tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83040153297186610142024-03-08T11:01:59.125-08:00Musings of a CycloticSteve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-19051365477304903122013-02-11T14:48:00.001-08:002013-02-11T14:48:52.779-08:00Coming Back From The Dead Is A Lot Of !@$!#%&! Work!!The title says it all! Yeah, I haven't posted anything since the start of the year - and you know why? It's because I'm working so hard to get back into shape! You know who says exercise is fun? The ones that are already in shape - and have paid their dues a long, long time ago and forgot how much work it took for them to get into such good shape in the first place! Yeah, you know who you are ...<br />
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Then there are the rest of us - maybe someone like myself, who *used* to be in great shape - especially when I was road racing just a few years ago, back in 2007/2008 - if you wanted to do a road race, you could not just be a "weekend warrior" type cyclist - you needed to *train* - a lot - as much as possible - including 2 or 3 days during the weekdays (somehow) ... and that means you had to get out there and ride in conditions that are not exactly "ideal", i.e., raining (and raining hard, not just sprinkles), fierce wind storms, super cold mornings (like temps down in the 30s type cold), blazing hot afternoons in the summer (if that is the only time slot you had open to get in your training ride), etc.<br />
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Yeah - those hours spent training for my road races were a lot of work - then I stopped cycling one day, back in 2008, when I burned out on a training ride (I was training for my 4th Death Ride in July of that year - it's a 130 mile "fun" ride, where you do more than 15,000 feet of climbing by riding up and over 5 different Sierra passes - all between 5500 and 9000 feet elevation - totally *cruel* - but still, "fun") ...<br />
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So here I am, post heart surgery - trying to desperately get back to some semblance of my old self - I don't expect to race again (at least, it's not showing up on my calendar right now) - but it would be nice to get back into decent cycling shape - like maybe 80% or 90% of my max fitness back in the 2007 timeframe (that's when I set most of my cycling records - best times up various climbs, etc.) ...<br />
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And there is no doubt about it - coming back is hard work - regardless of whether or not you've had heart surgery - just ask any cyclist that has been off their bike for a few years and then tries to get back into shape (especially after gaining the requisite 30 to 50 pounds, as I did) - it's a *lot* of work! My only consolation is that one day (about 1 year from now, I am estimating), I will be able to look back at all the hard work I'm doing this year and say, "Yeah - it was hard, but worth it!" - I can't wait to say those magic words, for sure!<br />
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But right now, I cannot issue that statement - I can only marvel at how hard it is to ride my bike up a small (but tough) climb - like the end of Rodeo Gulch, for example - that is what I did yesterday.<br />
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One of my biking buddies, Mike, and I decided that we would try a classic ride that we used to do years ago (Mike was one of the guys I rode with on a regular basis - it was easy, since he lives right there in my neighborhood!) - the ride we chose for yesterday's adventure was the Rodeo Gulch - Granite Creek classic ride - we head out from Scotts Valley, bobble over the little rollers on Green Hills road, glide down Glen Canyon into Santa Cruz, then wind our way along the foothills until we get to Rodeo Gulch (just off of Soquel) - we turn onto Rodeo Gulch and then do the 4.2 mile climb up to the top of Rodeo Gulch, where you get a spectacular view of the entire world (well, Santa Cruz, at least) - and this was a beautiful morning - sunny - but really, really cold! - like high 30s, low 40s type cold ... <br />
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Now, the climb up Rodeo Gulch is 4.2 miles - and the average grade is just 3.5% - which sounds like a piece of cake - but it's deceptive because the road gradually gets steeper and steeper towards the end - and then you hit "the mailbox" - yeah, that nasty mailbox - the one where you make a small right turn - and then you get hit with the last 0.7 miles - but that last part of the climb averages about 10% - and that's a lot more work than doing a 3.5% grade type of climb - a *lot* more - in fact, it's so much more work, that I was riding just under 4 mph for that last part - 4 mph! I mean, a lot of people can almost walk that fast - but I did not walk- I pedaled the whole time, stroke by stroke - until I hit the top of the climb - and then I met up with Mike (who had zoomed up ahead of me, since he's in much better climbing shape than me right now) - and we enjoyed a little break, munching on our gels (yum!) and drinking a lot of water - and enjoying the amazing views from our little perch on top of the world (or, so it seemed) ...<br />
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Then we ride along Rodeo Gulch at the top, where it just rolls gently - and finally descends a short distance to the end of the road, where it meets up with the intersection of Mtn View Rd and Laurel Rd - we hang a left (which is Mtn View Rd) - and do a fun drop down to Branciforte - then we saunter along Branciforte, which on average drops down some more (but ever so gently) until we get to Granite Creek - and then we do the Granite Creek climb back up into Scotts Valley.<br />
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The whole ride is only about 22+ miles - but it is also just about 2200 feet of climbing - in other words, it's a classic ride for us, where we do 1000 feet of climbing for every 10 miles we ride - that rule of thumb works out quite well for the vast majority of our rides, since from Scotts Valley, you either drop down into Santa Cruz for some ride - and have to ride back up to Scotts Valley - or you climb out of Scotts Valley and head up to the top of the Santa Cruz mountains, where you can then go either north or south and find some nice roads to get you back to Scotts Valley (and we have dozens of variations that we do for our various loops).<br />
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Well, I expected the Granite Creek climb to be tough - it is actually 2 climbs - one smaller one that is about 0.5 miles in length and then a bigger climb that is a bit longer - and definitely has a steeper average grade - but I had ridden Granite Creek a couple of times since my heart surgery - and had survived the climbs. So I knew I could get up those 2 climbs - I simply expected that due to my butt getting kicked by the Rodeo Gulch climb (which would soften up my legs a lot), I was going to do that Granite Creek climb at an all-time slow speed.<br />
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But - good news! - and this is where I can (ever so slowly) see actual progress happening in my comeback - I did those 2 Granite Creek climbs faster than my 2 previous attempts - I took 20 seconds off that first climb and 40 seconds off the second climb - woohoo!!!!<br />
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So this demonstrates to me, quite clearly, that I am getting stronger - it's all relative, of course - and compared to a few years ago, my times still royally suck - but they aren't quite as sucky (is that a word?) as they were when I first started riding back in November of last year.<br />
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As such, although I still cannot issue those magic words ("Yeah - it was hard, but worth it!"), I can at least say, "Yeah - it was hard, but one day down the road, it will be worth it!" - and that's all I have to say today... :)<br />
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Keep on cycling! And a corollary - once you get back into good cycling shape, don't ever stop!<br />
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<br />Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-85434891761301598802013-01-02T14:33:00.000-08:002013-01-02T14:33:29.224-08:00There's Nothing Like Setting a New PB on New Year's Day - On A Recovery Ride, Nonetheless !The title says it all! One of my biking buddies, Mike, and I decided to ride for the 3rd day in a row - and it was the 1st day of the New Year, 2013 - we figured to do a nice little recovery ride. That's where you just spin along in a comfortable gear, talking all the time - and never trying to work too hard - even on the climbs.<br />
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We thought we'd do 25 to 30 miles (it ended up smack in the middle - 27 miles for me, 28 miles for Mike, who rode down to my house to meet me - and then rode back after dropping me off at my house at the end of the ride). And, we decided on doing the ride down to the harbor area of Santa Cruz (Crow's Nest Restaurant, to be exact) via Glen Canyon and then back the same route. That would be a 21-mile round trip, so we thought we'd do a couple of loops around Scotts Valley (Scotts Valley Drive and Green Hills Road) to get those extra miles (and a little extra climbing feet) done.<br />
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And, we stuck to the plan - until we didn't. Well, Mike stuck to the plan - but then, he's in a lot better shape than I am right now. I'm the one that veered off the plan, but it was totally unintentional! As planned, we did an easy spin down to the Crow's Nest Restaurant in Santa Cruz - and, as planned, we noodled our way back towards Scotts Valley at an easy, conversational pace.<br />
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But then, when we started the Glen Canyon climb (to get back up into Scotts Valley from Santa Cruz), I started out exactly as we had planned - spinning an easier gear on the climb - and we would have stuck to the plan - except I seemed to get into this total rhythm - the climb up Glen Canyon is uneven - it's not a very hard climb - the grade is fairly mild and it sort of rolls up and down, doing more rolling up than rolling down - and there are a couple of spots where it pitches up a bit (but again, pitching up is not to suggest we hit these steep, 15% sections - it just pitches up from 2% or 3% to maybe 6% or 7% - and only for a very brief time). When I hit those little parts where it pitches up, rather than drop down a gear (to keep the spinning on the lighter and easier side, as planned), I just kept it in the same gear and just pushed a bit harder on those sections where it steepened a bit - for whatever reason, it just wasn't all that hard - and the rhythm felt good - not changing gears on a climb can allow you to sometimes keep a nice rhythm going - assuming the changes in pitch are not too severe, of course - and this was the case with Glen Canyon - the "steep" parts are not really all that steep - just a little steeper than other parts. Overall, it really is the easiest climb to get back up to Scotts Valley.<br />
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So here I was, motoring along in this nice rhythm - and breathing a little harder as a result - I had noticed our riding time (1:02:40) as we started the "official" climb of Glen Canyon - and at some point during the climb (like, after the last main part that pitches up briefly), I looked at the riding time and thought there was a reasonable chance I could do a new (relative) PB for that climb - and the funny part is that I had just done a new (relative) PB on that climb the day before, which was the LAST day of 2012! <br />
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My very best time (ever) on that climb was <a href="http://app.strava.com/rides/27901704#">14:19</a>, done back in early 2007. My very first time, post heart surgery, was <a href="http://app.strava.com/rides/27462672#">22:26</a>. My end of the year PB (relative) for 2012 was <a href="http://app.strava.com/rides/35026067#">21:12</a> - and according to what I saw on my cyclometer, it looked like I could possible hit about 20 minutes for the climb I was doing - on our recovery ride, nonetheless - and the first ride of 2013 - how cool! Mike could tell that I had gone into a different mode - he sensed that I was going for a new PB, so he just motored along with me.<br />
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My breathing never got labored - just a nice steady rhythm - and pushing it a bit more than planned - and just as we hit the end of the climb, I realized I had done right around 20 minutes - in fact, it turns out that my actual time on that climb was just <a href="http://app.strava.com/rides/35205689#">19:24</a> - almost 2 minutes faster than my previous PB (from the day before) - and only 5 minutes slower than my all-time record time in early January, 2007 - wow!<br />
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I then did a simple calculation, using my famous <a href="http://www.polarlight.com/climb_calculator.html">ClimbCalculator</a> - and put in the numbers for the Glen Canyon climb, to then determine how much time I gain for every 10 pounds I lose (I'm about 30 to 40 pounds overweight right now) - and it turns out I would get back 1 minute every time I lose another 10 pounds - and that is WITHOUT gaining any strength in my legs (which will also happen as I get in better shape). So if I then assume I can lose 30 pounds over the next 5 months (very realistic and doable - that is about 1.5 pounds per week), my time - today! - would be about 16:24 - just 2 minutes off my all-time PB!<br />
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Then, if you figure that I will, in fact, gain some more climbing strength in my legs over the next 5 months, it stands to reason that I should be able to come very close to my all-time PB of 14:19 for that climb by the time we hit the end of May, 2013 - woohoo! - wouldn't THAT be ever so cool?<br />
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So now I have some real strong incentive to get those extra pounds off - not only will the cycling be more fun and easier, but I will have a chance to get my fitness creeping back to where it was in 2007, when I was in my very best shape of all time (even better than when I was in my 20s!!).<br />
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So for all those old geezers out there (like me) that are trying to claw their way back into shape - even after heart surgery - anything is possible, I can guarantee you!<br />
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Keep on riding!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-30666918715963280932012-12-31T16:40:00.000-08:002012-12-31T16:40:33.458-08:002012 End with a Breakthrough Ride !What a great way to end 2012 - one of my biking buddies, Mike, and I did what we call the "Easy Beach Ride" - it's just a simple ride of 26 miles that heads down to Capitola via Glen Canyon (from our start point in Scotts Valley). We headed out from Scotts Valley by going over Green Hills Road, which adds about 200 feet of climbing to the ride (instead of just coasting down Scotts Valley Drive to get over to Glen Canyon).<br />
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It was great biking weather (well, great from my perspective!) - cool and sunny - it was around 50 degrees out, with just a slight wind blowing. Mike and I just tooled along, heading down the familiar path through Santa Cruz to get over to Capitola Beach via East Cliff Drive - a wonderful scenic ride for cyclists!<br />
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When we were riding along East Cliff Drive, I happened to notice that our riding time was looking pretty good - in fact, I was a bit surprised, since we had just ridden a similar ride the day before - but that ride was what we call the "Classic Beach Ride" - it starts out the same way as the "Easy Beach Ride", but after leaving Capitola Beach, instead of taking the "easy" way back up to Scotts Valley (which means up Glen Canyon, the same road we take down into Santa Cruz from Scotts Valley at the beginning of the ride), we head back the "hard" way, which means going up Old San Jose Road and then doing the Laurel Glen climb, down Mountain View Road, down Branciforte, then climbing back up into Scotts Valley via Granite Creek. The "Classic Beach Ride" is close to 30 miles and does about 2000 feet of climbing. The "Easy Beach Ride" is more like 26 miles and only 1600 feet of climbing (and those climbing miles are easier because they aren't as steep).<br />
