Power summary of the 2Up TT last night with Will. Lotsa draft back here but it’s still not enough for a real recovery when we’re doing 30 mph. #2upTT I think both of us were pretty cooked at the end of Worlds the night before (I did 55 minutes solo to finish) but we opted […]
Continue Reading‘The Motherlode’ is the name given to the 210 mile course variant at the Gold Rush Gravel Grinder. The event leaves from Spearfish South Dakota and heads up and into the Black Hills. Last year I raced the 110 mile ‘Gold Rush’ course and decided to go for the big one this time around, more […]
Continue ReadingThree hundred sixty four kilometers, four thousand three hundred fifty five meters of elevation climbed.
Continue ReadingI returned to Winter Park this past weekend to take in the 3rd annual stagecoach classic. I had attended the 2nd edition after having missed out on the inaugural event because I was in Cartegena with Jason in January 2014 and too busy drinking Club Colombia, sitting beside rooftop pools, and riding bikes up and […]
Continue ReadingA project in correcting power data for altitude to gauge aerobic stress. The aerobic stress of a cycling effort is gauged “fairly” by using power (assuming the power meter is calibrated. c.f. Brailsford’s Bullshit) only when the relative aerobic effort stays fair across the measurement. In the case of going to altitude, the blood-delivery demands […]
Continue ReadingThe Invitation: First thing back after Christmas (well at least close to first thing) is a good time to lay some plans for the next season. This is partly because everyone is highly motivated at this time of year and full of the ‘New Years Resolutions’ vibe. This week, we’d like to have a club […]
Continue ReadingThe magnitude of effort required to complete the first stage of the CCC was about 50% more than was required to complete the Golden Triangle. We then did the same thing the next day… and the load just piled on with basically no respite until the end (if you can call those days respite. Stage 9 had abnormally low grades (only 7 or 8%!) on two of the passes because we were in Spain so the mileage was high but the climbing low. Stage 10 was slightly abridged so that we could finish with time to pack bikes before a celebratory dinner of pork cheeks and some fine Catalan red wine.
Continue ReadingI leave for France in two weeks. The final training block consisted of a week of ~15 hours that was front-end loaded leaving me headed into the weekend well rested so I could string together three relatively big days. My hope was that I would get myself a bit metabolically fatigued by loading on some volume. The weather wasn’t warm enough to be conducive to very early morning riding and the sun set too soon to do any late evening riding so all of the days were of reasonable length and difficulty, nothing was extreme. All told, I managed 15 hours 40 minutes of riding over the course of three days with a total ascent of 6000 meters. That’s a very small taste of what I have coming at me when I get to France, but I managed this 3 day block with minimal discomfort. I did screw up the eating when battling a block-headwind for two hours which had me running on fumes for the final 3 hours of my Sunday ride… retrospectively that’s encouraging. I can still climb at sustained rates in excess of 800m/hour when my blood sugar is a total mess. I was also able to climb the final pitch (4 kms averaging 6%) of the Marmot Basin road 3 seconds faster (alone) at the end of the third day than I did (racing S.Mundy) on the first day of the weekend.
Continue ReadingThe variability in speed over this course was minimal, the consistency of the course was sufficient that it would be very difficult to apply more power when moving slowly and less when moving quickly. The power distribution shown at right indicates that I wasn’t really able to execute any strategic power distribution at all. I think that’s mostly because it was pretty much impossible to do without more hills. Nothing was steep enough downhill to provide material rest so consequently there wasn’t really anywhere I could spend more power in exchange.
Continue ReadingI tried to go with a couple moves on Saturday night and did some attacking of my own but the pace was incredibly fast. In the end we averaged 49.5 kph! Rundle Mountain was doing their utmost to keep things together and Red-Truck didn’t care, I think they knew that Bailey (who was only a half second down on GC) wasn’t going to be able to gain time on Dave (winner of Friday’s hill-climb) because he’s small and Dave is a pretty strong all-rounder. Strong enough to mark him in a flat crit, that’s for sure. At about halfway I gave up interest in trying to get in a move and just sat in. HR was down around 140-150 which was a joke, but when you can pedal around 99% of the course it’s easy to not get dropped from a pack of 40 guys.
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