Another Weekend of Spring

Well I guess T.I.W (This Is Winnipeg). Sub-zero temperatures on Friday and +5 on Saturday and temp is rising again today. Waiting till noon before heading out to avoid the chilliness. Had a surprisingly good ride yesterday, kinda one of those "no chain days", and was able to hit it really hard for 2 x 30'. This was surprising because I've felt bit off this week and went to a social on Friday night. Sometimes slight hangover boosts the fuel tank just right, but that's as hard to do as trying to fix diarrhea by farting.

Went to scout the Bird's Hell race course and it appears that park people decided to place huge rocks in two spots, I guess to prevent red necks from ripping up and down the bike path in their pick-ups, but I need to ask those to be removed at least for one day or I need to come up with plan B. The originally planned course is as close to those Belgian races as possible here in Manitoba, no bunch sprints on that course.

Need to start building my TT bike as well. Or just the bar end shifters and brake levers. Just some Shimano friction bar end shiters paired up with SRAM brake levers. Should be pretty good. Then need to keep an eye out for UCI legal bar combo. Those bastards just make the life difficult for those who actually need to buy their own equipment. Sucks c**k out of a car door to spend hundreds or even thousands of $/€ and find out after couple of months that you are not allowed to use that widget in a race.

I'm also looking for a new pair of wheels. Need to be carbon, tubular, 50mm or taller and good quality that will last more than first pot hole. I'll lace the rear on to my 24h PT hub so rear hub doesn't add any value in this case. FFWD and Edge are the strongest candidates at the moment, mainly because rims are available separately and I wouldn't need to buy 24h rear hub in the complete wheel.

But off to the roads I go. Remember to stretch.

Back in the Basement

Normal Winnipeg spring weather forced me back to the basement. Or actually it was the dark because wifey is sick and little chica had too much energy to burn tonight, meaning that I was strongly advised not to go outside to play. And it was hard to go back to trying to be entertained by Paris-Nice while pushing through intervals. It's so much easier outside. So my return to trainer looks like below (there was a bit of a suffer-fest yesterday for 90min). All I can say is that I'm not an evening training type of guy.


Had pretty good weekend though. On Sunday I rode to the park and hooked up first with Dave, Eric and Brad, but they were just finishing their ride and then I rode for few laps with Marian and Lifesport train. Good ride and tons of people in the park since it was the first spring Sunday of the year. Marian has been coaching the Boy and trying to train himself as well. He has a full-time job though so he can't train the way he used to before. The Boy is in good condition though, might be a good season coming up in the duck pond. Below is a photo of my Sunday ride. I finished the ride by towing little lady in the Chariot behind my MTB and that combination works pretty well when riding with the wife. She can actually drop me on the hills on her CX with road tires.


And again I got some feedback from my faithful fans. Apparently leaving the numbers out is childish and cocky. It's nice that at least someone reads my blog but I'm terribly sorry if my stories upset those readers. I guess I'm getting old because I feel kinda guilty for upsetting people with my blog rambling. Thank you for the feedback though, I'll do my best to meet your expectations.

Good night.

First Ride Outside on My Road Bike

Pretty weird. It's March 14th and I'm about to go out on my second training ride outside on my road bike. This wouldn't be that special anywhere else, but last three years, while living here in the prairies, I've been shackled on my trainer this time of year. Yesterday it got up to +11 or +12 and it was pretty nice with sun and not much wind. Can't complain.

So all the highways are dry here and even the River Road was pretty good. Quite a bit of melt water on the road though so I won't be riding there today. It's pretty wet inside the city still but all the snow should be gone by the end of the week. Here's a picture from River Road. What makes me even happier is low water level in the river...shouldn't need to stress about flood this year and no roads blocked by water.


Of course I got bit excited, because of the good weather, and my first road ride outside and overcooked my first interval a bit. It just felt too good and the damage was done before I noticed anything. Had to take the second interval bit easier but kept going 10 minutes longer. So 28 and 38 minutes at bit below my threshold. Trying to get that 60 min of threshold/SST work in every outdoor session now. I removed all the power/speed/HR/torque/cadence numbers off the picture below because I've received some feedback about them in one of my previous posts. Smoothing in the picture is 30".


So this 60' of threshold/SST per outdoor session will be the meat and potatoes of my training for next 8-10 weeks. Local races will help me with non-structured VO2 training starting mid-April and I'll start my structured VO2 training at the beginning of May. Then it's pretty simple. Bikes on Broadway 4 weeks before nationals and hopefully few races at America's Dairy Land a week before nationals. I wasn't really thinking about training too hard once the season gets going. Just do the local MTB races for training and then Tuesday night crit' and two other rides during the week.

MTB enduros are pretty good training though. I need to pin it at high SST just to keep up with the more agile MTB guys. Being overweight = good training on MTB when trying to follow those more cyclist looking guys on the trails. And MTB enduro stands for MTB marathon locally here in Manitoba. Don't confuse it with MTB enduro familiar to Finnish guys.

Most important goal for me is to get rid of few more kilos. 75kg by the end of May would be OK and I can get there pretty easily. 73kg would be better, but that takes some more commitment. 70kg would be great, but that is little too much. I guess 500g/week is good pace without killing yourself so 11 weeks x 500g = 5500g. Doesn't look that bad...

OK...enough of this rambling and off to a training ride.

p.s. After the winter and parking spots covered with snow, some of the fellow 'peggers have as hard time parking their beloved trucks as they have allowing cyclists onto THEIR roads. Good for him only blocking two spots. My wife didn't let me take another picture later on that would have explained this inability to maneuver a vehicle.