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In any case, on yesterday's "Classic Beach Ride", we got down to Capitola Beach in just under one hour, which was a new post heart surgery record for me. What surprised me about today's ride was that it looked like we were going to get to Capitola Beach even faster than yesterday's record ride! In fact, that is exactly what we did - we got to Capitola Beach in just 55 minutes - woohoo! That was an average speed of 15.6 mph for that leg of the ride - very cool!<br />
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Then we headed back home and bumped into another cycling friend of ours, Brett - he was returning to Scotts Valley and joined us for the return ride. I felt pretty good - and ended up shaving 2 minutes off my time up Glen Canyon (from 23 minutes down to 21 minutes) - it's still a far cry from my record time of 14 minutes for that climb - but hey! - I have a good solid year to chip at that time and get it back down close to my record 14 minutes. <br />
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As we finished the climb up Glen Canyon and entered the outskirts of Scotts Valley, I looked at our riding time and saw that we had a chance to get back from the ride in under 2 hours, which would have been 12 minutes faster than my previous ride (from 3 weeks ago), when we did that ride in 2:12. And, we easily broke 2 hours - we got back in just 1:58 - 14 minutes faster than 3 weeks ago - woohoo!!!<br />
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In any case, it was nice to end 2012 with such a positive ride! I just know that 2013 is going to be a good year for me - I plan on riding consistently - and s-l-o-w-l-y grind my way back into decent cycling shape - that's the plan!<br />
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Hope everyone had a great 2012 - and let's keep riding as we slide into 2013, the New Year!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-11777378175533812612012-12-30T19:12:00.000-08:002012-12-30T19:12:10.144-08:00Looking Forward to 2013 !!!Well, it's been an interesting year, 2012 - got myself a fixed-up heart and I'm feeling pretty good these days - need to still lose a few pounds (well, maybe more than just a few) - but since I started riding again on November 3 (about 2 months after my heart surgery I had on September 10), I've done about 14 rides - only half the number I wanted to do - but hey! - it's a start, anyway... :)<br />
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My most recent ride (today) was with a couple of my old riding buddies, Mike and Ed - it was fun doing the ride with them - and they very graciously stayed with me on those tortuously s-l-o-w climbs on today's ride (Laurel Glen and then Granite Creek). I started to bonk a bit on those 2 climbs to get back up into Scotts Valley - but it was my longest ride since the heart surgery (29+ miles) and close to 2000 feet of climbing! Nothing to write home about - but it was a good accomplishment for me - we basically did what we used to call the "Classic Beach Ride" - leaving Scotts Valley, getting down to Santa Cruz via Glen Canyon, then over to Capitola via East Cliff - and then returning the "hard way" - up Old San Jose Road, then up the Laurel Glen climb - down Mountain View to Branciforte - and finally, up the Granite Creek climb to get back into Scotts Valley - here's my Strava recording of the ride:<br />
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<a href="http://app.strava.com/activities/34842755">http://app.strava.com/activities/34842755</a><br />
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All in all, a nice way to finish off 2012 (even though I just might head out for a final New Year's Eve ride tomorrow - just for fun!) ... It's very, very slowly coming back - but my enthusiasm for riding is gradually returning - as I lose some more weight and get back into better cycling shape, I know the enthusiasm will return in full - and that is why I am SO looking forward to 2013 - it's going to be my "comeback year", in many more ways than one!<br />
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Keep on riding!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-44194127241245527862012-12-21T14:35:00.001-08:002018-06-10T09:47:38.888-07:00Where Have I Been The Last 23 Months?Well, it's been awhile! And I just looked at this blog, noticing that my last post was way back in early December, 2010. But that is not the last time I rode my bike! In fact, I did some on-and-off riding for a couple of months after that month - up to mid February, 2011.<br />
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And that is when something odd started happening. I was attempting to get myself back into shape, but noticed that some fairly easy rides resulted in a lot of shortness of breath issues. Not good!<br />
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So, I decided to go visit my regular doctor - and during my routine checkup, he said he detected a very faint, yet distinctive, heart murmur.<br />
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Heart murmur - yikes! What does *that* mean? My doctor said it could mean nothing - or, it could be something - and the only way to find out for sure would be to see a cardiologist and have a stress echocardiogram done. And, he had a cardiologist to recommend, of course.<br />
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So I went to see the cardiologist, who then scheduled the stress echocardiogram - the date was March 18, 2011 - a date that will live in infamy - well, not really! It wasn't exactly the same as Pearl Harbor - but, it *was*, in essence, my own Pearl Harbor - that is when I found out I had a defective heart issue - actually, there were 2 defects! One was congenital - I had a bicuspid aortic valve - just like my younger brother, Scott, had found out many years ago (when he was just 29) - they monitored his BAV (as we call it in the heart patient world) and 12 years later, at the age of 41, he had open heart surgery to replace his defective aortic valve.<br />
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Now it looked like it was my turn to monitor *my* BAV - and then replace it when it was starting to become too narrow (called "stenosis") - but I had an issue that my brother did NOT have - and that was an aortic aneurysm - my ascending aorta (just above my aortic valve) was TWICE as wide as normal - about 5.0 cm instead of 2.5 cm ... yikes! The problem is that your aorta can dissect (split) or worse yet, rupture. A rupture means you have 5 minutes to make your peace before you die. An aortic dissection will let you live for anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, depending on how much the aorta dissects. Basically, you are a "ticking time bomb" ... not fun to contemplate!<br />
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Bottom line - I needed to contemplate having open heart surgery much earlier than my brother did - I would need it within a matter of months - certainly within a year or so.<br />
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And that is exactly what I did a several months ago - September 10, 2012 - the date of my "rebirth", so-to-speak. The surgery went amazingly well - I had a great cardiac surgeon, Dr. Vincent Gaudiani - if you ever need any surgery related to your heart and live somewhere in the Bay Area, I can highly recommend him! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0RD6-foBKQ">Here </a>is just one of several YouTube videos that Dr. Gaudiani has published - what a great guy!<br />
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And, just 8 weeks after my surgery - on November 3, 2012 - I went on my very first bike ride in a very, very long time - and there was no shortness of breath - and the ride felt great! Except, I didn't set any kind of records on that ride - pretty short - pretty flat - but, it was uneventful - beautiful!<br />
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I also discovered a very cool new website, Strava - <a href="http://app.strava.com/athletes/292741">here </a>is where you can find me on Strava - what is cool is that after you upload one of your rides from your cyclometer (or, there is even a Strava phone app that can function as a cyclometer, but without the heart rate functionality), Strava will automatically break up your ride into different "segments" - sections of your ride that are ridden by lots of other people - and you can see where you "rank" amongst all those that have ridden that same segment - or, you can just use it to compare yourself to other times you've ridden that same segment - pretty cool!<br />
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<a href="http://app.strava.com/activities/27910072">Here </a>is the link to my first ride after my heart surgery - as I said, nothing to write home about - just 8.2 miles and only 42 minutes on the bike - without any hills to speak of - but it was a ride, nonetheless!<br />
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And, <a href="http://app.strava.com/activities/29217115">here </a>is the link to one of my tougher rides that I took, just 3 weeks later - I did 26+ miles, almost 1400 feet of climbing - and rode for 2 hours and 10 minutes - quite a bit more of a ride! And with that harder ride, I even averaged a faster speed (12.1 mph versus 11.6 mph for that first ride) - and there was a lot more climbing involved in that harder ride.<br />
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My main problem has been consistency - I was hoping to ride 2 times during the weekdays and 2 times on the weekends (4 rides / week) - but it has only averaged about 2 rides per week since I started riding again - so I need to increase my riding time! I only rode 8 times in November - and only 4 times for December (so far) - I really need to be doing about 16 rides each month - so I better pick it up in January of 2013!<br />
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So, this is why I've been away for quite awhile - but Musings of a Cyclotic will start seeing some regular activity, once again - stay tuned!<br />
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And keep riding... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-48743583021928296382010-12-03T17:33:00.000-08:002010-12-03T17:50:41.843-08:00I Gotta Keep Breathing (And Riding)So I rode with one of my favorite biking buddies today, Jeff - he's one of the first people I started to ride with on a regular basis many years ago - and is a constant source of support, always ready to go for a ride.<br /><br />We used to ride all the time a few years ago - and today was a reminder of just how much fun it is to go for a ride with someone you connect with - we always tell fun stories, catch up on the latest gossip at our respective companies, chit-chat about life, etc.<br /><br />Today's ride was not exactly one of our epic ones - just a short, simple ride - I did all of 7 miles today - and didn't feel quite as bad as I did on my first ride a couple of days ago - we rode for just over 1/2 hour (actual moving time, since I've setup my Garmin Edge 500 to auto-stop when my bike stops - cool feature!) - and I even "attacked" a few small hills. Well, perhaps "attack" is stretching the truth - a bit - but you get the idea - it felt like I was attacking those small hills. I'm sure an impartial observer would be asking why the old guy on the bike was moving so damn slow up that little itty-bitty bump in the road. But I was imagining it was more like climbing up Mt. Diablo or some other monster-sized mountain. Some day next year, I won't have to imagine anything - it'll be all too real!<br /><br />When I talked to Jeff last night, he asked the usual - "Are you riding - or hiding?" - and for the last couple of years, it's been "I'm hiding!" - but this morning, he showed up promptly at 9:00 a.m. - and there I was, ready to ride! So we rode - and now I'm feeling better that I've done 2 rides in the last 3 days - exactly as planned. <br /><br />Now I just gotta keep moving - or, to paraphrase the end of a great speech that Tom Hanks gave at the end of Castaway (one of my favorite movies):<br /><br />"And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing (and riding). Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide (or bike ride) could bring?"<br /><br />:)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-15300319232102189302010-12-01T17:13:00.000-08:002010-12-01T17:36:30.754-08:00Did I Just Do A Century Ride Today?Nope. It just FELT like a century ride, unfortunately - my first ride in a long, long time. Too long, as it turns out. I thought that getting onto the Comeback Trail would be tough - but it's going to be even tougher, as I found out today.<br /><br />The ACTUAL ride was only about 30 minutes long - and wasn't even 10 miles long (more like 6.5 miles) - and it wasn't even hilly - it was FLAT! And I still died... :(<br /><br />I guess something happens once you get past 55 (the last time I did a real ride, I wasn't even a Senior Citizen) - I'm 56 now - so THIS is what's it's like to be an old-timer, I guess. Ugh! I have a feeling it's going to be a tad harder to pull off those extra pounds, too.<br /><br />But here's the good news - my new Garmin Edge 500 worked really, really well - I love it - and will be posting all my rides up on the GarminConnect website, with my handle (polarlight) - so everyone can watch me go from "Mr. Slow" to "Mr. Go"... :)<br /><br />But it's gonna take awhile - I figure about 6 months before I can point with any pride to any rides I do - but it looks like I'll get some help along the way - I've already heard from a bunch of my riding buddies - Chimene, Andy, Jeff, and Jason - and I'm sure they'll help drag my butt around, firmly attached to the saddle of my bike - and hopefully get strong enough to cause them some anxiety when we hit some hill (like I did at one time - a very long time ago!)...<br /><br />So today's initial ride was nothing to write home about - but at least it's a start - and that's all it was meant to be. It would have been closer to an hour, but I got started late (work crap!) and then spent a bunch of time getting my new Garmin Edge 500 configured just right - I mean, they now give you 3 (count 'em!) different displays to toggle through - and you can even have the toggling through the different screens done automatically while you ride! - and each screen can have up to 8 programmable fields - and you can choose from about a zillion (well, maybe closer to 42) different fields - nice! It'll be fun to get home tonight and upload the data to my PC - or maybe I'll just upload to the GarminConnect website, since it has all my older rides (used to be called MotionBased.com) - I'll decide later...<br /><br />So it wasn't a century ride - but in about 6 months, I plan on doing a *real* century ride - and hopefully, get in good enough shape to tackle the Santa Cruz Mtn Challenge next summer - but that's just dreaming right now...first you crawl, then you walk, then you run, then you get on your bike (and die) - and then repeat as needed... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-16512195254240476932010-11-30T17:39:00.000-08:002010-11-30T18:13:24.946-08:00The Comeback KidUnbelievable. I was doing so good - and was in such good shape. Then, I stopped riding. Why? Well, it certainly started innocently enough (heard that one before, I'm sure!) - I simply got burned out when trying to desperately train for the Death Ride with a couple of my riding buddies - actually, it was just one main riding buddy - Ed. He's a great guy - and a really strong rider - especially considering he's actually a few years older than me. Ed was able to retire - I'm still a working stiff - and he had time to ride as much as he wanted - and he really wanted to ride a LOT, to see how well he could do on the 2008 Death Ride (he ended up doing quite well, btw!) - and since I had done the Death Ride a few times, I was trying to get psyched up for that really hard ride - but I was working at a new company (SeaChange) - and I had been put onto a really hot project - lots of fun - but also lots of work...