The drama for the Hugel started Thursday evening, for me anyway. At Ethan's soccer practice, I coach his U8 team, as we were working on shots I dribble down to the goal and fired off a shot. Not a hard shot, but a decent shot and as I plant my left leg and kick the ball with my right, but the muscle in my left leg shrieked with pain and I instantly knew something was wrong. I don't believe I pulled the muscle in my quadriceps, but it was strained none the less. It hurt to walk on it, on a scale of 1 - 10, with 10 being excruciating pain that warrants morphine it was only a 4.
When I got home I stretched it and used the foam roller on it. It felt alright on Friday when I tested it out, but that was on the flat road of Shoal Creek and Great Northern. I didn't know what to expect when the grade went past 12%.
One last thing that is a crucial piece to my ride was on Friday night when I was getting everything ready for the ride I come to find out I only had 4 Endurolytes! That's no good as I typically take 3-4 an hour. I barely had enough Anti-Fatigue capsules and Energy Surge.
Now for the ride, there were a lot of riders again this year and clogged the roads as we started rolling. Things started to thin out a bit once we hit 360. I worked a bit harder on this section so I could put some space between myself and a lot of people for when we hit High Road. My plan worked as High Road was not littered with riders, there were still a few stoppers and people pushing their bikes but at least there was more space to maneuver around them. My plan for the first section was to carry to bottles of Perpetuem for fueling and Espresso gel when needed for some added calories. I didn't plan on stopping at any of the rest stops but go the entire 38 miles and refill my bottles back at Zilker Park. This plan worked and my quad posed no problems at all during this section.
Loop 2 is the doosie for the ride with most of the climbing packed into this section. I'm not sure how many of the starters go onto even attempt the second part, but I'd say 3/4 of the people go home after the 1st part. The first real challenge is Smokey Valley with it's 24% grade and then up the remainder of Ladera Norte. It's quite the 1-2 punch. I made it up both with little difficulty. I opted not to stop at rest stop #3, the rest stop house, as I had enough water to get me to the rest stop at River Place.
Then came Beauford. Beauford gave me a near knock out blow. Right at the base my right quad started to spasm and cramp up. I think I was over compensating with my right leg to make up for the injury on my left. Boy did I pay for it. Whenever I would stand and put any power to my pedal my quad would hurt. Somehow I made it to the top. Courtyard came too soon though, the lower sections I was able to sit and spin at about 60 rpms, but the top section was more of the same. Courtyard tried to inflict it's misery on me. I so wanted to zig zag up it but there was too much traffic coming from both directions. I did try a little weave but it was more like a drunken stagger. At the top I stopped to relax the legs a little and to take 2 of the Endurolytes, which didn't kick in till I got to the top of City Park.
Onward I pedaled to the River Place rest stop. Once you get on Big View you go down it for a little bit, but at this point you don't go all the way down that's a special treat saved for the return. Well I somehow missed the bright orange arrows for the right hand turn off of Big View. I got practically all the way down to the bottom. I got all the way down to the base, where the steep grade warning sign is. NOT GOOD, I had to go back up and find the turn. Back on track I finally made it to the River Place rest stop. I refilled my bottle with more Perpetuem, I had packed up 3 bottle servings into ziplock baggies so I could refill. I stopped long enough to refill grab a couple fig newtons and chat with Andy Webb for a bit to swap stories of the ride so far. Luckily the rest of this outter section was good, I ended up dropping the 2 guys I was riding with at that point. One guy on Bullick Hollow and the other one on 620 near Steiner ranch on the return leg. I stopped at River Place again to refill my bottle again and stretch a little. I also downed my last 2 Endurolytes.
Since I didn't get all the way down to the bottom of Big View I decided I'd better get my monies worth and do the entire Big View. Plus I wanted to take the chance that the park at the bottom would have a bathroom. I could have made it the entire ride without stopping to use the restroom, but I want to go up Jester with as little weight as possible. My hunch paid off and the restroom was open. A small price to pay of climbing up Big View, plus I didn't want to cheat and not do the entire route, I want to earn my t-shirt. On the way to Jester there was intermittent cramping in both legs now. I would try to sit and not stand as much as possible.
