No Raccoon MTN but there is Bethlehem-Madison

Got a call from the baby-sitter last night at 11pm saying she will be leaving town Saturday instead of Monday so there went the highly anticipated Raccoon Mountain MTB race and my debut riding the SS in the expert class.

So, I decided to take out my frustration by doing 78 miles today from Bethlehem, GA to Madison, GA and back. I made a wrong turn so I added some extra miles onto a 74 mile course. It is primarily flat with some nice rollers periodically, the tough stretch along "Confederate St." leading to Rutledge, GA and then the hard hills through Hard Labor State Park. There seemed to always be a headwind today and even though there were a thousand clouds in the sky, not one had the decency to cover up the sun. The route is all pretty exposed to the heat takes its toll and by the end I was pretty fried.

I covered the 78 miles at a nice 20.7 mph clip and my average power was a meager 206w (226w NP). So, about 3:50 in terms of ride time. I got stung by 2 bees which goes back to the debate on wearing underlayers in the summer. One drawback is that a bee/wasp can hit your underlayer and then get caught between it and your skin. It is my 3rd sting this week.

Knowing jury duty is looming I tried to get in a big riding week and I succeeded with 14 hours and 237 miles.

At about mile 75 I stopped at "The Store" near Monroe, GA. Four ancient dickheads who always seem to be sitting out front and always with something to say started going on to me about how my bike should have a license plate. It was a clear provocation, but they obviously underestimated how big of an asshole usually I am (just ask anyone) so I agreed with them and said that roads are for cars and I am only fortunate enough to share it with them. Those douchebags had nothing more to say but I am sure they are still sitting there going on about cornholing and such. I hate that place.

With possible jury duty next week I am trying to get in as much riding as I can this week. I actually did some threshold intervals this week and they went well. I am assuming without any formal testing that my ftp is around 300w right now. Racing has helped this and after this weekend no more racing until possibly the Gwinnett Fest Road Atlanta race and maybe the Saturday road race in 4 weeks and then maybe the GA State TT champs in August, then finally the SS champs in September. I am trying to do 1 race per month.

I am juror pool number 48 which does not bode well for me. Maybe I will get lucky. I hate to not want to be on a jury but I am being selfish. At least I am going. Thousands of folks never show up for their duty day and are never caught. Good for me.

I picked up some new cross wheels for this fall. They are Ksyrium SSC SL and came mounted with Dugast Rhino tubulars. They are not the top of the line wheels but I think they will last and perform well. I fell out of love with carbon deep dish bling wheels after my nationals experience.

Sanibel was a great time. Besides the swimming and the ocean, there is great sea kayaking there in the mangroves. North of Sanibel is a small island called Captiva which is a hidden gem. Here is the bike loop if anyone is ever there on vacation.

On vacation at Sanibel Island, FL. Took my bike and there is a nice flat 27 mile loop here which is actually pretty hard. No elevation change but windy, hot and humid. Hopefully my bike/components won't get eaten by the salt.

Very sparse crowd, nice shelly beaches, and pretty good food. A nice vacation spot.

Issaqueena MTB Race

Drove up to Clemson today for the SERC Issaqueena MTB race in the SS class. We started at 9:30 which was a bonus considering the heat of the day would be later. I was hoping to put in a good effort and was interested in the long climb at the end of each lap. What surprised me was the small steep climbs in the middle of the race.

I had a good start and was soon off with Michael Scholtz (NCCX). I led about 1/2 a lap until my saddle bag dropped into my rear wheel. Michael was nice enough to sit up in time for me to fix it and we were off again. One of the disappointing things about the GCS/SERC series line-ups is starting the expert women in front of the SS. It is a frustrating thing for both groups since we usually catch them and have to bother them about passing. Today was no different and as we came upon 4 women on a hill, Michael was able to pass but then the line collapsed for me. I asked to pass but the women were having a tough time on the hill as well. With the SS, momentum is on your side so when it is lost you have to dismount and run. There was no other choice on this climb. I had to do this and eventually passed them but gave up the race lead with Michael. Now doomed to second, I did my best to hold that position.

I was able to climb the finishing hill no problem and it was not really a huge factor. I think Michael would still have beaten me up the climb at the end and won, but I would have like to have played that out instead of getting stuck and losing because I could not pass.

Second is not bad and Michael said he would have waited for me had he known, but that's racing. Tony Angevine also showed a lot of class today by killing me with kindness since our argument about passing a few weeks ago. Thanks Tony!

I had a nice crash today at Yargo because I refuse to wear gloves and my hands get sweaty , hands slide off, and I crash. I am not a big fan of gloves unless it is cold. I am going to have to change that.