<br /><br />So I tried to meet up with Ed as often as possible - and tried to play "catch up" on the miles (and the elevation gain) that you need to put into your legs to ride a successful Death Ride (in this case, "successful" means just finishing it before it gets dark!) - but alas, I was trying to ride too much in too short of a time period - and I simply burned out.<br /><br />Yep - I just burned out. I was on a ride with Ed - starting in Palo Alto (right near where the Noon Ride takes off most days during the week - a racer's training ride) - and we were going to ride up and over to the coast and back - I don't even remember the exact climb we did to get over to the coast - all I remember is that I struggled immensely to get up the climb that took us to the coast - and then *really* struggled to get back from the coast - all I remember was stopping about 1/2 way up this one climb we were on - and I just said, "Screw it! I'm NOT doing the Death Ride this year - no way, no how! I'm DONE!". And that was it - I crawled my way up to the top of the climb, then drifted back down to Palo Alto to our start point - put my bike back in my car and told Ed he wasn't going to do the Death Ride with me - I was done.<br /><br />Really done. I then decided to stay off my bike for a month or so, to just get away from all the training and racing I had been doing. But that one month turned into two months. Then three months. Then the legs began to really atrophy - and I started thinking about how painful it was going to be to start riding again. So the three months turned to four months - and so on, until today - two years and six months later - 30 months off the bike!<br /><br />Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!<br /><br />So now I'm motivated again - I've gained a BUNCH of weight (probably 30 or 40 pounds - I'm actually afraid to find out!) - and it will be really, really hard to ride again. But ride I will. I know I will. How do I know? Well, I'm going to use my blog to keep all my dedicated followers informed (all one of us!) - and someday, maybe one of my kids will read this - and use it as inspiration to get themselves onto some kind of exercise track - and make it a a permanent part of their life!<br /><br />To be truthful, I know that one of them is already on the right road - our middle son, Mitchell. He is in good shape and is on a really good diet, too (vegetarian - well, actually, he's a pescetarian, since he'll eat fish for protein) - and I'm confident he'll maintain those healthy habits all his life - because I'm going to really BUG HIM BIG TIME if I see him start to wander away (like I have - a few times in my life, unfortunately).<br /><br />And our youngest son, Grant, is really into surfing - which involves a lot of exercise, too - although he doesn't do it often enough - you need to find something to gives you some kind of good aerobic exercise at least 3 or 4 times a week. I plan on starting out with 3 to 4 - and then slowly increasing it to 5 or 6 times a week, like I used to do when I was in the very best shape of my life.<br /><br />But our oldest son, Jake, is kind of like me when I was in my early college career - after a couple of years just studying for classes (like Jake) - and totally stopping any kind of exercise routine (in high school, you HAVE to exercise!) - I had gained about 20 or 25 pounds (just like Jake has now) - and one day, I decided to get myself back into shape - so I looked around and decided to choose biking - what a great choice! I hope that Jake (soon!) finds something, too - and then sticks with it all his life, to keep himself as healthy as possible. Because after all is said and done (are you listening carefully, Jake?), your health is the only thing that really matters, along with your relationships - but you can't have any relationships with people unless you are able to visit them - and do things with them - so if you're bound to some hospital bed and in the poorest of poor health, you can't enjoy the fruits of all your hard labor - or enjoy your family and friends, either - so get in shape, then STAY in shape - and have fun, living life to the fullest. Okay, time to jump off my soapbox... :)<br /><br />But THIS time around, it will be a little different. Rather than try to keep on pushing myself to ride faster and faster - and harder and harder - and get back into racing - I'm going to keep it light - and fun. With the emphasis on "fun". Oh, I'll do my fair share of huffing and puffing (especially in these first few months that I ride again) - but I'll keep things "fun" - I'll only ride harder when I feel like it - and it won't be to try and set some new record (although I'm sure I'll occasionally test myself, just to see how far I've come in my comeback).<br /><br />To get started on the right foot, I've just had my trusty Trek Madone 5.2 bike all cleaned up and tuned up at my favorite bike shop, Chain Reaction (in Los Altos) - I bought my bike at the Chain Reaction store up in Redwood City, since I used to work up there (at SeaChange) - but now I'm at a new company (Panasonic in Cupertino) - and the other Chain Reaction store is now the closest to me - and I'll be starting on the comeback trail tomorrow, December 1, 2010 - and my first ride will be really nice and easy.<br /><br />Oh - and I will be recording my rides, as usual - and I just purchased a new Garmin Edge 500 cyclometer to assist me in my comeback endeavor - and I'm really looking forward to recording a lot of FUN rides - and getting myself back in shape. I'm now 56 years old - and I know what I have to do.<br /><br />So here we go...again... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-32126895297156879872008-03-18T16:32:00.000-07:002008-03-18T18:08:14.793-07:00So How Am I Doing So Far?It's early in the season and I've done several road races (no crits - at least, not yet!), with some mixed results, which is to be expected. And, this is probably a good time to assess how my climbing program is going, since *that* is certainly my greatest weakness as a cyclist.<br /><br />Well, my very first road race, the Cantua Creek RR, was a resounding success, IMHO - I didn't quite make the top 10 (the current results show 22nd, but they made a mistake that has not yet been corrected - I will ultimately end up with 13th, and my friend, Gary Griffin, will be placed 14th instead of 13th, since I beat him by half a tire width - see my full race report <a href="http://cyclotic.blogspot.com/2008/02/cantua-creek-road-race-masters-45-45.html">right here</a>). I was especially pleased with this first road race of the season, as I fully expected to finish AFTER Gary, who is a much better climber than me, by far - and yet, I somehow managed to actually beat him, albeit by the slightest of margins - and it wasn't on a course that really favored hill climbers, like Gary - it favored people like me, who can sprint pretty good up a relatively short climb - if that race had continued on for another 1/2 mile uphill or more, I'm sure Gary would have easily beaten me into submission at the end... :)<br /><br />Then, my second road race, the Snelling RR, was a full-blown disaster - and to make things even worse, it was my very first race with my new team, Bicycle Trip! Not exactly how I hoped to start out my racing career with them! You can see the gory details of this disaster <a href="http://teambicycletrip.blogspot.com/2008/02/snelling-road-race-masters-45-open.html">here</a>, assuming you like to read stories that make you feel a whole lot better about yourself, as you compare your life to the sorry life of the story's author! However, in my defense for that particular race, it was a really nasty day, with horrendous headwinds - and I had been snookered (is that a word?) into doing the Masters 45+ open race with my new teammate, Dennis Pedersen... :)<br /><br />Well, I didn't really get snookered - I actually thought that a Masters 45+ open road race would unfold like all the other road races I had done this year and last year - but *those* road races were with the Masters 45+ 4/5 group - and it turns out that the 45+ open category for Masters is a totally different beast than the 45+ 4/5 races - so now I know! Needless to say, I was completely unprepared for what happened at Snelling, so I suppose you can say I'm allowed to make one terrible mistake this year - you really have to choose your races wisely, which is pretty obvious, really!<br /><br />My third road race this year, the Merco Credit Union Foothills RR, was interesting - I was actually racing the regular Cat 4 race with another new teammate on Bicycle Trip, Bryan King. It turns out this was the only race I could get into - the category I might have normally signed up for (Masters 35+ 4/5) was all filled up, unfortunately. I was a little bit leary about this race, since the regular Cat 4 group is primarily a bunch of kids - like Bryan - guys in their 20s and 30s, mostly - so I was about twice as old as the average kid (and I *do* mean "kid") in that race.<br /><br />But - unlike the Masters 45+ open group, the regular Cat 4 group has *only* Cat 4 racers - no Cat 1, 2, and 3 guys, like you see in the Masters 45+ open races. So, I thought I had a fighting chance in the Merco race, and the distance was only about 50 miles, much like the road races I normally do with the Masters 45+ 4/5 group.<br /><br />And, it turns out I was doing just fine in that race - except Bryan and I *both* got caught behind a crash just 2 miles from the end of the race - darn! - and ended up finishing the race, but way down towards the bottom of the list - and we both thought we had excellent chances of placing in the top 10 in that race - Bryan for sure, and me, quite likely - I guess we won't get a chance to find out until next year! If you need to see the longer story, check out my race report <a href="http://teambicycletrip.blogspot.com/2008/03/merco-credit-union-foothills-rr-cat-4.html">here</a>.<br /><br />My last race for this year, at this point, was just an unsanctioned time trial - the first Swanton Road TT, where I was doing okay for the first half, but got a terrible cramp in my right calf muscle after I did the turnaround, and had to pedal relatively easily for the return leg of that TT - ending up with an okay time, especially considering the strong winds we had to deal with, but at least 1.5 minutes slower than I might have done if I had been able to push as hard coming back as I did going out. My average heartrate going out was about 161 bpm, but it dropped down into the 152 bpm range for its average coming back on the course - and we had a nice tailwind coming back, too! Oh, well - I take solace in the fact that my "adjusted" time would have been reasonable for this time of year!<br /><br />So how does it all add up? Overall, I'm relatively pleased - my climbing is not quite where I'd like it to be - but it's much better than a few months ago - and my weight has barely dropped down (I was supposed to have lost 20 pounds by now, but it's been more like 2 pounds!) - I figure if I can lose the weight I should have lost by now, my climbing would be good enough to entertain new PBs, left and right!<br /><br />So my new short-term goal for the next 60 days is to get that weight down while I continue to improve my climbing. Working with Team Bicycle Trip, doing their weekly hill repeats (every Saturday morning and again on Wednesday afternoon) has certainly paid off for me - and I haven't even been as diligent as I could be! Imagine where I'd be if I was more consistent!<br /><br />Okay - it's time to stop and start now, as in STOP blogging, STOP eating, and START riding more and START doing more hill repeats... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-1464965492958328832008-03-17T17:20:00.000-07:002008-03-17T17:30:43.026-07:00Memorial Ride for Kristy and MattLast Saturday afternoon (March 15), I decided to go out to do the memorial ride for Kristy Gough and Matt Pederson, who were the 2 cyclists killed on Sunday (March 9) on Stevens Canyon Rd.<br /><br />It was amazing - there were hundreds of cyclists - maybe even more than a thousand - that all congregated at Foothill College on El Monte Rd today, starting about 2:30 pm. The ride was scheduled to leave at 3:00 pm, heading down El Monte to Foothill, then following Foothill until it became Stevens Canyon, then end up at the memorial site where the accident happened. After the memorial, the entire group of cyclists would then return on the same route back to Foothill College.<br /><br />The Channel 7 News team was there (maybe Channel 2, also - but I only saw Channel 7) - they were filming everything and doing some interviews with different cyclists. I also saw a helicopter hovering above - I'm not sure, but it might have been a news helicopter, just getting some aerial shots. <br /><br />The Third Pillar Racing and Roaring Mouse Cycling teams left promptly at 3:00 pm, leading out a very slow procession of cyclists, with the Sheriff's office helping to providing traffic control all the way to the memorial site on Stevens Canyon Rd. You could see that all the people from the Sheriff's office that were present were very respectful and truly felt bad about what had happened last Sunday.<br /><br />It was an amazing site seeing the hundreds of cyclists covering half of Foothill Blvd and then Stevens Canyon Rd as we headed out to the memorial site. We were allowed to totally take over the slow lane all along the route. When we got to the top of the small hill on Stevens Canyon Rd (just a short distance before the place where the accident happened), they had closed the road completely to allow all the cyclists to come to a stop at the memorial site.<br /><br />Most of us were wearing small patches that had been handed out to us in the parking lot of Foothill College before the ride started.<br /><br />Also, a lot of people were handed roses, including myself - and those with flowers - or anything else they might have brought with them - were allowed to come up to the memorial site and place their flower (or whatever memento they had) down on the site. It was a very moving experience - and it was generally very quiet as people moved slowly past the memorial site.<br /><br />The saddest part was hearing Kristy's mom, who was crying uncontrollably for quite a long time. I only knew it was her because someone that knew Kristy's mom pointed her out to me.<br /><br />Ride safe, everyone...Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-82399841874447226062008-02-18T11:17:00.000-08:002008-02-25T10:30:54.358-08:00Cantua Creek Road Race, Masters 45+ 4/5, 2/16/2008One word - <span style="font-weight:bold;">Wooohooo!!<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> - or, is that 2 words: <span style="font-weight:bold;">Woooo-Hoooo<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>? - it doesn't really matter, as I survived long enough to write this report!<br /><br />In my previous post, I was wondering if I was ready for this first road race of the 2008 season. My post suggested I was basically ready (except for the fact that I had not lost nearly enough weight!) - but secretly, I was a little worried. I had analyzed the data for this race very carefully, and figured out the race would probably boil down to 2 critical points:<br /><br />1) The climbs up the 3 stair steps at the mid-way point of the race...<br /><br />2) Those same climbs of the 3 stair steps at the <span style="font-weight:bold;">end <span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>of the race!<br /><br />My big fear was that I would get popped off the back at the first critical point - and if that happened, it was going to be a <span style="font-weight:bold;">very <span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>long second lap, doing the solo thing - and with a pretty good headwind on the "out" part of the out-and-back (heading towards the north), it would be 12 long miles by myself into that headwind, then a very lonely 12 miles back to the end of the race, and dragging myself up those 3 climbs all by myself, with only the cows over at Harris Ranch cheering me on... :)<br /><br />However, that's <span style="font-weight:bold;">NOT <span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span>what happened during my race, I'm quite happy to report!