Category Archives: Training

Wasted

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The day after a big ride can sometimes leave you without your mojo. Gym rats don’t get it. Tell a gym rat you were cooked after a hard 75 mile ride and they will ask, “are you sore?”  These guys don’t understand. An endurance athlete doles out the effort over four to five hours, exhausting energy stores of glycogen, draining his will, depleting his very soul.

No I am not sore, I am wasted.

Almost like a hangover, you pull yourself out of bed moving slow and deliberate. The mind in a haze, simple tasks take your entire focus. You slide your tongue across the roof of your dry sticky mouth to confirm the headache you feel is caused by dehydration. This is the kind of dehydration that takes an entire day to cure. After a few hours you give in and take some NSAIDS for relief. Staring off into the distance you keep telling yourself, “I have to ride. Just 30-40 miles will be good. Just go easy”. Then nothing, you don’t move an inch. Almost paralyzed you keep staring while feelings of guilt however strong cannot motivate you to ride. Your body knows what it needs and it is taking control.

Last night I spent an hour in the gym with Thomas providing direction. Today, I am a little sore…but I am not wasted.

Easter’s Best

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Riding out on Saturday I came across Alex Labora returning from his morning jaunt. He was kind enough to roll in my direction for a while providing enough time to catch up and make plans to ride Sunday’s regular ride to Gorgio’s. This ride is usually pretty spirited and with the winds we have been enduring lately the lactic acid will flow.  Whether out front pulling or sucking wheel there will be little respite, no quarter for the weary.

The thought of Sunday’s effort made me rethink my Saturday mileage. I can feel Thomas’ Friday evening strength training on my legs while anticipating sixty at tempo while keeping cadence at 90-100. At Deerfield I topped off the hydration supply and squeezed in a bit of honey to fuel the Mito. I have changed my onboard nutrition towards the simple. Tea, lemon, and honey fill the bidons while a concentrated mixture inside a recycled EFS bottle is nestled in my right jersey pocket at the ready for quick refuels. The legs feel fine so the original sixty stay as planned.

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The return home consisted of a series of chases as I encountered solo riders en route. These carrots help me keep the pace high while maintaining my target cadence. Road construction forced me to ride some rough tarmac laden with debris. A quick fix following a flat was executed in the shade of the mangroves lining the sidewalk. A bench makes for light work by limiting time spent bent over the wheel. Five miles later while rolling through the city the rear tire took another hit. This time a serious gash was torn into the sidewall. Application of a Knog Porno Patch to the inside of the tire and a Park Super Patch to the tube had me mounting the wheel in less than 5 min.

Knog Patch

20140419_193414In a fit of hunger I pan roasted chicken breast in herbs and GI then quickly dispensed with it. My simple on board nutrition leaves me little in the tank post ride and my restricted diet does not provide for quick fixes like recovery bars and drinks. As my hunger subsides so does my aggressive sense of urgency. No time to relax, must rush to the LBS to restock on tires and tubes. I prefer the comfort of a 24mm width tire. This store had only 23mm, so after some muttering under my breath, an impulse buy has me carting home a couple of Continental Grand Prix 4000… in Yellow! I am sure the racing thoroughbreds will be scoffing as yellow is exclusively reserved for the wearer of the maillot jaune, the leader of Le Tour.  “Sometimes as cigar is just a cigar”. I just like yellow.

 

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Saturday night I changed two tires while simultaneously cooking dinner for Renate and me. Who says men don’t multitask. Dinner was delicious. The wheels look great. A quick chain cleaning completes the Mooney’s preparation for Sunday’s ride.

 

 

 

 

 

Pm003As it turns out, I did not wake early enough to join the group ride. Good thing too. The legs were well worn and a decision to keep the ride down to two hours was a prudent one. Still the bike looks great wearing it’s Easter’s Best.

 

2014 Six Gap Century

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It may be premature, but I am setting my sites on the Six-Gap Century in September. It seems almost idiotic that this is the result of surviving a four day training block without any residual Sciatica pain. Friday night I cruised through the gym, Saturday I put in forty miles with decent results and Sunday I turned in another forty-two. Tonight’s gym workout finishes the four day block.