On a good day Jester can be difficult, even when fresh. I said a quick prayer to get me up to the top, oh yeah, I'll call on the big Guy in times of trouble. I sat as much as possible which was a bit past the strip mall, actually to a drive way, I think it's an office complex. I stood and managed the pain switching back to the saddle to relieve some of the pain. Didn't help much. It wasn't pretty, but I was able to get to the top.
All I had to do was get my tail the last 10 miles back to Zilker Park. This proved to be a hard path to the finish. Once I got on 360 I had a complete full on cramping. It was so bad it was not something I could get through or at least want to get through. I immediately pulled over at the Buddha Temple driveway to catch my breath. The pain subsided after a minute and I pushed on. The rest of the way was kind of a cat and mouse game to see how hard I could ride without red lining and overdoing it. I was able to catch and pass 4 or 5 riders on my way back to Zilker Park.
What when right:
I bettered my time from last year. This year I had a time of 7 hours, with a 7 hour 31 minute duration. Compared to 8 hours 24 minutes of active time and a total duration of 10 hours.
I vastly minimized my rest stop time, I went in with a goal of only stopping when needed and not sit around at the rest stops. I had more time spent at stop lights then I did restng at the rest stops.
As long as I didn't have to stand I had ample power and my endurance was spot on and felt I could have kept riding.
What went wrong:
Not enough electrolytes. It was way too hot, 80 degrees. In retrospect I should have brought along Heed which does have some electrolyte components. Not sure if it would have been enough but might have minimized things. Yes I could have taken in some Gatorade or Pickle Juice, but 1 it's not advised to mix Hammer products with a simple sugar drink like Gatorade. Since I had not tried either scenarios during a race is not the time to experiment.
Forgetting to press start on my Garmin 705 for 2.5 miles into the ride.
Last year I had a lot of lactic acid build up, it would hurt on the down hills and my legs would get tight. This year I had no lactic acid build up in my legs, again which leads me to believe to think my conditioning was way better and I was better prepared for the ride.
2nd Loop (71 miles) Average Speed: 15 Max Speed: 45.7 Average/Normalized Power: 167/229 watts Ascent: 9708 feet kJ (Calories): 2887
Footnote: The above accents would mean a total climb of 13,771 feet. However when I run it through some software that supposedly throws out bad Garmin data it comes out to 10,050 feet. 209 is the total number of times while in my 25 and knew I was in my last gear but still tried to shift to an easier gear to see if I miraculously had one more gear to help spin up the hills.
On Saturday I set out for one last Hugel tune up ride. I wanted to get in some hills and distance for final preparation for the ride. The Gawd Dam Loop is my own creation that basically follows the traditional dam loop, but I throw in a sprinkling of the Hugel route hills of Bluegrass, Beauford, Courtyard and Cuernavaca. I also threw in Alexan just for fun. The Garmin reported back 5695 feet of climbing in 59 miles. It took me 3 hours 17 minutes of riding time. I stopped for 10 minutes, that includes 1 water stop and stop lights. I averaged 17.9 mph for the ride. Most of all I felt great the entire time even going up the Austin cobbles of Beauford. I also did this ride with my 11x23 cassette, not really the gearing I'd want to do the full Hugel with. Next week I'll switch out my cassette and put on the 12x25. I have been contemplating purchasing a 11x26 for my hill and all around cassette and leave the 11x23 for most racing. One last noteworthy piece to the ride was on the home stretch on 620 I opened it up a bit for a 5 minute interval I still had enough to average 23.9 mph and maxed it out at 30.8 mph.