<br /><br />First, let's describe the race course: You start out at the top of a 2.5-mile climb that is really 3 smaller climbs, each separated by a (very) small downhill section. Then you have a relatively flat 9.5-mile section into a headwind that pretty much parallels Hwy 5. In fact, you cross over Hwy 5 at one point, then just before the next overpass that would take you back over Hwy 5, there is a 180-degree turnaround just as the overpass starts to pitch up slightly. Now you head back on that 9.5-mile section, but this time you have a tailwind - and, of course, those last 2.5 miles of the course are those 3 fun stair-step climbs - the first 2 are each about 1/2-mile long, and the last one is the "big" one - about 3/4-mile long. The gradient of each climb is fairly mild - only about 5% to 6%, I'd say. However, even though the gradient is not too steep, when your speed never drops below 15 mph, it can still hurt - a lot! Don't kid yourself...racing, even on "flat" roads, can be hard when the speed is high enough.<br /><br />But high speeds were not really the order of the day for our race. In fact, my average heartrate for the race was only 135 bpm, a new record low for me (at both the San Ardo RR and Henleyville RR last year, my heartrate averaged about 140 bpm).<br /><br />I had decided as a pre-race strategy to just sit in the pack, close to the front, for the first lap, and conserve my energy. I had one teammate with me, Gary Griffin - and when we briefly discussed race strategy before the race, it was clear we both had the same exact strategy - just sit in and pray that we are still around at the end of the race to contest the uphill sprint! Gary is a stronger climber than me, so I figured that strategy would work especially well for him, and less so for me. However, I had one advantage for this race - I had been doing a lot of hill repeats in the last month or two - I became a convert to that training technique as I watched the members of Team Bicycle Trip almost winning the Low-Key Hill Climb series at the end of last year - and they do very regular Saturday morning hill repeats.<br /><br />The concept is pretty simple - try to get one hour's worth of hard climbing in, done as 3 sets of 20 minutes, or 4 sets of 15 minutes, etc. I had the, uh, pleasure of joining Mark Edwards and his band of Merry Climbers for the first time a couple of months ago, when they did 5 sets of 12 minute hill intervals on Rodeo Gulch, one of my favorite places to ride. I had never tried to ride up Rodeo Gulch twice in one day, much less 5 times! Needless to say, I was complete toast at the end of that workout session - but I also noticed that my climbing started to improve considerably after that. Mark encouraged me to start working hill repeats into my training regime, and I took his advice to heart. <br /><br />In fact, I started working my own set of mini hill repeats into my training rides during the week. Where I work in San Mateo, there are dozens of these short, steep hills - typically about 1/2-mile long, but with gradients averaging anywhere from 9% to 14% - steep! I developed these small courses where I'd do small loops that forced me to climb up various short steep climbs like this - doing anywhere from 3 to 6 of them on any particular day. I wanted to do the steeper hills for two reasons: 1) To help improve my raw leg strength; and 2) As a psychological trick, to make the hills in my races seem easier by comparison - pretty clever, huh?<br /><br />So the 3 stair-step climbs of Cantua Creek, which were similar in length to the short hills I had been training on, were not nearly as steep - in fact, they were only about half as steep. I think all those mini hill repeats (as well as the Saturday morning longer hill repeats with Mark Edwards and Team Bicycle Trip) really paid off for Cantua Creek - a special "Thank you!" to Mark and all the great climbers on his team...it's quite motivating to be surrounded by all these really good climbers - it helps to make you work just a little harder than you might otherwise do by yourself...<br /><br />Now for the race itself: We started out on the 2.5-mile downhill section, with the 2 minor climbs between each of the stair-step sections. Then we hit the flatter section with the headwind from the north. The pace of the pack was pretty tame - I think a lot of people wanted to catch up and chit-chat with each other - since this was probably the first road race of the new season for most of us, it seemed that old acquaintances were just exchanging pleasantries, finding out what they all got for Christmas, how little they had trained during the winter, etc.<br /><br />Or, in my case, new acquaintances were being formed: Here we are, motoring along at this very pleasant pace early in the race, when this guy rolls up next to me and says, "Hi! I'm William! What's your name?" - of course, I told him who I was - and then he launches into his life story - pretty funny! But he was a nice guy - he had last raced about 10 years ago, and this was his first race in 10 years! But he had raced at Cantua Creek for its first 3 years, from 1996 to 1998 - and he patiently explained to me I shouldn't worry about the first 44.5 miles - the race will only happen in the last 3 miles, he assured me. Of course, I knew that relatively easy courses like Cantua Creek often boil down to a bunch sprint at the end, so I wasn't really surprised - but since he was the voice of experience, I thanked him for his reconnaissance info. He also reminded me not to try and go too hard too soon on the hill, which I had heard about from various race reports I had read earlier.<br /><br />But I was thinking to myself that I'd be delighted to just be present for the final surge up the 3 hills at the end of the race - I was really concerned about the surge that I knew would happen the first time up those 3 hills, at the midpoint of the race.<br /><br />On the way out to the first 180-degree turnaround, there were a couple of minor attacks, but I had no trouble keeping my good position in that top third of the 50-person pack. I think I generally hovered between 10th and 15th place the whole time. Every once in awhile, someone would take a solo flyer, but the pack would just let them dangle out there for a mile or two, then reel them back in with no problem. It was clear this was going to probably be a bunch sprint at the end of the race.<br /><br />I thought our pack was exceptionally well-mannered - there were constant shouts of "Slowing!" or "Gravel!" or "Car Up!", etc. - everyone (at least around me) handled their bikes just fine and didn't do anything dangerous or stupid - maybe it's due to the fact that all of us are over 45 - and nobody wants to go to the hospital at our age, if at all possible... :)<br /><br />When we did the 180-degree turnaround on that first lap and headed back to the start/finish area of the race, there were one or two attacks with that nice tailwind, and I again had no problem staying right where I wanted to be - near the front. I had not seen Gary more than once or twice for brief moments, so I assumed he was generally positioned just behind me in the pack.<br /><br />As we approached the 3 climbs near the end of the first lap, my apprehension really grew - this would be <span style="font-weight:bold;">THE BIG TEST<span style="font-style:italic;"></span></span> - either I'd sink or swim with the pack at this point. I had visions of watching the pack disappear up the climb, as I looked across Hwy 5 and took comfort that the cows at Harris Ranch were secretly cheering me on, all alone in my quest to catch back onto the pack again...<br /><br />But that's not what happened! In fact, as we started up the first of those 3 climbs, I thought there was something wrong with the pack - it felt like we were going very slow - I saw my heartrate rise up close to my time-trial rate (160 bpm), but that was it! The pack wasn't disappearing up the climb in front of me! In fact, I had actually moved up closer to the front - huh? Then, we hit the first small downhill section after that first climb, my heartrate dropped a bit, of course, and we started up the next climb. And the same thing happened - again! My heartrate climbed up to just 159 bpm this time, so it was ever-so-slightly easier than the first climb - and suddenly, we were descending down the second small downhill section. Wow! Two down and just one more to go - I was almost feeling giddy, as I realized I was probably going to be able to hang on to the turnaround spot at the finish line of the race.<br /><br />But that third climb was THE BIG ONE - a massive, 3/4-mile long hill that gained about 100 feet, instead of those "puny" 1/2-mile bumps in the road we had just negotiated. And of course, the top of a climb is where there is always a strong surge - nobody just coasts their way to the top of a climb - in a race, they always try to sprint over the top, just to shake off all the newbies and 90-pound weaklings - but in this case, you don't go over the top - you go around the cones, doing a 180-degree turn right there at the finish line area of the race.<br /><br />My heartrate climbed higher this time - up to 165 bpm as we surged to the top of that last climb - but I had managed to work my way to just about the front of the entire pack - in fact, I was about the 4th person to do the turnaround - now how cool is that? Here I was, worried about watching the pack pull away from me on the climb - but it was me who was pulling the pack up the hill - or, so I would like to believe. I suspect the truth is that the really clever guys were hiding their true strength, so they could catch you by surprise at the end of the race.<br /><br />But I didn't care - we were at the halfway point of the race, heading back down the 3 stair-steps - and I was now in the lead group. I felt so good about my fortunate state of affairs, I decided to take a flyer off the front when we hit the first little uphill section after speeding down the first hill - I looked back and saw that one other guy decided to launch himself out of the pack and he hooked up with me. Then a third guy flew out of the bunch behind us and suddenly, there were 3 of us, in our own little breakaway!<br /><br />Hey - this is pretty cool, I thought - but I had no intention of trying to make a break work at that point in the race. In retrospect, it might have been a good tactic to try, since there were 3 of us - but I quickly realized that the other 2 guys had no intention of trying to break away - they simply caught up to me, we exchanged smiles, and then they looked back and sat up. I imagined they were told to go neutralize my "attack" - ha! Little did they know I was doing nothing more than celebrating my good fortune of being with the main pack for the second of our 2 laps - wooohooo!!<br /><br />So, we settled back into the pack and I reclaimed my spot near the front - about 8 or 9 positions from the front. I had no intention of trying to take any pulls at the front - I felt more than strong enough to do this, like I had done at the Henleyville RR back in September - but I was more than content to just sit in and watch the sparks fly at the end of the race.<br /><br />We had a few more attacks on the way back out to the turnaround spot of the 2nd lap - and, in fact, there was one guy that actually broke away on a solo attack - he blasted off during that second lap and got a pretty good lead on the pack - maybe 30 seconds or so. But the pack didn't seem too worried about him - and we did reel him back in about a mile before the final attacks on the 3 climbs at the end of the race.<br /><br />So now we're approaching the end of the race - and just as William had told me, the real race was about to start, just 3 miles from the top of the last hill. Not surprisingly, the first of the 3 climbs was done just a little harder than we had done on the first lap - but my heartrate was still in total control, not rising above 160 bpm. I remembered that no matter what happened, I had to resist from pushing too hard too soon - it's a long way to the top, as William had reminded me. Then, on the second hill, there was a ferocious attack by either 4 or 5 guys that just hammered their way out of the main pack, which was actually disintegrating in front of my eyes - there were guys getting spit out the back like they were old cows, ready to join their siblings across Hwy 5, over at Harris Ranch...<br /><br />But I wasn't one of them, thankfully! No, I was bound and determined to stay as close to the leaders of our main group - those 4 or 5 mutants that blasted off were going way too fast for me to join them (at least, I think so) - I had visions of rolling past their cold, dead bodies somewhere before we got to the finish line - but, alas, this was not to be the case... :)<br /><br />However, I was holding my own with the survivors of the main pack - and as what happens in so many road races like this, there were different groups all merging together for the finish - I know we got mixed in with other groups, because we all had numbers in the 700s - and there were other numbers (not in the 700s) floating around me as we buried ourselves in pain to get to the top of the last climb.<br /><br />Now here's where it gets curious - I hadn't seen Gary for a long time - but I figured he'd just fly by me on one of the last climbs of the race - in fact, I started thinking that maybe he was one of those 4 or 5 mutants that had blasted out of the pack on the second climb...<br /><br />But about 1/2 way up that last climb, Gary comes rolling by me - he didn't blast past me - just rolled quietly by - I was going to make a joke, but my eyeballs were hanging out of my head and my tongue was all twisted inside my mouth - no jokes today! I figured he'd just keep motoring past me and easily finish ahead of me, at least a few places. But we were both passing people, left and right, as various guys were blowing up on the climb. I felt like I was going to blow up, too - but as Gary got in front of me, he slowed ever so slightly for just a split moment - and I managed to grab onto his rear wheel. I just stared at his wheel and decided I would do whatever I could to hang on for dear life...<br /><br />Then, after what seemed like several hours (but it was really more like a few seconds), I saw the 200-meter sign. 200 meters to go? That's it? Woohoo! Like a trained race horse that's just been let out of the gate, I knew it was time to 'sprint'. Of course, sprinting up a hill when you're totally maxed out is not an easy thing to do - I saw my heartrate was now essentially redlined - 172 bpm!! My max heartrate is only 175 bpm - so there wasn't much wiggle room left! But I let loose whatever was left in my legs for the sprint and I managed to pull up even with Gary just inches from the finish line - and with one last hard push, I actually nipped Gary at the line, beating him by about 1/2 a tire width! Is that possible? I guess so - and we had managed to come in just ahead of my new racing buddy, William, who thought he had sewn up 12th place - I have absolutely no idea how he could tell what place he had finished in - there was such chaos at the end, with several different groups finishing at about the same time.<br /><br />We couldn't stick around to see the official results, but it looks like I might have snagged 10th place and Gary 11th place, since William finished just behind Gary. <br /><br />A possible top-10 place - what a great way to start out the 2008 racing season!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-628435010297323892008-02-15T18:08:00.000-08:002008-02-15T18:15:47.063-08:00Am I Ready For My First Road Race of 2008 - Cantua Creek?So, am I ready for the Cantua Creek Road Race tomorrow, my first road race of the season?<br /><br />Let's see...<br /><br />1. Create a "secret training" program to reclaim some lost climbing fitness from last year.<br /><br />Check.<br /><br />2. Join the Bicycle Trip team for some of their Saturday morning hill repeats, as another aid to reclaim that lost climbing fitness (man, those workouts are tough!).<br /><br />Check.<br /><br />3. Try to ride virtually every day, starting around last December 10, when I began my "secret training" program.<br /><br />Check. (I've ridden 52 out of 67 possible days since last December 10 - I had a streak of 26 straight days from December 30 to January 24 - wow!)<br /><br />4. Discover my own hill repeat courses near work and work them into my training schedule each week.<br /><br />Check.