I finally got around to creating a video for my Eastern Serria trips.  I tackled the 10 toughest climbs in California!  Here are the links of my two trips:

Onion Valley, Horseshoe Meadows and Whitney Portal — 17,000 feet in 116 miles – IN ONE DAY!

Shirley Meadows and Sherman Pass

White Mountain

Thank you John Summerson for your list and inspiration!

Most Difficult Climbs:

1) Onion Valley —               DONE 6/10/10 !!
2) Horseshoe Meadows — DONE 6/10/10!!
3) White Mountain–    DONE 06/25/10!!
4) Sherman Pass–              DONE 6/24/10!!
5) Whitney Portal —          DONE 6/10/10!!
6) Mount Baldy–               DONE- too many times to mention
7) Shirley Meadows–        DONE 6/24/10!!
8) South Lake–                  DONE as part of Everest Challenge Stage Race
9) Mount Palomar–           DONE 6/06/10!!– too many times to mention
10) Mosquito Flat–           DONE as part of Everest Challenge Stage Race

Greatest Elevation Gained:

1) Horseshoe Meadows – 6,234 feet– DONE 6/10/10 !!
2) White Mountain – 6,204 feet  DONE 06/25/10!!
3) 190 – 6,199 feet
4) J21/245/180 – 5,750 feet
5) Mosquito Flat – 5,548 feet- DONE AS PART OF EVEREST CHALLENGE
6) Dantes View – 5,475 feet
7) South Lake – 5,445 feet- DONE AS PART OF EVEREST CHALLENGE
Sherman Pass – 5,316 feet– DONE 6/24/10!!
9) Emigrant Pass – 5,309 feet– DONE 04/04/10 – BLOG POST
10) Onion Valley – 5,169 feet DONE 6/10/10!!

Highest Elevation Attained:

1) Mosquito Flat – 10,220 feet- DONE AS PART OF EVEREST CHALLENGE
2) White Mountain – 10,152 feet DONE 06/25/10!!
3) Horseshoe Meadows – 10,034 feet DONE 6/10/10!!
4) Tioga Pass – 9,945 feet
5) South Lake – 9,852 feet– DONE AS PART OF EVEREST CHALLENGE!
6) Sonora Pass – 9,624 feet
7) Kaiser Pass – 9,184 feet
Onion Valley – 9,163 feet — DONE 6/10/10!!
9) Lake Sabrina – 9,141 feet
10) Sherman Pass – 9,126 feet– DONE 6/24/10!!

Just a quick post more to follow.  Adobo Velo did it again!! Great support great people great food!!

As some of you know I  recently acquired an SRM power meter.  I like it very much especially since a world of wheels is open to me now.  Tonight I performed a 5 minute test on a local hill that is 1.5 miles and about 6% grade.  I felt great and started the climb at about 360 watts and was holding that steady.  I was a couple of minutes into the effort and still felt good so I pushed a little more.  When the grade started to give way I shifted up a gear and brought the power back up.  I eventually had to stand to keep the power up and was in the 400+ range.  And then….I ended my effort THINKING I had gone 5 minutes.  Well the SRM has a feature where it scrolls certain data on the top line.  I mistakenly ended my effort at 4 minutes and 30 seconds.  I was feeling really stressed but I think I had another 30 seconds at least at over 340 watts.

Below you will see a screen shot from Training Peaks wko 3.0 software (the BEST software for analyzing power data)  showing my 4:30 Peak Power 😉  My average was 348 watts or 5.2 w/kg (more on 5.2 w/kg below)

The reason I’m so bummed is because I was on target for hitting 5.2 w/kg in the 5 minute test which would put me on the very edge of Cat 2.  I will have to try it again soon.  I have already changed the setting on the SRM so that in the INTERVAL  mode I don’t have the data scrolling I will just have time!

all for now….

Thank you for reading my blog pass it on to a good friend.

I have taken a few extra rest days during this 4th of July holiday weekend.  The last time I rode my bike was Friday.  On Saturday and Sunday I took it easy hanging around the house.  My little boy was sick on the 4th, and that gave me an excuse to lay down with him and take a nap — midday even–yay!!

Monday is always a rest day for me.  I’ve been meaning to make the Tuesday morning Coffee Crew ride for a couple of months but just haven’t gotten it together.  And then today when the alarm went off at 4:30am I was so exhausted I went back to sleep.  Apparently, it was drizzling so I didn’t miss much.  While rain has never stopped me from training, I don’t like riding in packs when it rains.  It’s sketchy and in my opinion dangerous.  Over the next couple of months I will make it a point to join the group rides at least once a week to get a little intensity in my training but not if it’s raining.

My favorite ride of the week is the Wednesday ride.  I plan on making the ride tomorrow.  Thursday and Friday are up in the air right now.  A plan should materialize by tomorrow.  I would like to do the Thursday morning Coffee Crew ride and then head out to Glendora Mountain Road and do some climbing in the afternoon.  We’ll see….

Thank you for checking in.

I felt good on today’s ride.  When a few riders surged on a climb I went with them and held their wheel just fine. I felt I had plenty of power on reserve.  At the sprint, I was in the leadout train but I was poorly positioned when the sprint finally happened– lesson learned.  I don’t have much of a sprint but I seem to be always well positioned and I seem to read the flow of the peloton well.

I compared the numbers on today’s ride to the last hard Friday ride in recent memory. 3/12.

My Normalized Power for 20 minutes on 3/12 was 260 watts while my Normalized Power 7/2 was 306 watts 4.55 w/kg!

My Normalized Power for 5 minutes on 3/12 was 360 watts on 7/2 was 385 watts  5.73 w/kg!

