There’s a new bike in the quiver!

After being professionally measured in early December I began the quest to find a bike that would suit the position I hoped to ride with for the next season (well next many seasons) of triathlon. My demands were a bit odd including an 890mm bottom-bracket to seat-top height and the hope of riding in excess of 80^o seat tube angle. The scoping out of all the bikes was happening at about the same time that Slowtwitch published it’s analysis of the pro positions on their bikes in Kona. It’s an interesting article and something I’d recommend perusing. If the bike positions aren’t something you’re super concerned with you will like the photo of Faris Al-Sultan with a bottle of gatorade stuck down the back of his speedo. Compare those shots with a few photos of yourself and there’s likely a few obvious things to improve. (Slowtwitch link)

I had a number of bikes that should have worked but the demand for something specific really bumped the prices into some of the upper brackets for what would have been ideal. I was excited to try out the same bike that Torbjorn Sindballe rides (Argon 18 E-114) but recognized that the pricepoint was too high to even bother trying to sit on a frame that would work. I’m too big to get a frame that most shops carry extras of and it’s not really fair to have one of them ship a frame in if I’m not actually going to consider buying it. I toyed with the ideas of Felt (B2-series awfully steep but not good value and DA is just too expensive), Look(496 has too much lacking, 596 is too expensive), Orbea (well Ordu’s too expensive, Ora’s not serious enough) Kuota (Kueen K is too expensive, Kalibur is not steep enough)… really I thought about a lot of things and after many hours of research I came back to cervelo. I’ve been riding a Cervelo Dual from 2004 and have enjoyed it thoroughly but it just can’t go steep enough on the seat-tube angle. It’s also been crashed twice and starting to put upgrades on a bike that’s been smashed is questionably intelligent. The next models up in the cervelo time-trial lineup rock out around the 78 degree mark without even trying. Pushing the seat forward is 80 degrees, maybe even 81 if I splurge and go for the (second from the) top of the line P3. I got myself on a 61 cm P3 bike in Calgary over Christmas and it fit like a glove, steep and really really tall! I couldn’t justify the price differential to the better bike without actually trying out the P2 which might or might not have been able to do the position. After waiting around for one of them to show up at a shop and then to be built I was able to hop aboard one of them a week ago Saturday 7 weeks after the process began. The results were good, the seat tube stays steep enough when pulled out to accommodate my enormous legs. I had solved the problem of correct positioning at the cheaper of the two prices and with only one of these bikes left in Alberta at the 2008 season’s prices I got it before the availability was lousy and then every other bike I had previously eliminated would have been back on the table for discussion. The following photos are on the new bike but they’re action shots and not fitting shots so the comparison to the still shots on the fit bike don’t correspond exactly.

It’s silver and red so that aero-helmet I bought back in October matches nicely. I had debated at the time whether or not it was a wise idea to get a silver helmet considering I had no other silver cycling gear… but it turns out to be an excellent match. It doesn’t exactly match with my racing kit for next season which is green, gold and black to represent the University of Alberta but that’ll just have to be how it is. The stuff you can’t see from the photos that is worth noting is that it’s setup with Shimano DuraAce components, visiontech up front, and FSA Hollow-Carbon cranks. The seat is fi’zi:k Arione and the wheels are the standard Shimano R-500 that it seems like the whole triathlon world rides as their training wheelset.

Plane tickets have been booked for the flight out to Abbotsford and Victoria for the beginning of April. That means I’ve committed to running this marathon and it’s no longer just an idea. That also means I shouldn’t be writing a blog about buying plane tickets, I should be outside running.

This will be my first marathon. I’m training based on a modified version of the Furman Institute’s marathon training guide. It of course doesn’t expect that you spend 3 days per week in the pool, commute everywhere by bike and do a fair amount of cycling on the side. I’m not hoping to slaughter a 3 hour time or anything spectacular so I’m leaving out a lot of running speed work in favour of doing my very high aerobic intensity work in other sports and focusing on strength (hills!) as endurance with my runs which are aiming for 4 or more each week. If you think that all translates into not actually following a FIRST (Furman Institute of Running and Scientific Training) Plan you’re probably mostly correct. I am doing my long runs according to their guidelines of distance and pace. Pace is what the program has it’s reputation for, you can’t dawdle on the long runs, a long run should be a run! The long run get’s it’s own day of the week (mine moves around… not FIRST) and I’m hitting the longer version of the tempo run each week as well. The short speedwork is mostly being skipped and I do a short run of hills instead most weeks. Like I said though, I’m getting high aerobic demands in what FIRST would consider my cross training, I still work hard in the pool and speedwork on the road can’t get me that many gains. I don’t hope to run terribly fast, I want to finish well and begin the triathlon season without a running deficit from the winter. I’ve also drawn upon Gordo Byrn’s training philosophy quite a bit in developing my training plan and the two most specific rules I’m trying to follow with regards to his running advice are:

• Don’t sacrifice tomorrow’s training by overdoing it today.
• Try to maximize your ten year mileage.