<br /><br />5. Achieve some new PBs on some of the shorter climbs that I do - the ones under 1 mile long.<br /><br />Check. (I actually established 6 new PBs!)<br /><br />6. Do a final test ride where I do about half the distance of the Cantua Creek RR (the race is about 48 miles) and about half the total climbing (the race is about 1600 feet) in about half the time (the race will be about 2:05 or so).<br /><br />Check. (Today I did a 20 mile ride with 1100 feet of climbing at 17.6 mph while averaging only 122 bpm for my heartrate in a time of 1:08 - how cool is that? - and you can see my MotionBased.com recording of that ride <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4977273">right here</a>)<br /><br />7. Lose 20 pounds so I can keep the Bicycle Trip guys in my sights on their longer climbs.<br /><br />Check. --- NOT!<br /><br />Well, 6 out of 7 ain't too bad, right? Gotta lose that weight now... !<br /><br />But, the good news is - I think I'll be able to hang with the main pack tomorrow for the whole race - and if I play it *real* smart, I'll try to go for a top 10 placing, assuming I'm still around at the end of the race. Stay tuned!<br /><br />A special "Thank you!" goes to Dennis Pedersen, for all his help and encouragement during the last few months - it's been a pleasure, Dennis!<br /><br />I guess my next blog entry will be something about tomorrow's big race - Cantua Creek, here I come!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-72235187839560918192008-01-31T10:30:00.000-08:002008-01-31T11:25:04.540-08:00Another Secret Revealed To Climb FasterSo I was doing one of training rides recently, heading from where I work in San Mateo over to Woodside, to climb part way up Kings Mtn Rd - it's related to my "secret" training program that I talked about in an earlier posting ( you can read all about it <a href="http://cyclotic.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-secret-training-program.html">right here</a> ).<br /><br />Well, as I'm approaching Tripp Rd, where I start my timer for the climb up Kings Mtn Rd, I happened to pass by 3 cyclists that were heading in my direction. I was riding slightly faster than them, preparing for the grind up the climb.<br /><br />Of course, they knew nothing about my "secret" training program - or me, for that matter! But it was clear that something inspired them to pick up their pace, in order to shadow me up the climb - or maybe just pass me by, which would not be too hard to do, since I'm not exactly the fastest climber in the world.<br /><br />In fact, I'm a fairly poor climber that is attempting to mold myself into a decent, "average" climber. In this case, "average" means that I can finish mid-pack in the <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/">Low-Key Hill Climb series</a> this year. And that is no small task - if you are "average" (meaning you can score 100.0 points on any of the climbs in that series), you can probably climb better than your typical recreational cyclist - and it means you can probably hang on in the main pack for a road race that involves some climbing. And that is my main cycling goal this year - climb well enough to just "hang in" during a road race that has some climbs, and not get dropped from the main pack...<br /><br />Now, back to the 3 cyclists that started to shadow me as I started climbing Kings Mtn Rd...<br /><br />Well, as I said earlier, I'm not sure what inspired them to up their pace and start to shadow me up the climb, but I'm guessing it might have been my SCCCC cycling kit. <br /><br />I joined the SCCCC race team in the middle of last year, just after I got my racing license in May of 2007. At the time, I was able to purchase only 1 jersey - so I had to wear my usual black biking shorts (bibs, actually) and black cycling shoes. But at the end of 2007, we were able to put in our clothing order for 2008, and I decided to order a whole lot of goodies - a couple of jerseys (short sleeve and long sleeve), a couple of bibs (shorts and knickers), some vests (including a really nice thermal vest), shoe covers (even thermal ones!), a couple of skinsuits for time trials - all in all, several hundreds of dollars worth of cycling clothes!<br /><br />So now I can get all decked out in my SCCCC kit when I go for rides - and I've noticed that I no longer have any desire to wear anything *but* my cycling kit - it's kind of like a badge of honor, I guess...<br /><br />In my mind, I was thinking these 3 guys wanted to see if they could keep up with a "professional" road racer, which is who they might have thought I was - who knows? Maybe they imagined I was a super climber, like Kevin Metcalfe. Or Mark Edwards. Or Clark Foy. Or Tim Clark. Little did they know that I was just me - someone desperately trying to become an "average" climber - and nowhere in the league of those great climbers I just mentioned. I'm really built more for sprinting and time-trialing - I don't have that real lightweight body that is the trademark of so many of the great climbers - and I don't have the time to train enough to increase my power to the point where I can use brute force to overcome my larger body type.<br /><br />But I guess when I realized these 3 guys had decided to jump onto my tail, some kind of magic power overwhelmed me - and I felt I had to try and not totally embarrass the racing team I represented with my kit - so I started to push just a little harder and faster than I might normally do at the beginning of the Kings Mtn climb...<br /><br />I figured they would probably stay with me for a mile or so, then swoosh right by me, to let me know that they could easily beat a "professional" racer...<br /><br />But that didn't happen! In fact, after just a 1/2 mile or so, I glanced back and saw that all 3 had dropped off my tail and were apparently in great duress - if Phil Liggett were commentating, I could hear him now: "Those boys will really have to dig deep into their suitcase of courage!" - or maybe: "Those boys are in a spot of bother on this climb!" - perhaps even this: "Those boys' legs will be screaming for them to stop!"...<br /><br />And here's what I imagined Phil would be saying about my performance at that moment in time: "He's dancing on his pedals in a most immodest way!" - or perhaps: "He climbs like an angel!" - maybe even this: "There's Steve Rosen, turning over those massive gears!"...<br /><br />Well, in any case, I realized that wearing my SCCCC kit seemed to inspire me to ride just a little harder - and hence, a little faster - than I might normally ride - and that day, I ended up getting to my destination spot on the climb (about 1/2 way up for that day's goal) in a record time for me - woohooo!!<br /><br />Oh, and those 3 cyclists? Well, they totally dropped out of sight by the time I reached the Huddart Park entrance (about 1.4 miles up the climb from Tripp Rd) - and after I reached my pre-determined spot for the day (2.2 miles up the climb), I congratulated myself on my excellent time (well, excellent for me, anyway!) - and then proceeded to head back down the mountain. As I passed by the Huddart Park entrance, I saw those 3 cyclists, who had stopped to take a brief rest - and they had this look of total disbelief on their faces! I think they had imagined that I had ridden all the way to the top of Kings Mtn Rd and was now coming back down to head home! I just smiled at them, suggesting that that is exactly what I had done... :)<br /><br />So you want to climb just a little faster than the next guy? Well, join a cycling climb - and be sure to order your kit - and wear it every time you ride...<br /><br />And now you've learned just one more secret to climbing faster - your mental attitude can be all the difference between winning - or losing - the race...<br /><br />...and wearing your kit doesn't hurt, either!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-15763105266330065582008-01-23T09:59:00.000-08:002008-01-23T14:05:19.774-08:00Preview of the 2008 Low-Key Hill Climb (LKHC) SeriesFor 2007, I watched on the sidelines with great interest as quite a few people participated in the the Low-Key Hill Climb series (check it out <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/">right here</a>). I didn't do any of the climbs because I was so discouraged about how I had lost my climbing legs during the second half of 2007, when I got into racing big-time - but totally abandoned my great training program I had adhered to so religiously for the first half of 2007. Sigh...<br /><br />But, since the LKHC participants seemed to enjoy my LKHC Converter I created for them (and me!) - you can check it out a previous blog entry about it <a href="http://cyclotic.blogspot.com/2007/12/lkhc-converter-first-release-now.html">here</a> - I decided to attend the LKHC Awards ceremony last week at the Cupertino Community Hall - it was totally fun! I highly recommend you attend it next year - we got to see a Tour of California preview short film and other goodies, too. Ron Brunner created an excellent and very professional-looking summary video of the 2007 LKHC series of climbs - good work, Ron!<br /><br />However, one highlight that was eagerly anticipated was the announced list of climbs for the 2008 LKHC series, starting October 1 this year.<br /><br />I managed to remember the list of all 9 climbs, but don't remember the exact order (except for the first and last climbs, which are the same every year, by tradition - Montebello Rd is the first climb of the series and Mt Hamilton is the last climb of the series).<br /><br />So - drum roll, please - here's the list for 2008:<br /><br />1. Montebello Rd - 5.3 miles, 2030 feet<br />2. Metcalfe Rd - 2.2 miles, 1033 feet<br />3. Quimby Rd - 5.1 miles, 2000 feet<br />4. Alpine Rd (West) - 7.6 miles, 1950 feet<br />5. Montevina Rd - 3.9 miles, 1800 feet<br />6. Bear Gulch Rd (West) - 3.2 miles, 1020 feet<br />7. El Toyonal/Lomas Cantada - 2.8 miles, 1129 feet<br />8. Jamison Creek - 3.1 miles, 1470 feet<br />9. Mt Hamilton - 18.4 miles, 4360 feet<br /><br />Here are a few quick notes on the above climbs:<br /><br />For Montevina Rd, here's somebody's MotionBased.com recording of a ride they did:<br /><br /><a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2182336">http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2182336</a><br /><br />For the El Toyonal/Lomas Cantada climb, it's in the Berkeley hills and was part of what someone called the Berkeley Hills Death Ride - here's their story (Note to self - I gotta try to do this ride one day!) :<br /><br /><a href="http://www.inl.org/bicycle/deathride.html">http://www.inl.org/bicycle/deathride.html</a><br /><br />For the Bear Gulch Rd West climb, here's somebody's MotionBased.com recording of a ride they did:<br /><br /><a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4692266">http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/4692266</a><br /><br />Also, note that the start of the Bear Gulch Rd West climb is also the entrance to Neil Young's Broken Arrow ranch, if you head towards the ocean - maybe he'll come out and watch the climbers that day!<br /><br />It looks like the 2008 climbs will be pretty interesting - I'm planning on doing all of the climbs in the series for this year - and I'm hoping to be climbing well enough late in the year to score an average of 100.0 points for each of those 9 climbs.<br /><br />Scoring 100.0 points (the median time) for any of those climbs will be a tough goal to reach, since I'm not a natural climber - so I'll have to be climbing better than I ever have in my entire life!<br /><br />To give you an example of how fast I need to do each of those climbs, here is my best guess at what I need to do to score 100.0 points (the MEDIAN time) for each of those climbs - I've also added what I think will be the WINNING time:<br /><br />1. Montebello Rd--5.3 miles--2030 feet--36:00 / 26:05<br />2. Metcalfe Rd--2.2 miles--1033 feet--18:00 / 13:20<br />3. Quimby Rd--5.1 miles--2000 feet--35:00 / 25:45<br />4. Alpine Rd (West)--7.6 miles--1950 feet--35:00 / 25:05<br />5. Montevina Rd--3.9 miles--1800 feet--32:00 / 23:10<br />6. Bear Gulch Rd (West)--3.2 miles--1020 feet--18:00 / 13:10<br />7. El Toyonal/Lomas Cantada--2.8 miles--1129 feet--20:00 / 14:30<br />8. Jamison Creek--3.1 miles--1470 feet--26:00 / 18:55<br />9. Mt Hamilton--18.4 miles--4360 feet--90:00 / 73:00<br /><br />Bottom line - I have my work cut out for me! I need to lose about 20 pounds AND somehow increase my power by about 5% - neither one is an easy task. Or, I could lose just 10 pounds, but then I'd have to increase my power by about 10% - much harder! I'd rather lose that extra 10 pounds than try to increase my power by another 5% over the 5% I *already* need to increase it by - either way, it's a tall order and a big goal!<br /><br />But that's what life's all about, right? Setting goals and then going for them - even if you come up a little short, you'll still be a lot better off than if you had never even tried in the first place...Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-18633815409110970232008-01-23T09:33:00.000-08:002008-01-23T09:59:26.688-08:00Another "Secret" Training Program - Revealed!For those of you following my blog (which means mostly Dennis Pedersen, of course!), you are aware of a "secret" training program that I started, in order to try and get my climbing legs back - you can read about it <a href="http://cyclotic.blogspot.com/2007/12/my-secret-training-program.html">right here</a>, in case your forgot about it...<br /><br />Well, I'm happy to report that the "secret" training program is certainly starting to work - I'm only up to Day 8, which means my next ride up Kings Mtn Rd ("Day 9") will be a distance of 2.2 miles, with an elevation gain of about 800 feet. That ride will be about the half-way point up Kings Mtn Rd, which is a 4.3-mile climb that gains 1590 feet of elevation. My time for that half-way mark should be close to 15 minutes, which means I'll be able to zero in on a sub-30 minute time for that climb, which would be a new PB for me. As I lose a little more weight and gain some new power, I should be able to get that time down to just under 27 minutes by the end of the year, which is my eventual goal - at that point, I calculated I should be able to score 100.0 points on the Low-Key Hillclimb time for Kings Mtn (see the 2007 results for that climb <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/week2/results.html">right here</a>). One of my big goals for 2008 is to average 100.0 points on all 9 of the climbs in this year's Low-Key Hillclimb series, which starts on October 1.<br /><br />So, what is this "other secret" training program, you might be wondering? It's quite simple, really. I decided you just can't go out there and do the same ride up Kings Mtn every day - I actually did 3 days in a row one week, but you need to have some variety. So I had this new idea - I noticed that about this time last year, I was doing a bunch of rides that involved climbing up a variety of short, but steep climbs near where I work here in San Mateo.<br /><br />In fact, I even scoped out a 42-mile ride that did almost 7000 feet of climbing by hitting 10 of those climbs - most of them are in the 0.5 mile to 1.2 mile range, but will climb 300 feet to 650 feet, meaning they each average something in the 9% to 12% range - pretty steep! I called this monster ride "The 10 Fingers of Death Ride" - you can see a recording of the entire ride <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1874298">right here</a> - that recording was done in my car. But I then broke the ride up into a couple of parts, so I could easily do each half of the ride as one of my "lunch breaks" from work. I then proceeded to do the "Easy 5 Fingers of Death Ride" (check it out <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1876964">here</a>) and the "Hard 5 Fingers of Death Ride" (view it <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1921270">here</a>), since the first 5 climbs are, on average, a little easier than the last 5 climbs. <br /><br />I noticed that a lot of the PBs I got in the first half of last year seemed to happen not too long after I had done some of those short, steep climbs - so I recently started mixing in some of those climbs into my training program, and noticed that they really seem to be helping me quite a bit. Hence, this is my other "secret" training program - doing regular rides up short, steep climbs. It obviously helps to build up leg strength, which is clearly important for climbing hills faster.