Out of India

Wow, what an experience. India is truly a world away from anything I have ever experienced. There are no words that could adequately explain the situation there. I stayed in my hotel room while my colleagues toured the city. They borrowed my camera and shot this picture.

After we got off the airplane we had to drive around the airport and it was just crazy. A one lane road that was shared between our van all other opposite bound vehicles and numerous dogs. It was just crazy.

The next day we we arose at 3:30am to make the trek back to the airport. The airport situation there is just horrific. Airline passengers spend an average of 4 hours getting through security and bureaucracy. We were not going to have to do that but it still took over an hour to make it through.

The south Indian people have an interesting way of bobbing their head to the side when they speak. It serves as a sort of punctuation mark on their speech and at times it is a stand alone communication device. We have all been working on our version of it but it is truly unique. As we moved through the airport we noticed a bobble head doll that we just had to have. The day before I was telling the crew about a Yahoo story I had read about Iron Maiden's tour jet. The lead singer is also the pilot and he has this bobble head statue that sits up on the glareshield judging landings by the degree of head bobble. It was agreed that we needed to work on some similar sort of device. This little doll now serves that purpose on our airplane. I call him Rageev.

We are now in Australia after a 10 hour flight. It is fall here. The winds were blowing with temps in the high 40's which is quite a change from our last stop. Driving through the city to the hotel city workers could be seen powerwashing the sidewalks. What a difference.

Chris Aten is one of my athletes and he always likes to hear DJ Tiesto when he tests. I went down for a coffee today and saw this little curry shop across the street. Lunch was found. As I walked out, behold I saw this poster advertising a concert tonight! I should go for Chris but I won't because I hate Tiesto. Chris knows this and never gets offended but I like Chris and out of respect for him I though I would post this pic.

Next Leg

We left Turkey yesterday and flew east two time zones. The place where I am now smells like soiled baby diapers roasting in a 300 degree oven.

Here's a pic snapped during engine start-up in Istanbul. It was a slow go getting out of there. Once airborne we flew across Turkey and into Syria. Syria, Lebanon and Israel have some coast line and green space. Other than this, the Middle East is some of the most lifeless desert I have ever seen. Lebanon seemed especially nice with snow capped mountains and lots of vegetation. Syria was not so nice. Jordan was even worse and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE and Oman were all desolate. Oman looked a lot like some of Arizona with much more mountain and canyon.

The UAE was flat and dry. There was this cool island development near Dubai. You can see this thing on Google Earth pretty clearly.

Below you can see us on final approach to ???.
















I managed a workout today and darn near died. The ergometer I rode had some issues with calibration. That combined with a general state of fatigue combined for a very nasty effort. I suffered for an hour and called it quits. This travel stuff is like chemo. It is a long slow death. What saves you is that the trip ends before too much damage is done. Don't laugh it's true.

Istanbul

Hi all. I am not biking over here. I am almost totally sedentary. Thanks to all who have chimed in with their advice and I agree with the consensus. I think there is little to be gained with long slow distance training. There is a killer health club here at my hotel but, alas, I am completely drained and it is the last day of my rest week. Therefore, I will make every effort to get a tough workout in on Tuesday.

Due to my limited intellectual capabilities I just now realized I have no hope of doing Cone Azalia. My flight arrives home that morning after flying all night home from Honolulu. So, before I have turned a single pedal in anger I am firmly established in last place in the points standing. My only comfort is my team mates are 1, 2 & 3!

Today I had the very great privilege of touring one of the oldest churches in all of Christendom. St. Sophia, or Hagia Sophia as it is also called, was built in the 6th century, (I think), by the emporer Justinian. There were older churches that stood at this same sight but they were destoyed. There are some ruins credited to Theodosius and legend has it that Constantine built the first church there in the fourth century.
We took a taxi from the hotel to the entrance. I paid the driver while the other two pilots and flight attendant exited the cab. They were immediately greeted by a very energetic Turkish carpet salesman. He very quickly singled out our flight attendant for his attempt to tour guide us to his carpet shop. We saw it coming but she didn't. We tried to separate her but the longer she allowed him to shower her with tour guidance the more he was inclined to feel she owed it to him to come to his shop.

