Weekly Roundup - 25 April 2009

This is something I've been meaning to do on a weekly basis but seems the last time I did it was a month ago. As I've been learning more and more this year, I'm taking it easier and doing things as best I can. There's no point in working myself into a spin because I can't update the blog or post somethings. the most amazing thing is that when I'm on the bike I have a million idea's and when I sit down in front of the ivory keyboard the mind is blank, clean slate. not sure how to take notes when on a ride but the the day they come up with a machine that plug's directly into the brain I'll be set with the creative juices to fill pages and pages.

This was last weeks graph, my third building block so next week will be an easier week in terms of intensity. You can see on the training days where the focus is more on quality than on quantity. We have our intensity levels up where the distance covered during these two session's pale in comparison to the others. Generally the session is about two hours and last week we had pukers and killers to make sure we remembered where our stomach's were situated.

Interactive Giro

Spent the morning just vegging in the sun and enjoying the sun. Sunbathing with Bob Roll's second book on his crazy adventures. His writing style lack's that rounded edge but it makes the stories so much more interesting and reminded me of Soiled Chamois and his turkey ballz. This led me to one of my favorite pastimes, no not hopping on the bike, that would be THE favorite, but in the top ten list is browsing through YouTube looking for video's. My current searching is finding some interesting historical clips from past Giro's. I've found some real keepers and made a list.
Had a big lunch as usual on a Saturday but still wanted to get a ride in this afternoon. However between the big meal and the lazy Saturday I was in sloth mode. I lay down for a little nap but luckily Mirit woke me up and I slipped into some Lycra and did my last ride of this heavy week. Did some serious training this week and my legs were loaded. Bobke did a training camp with Lance Armstrong during his recovery from cancer and covers it in one of the chapters of Bobke II. The way he manages to paint the visual pictures of the training camp is amazing and these images joined me as I wound my way north on the quite roads. I was really just keeping myself at a base training pace and enjoying the afternoon air. Some four wheelers were messing around and beaming past me but I just shook my head and kept the pedals going. You'll have boneheads everywhere but they can't spoil the feeling of saddletime.

The virgin ride on my new stead

Today went out for my first ride on the new road bike. Had a bit of a dodgy start but luckily Erez was on hand with his technical skills. As we were going up the first climb I shifted to the lowest gear but the limiter was not set properly and the chain landed into the spokes and bent the derailleur hanger slightly. So straightened it and Erez clicked here and screwed there and I was left with a ridable bike as long as I didn't want the second gear. The chain would simply skip second and go straight to third or not move up if I was going in the opposite direction.

After the little climb it was a crazy bit of downhill that I just sat on the brakes. I had done about three kilometers before the descent so I was far from comfortable on a road bike let alone a brand new one. I went down slower than I climbed it on the way up. Road rash kept blipping through my mind so I kept on the side of caution. Once down we went along on some rolling roads and I really enjoyed the ride although our pace was not as high as I thought. My favourite part was the climb back up. I followed Oren to the first few corners and then just stood up and started pumping. I have to say that the feeling of just standing up like that gave me the feeling that I had been looking out for watching the cycling races that come on teli.

You see the riders sitting and then all of the sudden they explode and shoot up. Well that's what I felt like. I was holding back most of the day, firstly because I was getting used to the bike and second because we were not pushing it. After yesterday's session of pain though I was still feeling tender, I discovered that the key to a fast recovery is stretching. Whenever I don't stretch my legs always complain. So managed about three and a half hours in the saddle so this is great. My new way of measuring performance is to watch my hours on the bike instead of kilometers. These junk miles are just not the way to go for someone with a nine to five job. The photo's as you may have figured out are of the shed and not the ride. I'm slowly turning the shed into my bike area where I have already spent many hours since moving to the new house. I need to put paneling on the right wall and then build something to hang the tools on and maybe put some drawers under the table. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Week of Pain

This is the last week in our build phase so the pain has been ramped up to the maximum. I was listening today to the Fredcast with David bringing in Graeme Street about quality training over quantity. I'm in this mode of looking at the kilo's I do a week instead of the hours, I guess we're all a little to blame for this. I must say though that after the podcast I can happily say that my coach err's on the side of quality and pain over junk miles.
Today was no different as we entered a world of pain and blood letting from the ears. We warmed up the legs with some spinning excercises and then warmed them up even further with some tempo riding. This set us up for an interval session that build's on the pukers. We had to do six and a half minute intervals holding it at what we call zone 5. This is directly translated as blood hard work as each time the pace was slowing we had to stand a push on a bit to keep the heart rate up. This was a killer session and after three of these I just got off my bike and lay on my back in the dirt trying to get oxygen back to the limbs. I loved it. Nothing like an all out session of solid quality to get those edorphins flowing.
This evening I prepared the Binachi for her maiden voyage tomorrow and as per normal I've decided to jump in the deep end. Oren and I will spend four hours in the saddle and get some solid base training in. Looking forward to spending time on the road. The last time I went out I really could feel the legs coming on as the the kilometers melt under the slicks. I may just get the century under my belt, I've almost forgotten about it so will need to get it in this weekend.