Planning out the annual training calendar is always exciting. You look forward with childlike enthusiasm at the coming months. Free from the pain of injury, the stress created by deadlines, the concern of time consumed by family affairs and free from self doubt, all is possible. Soon you have a Grandfondo scheduled every weekend and a training schedule that looks more like a professional race calendar. More than a little pruning produces a more realistic calendar and promises to keep Renate from going AWOL.

So that’s it.

The 2014 Six Gap Century.

One big event to focus on.

Everything else is training.

The ride consists of eleven thousand feet of climbing over six mountain passes with none tougher than Hogpen Gap averaging a 7% grade over seven miles. Your thoughts transcend reality as Hogpen slows you to a crawl while expending maximum effort. Once you crest the gap you descend at break neck speeds while experiencing a freefall into fear.  

Oh yes please, more…more of this.

Good Biker

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I am going on my 15th month of Base Training.

Consistency has been difficult with sickness and injuries plaguing my return to the bike. Returning Sciatica pain is my current obstacle to progression. This time it took five days to overcome and consisted of 2-3 waves of excruciating pain per day lasting 60-90 minutes long.  Ibuprofen doesn’t touch the pain and doctors won’t prescribe the good stuff. You just have to curl up into the prone position with a pillow between the legs and deal with it. Sciatica has introduced a whole new level of suffering for me. After the painfest, it has taken me a few weeks of light training to return to workable condition and have the confidence to start base training again.

So April I begin all over again.

Yesterday’s ride started slow while a steady headwind kept the effort higher than the MPH would indicate. On a time schedule, I turned around after an hour and headed home. Construction detours lead me onto traffic heavy South Bayshore Drive. Before long a fellow rider rolled up behind me dressed in Discovery Channel kit from the late 90’s. Apparently annoyed at my pace, he veered erratically left in a small gap between cars and started passing a bus on the left while its left turn signals were blinking then ran a red light. I caught up with him at the next red light where he was impatiently waiting for the obstructing traffic to clear. The light turned green while I rolled by blurting out, “not the brightest bulb in the box,  are yah”.

The Discovery rider, apparently pissed, rode by at a brisk paceand without thinking, I gave chase. “What are you doing?” I asked myself in disbelief. “You are not the guy rider you were in 2012, let him go – this is BASE TRAINING”. Before I could quit I caught his wheel.

He poked his head up from his effort to forget me and noticed I was on him. He then commences to attempt to ride me off his wheel. To my surprise, he cannot and so he begins playing track style cat and mouse. Dart to the left, sprint, Zig right, Zag left. I remained the tenacious cat exhausting his prey. Disgusted he could not drop me, he slows thinking he will jump on my wheel when I pass. His move fully anticipated, my mind and drive train were prepared for a full on sprint. With Cars to the left, the road narrowed to fit only one bike. I knew the idiot had pigeon holed himself. Out of the saddle, I launched myself passed him and into the narrow gap between car and sidewalk. A red light would soon shorten the affair. Discovery rider had once again decided to pass cars on the left into oncoming traffic and travelled through the intersection at speed without concern for the red light nor the cars swerving to avoid collision.

For a moment I watched him as his image waned. I wanted to chase and wondered wantonly if I should have ditched the red light myself. Then a SUV pulls up alongside with his window down…

“You’re a Good Biker “, he exclaims.

On Trying Hard

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“Hey man, I have to give you props”. Slowly I lift my head from my towel still out of breath to find a young man, let’s say in his early thirties, with his hand extended. Instinct has me reach out and shake his hand with a breathless, “thank you”. I try to control my breathing in a sad attempt to regain my composure. I don’t know if he can see on my face that I am perplexed by the compliment but he follows with, ”every time I see you in the gym you are always working very hard; you leave it all out there, in the gym. I am truly inspired”.  