The Blue Mosque is across the street facing St. Sophia. He suggested we go there first because it was about to close so we were time limited whereas St. Sophia was open all day. Oh, and guess where his carpet shop is? You guessed it, right next to the Blue Mosque.

We formulated a plan to have her tour the mosque then we would offer a tip to this guy and walk away when she came out and there was always a chance he would give up on her while she was in there. Well, the rains started to pour so now every would be tour guide became an umbrella salesman shouting, "Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella...," at the top of their lungs. Our guy came over to me and I told him I was fine. He took offense to this and said, "What is wrong with you people!"

I found shelter under a portion of the mosque with one of the other pilots away from out guide. When Jan finally came out he came right at here. We tried to tip him away and he became even more offended and said he didn't want out money but that we should go to his shop and look at carpet. I don't need carpet. My wife buys a carpet a week from Meijers which comes from China. I already have exotic Chinese carpet in my house and, now, into my garage as the indoor carpet is replaced.

When we finally got free we had a splendid time touring this magnificent, historic cathedral.

CAKE - The Distance

This song just makes me want to go fast! It disappeared from youtube for a while so enjoy its reappearance.

A Coaching Scenario

Your athlete must go on a business trip that will, literally, take him around the World taking off from his home to the east and return from the west. The day his trip leaves he will be just finishing up his rest and recovery for build phase 2. The following week is Peak 1 then Peak 2 then Race and at the end of that week he will be racing his first A-race of the season. He is a 45 year old cat 3 racer and a pilot crewing a flight. He will fly on the airlines to a join up with a trip. His schedule looks like this:

Friday - Airline travel 7 time zones leaving at 540pm from his home base.
Saturday - Arrive at first destination at 2pm in that time zone. Arrival at his hotel at 4pm.
He will be staying at a hotel with decent exercise equipment.
Sunday - Athlete has this day free but would like to do some sight seeing.
Monday - 3:00 am wakeup call for a 5:30 am departure to fly 7 hours and at least 4 more time zones. He should arrive at his hotel by 6pm that evening. His hotel has decent exercise equipment.
Tuesday - He has an off day scheduled.
Wednesday - 5:00 am wake up for an 8:00am take off to fly 10 hours to the next destination. Arrival there should be at 6pm. The hotel here has good equipment.
Thursday - Off day.
Friday - Fly 10 more hours leaving at 6pm and arriving on Friday at 8am. (Int'l date line)
Saturday - Fly home on the airlines leaving at 6pm arriving at his home around 12pm the next afternoon.

Considering the wear and tear on his body from all the travel, his location in the annual training plan how would you coach your athlete to maximum performance for his upcoming A-race? (BTW let me just say "thanks" in advance! ~ d)

Crusin'

This is my rest and recovery week for build 2 and I am loving it. I rode 3 hours yesterday and 3 hours today front-loading hours in anticipation of my long trip that begins Friday. Today I felt so incredible after all the stress of build.


It was warm but not too warm and the wind wasn't a factor at all. The only complaint might be the presence of swarms of these little bugs that got stuck inside my helmet. This is the kind of day I have been waiting for since last October.

STS #4 Recap

A beautiful day for the last training race before the official season start and it was for sure the best race day of the season weather-wise. James raced and I helped coach the C-race today. Sarah Uhl, (I was going to hyperlink to a website for more info on Sarah but I couldn't settle on one...look her up yerself), was our guest coach so we were able to just hang out and help where needed. James and Alexey absolutely tore it up jumping the field and forming a break that ended up lapping them. They both looked very strong indeed. James took third and Alexey was either fifth or six. They continue to draw ooh's and ah's from folks as they watch these little guys reek havoc on the adults they race with.

As soon as the C's were done I had to run back to Saline to pick up some gear for a rider, then back to Runway, then take James to church, pick up Abby then return to Runway. So, to race the A's today I had to miss church. This wasn't my plan but by the time James was finished Pastor Chuck was into his second sermon point. Jean met me at the entrance of the church for the trade off. She wasn't pleased and she was justified. I royally screwed up everything.

