A beautiful day

Woke up to a black sky leaking pink at its eastern edges.  Janet wisely set the alarm for 6am and a quick snuggle later, the La Pavoni is steaming two cups of milk in the kitchen.  Karl comes down after laying in bed for a few minutes; he's on the top bunk now and is confident enough at nine years of age to head down stairs without repeatedly asking Johann if he's awake until Johann is actually awake.  Johann is probably going through a growth spurt right now and sleeps hard onto 7am, late for our family.

A skinny latte and a bowl of grapenuts, two sandwiches made and lunch bags loaded, and I'm filling waterbottles for my morning ride.  Riding to school actually crossed my mind when I learned the high today would be near freezing, but our road is still a mixture of ice and snow melded with the gravel and Janet is meeting with teachers in Galena and I'm picking up the kids after school, so my time to spin is now.  Such is our daily dance.

Ten minutes into the warmup, Johann and Karl come in to say good-bye, they don't want to hug the sweating guy on the bike, but smile and wave and I'll see them again in a few hours.  Today's workout is alternating spin-ups and sprints, each 30s with five minutes spin in between.  The first set of six, I spin in level 1 (>165 watts, 135bpm) and the second set has me 'recover' with a bit higher pace (175-195watts, 136-145bpm).  I'm always a bit leery of this workout, the fifth or sixth all out sprint can leave me feeling a bit woozy. 

Today went well.  Instead of having the third stage of the Tour Down Under on (internet connection to cycling.tv was down), I watched Marco Pantani put the wood to Jan Ulrich in the Alpes during the 1998 Tour de France.  My focus alternates between the beautiful countryside, the village storefronts, the riders' faces under stress, and my stress as the computer ticks down to my next interval.  Time slows: Was the last interval a spin-up or sprint?  Sprint.  Whew, still six more minutes till the next max effort.  What cadence did I maintain last time?  140.  Still 30 seconds to go... grab a drink and glace at the screen, "Jan Ulrich's face is a mask of pain." Glance down, 12 seconds.  Keep the gear the same and glance at the average watts for the rest interval, 158, still within the Active Recovery zone.  Three, two, one and the watts shoot up to 330 and the cadence hits 130, 135 and finally sticks at 145. 

30 seconds takes at least 10 minutes and a beep and I'm spinning easily again.  Alpe d'Huez is behind me and Marco is comfortably in the Tour lead an American (not THAT American) Bobby Julich in second.  Jan has slipped to third; I wonder what's going to happen next?

Climbing hills while standing still

I've been doing the rolling/hilly workout from Dirk Friel's menu of trainer workouts once a week or so since mid November.  At first the low cadence of 65rpm really taxed the hip flexors, leaving me stiff and hardly able to walk (yes, you can do that to yourself on rollers).  A month and a half later, the workout leaves me with a sensation of having pleasantly taxed my muscles.  Amazing what this training stuff can do for fitness...

The big change today was the addition of my new power meter to the workout.  I figured my FTP (functional threshold power) last week, but Dirk Friel's numbers for his workout book use a slightly different number based on the normalized power for the threshold test.  That number he calls the CP30, or the power one can handle for thirty minutes.  For the rolling/hilly workout (E1 in the text), he sets the power goal for the first set of intervals at CP180, or 12.5% of the CP30 number.  For me that would be 260 watts for the first set of 2 min intervals and then 270 watts for the second set of 3min low cadence efforts.  As a newbie to powertraining, it's fascinating to see how the wattage numbers correspond to the heart rate numbers I've been using for the past nine years. 

There is a correspondence but the HR drift during long workouts on the rollers is readily apparent as well.  The exact same wattage efforts would result in slightly increasing HR numbers over each set of six intervals.  Strictly following the heart rate limits for the workout would have resulted in a less productive workout, with lower quality efforts as the workout progressed.

This must all seem like a lot of gibberish to some folks.  I remember someone saying once, back when I first started training for racing bikes.  "You have to be really fit to suck" at bike racing.  To do well, requires something extra.  For some, the extra is a physical gift, really high VO2Max (the ability to take in oxygen), extremely high power to weight ratios, freakish builds.  But for others, we have to accomplish our potential through harder and better work and that's where the power meter and HR monitor come in.  A friend of mine, an accomplished rider and someone I consider a mentor, told me that there wasn't a need for these training toys; I just needed to get more miles in.  I agree; I need to get more miles in, but with a family, job and life outside of cycling, those miles have to be the best miles possible and these are tools to help make them so.

They're also a motivator to get my carcass on the bike and workout on a cold, dark morning in the middle of winter...

A weekend at the Mines

There's nothing that swells this father's chest with pride like seeing his sons out skiing. 

Karl and Johann (and their parents, too) are getting ready for their ski races in Mora, Minnesota and Hayward, Wisconsin.

