Mike's Bike Blog

The first real test to Hugel comes at High Road. It is a short but steep hill. The hill itself I don't find to challenging, it's early in the ride so the legs are fresh and have had ample time to warm up. However, I suggest surveying who is around you when you approach the end of Toro Canyon Rd. Last year when I hit the base of the hill and looked up it was total chaos. People up near the top were zig zagging from shoulder to shoulder, riders were falling over or stopping, chains were breaking. It was a mess. Be ready for this and if you can time your approach do so. If you are weary of the riders in your group it might be advantageous to get some distance between you and them.

One other thing to look out for on High Road is this section is a lolipop route, you come down Toro Canyon take a right onto High Road, go up it, it loops around in sort of a circle and comes back out on High Road. Thus there is potential for mishaps if riders coming down Trail of the Madrones Rd. fail to stop at the stop sign and cross in front of riders going up.

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. 

On Sunday's ride I caught up with the Southwest Cycle Sport gang and in honor of my attendance Peter announced we'd go North. He'd astutely observed that whenever I join the group we do the same route. This time we'd head North to 620 and to the Spa in Steiner Ranch [ROUTE]. We rolled out 6 strong, but instantly lost 1 as Greg was not feeling up to the hills and he headed South on Bee Cave Road. This had me a little apprehensive as I've never ridden in Steiner Ranch and my legs were still seathing from Saturdays 3 Sister VO2 attack. I've seen the road from a distance, I'd heard it was a good climb but didn't know what to expect. When we turned right into Steiner Ranch from 620 we soon lost 2 more that left Peter, Joe and me. The ride down is fun, my top speed was 45.73mph. The road starts out as a 4 lane at the entrance and gets narrower and narrower the closer to the river. At the river we didn't stop and site see, but proceeded to keep our momentum up and head back up.

It's aproximately 6.58 miles back to 620 with 869 ft of climbing. We didn't stay on Quinlan Park Road but turned right on Steiner Ranch Blvd and climbed that up to 620. As we were heading up Steiner Ranch Blvd. Peter said it wasn't as bad as the 3 Sisters. Luckily it wasn't but I was waiting for it to pitch up at some point or offer up some type of fight. As it turns out it's just a long climb, 2 miles to be exact. I kept waiting for the knockout punch but it never arrived.

On 620 we made our way down to the gas station at the corner of Bullick Hollow and 620. As we were eating our bars and gels there was a violent explosion and the release of air from my front tire. I had a blow out while my bike was leaning against the ice machine! I replaced the tube and proceeded to air it up and as I was about to take off the CO2 the new tube exploded as well. Upon further investigation I had a side wall puncture!

Joe gave me a new tube and Peter gave me his used gel packet to fashion a boot out of. I folder the packet in 2 length wise and covered the puncture hole. I then seeded the tube in and we put air in, not the fully recommended PSI but about 80-90 PSI. The tube made it back to the shop and I was able to finish the ride.

When you're in a pinch you can use discarded gel packets to boot your tires. If Peter wouldn't have had the packet it would have been a dollar bill.

Hopefully by this time everyone is aware of the time change and nobody missed thier Sunday rides. It is suggested to change the batteries in your smoke alarms whenever there is a time change. I am also offering up the sage advice to change the batteries in your cyclocomputer as well. Now is a good time to change the batteries in your secondary bike computers as well, like if you have wireless cadance or heart rate monitors swap new batteries in them as well.

This is a little short notice but tonight Mellow Johnny's is putting on a free racing clinic 6:30 to 8:00 pm. I'll be there, hopefully they'll cover proper shaving technique and this wheels in/wheels out thing. To attend RSVP with Vince.

As many of you know this Saturday is my first road race, 2009 TBi Copperas Cove Classic Road Race. As can be expected I have many questions rolling through my head, hear are a few that I could use some help answering:

1. Should I even bother with my saddle bag? Will I look like a first timer with it on?
2. If I do get a flat what's the protocal? If I have the saddle bag I can at least change it and finish the race.
3. Wheels in / Wheels out. What does that mean?
4. All USA Cycling rules apply. I'll read through the rules, but are there common ones that I should be aware of? Ones that a noob should be aware of?
   
