Hello Toes

A long time ago, I used to be able to touch my toes. A decade of no exercise and a sedentary job took care of that.

One of the things that I wanted to work on this year was comfort, and flexibility and core strength are the key to on-bike comfort. For the past several months I have been diligently doing stretching, isometric exercises, and yoga. The areas that I am specifically targeting are my lower back, hamstrings, calf & ankle flexibility, and torso flexibility.

It took about five months, but I recently was able to touch my toes again. I have also noticed more comfort on the bike, especially when twisting around to look at traffic behind me.

I'll continue with these exercise even though my riding is ramping up for the Lewis & Clark Ultra, I don't see it as something to be done instead of riding but in addition to.

There are a lot of online resources for yoga and stretching ideas, but one book & DVD that I found very useful is Yoga For Bicyclists. I mostly use the first workout, which is geared more towards general flexibility. The second set of exercise is more strenuous than I can handle.

The DVD is helpful, especially at the beginning, because you can just follow along with it; my daughter really enjoys doing the yoga with me too, so that's an additional benefit. The book is helpful if you want to really customize your program, you can just browse through and pick the poses that you think will provide the maximum benefit.

The important thing is to evaluate areas that need to be worked on and develop a regimen that will help you to improve. Also bear in mind that you won't see overnight progress, depending on your age and other fitness factors you may need to continue your program for quite some time before seeing any improvement.

Training Plan Mk II

I'm currently reading two eArticles from RoadBikeRider.com: Beyond the Century by John Hughes and Swift Endurance by Fred Matheny.

First off, let me state that either of these philosophies will be of benefit. I will discuss some of the differences and will mention certain aspects that will work better for me but I don't intend to say which one or the other is better.

The training plan suggested by Matheny seems to make sense to me. Typically it seems logical to me that training rides should build up to be close to the actual competition distance (ideally, you would peak with a ride or a few rides that would actually exceed the race distance). However, it gets real difficult to find the time for these rides when you start getting over a century and if you're doing the traditional '10% weekly increase' training plan, you have a significant time period over which you're supposed to be doing these really long rides.

The one problem I have with both of these, indeed with most training plans, is the idea of a recovery ride. Why spend an hour on the bike (which winds up being at least an hour and a half by the time you get the preparation and post-ride shower taken care of) if your only goal is to NOT exert yourself?

Another problem I have is that the LaC Ultra occurs kind of early in the season (May 28th - 29th this year) so I really need to train according to a training plan; I can not rely on just riding around and coincidentally winding up with good fitness at the end of the summer like I did last year. I simply don't have the time to do a 3-4 month base build and 1-2 months of build phase. I'm considering two peaks this year, the LaC Ultra and RAO.

Currently, I have a training plan based on the traditional 10% weekly increase (specifially from www.ultracycling.com). I will do a volume peak shortly before the race, and then the taper. My intensity will come from short weekly rides, one consisting of flat speed, the other being hill work. Both of these rides are less than 50 miles. There will be two weekly volume rides: one ride that is about 30% of the week's long ride but is at a greater than race pace, and the long ride which is at race pace and will increase by 10% every week.

The problem with this is that in April, my long rides get into the double-century range. That's a lot of bike time, even for an unemployed slacker such as myself. One alternate that I know someone has used in the past is to just do a century both days of the weekend. This gives good overall mileage and also stresses the body for doing a century without sufficient recovery. That will be something to consider for RAO, but I think I'll be better-served for LaC by having one longer ride instead. The longer ride will also ive me a chance to get my nutrition plan ironed out. If I'm riding along I intend to do these rides non-stop as much as possible. that will also allow me to calculate my typical dilly-dallying time requirements.

 

Goals for 2011

Definite:

- maintain membership in century-a-month club

- Lewis & Clark Ultra (May 28-29)

- STP one day (July 9)

- RAO team member (July 22-24)

- Ride around Mt. Hood (TBD, August?)

- Oregon Stampede (TBD, September 10?)

My goals right now are to definitely do the LaC Ultra, solo 24 hour. I will also do the STP in one day, but that will be more of a fun ride. Depending on my results in the LaC Ultra, I will enter the RAO as part of a 2-man team. I am also considering participating in the Monday night races at PIR

My LaC goal: 22 hours riding time at 16 MPH avg = 352 miles total. If I do one long lap and about 22 short laps to reach that distance, I will have climbed approx. 14,800 feet (approx 42 feet per mile). Realistically, I highly doubt that I'll be able to do this. In fact, I'd be freaking surprised if I break 300. But what good is setting a goal that you know you can do?

The ride around Mt. Hood will be on a route that I drew up which takes Lolo pass road over the North side, down past Lost Lake and into the Parkdale area. There will be some gravel involved, as well as a side-trip up to Timberline Lodge. The idea is to just have a fun and challenging ride, as well as circumnavigating Mt. Hood while staying completely off I84. If I wind up doing RAO, I might do this route as a training ride between STP and RAO.

I laid out my training plan today, first time I ever did this. Don't know what I'm doing, the mileage goals look too ambitious. The plan starts this week (Jan 31). I doubt that I'll be able to stick to it if I get a job, but if I get a job I'll be able to use my commute for interval training; a week's cumulative commutes might be the equivalent of entire day's training. I'd have to find a day to do hill work somehow, probably work that in as part of a long commute home. That leaves the weekend for a tempo training day and a pace training day. I just realized that I didn't put any rest weeks in, that needs to be fixed.