Let the asphalt commence

I finally bought my first road bike. I've been looking and testing for a month or so and finally got this old Bianchi for a steel. Not the prettiest bike out there but its hopefully going to travel with me for many happy miles. This is the before setup photo and can't understand how the guy rode with the seat pointed that far down. Struggled a bit with the handle bar and will need to get a broader one. Other than it being a touch heavy, coming in at a touch over ten kilograms, the bike is a work horse.

Thats my bank balance now completely blown after this and the Epic yearly BIG check. The pockets don't even have loose change so I will be scrapping through with what I have and resorting to begging. I have been looking at building an ecommerce site related to biking and the talks with the new shop seem to be going well. I will hopefully get some graphics going although this is all mostly new to me. Anyone wanting to see some serious bike work and something I hope we will be seeing a regular issue of, XXC.

Fifty Fifty

Today went out for a ride I like to call the fifty fifty. Half the time spent in Zone 2 and the other half doing Tempo. this is really great because not only do you work on the base a bit but trying to keep up a tempo ride for an hour always makes for interesting riding. For the first time this year I went up to the top of Nahal Kziv, I didn't actually go along the valley floor but rather used the climb to keep the heart rate up while spinning away like crazy.

I don't have a cadence monitor on the bike so I use the highly scientific method of counting the revolutions in six seconds and then multiply by ten. This generally gives me an idea of where I'm at. Today i tried to keep the RPM's between 90 and 110. I read an articel the other day I think it was on Velonews about the effects of cadence. I'm not a power rider with a slow cadence even though I'm a bit heavier. I prefer an easier gear and then just spin along. I'm trying to find the sweet spot and today seemed to pay off. I was not going slowly up the hill and stayed in tempo most of the way. I also saw that my heart rate recevoery was much quicker, on every little flatish section I had to up the pace or switch to a higher gear to be able to keep the heart rate up there in the zone.

My timing was perfect and managed to fit the two hours in just before sunset. This made for great conditions with that warm glow coming from the setting sun. The weather is also changing and I'm feeling the effects of the changing season's with some heat waves and the stuffy nose. I'm almost convinced that I have European blood in me now as the onset of the Israeli Summer does me no good. I prefer the cooler conditions even though back home in South Africa the temp's climbed pretty high, I even stayed in one of the warmest places in SA. So as we start to bake over here I have good memories of the beautiful winter and spring.

On a final note I've been looking for an entry level road bike. I was pretty close the other day to getting something and even had myself fitted to the bike, a bit prematurely at the end of the day. That fell through and all I was left with was a piece of paper with some measurements on them. Luckily the guy that did the bike fit said he'd be willing to help me out with the new bike. So I've lined up a Bianchi no-name oldish racing bike. I have to admit that the colour scheme is a bit '80's but for the price its recession proof.

Ardennes Week

Hectic hectic week and its only Monday. Yesterday I needed to be at work at five thirty, with an hour and a bit commute I'll leave the calculation of what time I had to be up in order to get there. So no ride in but I managed to get away from work for earlier because I had come in at the crack of dawn. So there were advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage was that I managed to watch the first of the Classics this week, the Amstel Gold. This was a two for the price of one day as Eurosport has been broadcasting the Tour of Tumbles(Turkey) the whole week. What a crazy race with some serious questions asked about Bos in the end. Just watch the video of the closing kilometers and tell me what you think about the pull down?

Today I went up to Misgav for training and after a week out due to technical issues I was unprepared for the torture I went through today. We started with a decent warm up that would be seriously needed for what I ended up calling "Pukers". I should just stop here and let your imagination wander but the pain of those short eight second intervals are just too good not to share. We need to be in a heavier gear and had a short but technical hill that we had to sprint up. these were brutal as your body does not realise what the hell is going on and you're already finished gagging for breath. How I love this sport. After this we did an hour at tempo and boy was I hanging. to scared to open my mouth for fear of catching my tongue in the spokes I sucked it in and just sucked Omri and Oren's wheel. It took one of the three laps to recover but going at tempo you never really recover hundred percent. Great practice at the end of the day, reminds me of a thread i was reading:

Dutchman Theo de Rooy is sitting in the Panasonic team car after abandoning the 1985 Paris-Roubaix. He's covered in mud after spending a major portion of the race on the front, escaping in the Arenberg Forest. He's interviewed by American reporter John Tesh of CBS Sports...

de Rooy: “It’s a pile of sh!t, this race, it’s a whole pile of sh!t … you’re working like an animal, you don’t have the time to p!ss and you wet your pants … you’re riding in mud like this and you’re slipping and … it’s a pile of sh!t, you must clean yourself otherwise you will go mad …”

Tesh: "Willl you ever ride it again?"

de Rooy, not hesitating for a second: "Sure, it's the most beautiful race in the world!"
Well I wasn't racing but i felt the pain today. The good thing to come out of it was that I saw that I need to hang in there when I hit a bit of a tough patch. Normally I completely go off the boil to recover but I saw today that suffering does not kill you, well if it does at least its slowly.