5. It looks like the cat 4/5's run together, can a 5er join a paceline of 4s?
   

I might come in last but at the start I want to look like I won't be coming in last, so any other insights and suggestions are welcome.

For the month of November my mileage was down. I racked up only 474.41 miles, that's down from my 590 mile average the 3 months prior. On first glance you might be thinking I was slacking, but that's not the case. November I had my biggest and most important event of the year, the Tour das Hugel. Prior to the November 15th ride I did a taper.

If you are not familiar with what a taper is, a taper is a period of rest or reduced training immediately preceding a race. Starting the last week of October I cut back on the mileage and the number of intensity rides. This was my first attempt at tapering, as such it was really hard to get through the mental aspect of not training as much. I would worry if I was loosing too much fitness and how that would impact me during the Hugel.

One of the biggest advantages of training with a Power Meter is being able to see how many watts you expend on a ride. Training Peaks WKO+ software is great for this as it has built in tools to help athletes figure scoring for each ride. I'm not as sophisticated yet, so I look at the average power for a ride. On the PowerTap computer I have the power average to drops zeros, this will give a better average, something a little more accurate to what you would find in Training Peaks for Normalized Power. With this number I can see how hard I worked along with the amount of kJ's I burned in the workout. The more watts equals more kJ's which means a harder workout.

In the end I think it worked out great, I went into the Hugel feeling fresh and my legs didn't have that dead and achy feeling. Next time I will be able to go into my taper with a bit more confidence and won't be skeptical about the benefits and won't be second guessing it.

More Information on Tapering:

• Training: Easy Does It
• Tapering with WKO+
• Active.com - Hit your off-road peak with a well-planned taper
• 
  

Over on Road Rash Jason had an entry on ex-Pro Racer Kevin Livingston's PedarHard.com site. He has a good number of instructional videos worth watching. What really caught my eye when the first video popped up was how familiar the scenery looked. It looked a lot like the Mt. Bonnell ride. Not only is the ride video shot here in Austin but when Kevin talks one on one with the camera it was shot on location at Mellow Johnny's.

See any other portions of your favoirte Austin routes in the videos?

Here's a great article from the Austin Statesman on John Korioth who recently won the US Nationals in the masters division for cycling. Korioth is a buddy and former riding partner of Lance Armstrong. As the article details he made the jump from good to great when he started focusing on his training instead of just putting in long hours following Lance around. Basically he hooked up with David Wenger of Source Endurance who put him on a training schedule and together they started working on specific rides to help with his improvement.

Sounds like Lance needs a new riding buddy, hey Lance give me a call and we can hit some hills together.

The BikeNoob, has started a thread requesting input for the best bike blogs and sites. I've been gravitating to searching out blogs and sites that are dealing with training with power meters, nutrition and overall workouts in general. Here's some of the ones I'm following and find useful:

Chris Carmichael Training System - I'm a big Chris Carmichael fan, I've purchased and downloaded his iPod workouts, read his books. His blog and site have good entries on training, motivation and nutrition.

Joe Friel - Great info on endurance training. He also has the Training Bible site, I've just started going through it, but it looks like it has good content as well.

Training For Cyclists - Jesper has great content on training with Power and training plan ideas.

Cycling Performance Tips - This site has great content on every aspects of cycling.

Cycling Nutrition - Good product reviews and nutrition articles for cyclists.

Hammer Nutrition's Endurance email group. This is a fairly high traffic list, but is a good resource on fueling and nutrition for cyclists.

Hammer Nutrition's Training Tips. Articles on training, pre-race meals and recovery.

BikeReg.com - Texas Event Calendar

The Texas Bicycle Racing Association - List of mainly races, but does list a few event rides as well.

USA Cycling - Resource to find primarily races and clubs.

Active.com - Active.com's cycling page has training tips and articles.

If you have any good training sites not listed here let me know.