Abby and I hurried back to Runway so I could get some kind of warm up in. If we had a team meeting, I wasn't able to make it.

We had a big field today. I lined up at the very back and the field was 7-8 deep filling the road. I am guessing we 50-60 riders. The field was a good one with riders from the Bissell team joining the fray. I also noticed that dude with the Hooters team who won James' suffer-face contest last year. ( Check that...it might have been Rigdon who took that prize.) Ben Renkama was there along with Bart Carlson and several other Coasties. The Wolverines were very well represented with Danny Klein, Big Ray, Tim Finkel, Kroske and a host of others.

Describing the first half of these crits is getting pretty boring. By now you are getting the picture I think. It was fast, fast, fast then a couple of breaks go, they get caught, the pace slows and a serious attack succeeds. I managed to get into a couple of these little skirmishes that went nowhere. Matches were needlessly burned but I had a lot of confidence that I could recover and go again. My chance came with about 30 minutes left. A Bissell rider had gone off on a flyer. Meanwhile, the pace slowed and I thought, "Shoot, I might as well take a shot here." So that's what I did. I jumped and rode off the front. Now, I have done this a few times in the last two seasons when riding this field but it doesn't seem to be appealing to anybody because no one will ride across to me. I can't blame them. Why should they risk missing a break with known strong riders to join up with me. After I jumped I just rode a shade harder than FTP. No powermeter today but I suspect I was pulling 300-320 watts. Enough to maintain my gap but probably not enough to make it 30 minutes. After nearly 1K off the front Ray Dybowski rode across to me and no one followed. I want to tell you, I feel like Rodney Dangerfield sometimes in that field. "Aw shoot, don't worry about those two. Ray can't make it with that guy. We'll reel them in." When I saw Ray I looked over and said, "C'mon Big Ray, LET'S GO!" And that's what we did. You see, I think Big Ray knew something the others didn't because he and I were in the most hideously painful, (for me that is), break at Ada last year. I think Ray calculated that this might be an opportunity and he capitalized on it guessing the field wouldn't feel threatened.

Well, we threw the hammer down and it was go-time. Before long we reeled in the flyer so now there were three. The riding was excruciatingly painful. After pulling too long once, I yelled as I had to give it all I had to hold the wheel of the guy in front of me. I heard some time gaps yelled out and I wasn't impressed with what I was hearing then silence. We held out all the way down to 2 laps to go. Somewhere in here an Essex Brass rider rode across to us and just kept going. I think it was Bruce Rivera. Anyway, no way I could hold his wheel as I was fading fast. I got back with Ray and we worked together to try and stay away. The field was closing fast and I knew it was going to be close. The entire last lap I was huffing and puffing the same way I do when collapsing on the graduated exercise test. The Essex Brass rider stayed away, the Bissell rider took second, Ray got third and I took fourth. We made it but by a hair's breath. It was close. The field sprint missed me by feet. I'll take it though.

Now 4th place in a training race isn't much to get excited about but finishing in front of a very strong field like that does give me a sense of accomplishment and if nothing else, perhaps others will take a chance on me in the future.

I didn't get a chance to hear about our team's work back in the field. If anyone can post up a comment on the race from that perspective it would be nice. My guess is the SLC boys were doing their best to gum-up the works back there.

Tmax

it,s Saturday night and tomorrow will be the final workout in Build 2. Friday afternoon I wandered back into O2 depravation mode with 8 Tmax intervals. It was very hard but very gratifying. I lost count and wasn't sure if I had 1 or 2 more to finish. So, I added up the total time I should have ridden to that point. We'll see when I get to read the file.

We did some TT work out at Willow this morning with the AAVC junior team. James looked very good. I predict a sub-34 minute time for him. I rode my new TT bike around trying to get the feel for it. It's getting better but still feels a bit foreign to me.

Tomorrow's final STS looks to be epic with perfect weather and decent form.