<br /><br />And there you have it...another "secret" training program...revealed!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-81486334677365340842007-12-18T18:04:00.000-08:002007-12-18T18:27:58.432-08:00Climbing CalculatorsIt seems these days that everyone has some kind of cool climbing calculator - you've already read about my pretty cool <a href="http://www.polarlight.com/lkhc_converter.html">Low Key Hill Climb Converter</a> in a recent post (yeah - like my *last* post!).<br /><br />Well it seems my beefed-up LKHC Converter spurred on others to see what they could cook up - and the top climber in this year's LKHC series, Tim Clark, came up with something pretty cool himself - what he calls his <a href="http://www.drdmserver1.com/timspage/PowerCalc.html">Climbing Power Calculator (version 0.1)</a> - and here is what he says about it (I could paraphrase it, but Tim did a pretty good job of explaining it in an e-mail to the LKHC e-mail list - I hope you don't mind, Tim!) :<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">After seeing Steve Rosen's LKHC Climb Prediction page ... I got motivated to try to implement something in Adobe/Macromedia Flex.<br /><br />Ultimately ... my goal is to have something which is capable of taking your 'Average Threshold Power' ... and applying it to the different (instantaneous) gradients throughout the climb ... hopefully giving you the best possible estimate of your time.<br /><br />In order to do this ... I implemented the Power Profile spreadsheet that I found - which solves the quadratic equation for your climbing velocity based on a number of parameters (distance, grade, wind, rolling resistance, and POWER).<br /><br />I also needed to be able to read the MotionBased (exported) XML files, so that I could get access to the Distance vs. Altitude data. I did this on the left 'pane' ... where it displays a plot of the MB data.<br /><br />At present, it just pulls the (available) climb data for the climbs (I'm still missing a bunch), stuffs values into the Power Calc sheet, and allows you to Predict your Time based on the data. You can fool around with Rider Weight, Equip Weight, Head Wind, Power, etc ... and see how they would affect your times for the various climbs.<br /><br />It's *FAR* from finished, but I thought I'd share it wit everybody, so that I can get feedback as I continue to fool around with it.</span><br /><br />Well, I fooled around with Tim's new Climbing Power Calculator - and it's really pretty good. The main problem I see with his calculator is that it requires you to *know* your average power for a climb! Well, anyone with a power meter (like Tim and countless other more serious cyclists - especially the better racers) have access to this very important power information. <br /><br />But others of us - me included - don't have power meters (yet!) - so with this in mind, I decided it would be useful to have YACC (Yet Another Climbing Calculator) - but I just call it <a href="http://www.polarlight.com/climb_calculator.html">The Climb Calculator</a>.<br /><br />So what's the big deal about this one?<br /><br />Simple - I wanted a generic climb calculator, so I can play those "what if" games for *any* climb that I choose to do. And not just the LKHC climbs that most of us are so familiar with.<br /><br />Also, what if *you* are convinced the elevation or distance info for one of the LKHC climbs is *wrong*?<br /><br />Or, what if you think my choice of 50.0 watts of power needed to overcome tire pressure, wind resistance, extra cold weather, a bad hair day, etc. - is simply wrong and should really be 45.321 watts?<br /><br />This Climb Calculator will feel familiar to you - except you can enter the *exact* height of a climb (in feet), and the *precise* distance (in miles) for that climb.<br /><br />Then, do the usual - either enter time information (mins:secs) and/or weight information (and notice that you now enter the rider weight and the equipment weight as separate numbers - and it will automatically figure out the total weight - a good idea I saw in Tim Clark's cool calculator). You can also optionally enter in power information, <span style="font-style:italic;">if you have it!</span>.<br /><br />Note that if you enter in your average power information for a climb (and you don't have to - it will determine your power info from your weight and time, if you want), you can optionally enter in the "extra watts", i.e., that magic number (I use 50.0 for the LKHC Converter) that accounts for all the power you need to "move the bike", as Al Williams pointed out.<br /><br />And, of course, this Climb Calculator let's you play all those fun "what if" games, by changing the rider weight (or, the equipment weight - or both!) and seeing the change in the climbing time. Or, you can change the average power output for your climb, and see the climbing time get re-calculated, etc.<br /><br />I did this because I have good data for a lot of the climbs I do - dozens of major climbs, but also dozens of smaller climbs - some that are just a 1/2 mile long or so. Now I can see the effects of weight change or power change on all those climbs.<br /><br />And, of course, for all those *big* climbs that we do, but have not been done by the LKHC (yet) - like Alba Rd - or Jamison Creek - or the San Bruno HC, etc. - you can now see what happens when you control yourself and stop having those second helpings of lasagna, that extra piece of apple pie, etc. - or do those extra hill repeats in the middle of winter and increase your power output by 2%, etc.<br /><br />Have fun!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-69227690213574120432007-12-12T16:33:00.000-08:002007-12-12T16:56:27.751-08:00The LKHC Converter - first release now availableMost of you that read this blog regularly (yeah - both of us) know about a great hill climbing series that is quite, uh, low key - the Low Key Hill Climb series (LKHC) - you can read all about this year's festivities <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/">right here</a>.<br /><br />I wanted to participate in the series this year, but we all know what a disaster it's been for me the last few months - I totally lost the (little) climbing ability I had so carefully gained in the first half of the year, as I delved back into the exciting world of bike racing for the first time in 30 years, starting back in about July of this year.<br /><br />But a number of my friends did the LKHC series this year - and I always followed the action, anxiously waiting to see the results published later that day or the next (each climb was done on a Saturday, except for the last one, which is traditionally done on Thanksgiving morning and goes up Mt Hamilton).<br /><br />I sent out some e-mails to some biking buddies of mine, to let them know about a great set of conversion charts that one of the organizers of the LKHC series, Dan Connelly, had put together for the 1995 and 1996 editions of the series. The LKHC series was abandoned for about 10 years, but was resurrected in 2006, and was so popular, they did it again this year - and gained even *more* converts! I suspect it will be even bigger in 2008.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/1995/results_fit.html">1995 conversion chart</a> and the <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/1996/regression.html">1996 conversion chart</a> provided you with these cool conversion factors, so that if you knew your time up one of the climbs, you could use the conversion factors for that climb to calculate (or, predict) your expected times for all the other climbs.<br /><br />I've used those conversion charts a lot in the last few months - in fact, a previous blog entry I wrote explained <a href="http://cyclotic.blogspot.com/2007/10/why-i-want-to-climb-olh-in-1910.html">Why I Want To Climb OLH in 19:10</a>. But I always calculated my predicted times the old-fashioned way, with a calculator, of course... :)<br /><br />But one of my cycling buddies, Rich Seiter, sent me an Excel spreadsheet that allowed you to enter in your climbing time for one of the climbs, and then it would automatically calculate all your predicted times for the other climbs done that year - how cool! I made a few minor tweaks of his Excel spreadsheet and sent it out to all the rest of my biking buddies, with Rich's blessings, of course (thanks, Rich!).<br /><br />But then I got to thinking - wouldn't it be cool to have an online version of that same concept? And hence, the LKHC Converter project was born - and now you can see the results for yourself:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.polarlight.com/lkhc_converter.html">The LKHC Converter</a><br /><br />After I put out the first version of this web page, I let Dan Connelly know about it, and encouraged him to create similar conversion charts for the 2006 LKHC and 2007 LKHC series - and he said he'd do just that. He also asked me to let the LKHC e-mail list know about it - and so I did.<br /><br />Naturally, I got all kinds of feedback - and as different ideas and requests came in, it got fancier and fancier - with more features and more goodies. The current version you see now represents about the 10th iteration of that web page!<br /><br />So have some fun and play around with it - and drop me a note if you have any comments/suggestions to make - I'd love to hear your ideas.<br /><br />And when Dan gets me those new conversion charts for 2006 and 2007, I'll be sure to update the LKHC Converter, of course.<br /><br />I'm also working on creating a version of that same web page for our local cycling group - it would have a lot of the other climbs that many of us do in the local Scotts Valley and Santa Cruz area - but I won't have as many data points to use to create the tables that drive it, so it will mostly be useful to just a few of us, I suspect.<br /><br />But who knows? Maybe this will be the start of a whole new career... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-62095979907617698452007-12-09T19:38:00.000-08:002007-12-09T20:34:52.860-08:00My "Secret" Training ProgramWell, I guess it won't be much of a secret, if I'm publishing it here on my blog - but there are only one or two of us that read my blog anyway, and we both know about my "secret" training program.<br /><br />But I thought I'd put it out there for posterity's sake - who knows - it could be a valuable training tool for some poor sucker that used to be in pretty good shape, somehow lost their conditioning, and wants to get it back again. Gee - that could describe me this year! And hence, I've devised a new, "secret" training program to whip myself back into shape as soon as possible.<br /><br />What's the rush, you might ask?<br /><br />Well, for one thing, the first race of the season, the San Bruno Hillclimb, is on January 1st - just 3 weeks from now! It's only a 3.7 mile climb, gaining about 1400 feet of elevation - very similar to Old La Honda (which gains 1330 feet in 3.3 miles). In fact, your time up San Bruno should be not more than about 1 minute slower than your time up Old La Honda, mostly because of the slightly longer distance.<br /><br />Another reason - the first road race of the season that I intend to ride is the Cantua Creek RR on February 16 - just 2 months from now.<br /><br />And finally, the Tour of California will be happening February 17 through February 24, and a few of us will be taking a "sanity day" off on Wednesday, February 20, to ride up Sierra Rd in the morning, and watch the TOC roll up over the summit of Sierra towards the end of that day's stage race - and I want to be able to climb Sierra Rd in a good time (33 minutes would be real nice!) - and right now, I'd be lucky to do that climb in 43 minutes!<br /><br />Well, to climb Sierra Rd in just 33 minutes, I'd have to be able to climb Old La Honda in record time (for me) - just 22:51 (my current PB from earlier this year was 23:18), or Kings Mtn Rd in just 28:55 - and I haven't even broken 30 minutes on Kings Mtn Rd yet!<br /><br />So, I've got my work cut out for me! Oh, how do I know about those times for Old La Honda and Kings Mtn Rd? Simple - just check out my <a href="http://www.polarlight.com/lkhc_converter.html">Low Key Hill Climb Converters</a> web page - it has these cool calculators that allow you to enter in a known time for some climb (say, 33:00 for Sierra Rd on the 1995 Climbs converter) - and it will predict your climbing times on all the other climbs done that year in the <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/">Low Key Hill Climb series</a>. Those converters were fun to do, based on the fine work (conversion charts) that Dan Connelly did on the 1995 and 1996 renditions of those hillclimb series.<br /><br />So what does this all have to do with my "secret" training program? And just what IS the "secret" training program, anyway? And why is it such a "secret"?<br /><br />Okay - all good questions. And, I have some answers. If you've read any of my earlier blogs, you know that I've had this problem recently - I inadvertently lost a lot of climbing conditioning as I got into road racing this year (in the second half of the year, starting in July). I was on a great training program in the first half of the year, doing lots of climbing - almost every day, in fact!<br /><br />But once I discovered how much climbing ability I had lost a couple of months ago, I got quite depressed - and instead of starting to just climb again, I got more and more out of climbing shape - and also just lost conditioning, in general, as my riding volume decreased quite a bit! I started missing many days in a row - sometimes as much as a week without riding at all! What a mess...<br /><br />But now I've hit upon a really good idea to get myself motivated again, in a way that will demand a lot of work, but will be fun at the same time, which I believe is one of the "secrets" to any training program - you have to design something that works for YOU - and not somebody else! That's been my mistake - I've been trying too hard to bounce back according to someone else's ideas about how to bounce back - and not due to anything that anyone else has told me - it's been completely created in my own head, where I'm looking for answers and asking questions from all kinds of people that I admire and respect - and listening to their answers and advice, but forgetting to listen to the one person that knows best - me!<br /><br />So here's my "secret": You know best how to motivate yourself - so use whatever "tricks" it takes to motivate yourself, then apply those tricks and let nature take its course - how simple can that be?<br /><br />And, here's my "trick": I'm going to ride from my work location every day (it's in San Mateo), climbing over some small hills to get to Canada Rd - then I'll do a very moderate 5.0-mile time trial along Canada Rd, heading for the base of Kings Mtn Rd. After doing the 5.0-mile time trial, I'll go nice and easy for a few miles to get to the start of the Kings Mtn climb, then climb it hard, starting at Tripp Rd, and going up exactly 1.4 miles (this will be about 10 minutes or so, which is 1/3 of the climb of Kings Mtn Rd). Then, I'll turn around and head back to work, doing another moderate-paced 5.0-mile time trial on Canada Rd. This will be day 1 (Monday, December 10). On day 2, I'll do the exact same ride, but add 0.1 miles to the hard climb - and "hard" means at a time-trial climbing pace, or zone 5.0+ (about 162 bpm for me). This extra 0.1 miles will be an extra 45 seconds of hard climbing or so. And, each day, I'll continue to add 0.1 miles to the climb - and by the end of 28 days, or on January 7, 2008 - I'll be able to do a hard time trial pace up Kings Mtn Rd, all the way to the top (which is 4.2 miles - or 1.4 miles plus the 2.8 miles that I will have added by then, in 0.1 mile increments).<br /><br />Hopefully, this "secret" training program will result in me being able to climb Kings Mtn Rd in about 30 minutes, which would be a new PB for me. Then, all I have to do at that point is try and and take off another minute or so from my climbing time, but I will have a good 6 weeks to get that done, before the big day on Sierra Rd (on Wednesday, February 20).