the Tour of Sufferlandria

 

Saturday

 

Well…  before we even started I thought it a good idea to go out and do the normal Saturday Group ride…  and normally I ride to and from the ride because…  well…  I see no good reason to bring a car into this:

 

 

Most of the guys who normally do the Saturday Lodge ride were either doing the road Race in Deland or the Ididaride (mountain bike race) in Lake City or just simply decided to stay indoors on this Belgium like day…  overcast, high 30s to low 40s with some rain thrown in…  we ended up with about 18 riders at our peak on a ride that boasts almost 100 on a sunny summer day…  of these 18 only 10 or so hung on for the whole ride and really on about 6 of us took regular turns… 

 

Well that taken care of…  a beer some lunch and a nap later we stared the Tour with a fitness test… 

 

Sufferfest Rubber Glove

 

If you are beginning to think that I'm stupid you are astute.

 

Basically a little warm-up, a few FTP intervals, then an all-out 20 minute test to help you calibrate your FTP

 

 

A piece of cake…  and my 20 minute "consistent" effort is laughable..  I was all over the place.

 

Sunday

 

We had to get up early and knock this out before church…

 

I know…  a 12 hour turnaround from the "Rubber Glove"…ugh

 

Sufferfest ISLAGIATT

 

ISLAGIATT = "It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time"  yes aptly titled…  1:57 minutes….  I felt like a bus had hit me…  5 minutes into the workout I figured out how to turn down the target power to 90%... That is why the blue power profile is higher than my yellow actual output… and that is why I survived

 

 

I took a nice nap and really didn't feel like playing golf in the afternoon… but I did…

 

Monday

 

We slept in on Monday morning and opted to do the Monday stage after work… It was a good choice because I think this was the hardest cardio workout of the week… after the second interval I really didn't think that I would be able to complete it.

 

Sufferfest Revolver

 

Tuesday

 

Another quick turnaround because Tuesday is Guana ride day so we did the stage before work.  Since I felt pretty beaten up by this point and I really didn't want to get shelled by the first accelerations by the group at Guana..,.  I turned my FTP down a few notches to give me a bit of a tempoish ride instead of a threshold ride… 

Sufferfest Hell Hath No Fury

 

Guana

 

Only 3 of us showed…  the other two are better riders than I…  yet we all rode down together at a nice tempo… then... on the way back in the cold rain my rear tire blew… seven miles from my car..  blowing out the sidewall of my tire in the process… so I had to pedal back with a flat alone (the guys did wait on me at the cars)

 

Wednesday

 

Started with an unscheduled recovery spin in the morning…  nice and easy

 

The actual workout was a double…which we did after work... yay!

 

 

Thursday

 

I was feeling a bit better by Thursday and had turned my FTP back up a bit… I also think that this was my favorite video and workout…  I pretty much nailed it

 

 

Friday

 

Doubleshot again on Friday… only this time we split them one in the AM and one in the PM

 

 

An hour each of mostly climbing…  I was trying to save energy for Saturday

 

Saturday

 

Once again I dug a nice hole for myself by doing 63 miles on the road

 

 

I took my pulls…  even contested the sprint…  but followed wheels a little more than usual.

 

 

As the name indicates and the profile backs up the Blender workout is a little bit of everything mashed into an hour and 45 minutes… Oddly I felt pretty good for this one…

 

Sunday

 

The Coup de grâce

 

Basically an hour of intervals…  some hard…  some a bit easier…  and one set where I blew up halfway through and just drooled and gasped as I missed 3 intervals in a row…

 

 

We finished just in time to shower and turn on the Super Bowl

 

 

Direct Link: http://www.trainerroad.com/tour-of-sufferlandria/cowartm

 

January - Consistency

56 hours of cycling

6.5 hours of strength and mobility

A couple of runs

 

That breaks out to about 16 hours a week.

 

 

And 13ish hours a week on the bike

 

 

A solid base to build on.

 

I will say this for trainingpeaks.com - I like the graphs

The great "in-of-doors"

So as I set of in my quest to become a bike racer..  I quickly realized that I needed to do something to help me quantify, qualify, entertain, and edutain me while pedaling indoors this winter…

 

I hear you…  I really do…  and I know that I live in Florida and should simply get outside and ride…  but…  I do have a real job and it is dark a lot in winter even in sunny Florida. 

 

I had heard about the Sufferfest (more on that in a separate post) videos and a google search for the videos led me to http://www.trainerroad.com

 

 

I thought…  hey this looks like it might be intersting…  and a pretty cheap way to train using power and heartrate.

 

I checked out the steps:

 

http://www.trainerroad.com/getting-started

 

and got started.

 

I'd like to begin by saying that I'm no DCRainmaker J

And he has done a pretty in depth review…

Here:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2011/09/inside-look-at-trainerroad-way-to-make.html

and here:

http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/02/weekend-wrap-up-trainerroad-cold-dc.html

 

this is just an overview of how this worked for me.

 

The ingredients…

 

Easy enough to put together

1. Trusty MacBook

 

 

2.  ANT+ Usb Stick (recieves data from other devices)

I actually had one of these laying around from one of my dozen or so dead Garmin devices I've collected over the last 10 years.

 

 3.  Speed cadence sensor

 

 4.  HRM Strap – yep I had this too…

 

 

5.  And of course a trainer:

 

So I installed the software and paired my devices:

 

 

Which took all of 5 minutes….