I am excited to go up to Clemson this weekend and do the race. It sounds pretty hard but I am wanting to race a few more times this summer. I am going to do the Raccoon Mountain MTB race and then the Gwinnett Fest race at the speedway. After that I am going to attempt to get ready to defend the 40-45 SS State Championship in September. I have been invited to attend Star Crossed in Seattle in September and the Gloucester, Mass. UCI race in October. I have to choose one or the other. I have not heard about the GA Cross Series races but I'll do some of them and possibly one last hurrah at nationals since I have a free place to stay.

Bethlehem-Bostwick

It was a hot one even at 8am. We had around 10 riders and the route was very nice, rural and almost no cars. The pace was around 18mph and everything went smoothly. By 11am it was getting too hot and I'll bet the heat index was around 94 or so. I used to do part of this route starting in Athens with the UGA cycling team. It was one of the winter LSD rides. The climbs out of the Appalachee River are tough and the shake and bake on Gober is rattling but otherwise smooth roads and nice scenery. All in all around 57 miles at 18.4 mph and avg power of 157w.

Rode today at Blankets Creek MTB trails in Woodstock. The trails are very dry but are exceptional. They are quite challenging and the Dwelling Loop in combination with the South Loop makes around 10 miles.

The gearing of 32x16 was perfect and I felt that I could ride anything there with it. I really don't like drop offs and there are two that I had to look away from but they were fun to try and ignore (I remember some of those drop offs in Moab, Utah--it took all I could to ride past those).

Fun time and my new SS Klein is feeling better and better. Hopefully I will ride in Clemson in 2 weeks and then at Raccoon Mountain. I am going to skip Ellijay.

TSS Ramp Rate

Most guys using power and WKO+ look at overall CTL and TSB and want CTL to climb higher and higher until they need to taper for a peak event. This means that TSB goes lower and lower (more negative). But there seems to be a fine line in everyone in how fast you can increase your weekly CTL by accumulating training stress each day. According to the wattage forum the range for most folks falls between 3-8 CTL points per week. For example, if my CTL on Monday is 60, then I would have to accumulate blank amount of TSS that week to raise it 8 points to 68 by the end of the week. The point being that after 8 CTL points difference (ramp rate) that week people often get sick.

Guys who are top caliber and rack up 100+ TSS per day can easily over extend and find themselves ill. But, most people using power know themselves and how much stress they can accumulate before this happens.

How do you ramp it up that much? Well you would have to do any type of workout that would give you a significant amount of training stress on average each day to move it blank points.

Right now I am at a CTL of 73 tss/d. If I want to ramp it up to 75 tss/d by this Sunday, I have to average at least 84 tss/d for the 7 days. Depending on workout goals and ride length/intensity this can be accomplished. But if the goal is to increase CTL over a short period of time it is a risk to ramp up at a maximum amount and chance getting sick or burnt out.

In looking back in my log since January, there has only been 1 week where I ramped at 5 CTL/week. Most of the time I ramp at 1-3 CTL/week and sometimes if it is a rest week or I get sick, the ramp rate is negative.

If I want to have a chance to do well in a peak event and understand from previous experience how much CTL I need before a taper, I could map out my CTL ramp rate and TSS/week just like many folks use periodization (base, build, peak) and get to my goal before the event at my pace.

Now throw on top of this being able to increase your FTP over time as well and you have to superimpose the correct workouts.

For example, I raised my FTP last summer for cross season from 300w in June to 315w by September. That is pretty slow and if you look at my log my ramp rate was also really slow. But for me it was based on the amount of time I had to train and what my 41 year old body could do. I was using specific workouts designed to prepare me for cross and the goal was not really maximum CTL before cross season since I trained all season and peaked in December.

Personally, I would like to see my FTP at the same amount but I would like to increase my CTL to 80 by the end of the summer. These are silly statistical goals but fun to experiment.

Darylmple Loop

Always a tough ride for me, especially riding up from Johnson Ferry Rd.

Map My Ride Map Here

Spalding Alps

Making the best of not being able to drive out to car-free roads much anymore I have gone back to some old routes near my house. One of these I call "Spalding Alps" since Spalding Rd. in Dunwoody is pretty hilly. I like to start right off of Winters Chapel, go left, and ride Spalding all the way to Roberts Rd. Sometimes I keep going as Spalding eventually changes into Darymple Rd, but more often than not I just turn around and do the hills in the other direction and then make up a route back to the house.

Today I did that and was able to get in 28 miles in 1.5 hours. Other times I will exit Spalding and head to Roswell to the riverside area and then back again which is about 2.5 hours. If I am really in good shape for time, I will head up into Roswell and back around Oxbow. This would give me around 3 hours.

Not too shabby for the metro area.