<br /><br />Another benefit is that I will working on those 5.0-mile time trials on Canada Rd, which is where the Beat-the-Clock time trial series are held - and as I get in better conditioning, I'll mix in some days where I do those time trial segments at a harder and harder pace, until I am doing the 5.0-mile time trial segments at close to a true time-trial pace - so by the time the first Beat-the-Clock time trial comes along (which I believe will be in about the middle of February, like this year), I should be in good enough shape to do well for that 10.0-mile time trial, where I will try to match or beat my best time this year, which was 26:14, or 23 mph.<br /><br />And, as an added plus, this "secret" training program should get me in good enough shape to be able to do the San Bruno Hill Climb on January 1st in a time of about 24:xx (under 25 minutes) - and I get this number by using a Kings Mtn climbing time of 30 minutes in that LKHC Converter page, and noting that the Old La Honda time would be about 23:42 - and as I said, your time up San Bruno should not be much more than one minute slower than your Old La Honda time.<br /><br />Make sense? Well, it doesn't really matter if it makes sense to YOU - the key is, it makes sense to ME!<br /><br />...And that is the big "secret"... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-62889684687899097172007-12-04T16:56:00.001-08:002007-12-06T18:37:46.305-08:00My Cycling Goals for 2008Okay, it's time to put it all out there - what I want to achieve in 2008, at least for my cycling "hobby" (or, "infatuation", as my wife describes it!).<br /><br />Looking at my strengths from 2007, it's clear that I should aim high for any time trials that don't go straight uphill. This would include unsanctioned things like the Beat-the-Clock time trials on Canada Rd, or the Swanton Rd time trials. Of course, there are also the sanctioned flatter time trials - Dunlap TT, TT Championships in Sattley, Esparto TT, etc.<br /><br />Another strength I observed from 2007 (just based on 4 crits and 2 road races) is that I can do well in those flat crits and flatter road races. However, I'm not super crazy about the crits - they're okay, but obviously quite dangerous - I never got involved in any crashes in the 4 crits that I did, but I sure came close! I got to personally see 2 or 3 good crashes, including 1 or 2 that were very close to me - but that's just bike racing, for sure...<br /><br />I've identified the flatter road races that I *should* do well in - Snelling, Merco Credit Union Foothills, and Bariani / Zamora for the early season, then Dunnigan Hills, San Ardo, and Henleyville for the later season (and maybe Warnerville, a new road race for 2008, near Oakdale - but there are no details about the course yet).<br /><br />And my weaknesses that I saw in 2007? Well, climbing - obviously! Anytime the road goes up for more than about 1 mile, I will be at a disadvantage until I can lose a bunch of weight and/or improve my power output in watts. So here are my climbing goals for 2008:<br /><ul><br /><li>San Bruno HC - 22:59 (18:59)<br /><li>Mt Diablo - 1:08:59 (59:59)<br /><li>Old La Honda - 21:59 (18:59)<br /><li>Kings Mtn - 27:59 (24:59)<br /><li>E Hwy 9 - 39:59 (34:59)<br /><li>Mt Hamilton - 1:39:59 (1:29:59)<br /><li>Sierra Rd - 31:59 (27:59)<br /><li>Page Mill Rd - 45:59 (39:59)<br /></ul><br />Yes, the goals are a bit lofty, especially considering that most of my current PBs on those climbs were set earlier this year, when I actually had climbing legs, which is not the case today. But you gotta stretch, right?<br /><br />What are the numbers in parentheses, you might be asking? Why, those are my lifetime goals for those climbs - something to shoot for before I die one day... :)<br /><br />My racing goals are pretty realistic for next year - I'm going to focus mostly on the flatter road races (where I have a chance to place in the top 10) and the flatter time trials, plus some crits. But I'm also going to try my hand at some of the tougher road races and time trials (i.e., hillier) when I feel ready - whatever that means! So, my goals:<br /><ul><br /><li>Enter 6 of the flatter road races, placing in the top 10 for 3<br /><li>Enter 3 of the flatter time trials, placing in the top 15 for all<br /><li>Enter 4 of the tougher road races, finishing at least 2<br /><li>Enter 2 of the tougher time trials, finishing them both<br /><li>Enter at least 6 crits, including 2 hillier ones<br /><li>Enter all Swanton TT races, breaking 33 minutes every time<br /><li>Enter all Beat-the-Clock TT races, finishing in the top 15 for all<br /><li>Earn at least half the upgrade points needed to get into Cat 3<br /></ul><br />There are also some goals that are the traditional goals I've set each year for the last few years - they are all related to participating in some of the organized bike rides that many of us enjoy doing each year:<br /><ul><br /><li>Death Ride - finish in under 10 hours<br /><li>Santa Cruz Mountains Challenge - finish in under 7 hours<br /><li>Mt Diablo Challenge - finish in under 1:09<br /><li>Enter all the LKHC series climbs and average 100 pts for each<br /></ul><br />Finally, I have my more immediate goals - the most important of which is to get myself back to the same climbing conditioning I had about the middle of 2007 - and attempt to get there by the first real road race of the season on February 16, Cantua Creek, which I also consider to be one of my 4 tougher road races, since it occurs relatively early in the season - the climbing is not severe, but it will certainly feel like it to me!<br /><br />Lastly, I want to do well enough in the first half of the season, to consider getting an invitation to join either the Bike Trip or the San Jose Bicycle Club team for the last part of the year, where I can help them in the flatter road races and some crits. My current team, SCCCC, just doesn't have enough serious road racers that want to work as a team - and I've seen that both Bike Trip and San Jose Bicycle Club have road riders with that kind of dedication and teamwork ethics.<br /><br />That's about it for 2008 - now it's time to get on my bike and start training seriously!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-21803272166795152432007-12-04T14:11:00.000-08:002007-12-04T14:57:57.305-08:00The Year (2007) in ReviewYep, it's that time of year - gotta figure out what I want to accomplish for next year, at least from a cycling perspective (is there any other?)... :)<br /><br />But before I try to figure that out, I need to do a quick review of what I did - right and wrong - for this year. I didn't plan on getting back into racing for 2007 - it just sorta happened! One of my cycling buddies had talked about doing some racing this year - and I thought it would be cool to try it again, myself. I mean, I had raced - way back when (in my college days) - so why not try it again? Ironically, the guy that initially motivated me about racing again turned out not to race this year - maybe he'll get into it for 2008!<br /><br />Before I got into the serious racing stuff, I thought I'd start out with some easy things - like the Swanton Time Trial series - informal, needs no racing license - not too long (11 miles, 5.5 miles out and back, with a solid, one-mile climb just before the turnaround point) - you can read all about it <a href="http://www.santacruzcycling.org/teamsc/timetrial/">right here</a>. I also heard about this cool (and again, informal) time-trial series called Beat-the-Clock, which had the extra benefit of being a great charity cause, with all the proceeds going to the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF) - read all about that great series <a href="http://www.scaledup.com/beattheclock/timetrialseries07.html">right here</a>.<br /><br />Well, I did (finally!) do one of the Swanton Time Trial races, but not until it was near the end of the season (see the results of that race <a href="http://www.santacruzcycling.org/teamsc/timetrial/SwantonTTResults2007.htm#Aug">here</a>). As you can see from the results, I did pretty good for my first Swanton TT - 34:14 - almost 20 mph (I was shooting for 33:00, which is exactly 20 mph).<br /><br />And, I did 2 of the Beat-the-Clock time trials, both 10-mile TTs on a rolling course (Canada Rd in Woodside/San Mateo) - one in May, where I did 26:14, or just about 23 mph - wooohooo!! I did the second one in September, slipping a bit to 26:42 - but followed that ITT just 5 minutes later with a 2-man TT - we did 26:07, which was mostly my partner, who had done a better ITT (he was my 30-second man in the ITT), with an excellent time of 25:00.<br /><br />After I did my first Beat-the-Clock TT, I decided it was time to get serious and get an official racing license, which I did in May - and promptly joined a local cycling club, the Santa Cruz County Cycling Club (SCCCC) - too many 'C's in our acronym! Then, with my fresh new racing license (#264162), I looked around to figure out what I'd do for my first race in 30 years! I decided to sign up for the Watsonville criterium - a few people I knew had said that it was a fun crit - and since it would only last 30 minutes or so, it couldn't be *that* bad, right? Well, it turned out to be a blast - and I even managed to get 8th place, after forming a breakaway with 7 other guys (yeah - I got last in the sprint finish, but that's not 'cause I'm a bad sprinter - I was just, uh, rusty - it was my first race in 30 years).<br /><br />With that first race under my belt, I was hooked again - and totally motivated to do more races - a few more crits (although I never liked crits as much as I liked the regular road races) - and I had a couple of road races singled out - they were not too hilly, and not too long - good test cases for my re-entry into the cool world of bike racing!<br /><br />And, I continued training - I had been doing a LOT of climbing in those first 6 months of the year, getting more PBs in May and June, as I continued to get stronger and faster.<br /><br />Then I made a strategic error - I didn't realize it at the time, but it turned out to have some dramatic effects on my conditioning. I decided to start doing a lot of the 'Noon Goon' rides, as I affectionately called them. They are great training rides - leaving at noon every weekday from Palo Alto and, after a 10 to 15 minute warmup, going at a race-type pace for the next hour or so. My strategic error? I started limiting my training mostly to these shorter, faster rides on the weekdays (instead of the climbing routes I had been doing by myself) - and the weekends consisted of either doing races or more of those same shorter and faster routes - but not too much climbing.<br /><br />Well - that strategy paid of well for the crits and flatter road races that I chose to race (4 crits and 2 road races) - but when I went to get ready for the Mt Diablo Challenge race in early October, I found out I had lost a lot of my climbing ability!<br /><br />It turns out that I'm one of those types of riders that needs to climb all the time to keep myself in climbing shape - I'm not a natural climber, so when I start to get in better climbing shape (from climbing, of course!), I need to keep climbing - a lot - just to not go backwards!<br /><br />It was depressing to see how bad I was on the longer, harder climbs in September and October - and I continued to beat myself up the last couple of months, bemoaning how much conditioning I had lost. I noticed that when I tried to push it on the climbs, I was a LONG way from any of my PBs that I had established earlier this year.<br /><br />So it was fun getting back into racing, but I paid a dear price for my training strategy - and now I have to figure out how to re-capture the motivation - I'm terribly de-motivated right now, as I've seen other cycling friends of mine get better and stronger (especially on the climbs), while I've been pedaling backwards at an alarming rate!<br /><br />So, how do I stop the carnage and start moving forwards again? That, my friends, is the crux of my dilemma these days.<br /><br />Fortunately, I have a secret game plan that I'm putting into action - and if it works, I'll have a very interesting blog entry to create in about one month! I won't reveal the secrets right now, as I want to get some more feedback before I announce to the world (uh, yeah - all two of you!) a very interesting idea I had that can be used to 'get back into the game', so to speak...<br /><br />Next up will be a blog entry about my cycling goals for next year - I've been putting a lot of thought into it - and I have some very definite things I want to do for next year - and they don't all involve winning races...<br /><br />Stay tuned!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-85813685925637462732007-11-30T13:00:00.002-08:002007-11-30T13:19:58.066-08:00So What's The Big Deal About Losing A Pound Or Two?I saw that my friend, Dennis Pederson, created a recent blog entry about his cycling goals for 2008 (you can read all about it <a href="http://dennispedersen.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-goals-for-2008-racing-season.html">right here</a>).<br /><br />He mentioned that one of his goals was to increase his FTP (Functional Threshold Power) from his estimated 265 watts to 276 watts - and was wondering if that would allow him to break 19 minutes on the benchmark climb of the Bay Area, Old La Honda (OLH). His PB on OLH is currently 19:50, even though I suspect he could actually do that climb a little faster right now (that's a challenge for you, Dennis!).<br /><br />So, I did some calculations of my own, and sent him a little note about it:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">You said you believe your FTP power is 265 watts - that might be correct, but using your 19:50 time on OLH, I came up with this value: 260.6 watts (I'll explain how shortly).<br /><br />You were wondering if raising your FTP to 276 watts would allow you to break 19 minutes on OLH. Raising your FTP from 265 watts to 276 watts is about 5%.<br /><br />If we use *my* value of 260.6 watts, and increase it by 5%, which is another 13.0 watts, we get about 273.6 watts. And by my calculations, an FTP of 273.6 watts on OLH would translate to a time of 1133 seconds (18:53), or almost one minute faster, which would allow you to reach your goal of getting under 19 minutes.<br /><br />So there!<br /><br />Oh, how did I come up with my numbers? Simple - I use a very cool webpage, that I think I told you about before - or, if not, here it is:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.chuck-wright.com/calculators/watts.html">http://www.chuck-wright.com/calculators/watts.html</a><br /><br />If you plug in your weight of 172 (152 for you, and 20 for your bike and accessories) - in the Mechanical box, and plug in 1330 feet (the rise in elevation of OLH), then put in 1190 (19:50 for your PB on OLH) for the Time in seconds, you see the calculated power is 260.6 watts - now, start plugging in lower numbers for the time - when you get to 1133 (or a time of 18:53), you will see the calculated power is 273.7 watts, which is the 5% gain you were wondering about.</span><br /><br />After sending him the above e-mail, I then thought about the fact that he had mentioned in his blog entry that he would also like to lose about 5 pounds, to get from his current weight of 152 pounds to just 147 pounds (I can only dream about getting to a weight like that!) - so I decided to do some additional calculations to figure out what losing just 5 pounds might do to his time on OLH - and I sent him this note:<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Oh, I forgot to add this tidbit:<br /><br />If you reduce your weight by just 5 pounds, so the total weight going up OLH is 167 instead of 172 (you + bike), then for that same power of 273.7 watts, your time drops to just 1100 seconds, which is a time of 18:20 - and now you're just 20 seconds from breaking 18 minutes! If you can drop 8 pounds, and get it to just 164 pounds for the total weight, you now hit the magic time of 18:00 exactly!<br /><br />If ever there was a reason to drop 8 pounds, that would be it!</span><br /><br />So is losing a pound or two going to make any difference in how fast you climb a mountain?<br /><br />You bet!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-8478263286981953702007-10-18T12:03:00.000-07:002007-10-18T12:55:08.210-07:00What A Difference A Day Makes !Good news - I'm back in the game - on this morning's ride with one of my biking buddies, Ed, I did the Hwy 9 climb in 48:05 - about 4:20 faster than just a few days ago (when I did 52:25) - Wooohooo!!<br /><br />Interestingly, my average heartrate was identical on both climbs - 153 bpm !!