The race for those of you who are interested is called the Yakima River Canyon Marathon. It follows the yakima river between Ellensburg and Selah Washington. This is part of one of the rides from the Sea to Sea tour this summer. My blog post on the day’s ride is available here and it is entitled “A Big Ring Day” as I rode the whole day in my 53 tooth ring. That’s because we had a tailwind and it was slightly downhill for most of the day. The marathon course does go generally downhill but not by much and there’s a big hill that comes at 21 miles in. It’s not going to be a walk in the park but how could I not go back there when the scenery is so great. Here’s a photo from this summer:

My VO2 Max was measured today at 66 or 67 ml/kg/min. In February this year I scored 57.2 and then proceeded to ride ten thousand kilometers on my bike, to read about the other VO2 Test click here. I blew that out of the water by about a 13% increase. Oxygen uptake was 5.8 liters per minute and I was processing 240 liters of air per minute around my aerobic threshold. Think about that, I’m breathing a whole 4 liter milk jug of air each second! The seat didn’t go quite high enough on their main bike so I switched over to their non-main bike which limited out at 500 watts of power and the guy was a bit nervous that I would exceed that. I told him that I didn’t think he needed to worry but I did indeed get to the 500 Watt mark during my last minute of the test and rode there for about 20 seconds before collapsing. I rode 2 minutes at 170 watts and then increased power by 30 watts every 2 minutes up to 350 watts and from there I was classified as “past threshold” from there on up it was only 1 minute at each increment. That’s 10 minutes prior and 5 minutes 20 seconds riding past threshold, more ride time by a good margin than my last test.

The test today was my reward for finishing the mid-term crunch of the semester. It’s not really fair to call it mid-terms as I only had one of them and the other stuff was papers and problems that needed to be solved, but anyways, they’re over. I’ll write a bit more about the testing when it finished up next week. I’ve got an MRI of my resting heart on Monday and another fitness type test on Thursday that’s followed up by some heart measurement kind of stuff. One hour of intervals, it should be a good time.

What are they measuring? I don’t have a good grasp on it yet but she told me that in one of her related studies leading up to this one they measured a 7% decrease in fractional emptying of the heart on each beat following a half-ironman triathlon. They were trying to show at that point in their research that the heart itself actually gets tired. This is somehow related as they want further proof that it’s not just the long 5 hour exertion that made the heart tired, that I can tire my heart out in only 1 hour of hardcore stationary bike riding.

I made a tyre swap on my fixed gear commuting bike yesterday in preparation for winter which is due to arrive any day now. Autumn is still cruising along in Edmonton but the leaves are mostly gone and we’ll have to give up on pretending that it’s still fall when things turn white.

I swapped my old chain off for a new one as I had stretched the old one by 3.5% or so. If you’re not familiar the rule of thumb is that you’re supposed to replace it around 1% I think. An eighth of an inch over a foot. 1/(8*12)~1% it was making quite a bt of noise due to being too long and not fitting well on the front chainring. I also slapped on the winter tyres which are 34mm front and 36 mm rear. I’ve a sweet c-cross front tyre that runs between 60 and 90 psi with loads of little knobbies. It’s quite fun and at 80 psi makes a sweet hum as I fly down the pavement. I also swapped gears for winter and am running 48×20 instead of 48×17 which was my summertime gear.

I also caught wind of a funny product out of Denmark to make cyclists appear a bit more fashionable. I would wear one if I had it but I don’t think a third helmet acquisition is necessary in 2008, plus I’m sure they’re not cheap.

Other news is that I’ve been in the pool 3 days in a row totaling up to 5 kms which is pretty amazing progress for the shoulder. It’s nice and tired after about 30-40 minutes in the pool. I skip doing the physio exercises when I’ve swum, I think it can only take one workout a day.

The race arrived this morning in the midst of mist and cool temperatures. Check in began at 8:00 am and I was there somewhere around 8:05. Simmon showed up at about 8:20 and no other athletes showed their faces in the park until quarter to nine.