Next week will be business as usual, I'll have hill repeats and intervals just no rides over 3 hours. I will pull back the week before Hugel, the number of intervals will be cut down along with the time. Since Hugel is not one of my A priority events I won't be doing a full taper. I'll just take a week of tapering to lower the fatigue and be fresh and ready for November 14th.
This year one of my goals is to ride up the 3 Sisters in under 3 minutes. Throughout the year I've been whittling away at that time. I started 2009 with my best time at 3'24 and set times at 3'16, 3'11 and finally I had gotten it down to 3'09.
My last few times when I set out to try and beat the 3 minute mark something would happen. On one attempt I got almost all the way up to top of the 1st sister and I came unclipped. Another time I went to shift from the big ring to the small ring 1/2 way up the 1st sister and it didn't shift thus I lost my momentum. Today, I got a good warm up riding out to the water treatment plant and back to the base of the sisters.
On all past rides my time up the 1st sister is 1'20, today I was surprised to see it at 1'06! I knew with a good split at this point the goal was well within my grasp. I was feeling good, I hadn't overcooked myself at this point, I averaged 516 watts and 12.6 mph on this section. For the second sister I tried to keep the effort consistent but also to pace myself a bit so I have enough in the tank for the final sprint. I averaged 420 watts and 7.8 mph. On the last sister I averaged 473 watts and 8.6 mph for the final 36 second sprint to the top. For the entire effort I averaged 424 watts and 10.5 mph.
Now that I've beat the 3 minute mark (2'53) next year's bar will be set at 2'30.
Don't get lulled into the rest stops for an extended period of time. The rest stops above Oak Knoll, at the house and the River Place will be inviting. The River Place rest stop will have warm potatoes with cheese and bacon. No food has ever looked so inviting than the warm cheese goodness on that brisk November day. Just stick to your plan, get water and get out. Take 5 minutes, maybe 10 tops. Don't stay any longer and let the lactic acid build up in your legs.
Popped into the Hugel site to find it's been renovated and the first thing that caught my eye is that the date has been "officially" set for 11/14/09.
I feel better going into it this year, last year I just wanted to get through it, which I did. I'm not going to put any time goals for the ride, however I want to not suffer as bad and at least beat my 8 hour 24 minute time.
My training plan for the next 2 months for Hugel will focus on hill repeats and endurance. I did a tune up route to gauge where my legs were at today with Andy Webb. We did Smokey Valley, Ladera Norte, Far West, Mesa and Mountain Climb. Plus the ride with Jeff through Bastrop State Park entailed 3300 feet of climbing. Both of these rides my legs felt great and is hopefully a good indication of where my training is at. I'm confident if Hugel was tomorrow I'd be able to get through it again, with probably less suffering. Since my legs are up to the challenge there's one thing I want to focus on and that's to drop some weight. Right now I go from 174 to 177 pounds. If I can get down to 165-170 for Hugel that will help my power to weight ratio and not carrying the extra weight up the hills will be a good thing.
To lose weight I'm not going to significantly cut calories as that will more than likely leave me without the energy to complete my training. Instead I'm going to create a small caloric deficit of 200-300 calories per day. I already eat pretty good so at first I thought this would be hard, but it seems like it will be doable. For example I did not have a Latte in the morning. By cutting it out that's about 180 calories right there. For dinner we had pork tacos and spinach salad. By not having tortillas I was able to cut 330 calories there (110 calories per tortilla).
Using the daily plate, it says my daily intake goal is 2599 calories to lose 1 pound a week and 2,099 calories to lose 2 pounds a week. Whose with me for this year's Tour das Hugel?