 

I learned after a workout or two that my favorite configuration while riding was music via iTunes

 

 

Throw in a bike race on YouTube…  with the volume at halfway on each…  so Phil, Paul, or Sean Kelly or whomever was talking over Blink 182…  but that works for me.

 

 

All the while my workout data is displayed atop the video on the bottom of the screen.

 

 

The pain cave

 

 

Baby I'm a blur

 

 

So once you are finished…  your workout is automagically uploaded to trainerroad.com…  and one can geek over their data as much as one wants… and then download (see the buttonJ)

 

 

A nice .tcx file that can then be uploaded to trainingpeaks.com…  just drag and drop baby!

 

 

Where you can geek out some more…

 

 

Well…   that's pretty much it…  I invested about $30 for a speed/cadence sensor…  used some other stuff I had laying around…  signed up for trainerroad.com ($10/month) and I now have a system where I am challenged, measured, documented and entertained…  and since I ride the trainer 5-7x per week during the winter…  I think that it's a pretty good deal.

 

And for just a few dollars more…  I got my cute little training partner set up too

 

 

After doing a couple of rides…  she decided that we should do this:

 

I'll write about that next time.

 

2013

The numbers

 

Swim: an hour or so total

Bike: 240 hours ~4000 miles

Run:  1850 miles ( zero in December)

 

the first year I remember that I did not capture a Goals List

 

oh, I had goals  just the Same but without a list it's a bit harder to reflect.

 

so….

 

what went well?

 

1.  I think I was a better dad in 2013….  might be my best year yet…  not the easiest… Parenting is hard…  really hard…   and not just hard to do…  hard to know if you are even on the right track.  

 

oh I do love the parents of second graders who think they have it all figured out…. I simply smile and nod…  they will see one day

 

these days with an 18 year old…  and a 20 year old I find myself listening more, asking more questions, and giving gentle advice….  a tectonic shift from the "drill sergeant dad" i once was…

 

2.  Career is going okay too… I count myself very lucky…  I have a job that is rewarding, coworkers and a staff that I really like and enjoy interacting with, yet my job does not control my life.  win-win

 

3.  I am also oh so fortunate to be married to the sweetest woman on the planet…. peace, love, and harmony at home….  the richest blessing anyone could ask for

 

4.  RATS was once again a tremendous journey…  both the training for and the trip/race…  memories and lessons to hold dear for a lifetime…  yet after 3 trips the desire to run through the desert has left me.  I sucked at being an ultrarunner this year…  yet I finished in the top 5 overall in the only two 5ks I did…  maybe I should think about that…

 

5.  I have made some new friends… after RATS my running quite literally fell apart…  Cycling is what I wanted to concentrate on for a while and to that end Judi and I started riding with one of the cycling groups here in town…  in the past few months I have met a bunch of people and am really having a blast riding 2-3 times a week with these guys…

 

Okay…

we have started this off on a positive note…  good.

 

The one thing that will forever define 2013 is the loss of my mother…

 

I've lost aunts and uncles, grandparents, and cousins…  even a couple of friends along the way… but never anyone so close….  And really who could be closer?

 

I've seen other lose their parents and while I have felt for them…  in the back of my mind I've always thought…  "well..  it's the natural order of things…  they knew it was going to happen…  they should really just get over it"  and there you have it friends…  in the back of my mind I'm an asshole

 

Nine months on…  and I still tear up at a memory…  a "I'm going to ask my mom about" this that or the other thought that I have…

 

I would write some more and try and wrap this up on a positive note but I don't really have anything else to say about 2013…  so let's just do a picture show

 

January:

Lots o stairmilling

 

February:

Breast Cancer Marathon in memory of an old friend

 

March:

Running in the rain with Jimmy

 

April:

Mom

 

May:

Self-supported midnight Marathon

 

June:

Another great week with our RATS Family

 

July:

 

Golf

 

August:

 Key West with my youngest

 

 

September: 

Group Ride to Amelia on Labor Day

 

October:

 

Muddy Cyclocross

 

November:

Bike crash on the Guana Ride

 

December:

 

 

Late Friday afternoon solo ride

 

  
 

Not Running

 

 

Hello my name is Michael and I am an alcoholic Runner.

 

Everyone in unison: ("Hi Michael")

 

Today I am happy here to say that I've been sober  not running for 37 days.

 

::polite applause::

 

HoBoy…

 

I hear many people say that running is hard….  But *not running* is no cakewalk for me…

 

Ya see…  I love to run…  I'm a natural introvert… I need that time…  and while I have been cycling a lot…  lifting weights and staying really active…  nothing can completely replace the place that I can go within myself, a kind of personal cocoon, when I'm running.

 

 

I have really not taken any significant (more than 3-4 days in a row) off running in probably 15 years with the exception of what turned out to be a torn quad in 2011 (http://allaboutpace.blogspot.com/2011/03/21-days-in-rehab.html ) and even then I spent a significant amount of time doing "running type" training (elliptical etc)  Yep that's right sportsfans since I quit smoking back in 1996 I have really not taken a break…  and  It. Has. Been. Fabulous.  J

 

So why now?

 

Well…  to say that I over-trained in the first 6 months of 2013 would be a bit of an understatement…  and all the while… one niggling injury here…  bad knee creaking everywhere…  and an ache and pain there…  led to a compensation in running form and a weird snowballing effect of awesome aerobic capacity that I could no longer physiologically support…

 

So…  I've backed off…  working on Balance, core, strength, flexibility….  And cycling

 

I will be a runner again soon.