidding? A short ride later in the morning showed that there was no way I cold have raced a time trial today, let alone a good one. My legs were fresh but my lungs splattered and sputtered with even the easy effort.

They say: If the symptoms are below the neck, stay off the bike! When you feel good again to ride, wait another day!

I will be a Cappuccino Rider again for the next few weeks - happily!

Climbing

I wonder if this is what my chiropractor had in mind when he recommended that I take up rock climbing?



Thanks, John, for sending the link. What a huge suitcase of courage! I wish I had no fear. This morning, over coffee and peanut butter and honey toast, it was almost as breath-taking and exciting to watch as the other climb:



I'm off to do some climbing now, the on the bike up a road and not chalky fingertips kind and tonight I'm going to get myself a big portion of inspiration for time trailling next Saturday!

Go Cadel!

Reconnaissance Ride

While Alberto is out on his bike discovering new roads, I have been re-familiarising myself with old battle grounds: the Closeburn to Dayboro time trial course - an out and back course with a total distance of about 33 km.

Looking at and comparing my photos with his, I once again realised that Queensland's landscape does not change all that much between here and six hours North of Brisbane. And I guess, these photos could have just as well been taken somewhere in New South Wales or Victoria. Wouldn't you agree?

Mt Samson Road between Closeburn and Dayboro. It's not this flat all the way.

Nice view when you are not time trialling and have actually time to enjoy it.

Closeburn: start of the club time trial. Population 467 people, average age 36!

As promised in my previous post, I mounted the time trial bars. It was a re-familiarising in more ways than just counting the potholes along the course. There are aches and pains associated with a rarely used time trial position that my body wasn't too keen on re-discovering. And the mind had also some remembering to do, the revival of frustrations when the powermeter shows three digit numbers that start with a one when the lactic acid filled quads are screaming like they were transferring 300 Watts to the pedals...

Was it a good ride? Yes and no! It was a beautiful day and my legs felt fresh when I wasn't tucked down on the bars but there were too many cars on that road to Dayboro and they were going pass with 100km/h, which was very scary at times. And I don't like the look of my bike with time trial bars. It looks odd, like a self-conscious child dressed as a bull in an awkward carnival costume.

Do I really wanna race an individual time trial again next week?

The non-training approach to training

Since I decided to take the HPRW Women's Series a little bit serious - not the type of all out competitive win-at-all-cost fervour but a more humble I'd like to do well seriousness - I've naturally been thinking about training.

Once a dedicated follower and devotee of meticulously planned and structured workouts with reasonable success, I unfortunately developed this aversion against anything even resembling training now.

Over the past few months I've done nothing else but ride my bike(s). Actually, I'm lying. I've done a bit more than that.

I've been setting maximum weekly riding hours of between 10-12 hours per week, which I'm under no circumstances allowed to exceed. After analysing some old training data from before and around the time I got sick, this appears to be a conservative estimate of what my body can handle without having to deal with Hashimoto's symptoms flaring up.

I also keep a keen eye on my Training Stress Scores (TSS). As soon as I get above 150TSS I schedule a mandatory rest day. No ifs and buts! Weekly allowable riding time and TSS increase by not more than ten percent from week to week (give or take) and I schedule a rest week every forth week or earlier if I feel tired or notice other early warning signs, for example high rest heartrate, sore throat, irritability (Alberto helps pointing this out, which is good and if you have a person you trust, ask them to tell you!), cravings etc.

So with the framework in place I just fill in the blanks with fun times riding my bikes. If it's not fun, I turn around and go home.

How did this look in real life?

On Tuesday mornings I have been meeting friends to ride to McAfees. If there was a ride on offer Wednesday mornings, I joined if I felt good (and often I did). Other times I got on the rollers at night after work if I wasn't too tired (and often I wasn't). On the rollers I followed a structured interval program ("Sweet Spot" intervals), simply because without it, rollers are boring.

Thursdays I usually slept in but there were some Fixie commutes, and Fridays I sometimes got up for a Riverloop. By Friday night I knew how many hours and TSS I had raked up thoughout the week. Saturday was reserved for leisurely Fixie ride or mountainbike rides with my friend John, depending on the mood of the day. When he abandoned me for his other love, running Half Marathons, I had no other choice but to scratch my itch at the Saturday club criterium circus - ah, circuit. :-)

On Sundays, depending on how many more hours and TSS I had up my sleeve, I joined whoever was happy to have me along. If nothing eventuated, I just ventured out on my own, on my favourite Clear Mountain/Bunya loop.

This approach has given me a nice solid base of fitness over the past seven months on which I can now build.

But back to my initial thought about preparing for the Individual Time Trial that is part of the Women's Series in two weeks. I think I will just continue with my non-training approach to training in general but whack some time trial bars on my bike for the odd ride here and there.

After all: why spoil this perfectly good thing I have going on with t r a i n i n g?!

HPRW Women's Series - Road Race Elimbah

Elimbah is a tiny rural community at the foot of the Glasshouse Mountains, just 45 minutes north of Brisbane and the race is a 17 km (give or take) loop with a nice mix of hilly stretches and some straight country roads that can be tricky when the wind blows.

I suggest you get used to race reports on this blog again because yesterday I had a ball.

C-Grade had a good turn-up of 13 or 14 girls lining up at the start. Even though it was an afternoon race, the cold wind sent shivers down my arms and I only reluctantly took the arm warmers off for the relatively short, 30 km race. It wasn't a very fast race, especially for its shortness, but the hills and sometimes strong winds added a bit of spice.