After my 48 hour waiting period I joined the Southwest Cycle Sport team ride on Sunday. It was quite fun to get out after 2 days off and with the drama of the past couple days behind me. We did the southwest route heading out on Bee Caves Rd to 360 to MoPac to William Cannon and then looping through the neighborhoods and coming back out on MoPac/45. When we reached the turn around point we headed back down MoPac. I was sitting about 3rd or 4th wheel behind Peter who was pulling the train along. From the back Jeremy, the current Cat 4 Time Trial champion and on his wheel was John. They passed us like nobodies business. I pulled out from the train when I saw that nobody was going to even attempt to catch the express train. I gave it a good hard effort to catch John's wheel. Luckily I got on and was pulled along at 32 mph. Towards the end John got burned up and dropped out what there was of Jeremy's draft. I moved up to Jeremy's wheel. After a little bit he started to slow up a tad and I moved ahead, that delusion of grander lasted all of 10 seconds as the headwind and the hill just sapped any bit of strength I had and Jeremy passed me back. We finished up the last .4 miles at a more sane pace and waited for the rest of the crew.
Some numbers of interest, when I was bridging the gap to John and Jeremy my max watts was 1052 and averaged 895 watts. Sitting in the draft I averaged 32.3 mph and 293 watts.
The other fun part of this route is the hills on Lost Creek Road. Only John and Greg from the group decided to partake in the hill joy. Not sure about Jeremy, he dropped us all on Southwest Parkway betting everybody back to the start. Everybody else opted for the easy route back to Bee Cave via Barton Creek Blvd. My strategy is to bomb down the hills getting a gap so I can ride up at my own pace. I made it almost to the top of Lost Creek before John caught up to me.
The 48 miles was a good way to get back into the swing of things and as always it's fun to ride with the Southwest Cycling Team.
For Monday Jeff and I decided to meet up in Bastrop to ride through the state parks. It's been almost 2 years since I rode through the park and that was part of Pedal Thru the Pines. You can't ask for better scenery and the hills are great. In fact the total climbing was 2917.98 feet for the 30 miles we rode. I must say this time through the park was a lot easier than what I remember. Jeff showed up sporting his snazzy Bike Pure jersey, very impressive.
My 2 weeks of VO2 training is winding down, I've been doing a lot of 3 to 5 minute intervals at or near my VO2 Max 5 minute power level. For Saturdays training I had 6 intervals at 85% VO2 max for 3 minutes so I headed out on Limecreek Road to have a visit with the 3 Sisters. In the past the most times I've went up the sisters in succession is 4 or 5, I don't really recall the exact number, I might have blacked out. I do remember it hurting.
The pace wasn't overly hard, with a hill like the 3 Sisters it's pretty easy to maintain the appropriate power. I find it harder not to go too far over the prescribed power level, but to be able to do 6 intervals I knew I needed to stay close to the power I needed to do and not exceed it too much. On all the intervals I was about 30 watts over, the 5th interval was the only one to fall below the prescribed power level and that was only by 6 watts. In the 3 minute time I wasn't able to get fully up to the top, my best time is about 3 minutes 9 seconds when going all out. In the 3 minutes I was able to get 1/2 way up the 3rd sister, almost to the top. I'd say about 10 to 20 seconds away from the top. On the 6th and final interval I did go all the way to the top in 3 minutes 35 seconds. I was happy with that time for the 6th time up it that morning.
Afterwards my legs felt great and I could have went up a few more times before I would have fatigued. That got me thinking that a good workout some time would be to see how many times I can go up and down it in a day.
Thursday (07/09/2009) morning I woke up at 5am and got ready to drive over to Port Angeles to ride the 17 miles up to Hurricane Ridge. As I was driving up to the Olympic National Park visitor center I noticed that the ascent actually started in Port Angeles. I turned around and drove back into Port Angeles and parked next to some tennis courts and started off. I got a block away and remembered I didn't lock the car so I turned around. Locked the car and rode off again, got to about the same spot and realized I forgot my water bottles in the car! I turned around again and got them. After this unorthodoxed warmup I was ready to go. For whatever reason the first 5 miles were the most difficult. Right before the pay station is the only down hill section of the 17 miles. It was at this point that I started to feel good and after paying the $5 entry fee I was able to get into a good groove and the next 12 miles were a breeze.