<br /><br />The difference? Pacing. I approached the climb much like I did my PB ride of Hwy 9 back in late April of this year - where I started out much easier, then started pushing harder after hitting the halfway mark of the climb (in terms of time, not distance).<br /><br />So, comparing my splits today with my PB ride back in April, I was only 2 minutes down at the half-way mark (22:00 in April, and 24:00 today) - then I pushed the pace harder for the second half, when it gets a little steeper on average, and saw my heartrate steadily rise up, just like on my PB ride.<br /><br />So, for the second half, my PB ride was done in 21:43 (for a total time of 43:43) and today I did that second half in 24:05, losing just a little over 2 more minutes from my PB time back in April.<br /><br />And when I did that PB ride in April, I weighed 11 pounds less than today - according to Joe Friel, that ll pounds (5 kg) is worth 15 seconds per kilometer, and the Hwy 9 climb is 11 kilometers, so my weight penalized me 165 seconds, or almost 3 minutes!<br /><br />So, subtracting 2:45 (165 seconds) from today's time of 48:05, you get 45:20 - which is my theoretical time on today's climb if my weight were the same as last April.<br /><br />And 45:20 is only about 1:30 slower than my PB time back in April. Of course, I need to lose the weight to turn that theoretical time into a real time!<br /><br />Bottom line? I don't feel quite so bad now.<br /><br />Oh - more good news! Yesterday's disaster on Page Mill? It appears I had a slow leak in my rear tire! When I met Ed this morning and got my bike out of my car, my rear tire was totally flat! I took out the tube and pumped it up quite a bit, looking for the leak, which we could not find. So I tossed the tube into the back of my car, and when we got back from our ride this morning, the tube's pressure was down quite a bit!<br /><br />So it looks like I was climbing up Page Mill with a bum rear tire - I hadn't even thought about having a slow leak after I got to the top and saw my horrible time of 1:01:15 (which was about 8 minutes slower than my time last week).<br /><br />I guess I should have realized that something was wrong, because my descent back to my car took quite a bit longer than when Dennis and I did the descent last week.<br /><br />Duh!<br /><br />So now I'm all psyched up again about getting myself back on track with my climbing program. I've decided I'm going to try and mimic the training I did back in the earlier part of this year, when I really did a good job of improving my climbing.<br /><br />Back then, I did a lot of rides for fun, but I made a point of hitting a lot of shorter climbs, some mild, and some quite steep - where I would turn on the after-jets and burn it up the climb - these climbs were often just 1/2 mile to 1 mile in length - so the climbs took anywhere from 3 or 4 minutes to 12 minutes (Crestview Rd is one of those harder ones - 1.36 miles, but 650 feet of climbing - ouch!).<br /><br />Then, I started mixing in longer climbs (like Hwy 9 or Old La Honda or Kings Mtn Rd) and would then push it up those climbs - but only after getting in some "base" climbing on the shorter stuff.<br /><br />Plus, I rode just about every day - doing lots of climbing most days. It's just that some days, my climbs would be "fun climbs", where I went at a very mellow pace, kind of like a cycling tourist - looking around and checking out the scenery, instead of suffering and doing that "blank stare" at the pavement in front of you, wondering when the pain and suffering would mercifully come to an end... :)<br /><br />So that's what I'm going to do for the next couple of months. And this is a good plan, too, as I need to re-discover how fun cycling can be, but still mix in some useful training days, to keep improving on my climbing, which is my weakest area.<br /><br />Another bonus about focusing on the shorter (and often steeper) climbs - the first race of next season is the San Bruno Hillclimb, on New Year's Day. I want to do that race - and focusing on the short, steep climbs will help, since that hillclimb is not super long - it's just 3.7 miles, and averages about 7% for the grade. This makes is similar to Old La Honda.<br /><br />In fact, your theoretical time on the San Bruno Hillclimb should be within 30 seconds to a minute of your time on Old La Honda.<br /><br />I haven't decided what my target time will be for the San Bruno Hillclimb - it will mostly depend on how I am progressing as we get near Christmas. I'll have plenty of data from my local training rides to see where I am at - hopefully, I will be getting close to my various PBs that I established earlier this year (in April, May, and June).<br /><br />All I know is that after yesterday's disastrous climb up Page Mill Rd, I was going to call Ed and tell him I wanted to bail on this mornings ride - in fact, I was thinking about bailing on riding for the rest of this year!<br /><br />But I'm glad I didn't bail - and I'm glad I decided to guts it out and do today's ride up Hwy 9, which gave me faith again that things aren't always as bad as they seem sometimes...<br /><br />Yep, what a difference a day makes!Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-40912796115026852742007-10-16T13:57:00.000-07:002008-03-18T16:07:50.784-07:00Why I Want To Climb OLH in 19:10For 2008, I want to climb Old La Honda (OLH) in 19:10, which is about 4 minutes faster than my current PB (Personal Best) of 23:18.<br /><br />Why 19:10?<br /><br />Well, sometimes, when you're browsing around on the web, you find these little nuggets of gold - and I happened to just find this wonderful Climbing Conversion Chart from the first Low Key Hill Climb (LKHC) series that was done back in 1995 - check out this chart near the bottom of <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/1995/results_fit.html">this page</a>.<br /><br />In particular, it will help you predict your times on various climbs in the Bay Area, based on your known time up any of those climbs.<br /><br />So, let's use, for example, a very well known time up OLH that my friend, Dennis Pedersen did recently - a time of 19:50.<br /><br />I always thought I wanted to break 20 minutes going up OLH some day for a couple of reasons:<br /><br />1) It's fun to belong to the sub-anything crowd for a particular climb, and for OLH, under 20 minutes is that "anything" number, at least for me!<br /><br />2) I figured that if I could break 20 minutes on OLH, then I should be able to break the magic hour mark for climbing Mt Diablo - and if you can get under 60 minutes for the Mt Diablo Challenge, you get this free t-shirt that tells the world you did just that - and that is one of the "Real Big Goals" in my biking life.<br /><br />Now, Dennis did 19:50 on OLH recently, so what would be his time up various climbs that I do all the time?<br /><br />So, using the chart, we can convert his OLH time of 19:50 into a Page Mill Rd time - the conversion factor for Page Mill (week 3) is 2.0921, using the chart.<br /><br />So, 19:50 == 19.833 minutes<br /><br />And, 19.833 * 2.0921 = 41.5 == 41:30<br /><br />Thus, his OLH time of 19:50 should translate to a Page Mill time of 41:30. Pretty cool, huh? I think Dennis and I thought his Page Mill time should be close to 42 minutes or so - I had a slightly different algorithm - take the OLH time, add 1 minute, and double it, which would give us a predicted time of 41:40.<br /><br />Using the same chart, this would mean his Kings Mtn Rd time would be this:<br /><br />19.833 * 1.2655 = 25.1 == 25:06<br /><br />Now, his Bike Trip teammate, Mark Edwards, did 21:46 on Kings Mtn Rd in a recent LKHC climb (he got 2nd place, too - check out the results <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/week2/results.html">here</a>), so this means Dennis would have finished just a little over 3 minutes behind Mark, and just after Scott Martin on his team, who did 24:55 - so Dennis would have been 26th out of 75 guys that entered that hillclimb contest a little over a week ago. Excellent, Dennis!<br /><br />And, Dennis' time on Mt Diablo would be very close to the magic 1 hour mark:<br /><br />19.833 * 3.1290 = 62.1 == 1:02:06<br /><br />Of course, you can use the chart to figure out what kind of time you need to do on OLH to break an hour for the Mt Diablo climb - the conversion factor for Mt Diablo is 3.1290, so you get this:<br /><br />60.000 / 3.1290 = 19.175 == 19:10.5<br /><br />This means, if you can climb OLH in 19:10, you can (theoretically) climb Mt Diablo in just under an hour.<br /><br />So, is there any evidence to back up these numbers? Well, let's look at Martin Hyland. He did the first LKHC this year, up Montebello Rd (week 1) and did a time of 32:59 (see the full results <a href="http://www.lowkey.djconnel.com/2007/week1/results.html">here</a>).<br /><br />And, to convert this to an OLH time, the chart says to use 0.5827:<br /><br />32:59 == 32.9833<br />32.9833 * 0.5827 = 19.2 == 19:12<br /><br />And, Martin, it just so happens, did the Mt Diablo Challenge this year - just a week after doing his time of 32:59 on Montebello Rd. And Martin's time?<br /><br />59:30.8 ( You can see all the results <a href="http://www.doitsports.com/newresults3/client/184108_215270_2007.html">here</a>)<br /><br />How about that?<br /><br />So, now you know why I want to climb OLH in 19:10 by the time we get to this time of year (October) in 2008.<br /><br />Because if I can climb OLH in 19:10, then I can break 60 minutes for the Mt Diablo Challenge in 2008.<br /><br />And get that free t-shirt.Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-26457554198482025362007-10-15T13:41:00.000-07:002007-10-15T15:07:22.971-07:00The Streak (or, I Was Almost A Mutant)I was just reflecting in an e-mail to my friend, Dennis Pedersen, about how I was doing a lot of climbing in the early part of this year.<br /><br />And, when I was looking back at some of my records, I totally forgot about "The Streak", which was this magical period from February 28 through April 19 of this year, when I rode my bike every day - and most of those days involved a fair amount of climbing. You can see a record of all my rides (with my Garmin, anyway) <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/user/polarlight">right here</a>.<br /><br />In fact, during "The Streak", I rode for 51 days straight, and did 156,600 feet of climbing, which is an average of 3100 feet of climbing per day!<br /><br />I also happened to have set a fair number of PBs (Personal Bests) during that streak, or just after the streak finally ended. I was even getting PBs on dead-tired legs (see my comments on day 12 of "The Streak" <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2227883">right here</a>) !!<br /><br />I didn't happen to plan "The Streak" - it was just one of those things that started spontaneously - I don't think I even paid any attention to it until I noticed I had ridden about 12 days straight - I think my previous "streak" was about 10 days of riding. So, I was suddenly on this roll...<br /><br />And, during "The Streak", I even got sick for about a week, but still continued to ride (just doing easier rides for several days).<br /><br />And why did "The Streak" finally come to an end? Simple - my youngest son, Grant, and I had to drive down to Oceanside for a couple of days for his surfing contest. I was going to bring my bike, but decided it probably would not really work out, since it was going to be just me and Grant for 2 or 3 days - it was a chance to do some good father/son bonding, which is what happened. Thus, my greatest streak came to a close at 51 days.<br /><br />All in all, it was probably the single greatest period of my life on a bike - I was getting stronger, faster, and feeling healthier than ever - and my weight dropped down, too - which helped me immensely in setting those new PBs during that time.<br /><br />Maybe I should start "The Next Streak"... :)<br /><br />Gee, I was almost a mutant...Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304015329718661014.post-21183942966659279102007-10-15T11:27:00.000-07:002007-10-15T12:10:09.238-07:00The 10 Fingers of Death RideI work in San Mateo, which turns out to be the epicenter of a lot of very cool short and steep climbs. Since I bring my bike to work every day (and try to get out for rides 3 or 4 times during the weekdays), I decided earlier this year to map out an insane ride, where I manage to ride up 10 of the steepest roads I could find here in the San Mateo area.<br /><br />Now, for those of us that ride a lot in the Santa Cruz mountains (which I do all the time, since I live in Scotts Valley), a typical ride just about anywhere will result in about 1,000 feet of climbing for every 10 miles that you ride, or 100 feet for every mile. <br /><br />So, a typical 30-mile ride would be 3,000 feet of climbing, etc. - but I wanted to map out a tough ride where you would do closer to 150 feet of climbing for every mile you ride - about 50% more the typical ride you'd do in the Santa Cruz mountains.<br /><br />And hence was born "The 10 Fingers of Death Ride" - an epic bike ride that, in only 42.6 miles does 6800 feet of climbing - about 160 feet of climbing for every mile - ouch!<br /><br />There are 10 roads that are included in this insane ride - and it's partially insane because the climbing you do are not on these long, gentle grades (like Highway 9), but the climbing is done on shorter, steeper climbs - the kind that tend to average anywhere from 9% to 12% (and that's just the average!). These are roads that are like Jamison Creek, or Alba Rd, or Bohlman - On Orbit - Bohlman - but just not as long.<br /><br />And here are the 10 roads (the "fingers", if you will), in their order of appearance on this insane ride:<br /><br />1. Glendora / De Anza - 0.61 miles, 215 feet, 6.8% grade <br />2. Bunker Hill - 0.51 miles, 300 feet, 11.4% grade<br />3. Woodridge Rd - 0.51 miles, 290 feet, 11.0% grade<br />4. Tartan Trail Rd - 1.11 miles, 500 feet, 10.0% grade<br />5. Crestview Dr - 1.36 miles, 650 feet, 9.3% grade<br />6. Club Dr - 1.29 miles, 605 feet, 8.9% grade<br />7. Hastings Dr - 0.67 miles, 450 feet, 12.7% grade<br />8. Melendy Dr - 1.37 miles, 640 feet, 8.8% grade<br />9. Alameda de Las Pulgas - 0.75 miles, 340 feet, 8.6% grade<br />10. West Hillsdale Blvd - 0.51 miles, 300 feet, 12.0% grade<br /><br />As you can see, this is not a ride for wimps! In fact, this is not a ride for anybody that has an ounce of sanity in their brain.<br /><br />But, for any regular, crazy cyclist - a cyclotic, if you will (hee-hee!), this is a dream ride - one for the ages, one to tell your grandchildren about one day.<br /><br />Now, I don't have the time to do this kind of ride during the regular workday week - I figured out this ride would take me about 3.5 hours to complete (Lance Armstrong could probably do it in about 2 hours!) - I have to limit my rides to somewhere between one and two hours. But one day, I'll do this ride on a weekend day - and hopefully, find a couple of other crazies to join me!<br /><br />Is it possible to do this ride? Of course - in fact, to test it out, I decided to break it up into two rides that I could do during the weekdays, as part of my regular training rides that are based from where I work.<br /><br />So, one day I did what I call the "Easy 5 Fingers of Death Ride", where I did the first 4 climbs of my insane ride, plus the last climb. It was about 20 miles and did 2800 feet of climbing and took me about 1.5 hours to complete - you can see the data from this ride <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1876964">right here</a>.<br /><br />Then, about a week later, I decided to tackle what I called the "Hard 5 Fingers of Death Ride" - basically, the last 5 climbs of the insane ride. It was about 22 miles and did 4000 feet of climbing, taking me about 2.0 hours to complete - and you can see the data for this ride <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1921270">right here</a>.<br /><br />Oh - and if you want to see a recording of the entire ride, where I first scoped it out by car, you can see the that data <a href="http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1874298">right here</a>.<br /><br />Okay, so who out there would like to join me one Saturday or Sunday to do this ride? The drinks are on me... :)Steve Rosenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14572348695392037434noreply@blogger.com0