I don’t know what to make of it. Unknowingly, this kid has sent me on a little head trip on purpose and past. I don’t understand why I am putting so much effort into my gym workouts except that I want dividends delivered on the bike. Why am I so hung up on performance in the first place? It is not the first time someone has recognized my efforts in the absence of results.

In high school I ran cross-country and could run sub-six minute miles for three miles.  Not bad but it was not quite enough to beat the opposing teams fifth man with the regularity required to letter. I never missed a practice and I put everything I had into my workouts. The members of my high school cross-country team presented me with a plaque giving me the distinction of “Most Determined Runner” in my sophomore year.  Touched as I was, it was really a consolation prize for not meeting the criteria for a letter. I did in fact receive a letter as well.

Athletic talent was not my gift. I ran, skied, studied karate, played tennis and raced bikes. Good but not great, I enjoyed them all and continue to this day to work hard at being a better cyclist.

 “Thanks again”, I reply as I continue my march up the stairs to the locker room while the sweat is streaming down my face and off my chin.

Chasing Wheels

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Two flights and six taxi rides sends me to NYC and returns me home safely. Business trips mess with my training and mess with my head. I don’t feel like sleeping. I can’t wake up. When I am awake it feels like I am asleep. I want to ride but the legs have something less stressful in mind. It makes me wonder how pro cyclists deal with the long transfers between stages of a grand tour. As the length and quantity of transfers seem to be a topic of debate when new grand tour routes are announced or even while a tour is under way, I am guessing the peloton has the same opinion.

Then there is this self imposed pressure to catch-up on training in an attempt to regain lost fitness. After returning from Germany I managed to complete two rides and an hour in the gym. That’s two rides in twelve days!

 “Where do you get the energy?”my wife questions while standing naked before me. “I have to ride”, I respond with conviction. Now I can tell you that leaving a beautiful, naked woman at home in bed on a Saturday morning is just about the most difficult thing a man can do… at least this man anyway. You do this on enough Saturday mornings and you start to seriously question your priorities.

I ride out to Miami City Hall only to discover that the 18-22mph group is not riding this week. Without a moment to spare, I head south towards Casa Larios knowing I had little chance of getting there before the guys roll on. As expected, the parking lot was free of the telling, anxious riders rolling around in semi-circular and squiggly patterns like scout bees returning to their hive. So I roll on.

Now just about every Miami group ride that heads south towards Black Point, Bayfront or Homestead follows the same route which begins by meandering through the residential district of Pinecrest. The only way I was going catch a fast moving group ride is to cut the distance by making a beeline towards Cutler Bay. Questioning my sanity I am riddled with self doubt as I calculate the effort required to hold the wheels of a group cranked up above 30 mph. I am surprised when I find myself keeping a 20-22mph pace as I solo towards the rotary connecting Galloway with Old Cutler Road. I am impressed with my legs as they are working well at tempo without the all too familiar sting of lactic acid buildup. Is my fitness improving? Are my legs just rested? Where’s the travel affect? Could it be the royal jelly in my water bottle? Is it just motivation?

While searching for answers my attention is now directed towards a group moving through the rotary at speed towards Black Point. Is it Larios? Can I do it? Can I bridge a half mile gap? Instinctually I pick up the pace to 22-23mph, hit the rotary, slow down for a truck towing a boat and accelerate again to 23-24mph.  I quickly mark the group at about one third of mile away. I have made decent ground, but if this is Larios they are going to accelerate to 28mph soon and then they will be gone. I top out at 24.5 mph and hold it. After a few minutes I slide off to 23mph. Out of the saddle I push it back to 24.5mph and hold. “Just one more” and with another acceleration, I reach the back of the peloton where I stay while I regain my composure. They are rolling at 22mph. This can’t be Larios?