I was a little worried about fog as I didn't have any lights or blinkies, but I left early enough that traffic up was not an issue. There was a section in the middle that was foggy, but it didn't prove to be any problem at all. Since I wasn't sure what was going to be around the next curve in the road I rode up very conservatively. I averaged 9 mph & 223 watts up to the observatory at the top of Hurricane Ridge. The Motobecane was equipped with a triple chainring, but I'm happy to say I didn't get into the granny gear at all on the climb. The views on the way up were breathtaking and the route was lined with numerous waterfalls and trickles. There was even a section of 3 tunnels. When I stopped to take a few pictures a guy walked over and asked me how long it took me and how far it was. When I told him it took me 2 hours and 13 minutes to ride up the 19 miles (remember I parked further down and had 2 false starts) he was impressed and said I should be riding in France. He talked a bit about Lance Armstrong and I got a good chuckle out of it. I then headed down the mountain.
The decent down the mountain was a blast I got into the 53x11 and into the drops and for the most part just let gravity do it's thing. Since this was the most miles the Motobecane had seen the breaks had loosened up, something I really hadn't noticed till this point. When I applied the breaks they weren't grabbing like they should. I had to pull them all the way back, the back break lever was touching the drops! There were only a couple sharp turns or sections where I got going too fast for my own comfort level. Close to the bottom there is a long straight section where I worked the pedals and then got into a tuck. During this section I reached an all time high speed, 69.7 mph! I only held this speed for a few seconds before I wussed out and breaked down to 59 mph. Through the winding roads I averaged 38-40 mph. What took me 2 hours to ride up took me only 39 minutes to get down!
Riding up Hurricane Ridge topped off a week of great riding. If you plan on riding this route do as I did and get out there are the crack of dawn to beat the traffic up. When I was going up I was passed by about 5 cars total. On the way down there was a steady stream of cars going up. I also passed 4 other cyclists going up as well. I wish I would have had more time to go back up again as I definetly could have made it up again with no problem.
Growing up on the Eastern side of Washington State in rural Chattaroy, outside of Spokane, we had many hills to ride bikes on growing up. The rural area we lived in provided a vast playground of roads that my friends and myself would ride on for hours on end. I recently mapped a few of my known routes that we rode to see how far we rode in any particular day and the average was about 6-8 miles with some 15-20 mile adventures thrown in as I got older. When I was 10 - 12 years old these all day rides seemed long and epic, it gave me a little chuckle to see how low the mileage actually was.
There was one hill in particular that us neighborhood kids would test ourselves on. It was sort of a right of passage to try and get up the hill without having to stop or walk up. I'm not sure what the grade of the hill on Buck Brush was, in the winter after a snow it was typically undrivable and would be closed for sledding. We also called it the Water Tower Hill, you can probably image why. Looking back I have several fond memories of riding up that hill. It was the quickest route to Owens Pond where I'd frequently go to fish. Imagine riding up this hill with my fishing pole. A lot of my friends would go around the hill to avoid it and meet me at the top. One other memory is when my Uncle Kenny came to visit and I talked him into going to Owens Museum with me one evening. I rode my bike while he walked. From then on he always talked about how he almost died walking up the Water Tower hill and how far this little jaunt was (actually only 2 miles).
Last night Jack and me went over to the Twin Creeks circuit and did 1 lap to warm up and then we went down the Twin Creeks hill. His eyes were wide as we descended the hill. At the bottom we discussed his strategy of getting back up, he was worried about getting to the top. I let him know that it was ok to stop and catch his breath. I've seen a lot of adults need to stop on the hill and I've seen grown adults walk their bikes up it as well so if he had to stop there was no shame in it. Off he went. After his first stop I told him to pick out a marker up the hill and ride to that spot. It took him 4 rest stops to get to the top and I might be a proud father but I must say his form looked a lot better than a lot of people I see on it. A lot of people are weasing and out of breath as they fight their way to the top. He on the other hand paced himself and didn't seem to burn any matches.