Tuffest 3 is a run-bike-run three person relay that traditionally has been dominated by triathlon club in previous years but unfortunately our showing was a bit limited this year for one reason or another. Tom McGrath, Leanne Haney and myself re-entered our winning team from last year in the race this year, hopefully safely winning the co-rec category and in contention for the overall win. Tom had another idea however, he’s trying to accumulate points in the annual Men’s Intramural competition and wanted us to race as a male team so any points we won would count towards his total. I was aprehensive about the idea as I wanted to win a shirt and didn’t want to have to beat Pat Kong, Corey Dawson and Simmon Hofstetter to get it. Tom agreed that he’d compensate both Leanne and I with champion T-shirts from his amassed collection if this was the case…

As the crew of 29 or so teams lined up for the start I rolled out for about a 10 minute warmup. After the first lap Nathan (tri club) was running in second place behind an unknown dude. Tom and Pat were 50 yards back running neck and neck. By lap two of the run the unknown guy had dropped way back and Tom and Pat had caught Nathan. I got set to ride sporting my time-trial kit: my tightest jersey, favorite bib shorts, and my newly acquired Giro advantage2 helmet that I scooped up for about half-price this past week. Tom came in only meters ahead of Pat and I set out for the first of ten laps with Simmon only seconds behind.

I tried to take it easy for the first three laps, 40 kph on the gradual uphill and letting things run up to 44 or 45 on the downhill, as I’d practiced the previous weekend when gauging how fast the ride needed to be when the corners were accounted to split a full 40 kph on each lap. Lap 4 arrived and I got a bit boxed in having to pass a car and 4 cyclists in the same lap requiring a couple pauses in the ride, Tom told me after I had him a bit scared as I dropped a whole 4 seconds on that round of the park. At about that point I was really going hard and the lungs and legs were firing on all cylinders. With three laps left I thought I heard someone shout Simmon’s name as I rolled through the transition area and thought they were cheering for him to go for the pass. I hadn’t checked behind me yet and opted to keep riding my race, he hadn’t blasted past me yet and if he was going to pass me he wasn’t going to pull away much anyways. A couple more laps, when riding the downhill to the finish and trying to push in for the last bit I really could feel my hips starting to give me a bit of grief, and when one part of the legs starts to groan the rest of them do too. Suddenly my feet and glutes were sore too and I was very content to be riding in to the finish.

I unclipped my left foot and ground the spd cleat along the ground as I pulled in to transition to Leanne. The sparks flew and I got a pretty funny cheer from the crowd. Leanne was off running and I laid down on the ground fully spent having clocked a 40.4 kph for 23.4 kms on my own speedometer.

Simmon rolled in about a minute back and Cory headed out in pursuit of Leanne. She wasn’t to be caught though as she ran well and even though Corey ran a blazing second lap he only managed to gain back about 18 seconds on it.

I suppose I can check off in good conscience “Win a race” from my list of life-goals today. While we won as a relay team last year, I was out split on the bike by one rider, this year however I was fastest on the bike and on the right team. The official stats are based on a lap distance of 23.0 kms so It won’t record my speed as above 40 kph but we were prohibited from riding the “tangent line ” as it’s called through the park. We had to stay wide through a couple sections because the road wasn’t completely closed. I did meet the goal of splitting 40 kph. It would be quite something to do that for a full 40 kms… but on a different course with a bit more focussed training at that intensity I think I might be able to do it next year. Riding huge volume with Sea-to-Sea didn’t exactly set me up for super speed on a 1 hour ride… but neither did Simmon’s training for his ride at Ultraman Canada.

A couple Thursdays in a row we’ve met with real bikes instead of indoor bikes to go for a ride with triathlon club at the UofA. The Wednesday Night XC race was so great with all of the leaves turning yellow in the river valley that I decided to bring along my camera for the ride on Thursday. I ended up returning with not all that many shots of the river valley colours but I did shoot a few tri club members on their bikes instead.

Also while out for the ride I got hit in the neck by a bee which proceeded to sting me as it splattered. I was left with half of it’s arse and stinger lodged in my neck. Bee toxins right to the jugular… great. I’m not allergic to these things but when you get stung in the neck it hurts quite a bit more than the wasp stings I got this summer on my upper arm and my calf while riding. Dave was really nice and encouraging by telling me to just suck it up and quit complaining, so I went off and biked to the zoo hill which was the location of our main set for the workout (climbing it a bunch of times with different focus). After 5 times up the hill I had to call it quits because I was starting to swell in the neck and it was getting a bit constricted with breathing. I opted to cut the workout short and headed home and to the pharmacy. After standing in line and telling the pharmacist that I was getting a bit of a constricted throat due to swelling in my neck he proceeded to tell me that I should put an ice cube on it and gave me some anti-itch cream. If I thought that my neck was swelling I’d need to go see a doctor. Thoroughly frustrated by his lack of concern for my ability to breathe I left and decided I could breathe “just good enough” if I didn’t keep biking up and down hills. After discussing with different nursing students they all thought the guy was full of it and was given some benadryl. I woke up this morning feeling quite alright except it’s pretty tender so I’ll have to grow a Faris-Al-Sultan beard for the Tuffest3 race on Sunday. Maybe I’ll race in a speedo too… but probably not.