The Mora Vasaloppet is the first weekend in February.  At 58k for the big people, the freestyle race is a grueling effort.  The distance isn't the biggest challenge; it's the lack of hills, maybe three in total as the course crosses small river valley.  Three hours of field skating will cause cramps in anyone!  By the time we reach the sharp hill at the foot of Main St. in Mora, the body can be locked up pretty good. 

Besides the unrelenting terrain, another unique feature of the race is the blueberry soup.  What is it?  I don't really know.  It comes in packages from Sweden and it's served hot at the aid stations along the trail.  Serving it up is the most amazing feature of the race: the host of volunteers from Mora.  The entire town gets out for the race, though very few actually ski it.  Our family is hosted by the Bangmas each year and Jeff is out there in the morning at 6am, getting to his post at the race start to serve blueberry soup. 

The racers line up, over a thousand, self-organized by our expected finish time.  I usually choose 3:30 as a realistic goal.  And we wait for the start signal; a stick of dynamite that follows the national anthem.  Last year no one took their hat off during the anthem.  I think the -7 degree temps froze it to my scalp...

 

Saturday at the Mines was our friend's first day on cross country skis!

A test or two...

 

Today is the first day this week I've woken up and the temperature was significantly above zero.  Yesterday?  -33.  And that isn't the wimpy euro thermometer (I'm thinking of all of those guys at RoadCyclingUK crying when the temps hit -7 C), no, this is -33 Fahrenheit.  It's so cold outside that if I cried about it, it could become a life-threatening situation. 

Since our return from vacation up north, our pattern has been to ski on the weekends and bike on the rollers during the week.  This keeps the cycling fitness at a basic level and works with our teaching and family life as well.  Even the little guys get on the rollers , albeit with the fork stand and a tempting video on the computer (listen closely and you can hear the Dutch narrator of 'Stars and Water Carriers)...

The new year also sees the addition of a new tool to my training quiver, a Power Tap Pro+ wireless hub to measure power.  Exciting stuff.  Basically cost me my track bike that I built last year and rode a few times on the rollers during last winter.  The hub takes up a lot less space and might actually help me train smarter. 

So last week, nursing a head cold and grasping my spoke wrench in one hand, a Velocity tubular rim in another and a bundle of super short 280mm DT Competition spokes in yet another, I built my new wheel, glued on a tire and prepared for my inaugural ride into the land of power training.  Hmm, kind of felt the same, except there was a new number on my computer monitor.  Just a shake down ride to get used to the numbers, and shake out the pesky cold in my chest. 

Tuesday came and I attempted a threshold test, cold and all.  Threshold testing is important, whether training with a heart rate monitor or power meter; it gives you zones around which to plan your workouts.  Most cyclists go way to hard during their recovery rides and not hard enough in their training efforts to force their body to make training adaptations.  A few minutes into the test, I coughed up what appeared to be a sea cucumber and Janet looked up in alarm.  Test aborted.

After two more rides and some sprints to get a baseline for my power in 15 second, 1 minute and 5 minute sprints, it's Friday!  I take the bike off of the fork stand and turn on the computer, select 'threshold test' and away we go.  A twenty minute spin in an easy warm-up zone (less than 165 watts), a few spin-ups to 100 rpm for a minute each and I'm ready to go.

The test starts with a 5 min maximum effort.  This doesn't mean an all-out sprint.  Do that and you'll find you have jelly in your legs after a minute or so (amazing how time slows down during a sprint).  Five minutes feels good and I increase the power right up to the end.  Ten minutes of much easier endurance zone spinning and this is where the power meter is interesting.  My heart rate is at 165 bpm, just nudging into my anaerobic zone, and even though I know I'm spinning easily, my heart takes a few minutes to come down.  The average power for this lap, though, is instantly right there and I adjust my effort to keep it in the lower zone.

Ten minutes passes so quickly, especially when anticipating a twenty minute maximum effort.  Again, the key is start gradually, ramping up to what I think is an effort I can maintain.  It's hard not to look at the numbers blinking back at me on the monitor, but I try to focus on the Vuelta Ciclista al País Vasco.  I've got stage five on the computer screen and there's a break of four, including eventual winner Alberto Contador, making a hard effort to the finish.  Perfect!  Half way through, less than ten minutes left and I need to gear down one cog.  I can feel the effort in my muscles, my ankles, I move around on the saddle, focus on the sprint for the line on the computer and notice only 28 seconds have passed since I last looked at the numbers.  I begin breaking down the effort into two minute parts.  I notice my average power for the interval has dropped a tad, from 320 w at the beginning to 305 sixteen minutes later.  Shifting into a higher gear, I nudge the number up to 309 and sprint for the line.

Two weeks of snowy dreams

The Family Sauer just returned from time away from Iowa.  First a journey to Milwaukee for Christmas and skiing and then north to Munising, Marquette, Kenton and Eagle River, seeing old friends, making new ones and searching for our ski legs, missing since last season.  Now it's a day after a last ski in in Eagle River and we have all of these pictures (and achy body parts)...