That’s it boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, the 2010 Furnace Creek 508 roster is out.  I made the list.  2010 will be my fifth consecutive and final solo 508.  There are approximately 13 weeks remaining for me and the other 91 solo racers to get ready for the “toughest 48 hours in sport”.  That’s right 92 solo racers this year!  A good solid field is represented with the 2009 508 champion, Chris “Ram” Ragsdale returning to defend his title.

I am currently in my mountain training phase.  For the months of June and July and parts of August, depending how my numbers look, I do a lot of work climbing the mountains of southern California.  I then wean myself off the mountains and begin to do higher intensity, albeit, shorter rides through the end of August and September.  Things are going well for me and I feel strong for this time of year.  My power numbers look good and I have maintained my weight at 150lbs or 68 kg.

This weekend brings more climbing and suffering in the Sierras.  Stay tuned for another weekend of EPIC TRAINING!

Psst!  A little bird told me there might be a Sweepstakes coming soon with the opportunity to win a FREE SRM and coaching.  Stay tuned for more details…..

I was pleasantly surprised with my first ride on the Jamis Xenith SL.  I don’t know why but when I hear super hi modulus carbon fiber I always shudder expecting the ride to be super harsh.  The Xenith SL was a nice riding bike.  Plenty of responsiveness on the short rollers I rode today.  I did short 30 sec to 1 minute intervals in the 400 watt range and the frame felt plenty stiff.  I even rode the bike in a big ring crossed configuration hoping to make the front der rub.  It didn’t happen.

Tomorrow is the century day.  I will be going to one of my all time favorite climbs — Palomar Mountain.  I will report more after tomorrow’s ride.

Thank you for reading my blog!

You know sometimes I love my job.  The Jamis rep came knocking on our door earlier this week.  He wants to open an account with us because he sees our shop as a reputable mid to high-end road shop with a good vibe.  As part of his sales pitch he said he had a demo bike that the staff could ride and evaluate it.  Wouldn’t you know it the demo bike was a size 54cm– lucky me.

Ok so now I have a weekend with the Jamis Xenith SL.  Here is the write-up from their website:

“Pro racing is the toughest test lab in the world. And that’s where Xenith SL and Team really shine, under the pedals of the Jamis/Sutter Home/Colavita pro cycling team, weekend after weekend.

Last year’s Xenith was a high-water mark for performance. This year we kicked it up a whole new level. We used every trick in the book, then added a few pages of our own: like Near Net Molding technology that allows hyper-accurate reproduction of our FEA-optimized layup schedule. With a high impact-resistant resin binder system and Omniad fiber lay-up, plus asymmetric chainstays that balance out drivetrain stresses, and a tapered-steerer fork with 1.5” lower race that’s completely hollow from steerer to dropouts.

The result: a lighter, stiffer, more durable,
faster platform.”

Source

If my weekend goes as planned I will do a short 30 mile ride tomorrow to make sure everything is good to go on the bike.  Then Sunday I’ll do my favorite century — The Palomar Century.  It is 100 miles and 10,000 feet of climbing with the featured climb being Palomar Mountain 11.7 miles 4100 feet of gain for an avg. grade of 6.8%.

Stay tuned for the Vireo Review…

Above is a modified screen shot from Training Peaks WKO 3.0.  The software compiles your data and has many different charts and analysis you can use to dial in your training.  I will only discuss two simple charts that I find essential in tracking my training stress and recovery.

Let’s begin with the chart above.  It displays the amount of hours and mileage trained in the “Recent Weeks” and then the weekly data is compiled for the “Recent Months”.  When training there are two very basic variables — Duration and Intensity.  Looking at the data above Duration is quite easy to pick out since it is labeled.  Intensity however is a little trickier to discern from the data provided.

Let’s look at several ways to determine the intensity from the data provided.  One way to gauge intensity is to look at the Training Stress Score (TSS).  Your TSS will tell you how hard and how close you were working in relation to your Functional Threshold Power (FTP).  A TSS score of 100 means you were working at 100% of your FTP for one hour.  So when seeing your duration compared to your TSS you can make some assumptions to your training load and your intensity.

Another way to loosely determine your intensity would be to look at your Heart Rate average for the week.  The higher the number the higher the intensity  – simple.  Another way would be comparing the number of hours to the number of kjs.  For example, Week ending 5/30 had fewer hours (18:38) vs week ending 5/16 (19:03) but 5/30 had more kjs than 5/16 10,551 and 9810 respectively.  And lastly, you can look at the 1 minute, 5 minute, 20 minute and 60 min peak power numbers.  You will note that the week 5/30 has the highest peak power numbers for the previous 5 weeks.

The same analysis can be used on the “Recent Months” total provided below.  Incidently, you may notice that 609 watts is the highest recorded  1 minute peak power.  It is a personal record and I have charts and a little write-up here.  The rest of the data indicates the month of May was a solid month.  The totals for the month of May were 53 hours, with 810 miles (everyone understands miles) Avg Heart Rate 154 bpm with a fairly high 2886 TSS for the month (as compared to the most recent months).

Now let’s look at the chart below.  It is the Performance Management Chart for the month of May.

BLUE– the chronic fatigue on your body (last 42 days)

YELLOW– the amount of rest/recovery

PINK — the training stress on your body over the last 7 days.

You will note beginning with May 1st, I have been increasing the amount of training stress and the rides have been getting harder and harder yielding higher Training Stress Scores. Pink line displays higher peaks, the yellow displays lower drops and the Blue line steadily goes up.  All good indicators as I build up the duration and intensity of my training.