I rode the Ellijay MTB race course today. By the time I got to Ellijay it was raining and although I don't normally ride on wet trails, gas is expensive and it is 88 miles from my house to Ellijay...

Wet, the trails are very treacherous and right out of the gate I took a major spill on one of the notorious downhill sections that has a hard left in the middle of it. After 2 or 3 tough climbs and hike-a-bikes, I was met with another slick downhill and crashed again, this time busting up my pinky pretty bad on a rock and giving me a nice thick bruise on my hip. There is a little break in the undulations through a nice grassy field and some sculpted turns but after that it back to one more extended hike-a-bike.

I was using a 32x18 but I may go to a 34x20. That would give me a 1:1.7 as opposed to a 1:1.77 ratio. I used the 34x20 for the Snake TT and liked it a lot. My legs were pretty fried after the climbing since I am no climber.

So, if the weather holds out I guess I'll be there but if it rains I may skip it altogether.

Heritage MTB Race Result

Some nasty pro-type guys came to play and had a lot of game. My first lap was marred by 4 crashes, 1 over the handlebars. Breaks were disabled, rubbing the tire so I had to stop and fix that. Water bottle gone of 1st lap so I had to take a hand up. The second lap was a total antithesis of the first. I felt in control and began passing folks again. I finished strong but clearly 4 minutes off the podium and 13 minute back from the winner. The winner was 1.5 mph faster than me over the tough slippery, rooted course. Eric Nicoletti who is in front of me in the standings, had a good day and finished 3rd. I was finally satisfied to see him beat me by 4 minutes today.

My new bike performed well but I did not see any real difference. The Rapidade drink mix from Dedicated Athlete was incredible. It was the first time I had ever used a product in a race where I felt a difference in performance from lap to lap.

My 4th place result was my worst this year so far but the field was tough and it was great to have stiff competition. I hope Eric and I can match up again in Ellijay. I think that is going to be a brutal race for a single-speed.

So my FTP based on the 60 minute NP values from my hard race Saturday (304w) is probably too high an estimation. Since I have no other test data, I have been advised to leave it at 295w until I can add another metric. Fine with me.

I am looking forward to Sunday's Heritage MTB race and I am considering abandoning the SS category and racing the 40+ expert category (If I can get it approved). It will depend on whether I have enough time to do 3 laps.

I'll also get to race my new bike which I am looking forward to!

One good thing that came out of the hard race Saturday is that my normalized power for 1 hour was 304w which is an indicator that my FTP is at least that high. It could be higher but probably not. I have had it at 295w so that is encouraging since I have not been doing any real training as of late.

I am going to do a formal test in 2 weeks so let's see what that reveals.

FTP can be determined many ways and the most likely ways have been nicknamed the "7 deadly sins".

GTC Championship Race Recap

For me the race sucked as usual.

I always miss the winning break because I have no idea what I am doing. The chase was hard and fruitless and capped off with 2 mechanicals.

Then to make matters worse, I saw some power data from the winning break and whatever ego I had left was humbled even more.

The race ended up sucking worse for Brendan who did everything right to win only to get squashed at 38 mph by a turning motorist in the last KM.

The big winners were Brendan, Andy, Theron, Michael and Tim.

Not that it matters, but I am going to take out my inability to close 50 yards to the break on the MTB race this weekend. New SS bike too.

School ends Friday. Charlotte turns 3 in 2 weeks!

Power data:

Race average--sucked

The TSS Addiction

Ever since reading the Training With Power book, lurking on the Google Wattage Forum, and using Cycling Peaks WKO+, I can see why so many power users become TSS addicts. TSS or training stress score is a way to quantify the effects of training as a fraction of your functional threshold power, terrain, time, and intensity of the workout. It is defined here.

In using WKO+ the past 3 years, you can create a graph called the Performance Manager that tracks chronic training load, acute training load, and training stress balance (freshness) over time. The meat and potatoes to causing changes in these values is training stress and the TSS value that you acrue in each workout.

The standard of 3 weeks training/1 week rest has been abandoned by many cyclists training with power in favor of using training stress alone. These riders look to build their preparation for events by looking at how much/what kind of TSS they should accumulate each week before their body stops performing optimally. For some power users, the addiction results in just seeing how far you can push the envelope with TSS in terms of daily, weekly and monthly amounts.

It allows you to think of workouts differently. Here is an example from my own riding. I have around 5-6 hours during the work week to ride. If I want to keep my fitness at a specific level I would have to do workouts that increase my CTL and lead to positive changes in FTP in tests. So I know that if I time trial at my FTP for an hour I should earn 100 tss points. Right now to make improvements, I have to be doing an average of 70 tss points per day for 7 days. So an easy day of 50 tss would mean that I would have to make up the other 20 points somewhere else during the week. I also know now howe many tss points I will earn on group rides, intervals, and other rides I commonly do (with some variation on intensity).