He was quite proud of himself to get to the top and he set a goal to ride to the top without stopping by the end of the summer. I'm pretty sure the Twin Creeks hill is steeper than my Water Tower hill and it is a bit longer .5 compared to .22 miles. Be on the look out for updates on his progress!
I made my first group ride with the Southwest Cycle Sport group from their Bee Cave location. I didn't know what to expect, from their website it just said there would be a Memorial Day ride with an 8am roll out. There were about 10 guys in the group as we rolled out they mentioned 50 miles was on tap. We rolled out at a social pace on Bee Cave Road down to 360. As we approached Loop 1 a spirited sprint started and I geared up and met the acceleration at 30+ mph. The group got split and I managed to stay with the lead group as we turned onto Southwest Parkway. A light split the group again with me and 2 others. We continued on till around William Cannon and stopped to regroup.
On Hwy 45 we got the fastest paceline going that I've ever been in, we motored along going 35-40 mph. Jeremy one of the Southwest Cycle Sport riders, pulled us along. Somewhere around here we stopped for a water break. After our refueling and we got back on the road on a hill leading up to Southwest Parkway Jeremy attacked again. This time there was no answer as he got a sizable gap on everyone. There was some discussion in the group about who would give chase, I thought there would be a spirited chase so I went. I bridged up to Jeremy and we continued on to the light.
Shortly after getting onto Barton Springs Road another attack materialized. I was in mid pack and saw the attack coming so I got ready and made my jump as the group answered. Again we were attacking at nearly 40 mph, I would sneak quick peaks down at my Garmin 705 to see the speed. I made my move as I approached the front of the group. I pulled around to the left and found myself in the front. I pulled up as we hit the rollers and the group came around. I got onto the back but was completely spent and found myself starting to lose contact with the wheel in front of me. I hunkered down on the hill before the turn onto Lost Creek to catch back on with the guys.
I love Lost Creek Road, it was one of my favorite routes I'd take when I worked at Keller Williams for my lunch time rides. Normally I'm not much of a decenter, I seem to get passed, but the technical and winding hills on Lost Creek were to my advantage. I was able to get ahead on the docents that would then allow me to climb up the hills at my own pace and not lose too much ground. That is until 1/2 way up the final climb up Lost Creek. I wasn't able to stay in contact with Jeremy and one other rider. I knew there were still plenty of hills on Bee Cave that still lay ahead so I was content to ride with the second group and let the other 2 go. We got caught at the 360 light so Jeremy and the other were gone and we didn't catch up to them till the Southwest Cycle Sport parking lot. When we got onto Bee Cave we got a paceline going all the way back to the store.
I had a great time with the group and they invited me back. My legs held up faboulously, I was a little worried as I was coming off a heavy week. Last week I put in 297 miles so I wasn't sure what to expect from my legs. I was really excited to get home and see what kind of numbers my Garmin 705 would have there for the route and for my power. The route was of interest to me as it covered a lot of new places I'd never been to. The power always interests me but this one I really wanted to see what my numbers were for the sprints and what my overall power would be as I put in some race efforts. Imagine my pissed offness when I plug in the 705 and there is no history file. I've been bitten by the file corruption bug that I'd heard about on the wattage group. It appears there is a bug in the Garmin 2.70 version of the software where a lap gets corrupted. The lap file was there but I couldn't get it off the device. After plugging and unplugging it a few times a blank history file showed up, but my lap data was gone! Stupid Garmin! I should have known better when others have had problems. I guess if I'm going to go out for a ride and I absolutely want the power data then I'll have to bring along the PowerTap head unit as a backup. I'm not sure if the corruption happens only when the device is recording power or if it happens when not paired to a power device as well. Sorry I can't post the route, once we got off of 360 I was on all new territory and I have no clue how we got to Hwy 45 or how we got back to Southwest Parkway.