Turkey Trot 2008 came and went this morning… and triathlon club did a great job! Hopefully only a foretaste of the great job we hope to do next weekend at the Tuffest3 race. For the less-than-100%-informed. Turkey Trot is a 4 km or 8 km run near campus. I ran the 4 km distance because of my lack of running since this shoulder injury and it was a good choice as I was ready to fly for 4 kms and probably wouldn’t have felt the same about a whole 5 miles. Turkeys (or gift certificates for turkeys at least) are awarded to first and second male and female student, alumnus and staff of UofA at both distances. That adds up to 24 turkeys and tri club managed to win 5 of them. The alumnus category is one you can register for if you’ve got a degree from the UofA so a couple grad students registered as alumnus from the club so they strategically didn’t need to race against other club members. I would have placed higher as an alumnus but still would have been out of the running for a Turkey (I was 8th student and could have been 4th alumnus). Oh yeah my time was 15:07 which counts up to 3:47 per km which I’m really happy with.

One of the runners for my Tuffest3 team placed second overall in the 8 km distance. He’s running the 6.9 km leg next Sunday morning at Hawrelak. I will be riding 23 kms and hope to split above 40 kph. Fearless Leanne will be sealing the deal for our team with a 4.6 km run. I understand that Tom hopes to run under 25 minutes and Leanne hopes to be under 17:30. If I actually pull through with what I’m hoping: 34:30 or 3:27 per lap (ahh going under 3:30 takes a ton of work and to nail 10 in a row will hurt) our team might get close to the 1 hour 15 minute mark which would be pretty spectacular. I make no promises though, at the same time though I feel like racing under pressure will be a good experience and look forward to giving that phenomenon a shot. I know the pressure was a real contributing factor to Kyle doing so well in out ITT this summer. I also know that getting some personal records next season will require specific goal setting and capitalizing on training during a race. You’ll hear from me next weekend about Tuffest3 but until then here are a few photos:

I got the OK from the physiotherapist to get back on the bike after taking a solid 2 weeks off. I’ve done two sweet rides since getting the OK (and raced my first XC race of the season, which resulted in a sore body and did a bit of aching muscle recovery in there too).

The first bike ride was a late afternoon cruise through the river valley on the fixed gear. I filmed three segments of video on the trip and basically now have videographic proof that Edmonton is the best place in the whole world to live between the 10 of September and the 20th of October each year. Other dates are up for debate, lots of Colorado, Wisconsin, Upper New York State and Washington State are in pretty close contention after riding my bike there this summer.

This weekend I also had the opportunity to pay a visit to Rocky Mtn House. Intervarsity Groups from around Alberta have a tradition of meeting up out at Pioneer Ranch camp on Crimson lake on the third weekend of the school year and having a sweet weekend away from school before the homework crunch begins in earnest. I wasn’t exactly up for a day paddling a canoe and didn’t want to risk the possibility of slipping and bracing myself against a fall while climbing a ridge so I opted to take my bike out and go for a ride. I offered to drive a group out to 2 O’clock ridge at the west end of Abraham lake and then proceeded to bike all the way from there back to Rocky Mountain House. The scenery along the whole drive out was spectacular and figured I would be able to see the most of it if I rode point to point instead of doing a loop. I hopped on the bike with my camelback (first time ever riding with a camelback) a couple roast beef sandwiches, 3 bananas and a few sweet and salt bars. The sun was shining and for the first 90 minutes or so I had a light tailwind to push me along. I averaged 35 kms per hour for the first hour, loving the opportunity to ride in the aero-position and looking at the green and gold countryside roll past.

All told the trip was 160 kms, yet another century to tack on to the stats for this summer. That makes 18 century rides for 2008, a tough record to break! My ride time was sub 5 hours (4:50 ride time, 5:19 under the gun), I didn’t quite match my performance in east colorado with the total time under 5 hours (4:48 ride time, 4:56 under the gun). The lack of support vehicles meant I needed to stop in at the grocery store in Nordegg to stock up on water (and a pepperoni stick) before heading out on the stretch of road with no services for 92 kms!