New Challenges

Long time silence on this blog, sorry about that. I started a new job at the beginning of the month and before that I had to take advantage of my week long winter holiday and finally drywall the kitchen ceiling and one wall upstairs. So I've been busy to try and get my training in and geeking has been put on back burner.

Season is getting closer and basement is getting smaller and smaller. Luckily the worst of the winter seems to be behind us now and at least the next week shoud be nice and sunny. I'll try to write something interesting this weekend while watching Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne.

ISM Adamo Saddle

I just received the new "toy" on Monday. It's a ISM Adamo Racing saddle that is supposed to prevent numbness in man parts. The saddle looks rather exotic or tri or at least not very good, but after hearing only good about this saddle I had to give it a shot. So my Arione had to give way to the new kid at least on a trainer and this Adamo will be my designated TT saddle on my Norco. To make things even better, this saddle is pink. My wife named the saddle "pink taco"...

I'm still adjusting the saddle, but after the first ride it feels rather comfortable and definitely less numbness than with Arione or SLR in trainer use. The saddle feels bit weird because all the weight is on sit bones and the boys are hanging loose. So far I'm quite impressed and it should be even better on TT bike compared to other saddles.

State of the sport (in smaller communities)

So this tends to grind my gears...

Small community sport scene is really suffering. I would use our dear Manitoba/Winnipeg scene as an example even if it may upset some people. This is the only scene I have a real insight at the moment so I can't really comment anything else.

Some seem to think that you can buy sporting events, but in smaller communities like Winnipeg's, it just doesn't work that way. Well at least not at a reasonable cost. Or actually the reasonable cost varies between individuals. The problem is, that in smaller communities, the willing payers' group isn't enough to make things roll. Since there is no way to make sport consumerism happen in Manitoba, there needs to be volunteers to keep racing scene going. Or you could buy sport events, but the cost would be something completely different than current $10-20 entry fees.

If things seem rosy to you, there are minimum standards set for all the organizers to meet. This again is all good, as long as there would be organizers to meet these standards. I was just wondering where the organizers will come from since breaking even will be extremely difficult. Standards will effectively block all the hopes of organizing long loop races under MCA. It almost seems that those, who laid out these standards, have never organized a road race. Maybe there hasn't been any input from the people who have organized road races. Just saying...

Well see what happens...

I should add that the other smaller cycling communities are facing the same issues. Many of those have even greater challenges with increase in traffic and more difficult permit processes etc. While the external factors are making race organizing more difficult, the internal factors are adding to the issue. Finding volunteers must be more or less a global challenge and if consumers are not willing to pay enough to hire course marshalls etc. the challenge might become a problem.

My Winter Training, Part 2.

Now that I managed to get sick again and have to take a bit of a training break, I need to battle the old nemesis, that is weight/fat/lard.

In winter time the activity level goes down quite a bit and you spend more time sitting on a couch with a fridge just couple of steps away. And many will get sick too. Add smaller training volume to the equation, because most can't spend more than 90min on a trainer, and going out to ski or snowshoe in -30 temperature, just to keep your weight down, is not too appealing either. This whole mess tends to do terrible things to your waist line. This sure as hell is demanding time for me, but I've found couple of tricks that should help.

These are my 7 P's of weight control.

1. Planning (Eating Schedule)
I know I know...It shouldn't matter when you eat, only the total energy intake matters. Eating schedule helps with this though because you won't be eating snacks all night and you have a plan laid out. Extra energy is easy to take in at night and not eating all those extra snacks may well make the difference between gaining or losing weight. Big breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and light supper tends to work pretty good for me.

2. Proper Diet
Don't eat sugar. Especially if most of your training is on a trainer and you get 10h/week at best. You just don't need too much carbohydrates to keep you going and I would hazard a guess that most people eat way too much bread, pasta, rice etc. in winter time. Also don't eat animal fat. Animal fat has over twice as many calories per gram than carbohydrates.

3. Phunger
This gets bit tricky. I need to be hungry pretty much all the time in winter to lose couple of kilos. This is very personal though because some have better genetics and don't need to torture themselves to keep the weight in check.

4. Peer
Yeah...about that. You can't have beer if you want to slim down. Beer has more energy than rocket fuel, but usually beer is consumed in such circumstances that minimal energy is required. Other alcoholic drinks are no better but beer tends to be the most regularly consumed alcohol beverage. So don't drink beer, wine etc

And actually, don't drink soda, energy drinks or other sugary goo either. Well, why would you drink that stuff anyway?

5. Palance
You need to eat enough to keep your metabolism going. If you try to starve yourself, your body will switch to energy saving mode and that's not good.

6. Pregular Training
Another used-to-be-beneficial mechanism in human body is atrophy. That is the ability to start breaking down the not-used cells after 24-72 hours. Nowadays you don't need this ability but evolution is a slow beast to change these things. You need to train regularly all the time to keep things going. You don't want your body to turn the energy saving mode on. This is why it's better to train in blocks of 2-3 days and have adequate rest every week instead of Soviet style 3+1 system where you train hard for three weeks and rest for one week. And seriously, how many non-pro guys with full-time job and life outside of cycling, can plan and execute such a long training schedule?

7. Protein
If you're hungry all the time like I am, you may want to do something about it. No I don't mean cigarettes to suppress the hunger, I mean whey protein isolate. 30g of this stuff takes the hunger away really well but doesn't have too many calories. Some people like to drink diet soda but I think that the protein works better.

Now I just need to do what I need to do and that's the hard part. My aim is to be 73kg by the time of nationals at the end of June so we'll see.