Fading to Grey

One of my goals in build phase is to make it to 8 Tmax intervals. I inched ever closer by finishing seven last night. It wasn't easy after rep #3 but I was able to hold my target power output through all the intervals. I had at least one more in me I think but I'll save that for another effort. By the time I got to the last 30 seconds on each interval I started to do that "huff and puff" thing we do when we are going for a max effort.

Today I am sitting in Louisville. The Master's Nationals are going to be held here this summer so yesterday I drove to Cycler's Cafe to see if anyone knew anything about the courses. The road course is going to be through a hilly metro park near Lexington and Grinstead.

The crit will be downtown and the TT starts from some casino over in Indiana.

Bad Weather

Build 2 week 2 came to a close today. The weekend racing was disrupted by winter's resurgence. Yesterday we had temps in the 30's and rain all day. This morning I woke up to snow. That notwithstanding, I went to Runway Plaza to coach the C's and was amazed to see 10 or so hardy soles ready to mix it up! Pretty impressive really. These guys area all new to racing but I think they are fully hooked after three weeks or racing. The wind was pretty nasty but the snow made judging wind direction very easy.

I gave serious thought to racing the A's but I didn't make it back from church in time. The field was chopped up pretty badly. The winning break got off with Big Ray, Tim Finkel, Pete Shilling and Larry Warbasse. Ray did what he does and just motored off the front with a couple of laps to go. My money was on Peter Shilling to win the sprint but Ray forced the issue.

After, we had a junior practice with a great young rider who came all the way from Grand Rapids to ride with us. That's commitment.

Waterford #2 A-Race Finish

Better late than never!

waiting

Here's a post from my Blackberry. BB and I are sitting in my car waiting for his youth group posse to arrive. 16 minutes late so far.

Last night called for 4 fifteen minute zone 4 intervals. I got the first one and collapsed and had to stop the workout. I was so completely wasted. I tried so hard to listen to the coach and not the athlete. I knew the right thing to do was to stop. Today I am still feeling off and elected to take a rest day instead of driving myself deeper into this nasty fatigue I am experiencing. I need more sleep than I have been getting. I think getting up Monday @ 230am and going to bed at 1130pm that night tool more out of me than I first thought.

Waterford #2

This was our first foray into the racing at the Waterford Raceway. This is a race course for cars but it serves us well as bike racing venue.

James went first and raced like a banshee in the C-racing. He was in the hunt as they headed for the sprint. Unfortunately he was crashed out a couple of hundred meters from the finish. When I realized he didn't make it to the finish I scanned the course for him found him in the grass. When we got to him he was sitting up struggling to breath. I made him lay back down to recover from the trauma. After a few more minutes he was able to breath easily again and get up. Zach brought in the camera and interviewed him. I think he has that on his blog if you haven't checked it out yet.

My race was an hour and thirty minutes plus 2 laps. Danny Klein flew off the front from the whistle. I couldn't believe it. We had a ton of racing and we were already flying. I rung up 330 watts for the first five minutes. That is zone 5 for me meaning I had about 6-7 minutes before things were going to start blowing up. Thankfully, my power requirement dropped down to 280 watts for the next five minutes which was manageable. Joe told me to hang onto Ben Renkema which sounded like a good idea but for how long? Look, this was a long race and there were a lot of turns and acts of aggression but in the end, none of the breaks were successful and it all came down to a field sprint. My legs felt great and I had a decent sprint left. Vince Roberge led me up to the front and I launched from several riders back. I didn't have any chance against the class of the field but I moved up some and finished in eighth place. Our own John Rigdon took 7th.

Overall, it took 281 watts of normative power and I averaged 161 beats per minute for one hour and thirty seven minutes. Phew! It hurt but I finished feeling fairly strong. I wish I had more time to write about the race but I just ran out of time. I hope to get some video up of the finish tomorrow.

A Total Failure

So I am determined to get to work fund raising for the MS150 today. I send out an email to over 100 people only to have the whole thing barf up on me. Outlook shows that the message never went out. Meanwhile, others contacted me to tell me they got up to 15 copies of the same message over 15 minutes! Geez, what can you do? Now I don't know who all got the 15 messages and who got none. Just $100 more and I can ride.