I accelerate up into an open gap in the pace line and confirm with my new partner that this group is indeed not the Larios group. We are keeping a gentleman’s pace of 22-23mph and so I decide to hang on and see where they lead. We travel through the palm tree nurseries between Black Point and Bayfront maintaining a double pace line at a steady tempo. I am second wheel when we turn left after the bridge and over the channel towards Bayfront. The front guys peel off and my partner asks, ”where do you want to put it”. “Twenty two-twenty-three”, I reply. We bring it up to 22mph into a headwind and hold.

There is a little bridge just before the entrance of Bayfront Park that marks the sprint  line. I am not sure why, but in Miami we don’t sprint for county lines, we sprint for bridges.

We pull on the front for a mile leaving a mile to go before the bridge. Soft pedaling I roll back and find a gap in the pace line after five riders. The guys at the front spy a small group of riders and so like bees to a hummingbird we accelerate forward until we are all mixed up and on the attack. The new guys try to maintain their dominance on the front but we engulf them anyway. That’s when things heat up and we are in full flight towards the bridge.

As is always the case, my time at the front too close to the sprint caused me to fall off too soon but not before hitting 29mph. A nice long break at Bayfront preceded the ride home that stayed at a steady tempo. Later a brief break at Starbucks resulted in a rare Miami Rapha kit sighting. After talking with the young chap for moment I joined his group for ten of the twenty miles home to close out a seventy five mile ride.

Tuesday morning finds me in a taxi on the way to the airport.

Even when I am not on the bike I am still chasing wheels.

Friday Night Ritual

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Another Saturday rolls up on me fast. Labor Day Monday’s tempo ride was awesome and I was happy to see that my power numbers are on the rise. The balance of the work week finds me in the gym on a Wednesday night which was a prelude to a difficult and failed attempt to complete 2 X 15 minutes of Threshold intervals on Thursday. It’s a little hard to take but I am learning to let these things go.

My Friday night ritual starts with a rather intense hour at the gym. “Basic Pushing and Pulling” is what my trainer calls it.

Yes, I said trainer.

No, I am not headed for the Nationals nor do I have any delusions of grandeur.

If it were not for Thomas I would not make it to the gym consistently if at all and I certainly would not work beyond 30 minutes at the intensity we work at for a full hour. He is the best trainer I have ever contracted, knowledgeable, serious and devoted to me for the entire time I spend with him. Thomas is a quiet gentleman that leads by example rather than bark orders from the sidelines and knows when to push me hard or when to modify an exercise to meet my current fitness level. His depth of knowledge and experience affords him the capability to train a client to meet the client’s needs rather than stick you in a “one size fits all” training plan. He does however emphasize all our work outs around muscular balance thereby reducing the potential for injury and maximizing my potential for power. The excercises he encorporates are sometimes complex which makes them difficult yet all the more compelling. He the architect and I the brick layer have together built a structure that I can rely upon during my training on the bike.

Besides……despite statements to the contrary…… girls like guns

and an Andy Schleck wannabe I am not.

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The ritual continues with basic bicycle maintenance. It is important that everything is working properly during a Saturday morning group ride as nothing ruins a good ride faster than a crash caused by a mechanical or being dropped for the same. The majority of maintenance one must endure is cleaning the bike and drive train. Throw in an occasional adjustment to a derailleur or brake cable and you have it covered.

I live in a high-rise condo so access to an outdoor faucet or garage to clean and maintain my machine is non-existent leaving me to maintain my bike in the living room overlooking Biscayne Bay and South Beach. To facilitate this work I set up and secure my bike on a Park PRS-20 Repair Stand , wipe her down with a Velo-shine wipe, clean the chain with a Park Cyclone Chain Scrubber  and Finish Line Degreaser, and wipe the chain with a standard bar towel. I give the degreaser a chance to dry before applying Chain-L chain lube. This whole process takes maybe 10 minutes when I am focused but distractions like the finishing sprint at the Vuelta or the death of another terrorist type on Strike Back tend to prolong the activity. So I give myself a 30 minute block of time at least once a week or every 100 miles for basic bike maintenance. You should too.

This Friday I had a little extra time and energy so I laid out my kit, gear and nutrition in preparation for the morning’s ride.

Good thing too.