Quite day with another doper

My day was pretty quiet today and went for an easy ride up to the North. After spending the week off the bike because my bike was in the shop I decided to take it easy. I took my bike into the LBS for my pre-season/after winter pamper. Similar to what women do by going to the beauty salon I take the other lady of my life to her own special pampering parlor. Generally I have the cables and chain replaced as well as a general checkup where I replace anything that may be worn. This time around the headset, rear tire, BB and middle chain-ring all needed to be replaced, so this was a rather expensive trip to the shop and it took the whole week because of the holidays that were sprinkled between. At least now everything is working as required on the bike and I can know that something is not going to snap or break because I did not replace something before the time, much better to do it before the time and prevent problems.

Onto today's ride. I did an easy hour and a half ride up to Rosh HaNikra, the normal easy ride loop that takes me along the coast and with the weather lately the normal calm Mediterranean was kicking up white horses, I even spotted some surfers trying to catch the four foot waves blowing in. I was listening to the iPod and a new Podcast, the Two John's. Interesting stuff and its bike related so I'll give it a go. They have a wealth of knowledge but each show is about two hours long so its not a one sitting type of podcast I'm used to. An uneventful ride although it is still hell of a beautiful with all the flowers opening up on this harsh land.

Finally I read that we are once again befallen by another doping problem. Tyler Hamilton, of the badboys of cycling Rock Racing Team, was a little too bad. What i don't understand is that he knowingly took the substance, as if the riders that dope don't normally knowingly take the products. He claims to be suffering from depression so you sort of feel sorry for the guy but once you read that he once accused of paying some serious dollars to Dr. Fuentes you have to ask the question, why not go to a specialist and find some treatment that is not going to throw the entire peleton back into the spotlight. He will go on to retire and cycling will take another kick while its down. As if the news of Lance last week was not disconcerting enough now we have the real deal again. Lets hope that this will just go away quickly, thankfully he is not claiming his innocence and wondering who slipped something into his drink at the local pub.

Passover break

We've had the passover holiday over here in Israel so this is basically like the Christmas break in most of the western world. Had about ten days off work and have just been enjoying the time off. Wish I could say I was doing a ton of riding but that has not been the case. I did compete in a race about two weeks ago and managed to take the gold in that one. I hope to broaden out a bit but just wanted to wish everyone a happy belated Easter and Passover. Here are some pictures from a hike Mirit and I went on. If I couldn't ride at least I wanted to enjoy the outdoors!!

The area is just east of the Sea of Galilee in the valley of Daliah. An amazing place and I was already planning some return adventures to explore the mountains where you probably have the least populated area's where its not dessert. As you can see its still pretty green and the flowers are in full force. We had some rain but in about three to four weeks the whole area will be brown as this land of extremes plunges in the hot summer.

So close

Another Volvo Challenge under my belt and this time I had a strong partner. I quickly realized that a podium finish was out of the question as there were some seriously strong riders and our slower start wouldn't push us to far up. You also don't know during the race where you are at because all the categories are mixed and there are three different length's so trying to keep track while keeping focused was out of the question.
Had a fantastic start and didn't get stuck in the masses that normally eats not only time but also energy. The legs were cold as you can't get a good place on the line and warm up. They started us off on a hill that didn't help the cold legs but after working them loose we were on our way. Our slower start was fine because it was not too slow that we fell behind but rather a leg saving pace. Had a close encounter with a ditch that "burped" my front tire but luckily the tubeless setup negated a definite snakebite and just soaked it up.
By the second lap the legs were starting to feel the pain but I was munching on Hammer Gel all the way. Started with one at 20 minutes and was planning to take one every forty minutes afterwards. I realised that the pace was high so was taking in one every half hour. This kept off the cramps but created a whole different stomach problem. Luckily they had some banana's at the water point and I got some real food down.
We were cruising at the end and really burying ourselves to make up as much time as possible. This seemed to work as we were not passed by anyone and rapidly made up some places. The laps wall to the finish line we spotted so other competitors who we thought were in the same category as us. I urged Tamir on as we cranked our way up the sharp incline. I was on the wheel of the guy in front and had just past the other rider who had slipped off his bike. I was hoping Tamir was on my wheel but unfortunately as I got to the top I realized that Tamir and the other guy were coming up together. We arrived just behind them and finished in 11th overall and four place in our category. Not a bad result and my best so far. Tamir was brillinat and I'm super happy to have found a parnter that in at a similar pace as me.