This was my first ride this season with aerobars on and I didn’t really consider the ramifications of that until I had proceeded to get an achy lower back and neck. It typically takes a few rides to get those muscles used to the aero position and they typically happen early in April so I’m not in good enough shape to bite off a century anyways. This wasn’t exactly the case, I probably rode aero a bit too much for the first half of the ride as I needed to hop off the bike and stretch out my back with about 40 kms to go.

The traffic to this website hasn’t really slowed down much since the tour wrapped up more than a week ago. My guess is that lots of the cyclists on the trip got home and are suffering a bit of SeatoSea withdrawal and as a result are poking around online and reminiscing on the memories by reading one another’s blogs. Well I’m in the same boat and have found myself poking around on Flicker and looking at some of the 5000 photos posted there once or twice already. At any rate I just wanted to give a quick update on my shoulder since returning to Canada.

I had my first Physio-Therapy appointment at the University of Alberta’s sports medicine center this morning (it was along the time schedule of Pete VanNoord, Barb Mellema or John Vandersteen… ie. earlier than I would have liked). I have been taking it uncomfortably easy since returning to Edmonton. My arm’s been in the sling for most of the day each day. I have avoided the temptation to do all my unpacking at once. I have been riding my bike a bit, my commuting bike (Fixed Gear) and have been doing so with one hand only. My cervelo has remained in the box (which is partly due to the fact that I’m missing a few parts). My room still has a bunch of boxes in it because I just didn’t want to overdo it right away.

So the message from the physiotherapist is basically that I’ve had enough rest with the shoulder and need to start using it more. I do have a “classic” separation of the AC joint and the step deformity in my shoulder is going to be there for life. I likely do not have a torn rotator cuff (which was questioned by a family friend surgeon) as I still have a significant amount of strength in there. If I can build strength in that shoulder over the next few weeks she’ll write off that possibility but if not she says she has excellent connections through the Glen Sather Center to get that fast-tracked. The separation was so “classic” that she went and got the student interns there to come have a look at it and then showed how pushing my shoulderblade in at the bottom made the step go away. So all the while I’ve been saying that my clavicle is “up”, that’s not as true as this one bit of my shoulderblade that pokes through the middle of my shoulder is hanging too far “down” and makes the collarbone look like it’s too high. Luckily that little demonstration didn’t hurt so bad… some of the other stuff did and wouldn’t have been so happy to have the whole thing replayed for this other guy.

Basically my prognosis is: No running allowed. No swimming. No riding my racing bike but I am allowed to commute as I have been doing. I’ve got to make an effort to sit up straight in my chair with my shoulderblades pulled together and down my back as much as possible plus some similar motions I’m supposed to do every hour of the day. I’m still to wear the sling when transporting myself from place to place but am not supposed to keep the arm supported when I’m at home or doing something. I also have a bunch of strength building exercises to do once a day. The prognosis was good and she’s happy that I will be swimming once again eventually as it should build more muscle in the area. My shoulder bulk is WAY DOWN! from the beginning of the summer (especially in the last 2 weeks I’m sure) and even though building those muscles back won’t erase the deformity it should make for a better shoulder in the long run. I guess I’m not allowed to go the Duathlon route… Triathlon was pretty much a prescribed activity for the long term.

If you’d keep the healing process in your prayers I’d be appreciative. I jarred the shoulder quite bad yesterday and it is still capable of causing a boatload of pain when it’s not happy but on a day to day basis I’m completely off painkillers and it’s not more than a mild ache.

Three cheers for Edmontonian Paul Tichelaar who will be representing Canada at the Beijing Olympics this summer. The world championships were held on Sunday in Vancouver and Paul needed to place top 8 to guarantee his slot for the Olympics. He missed top 8 by 0.7 seconds but this morning Triathlon Canada made their final selection and weren’t totally stupid, they sent what I expected to be the team over to Beijing. Simon Whitfield and Paul Tichelaar will be representing Canada along with the help of Colin Jenkins who will probably race with a domestique strategy to help the others on the bike ride if at all possible by breaking wind and helping out here and there with strategy.

These guys really did a good job yesterday, racing the kind of race that is likely to be seen at Beijing with essentially everyone getting off the bike together. The swim was cold though and there’s essentially no chance that there will be wetsuits at Beijing. At any rate, the guys with good swim and run strength fared well. Essentially everyone rode under 1 hour for 40 kms which is pretty sweet. The run musn’t have been as easy as other courses as Docherty and Gomez were the only people to run under 32 minutes for 10k.