After battling a head-cold all week, I wasn't sure how I would go. That probably made me race more cautiously and I held back more than I would have otherwise, which is a shame (and a lame excuse, I agree). Sure I took my turns at the front and mixed it up a bit here and there but I wish I had raced more aggressively.

The first six kilometers were straight country roads, lined by fields of fruits for Golden Circle juices on one side and tall pine tree forest on the other. I didn't stick my nose out into the head-cross wind once, riding near the gutter with girls next to me who were protecting me from the wind. I was warming up nicely.

Once we turned left and hit the hills, I stayed near the front in case I would get into trouble but the fear was unfounded. I enjoyed climbing the little rollers without being under pressure. I had actually noticed last week at Lakeside already that the hill seemed to give me an opportunity to recover while the fast straight, where everybody hammered it, put me into difficulty and I barely hung on.

There was a lull in the race after the hills. With a tail-cross wind, the bunch moved along nicely, so easy in fact that I almost thought we were out on a Saturday afternoon bunch ride. A few girls got restless like I did and tried some attacks that didn't get anywhere and then there was the "turn around point" and the push into a headwind. Nobody wanted to put their nose in the wind now and I did a bit of work. It would have been a perfect opportunity to try and get away at that point in the race.

I started to tire and the hills gave me the opportunity to recover somewhat. Before I knew it, I was dragging the bunch up a long hill into a head wind. Again I rode within my comfort zone. It was much closer to the finish and I wish I had gone harder, had a little dig instead of playing it safe. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten away, maybe I would have been caught but it would have been more exciting.

And then it's reassuring that I haven't forgotten a thing about sprinting. I'm still making the same mistakes that I always made. Finding myself at the front of the bunch winding up for the sprint with still way too much road left to the line. Yeap, that's me! And then overthinking it when there is no time to think at all, I kept telling myself not to panic and not to open up the sprint too early, just to wait... wait... wait... oooops, there was the finish line!



Lisa, who I beat in the sprint last week, won, and Sharon, a very good time trialist, took second, both for our club Hamilton, which was great to see.

Now I just have to decide how serious I want to take this Women's Series, since 4th place gave me seven points for the series. There is a Individual Time Trial in three weeks time and a Criterium another three weeks after that.

The Itch

I have been having this itch, a 12 months itch, and I have been resisting to scratch because, you know what happens when you scratch an itch: The itch gets worse!

Saturday mornings have been reserved for easy, cruisy, coffee shop rides, but my riding buddy John buggered off to the Gold Coast to run a Half Marathon, and Daniel, who first offered to stand in, cancelled his riding plans, so I felt stranded on lonely road island. With a bad itch!

Alberto said he was meeting a group at Zupps at six to ride out to Lakeside for the race. I said I may join you and race, too. It was meant as a joke. At first!

The fog was hanging low over the lake when we arrived at Lakeside, it looked so pretty with the sun just coming up over the hill. Riders were preparing, pinning numbers, taking arm and leg warmers off, reluctantly, because it was still only just over 10C. The three-day license cost $44, HPRW Club Secretary Wayne said, and if I decided to take out a six months membership for the rest of the year, it would come off that membership anyway. There it was, the itch, very strong now! Irresistibly strong!

Commissaire John walked pass when we lined up, tapped my handlebar slightly and said Good to see you back! Over twelve months... yes, it felt good to be lining up with the other 30 or so C-Graders for a Saturday morning kermesse at my favourite circuit Lakeside. Just for a little bit of fun!

The first two laps felt way to easy, I was up the front, took turns, was comfortable, more comfortable than on some of my recent McAfees Tuesdays in fact. Then I felt my legs tire and Wayne attacked and I stayed glued to his wheel, second wheel, with the bunch strung out behind and I fought not to loose his wheel. In lap four or five, on the hill, riders came around me, lots of riders, and my legs burnt and felt like jelly. I turned around and there was no one behind me anymore. I didn't worry about getting dropped because I was fully prepared that this could happen, with so much easy riding and so little intensity in my legs.

But I didn't get dropped, just hung out there on the cheap seats in the back for a bit, and before long found myself half way up the bunch again. It was like Hey, someone pinch me, am I really here, racing my bike?. Maybe the attacks in the front had stopped, or everybody needed a breather, or I had simply recovered.

Then there was the whistle for the Prime and then Two Laps to go, which I didn't hear or see. The bell took me by surprise, disappointed that it was all over so soon. 40 min had gone by like nothing.

I was somewhere up the field on Trish's wheel, how I got there I don't remember. I recognised a female voice behind me so I knew young Lisa was on my wheel. I didn't know where the other girls were but I couldn't see them ahead of Trish, which sparked a competitive impulse.

Up the hill the last time, my legs felt so good. I went around Trish, passed some guys, latched onto some one's wheel and flew down the hill, getting as much draft as possible to get ahead, away from the other girls. I saw the finish line, thought I had it in my pocket, when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I felt Lisa coming up on my inside. I wasn't going to give that one away, found a little hole and kicked again. I looked over and I was maybe half a wheel ahead, not more than that. Such a close finish and now the itch really only started getting itchy!

There is a HPRW Women's Series starting next Saturday, with a Road Race at Elimbah and a Time Trial and a Criterium to follow later in the month. Glad I've got this three-race license in my pocket...