But, not all TSS is equal. I can ride for 1 hour at my FTP and get 100 points, or ride for 2 hours at 50% of that and get 100 points. However, the physiological effect is very different. In the forst workout I am stressing my threshold power capabilities while in the other I am primarily using the aerobic system. Depending on my goals, one may be better than the other.

So, two riders with CTL's of 70 tss/d could physiologically have a very differerent FTP depending on their workouts.

It is easy to become addicted in a loose sense to TSS. Watching how the CTL and TSB lines change with even 1 day off per week (given my schedule) can be enough to not take easy days or time off. It can become onsessive to make the CTL line ramp up and the TSB line decrease to negative. Eventually something has to give and one has to be careful to not overtrain or get sick because of it.

GTC Championships

This Saturday is the 4th annual GTC championships. "Historically speaking the inaugural event was 2005 as I (Dan) had missed the entire 2004 season. In 2006 Brent Owens took the win after the 2-man breakaway of Welp and Stone missed a turn. In 2007 Welp won from a breakaway of five riders including Stone, Behning, Simpson,and Coy." (corrected by Dan)

"I suspect Tim Stone really wants it this year but will work for his son Michael if they can get away. Expect Brendan, Andy, Tracy and Theron to be contenders also."

I think this year will be the toughest edition with a rising junior star, hungry club members, and new masters team racers. I think it will be over soon for most, possibly before New High Shoals. Who knows what alliances will form? All I know is that compared to my yearly racing, the GTC championship stands out as the hardest race of the year. Stats from last year...

64 miles in 3 hours
Max Power: 948w
Average Power: 210w--Normalized Power: 257w
Time spent sitting in: 30 minutes (15%)
Time in threshold: 20 minutes Time above threshold: 45 minutes
Variability of terrain: 1.22
Burned 4 matches at 30 seconds each between 300 and 5oo watts. Dropped at mile 55.

Spring Update

It has been a wonderful spring so far. Even though I got a case of the flu back in February and a ear infection in March, I have been able to get in between 8-9 hours a week of riding. I have also been able to do 5 races since January with very good results. My CTL is hovering around 70 which was my high last summer. All this with little structured training except for "sweet spot" intervals every week.

I have only raced on the mountain bike since January and here are the results:

Snake Gap TT: 1st, new course record for the 17 mile single-speed division
2 Ways in 1 Day TT: 1st
Flat Rock MTB Race: 1st
Yargo MTB Race: 2nd
Yargo Dirty Spokes 4 Man Relay: 4th

I have tried to commute once a week but it is not very easy to do. The commute is 40 miles round trip and there are a lot of lights. Last Friday I made it to school in 57 minutes (19.6 average) but the way home I was tired.

My newish single-speed MTB is almost finished. I am waiting on the fork and stem to come in the mail but Max over at REI has the Klein BB and White Industries cranks in perfect alignment. I am really excited to try it out.

Coming up is the GTC Championships next weekend and then the Heritage MTB race.

Dirty Spokes 12 Hour MTB Race

I rode as part of a 4 man relay team in the Ft. Yargo Dirty Spokes MTB Race yesterday. It was cloudy for most of the day with a little drizzle early, and then it gave way to some nice, cool conditions. There were a lot of folks racing this event and hats off to all of the solo 12 hour racers, especially Shane and Mark on the single-speeds. They really suffered through the 12 hours and not many people would want to do that.

Our team was a good mix and our main goal was to have fun and see how competitive we would be, but not go into the race with pre-determined expectations. We went with a line up order of Jim Behning, Theron Colucci, Stephen Jansa, and myself. We did not change it and all of us successfully did 3 laps each. Stephen did about 30 minutes in the dark and I did a full dark lap. We were able to keep good lap times with Jim and Stephen doing laps around 1 hour, Theron around 58 minutes, and myself around 55 minute (except for the dark lap which ended up being 1:05).

As time went on it was apparent that we would be a solid 4th place if we just kept doing good laps. Third became out of reach about 7 hours in and since it was an open field, the top team really turned the pedals and put almost an hour into us.

All in all the race was great fun and we all were pretty low key about our place in it all. My favorite thing of the day was watching a co-ed 2 person 6 hour team that had a toddler. One of them would do a lap and exchange both timing chip and baby at the same time so the other could do their lap. They had it down to an art.

I must say that watching Mark Stewart and Shane Schreihart suffer through the 12 hour solo singlespeed race was enough to make me never want to race 12 hours on a bike doing anything. It looked very painful. They have my respect but hopefully there is no lasting damage to them.

Results