3 Very good reads:

Personal Best: That Little Voice Inside Your Twinge: How to tell if that pain your having is something or not.

Finding Inspiration At 50, Jeannie Longo is showing no sign of slowing down as she won her 56th national champion’s jersey, successfully defending her French national time trial title in Saint-Brieuc on Thursday.

Actual Ironman Race Plan ~ Joe Friel shares an actual athletes Ironman race plan.  Excellent read.

What you don’t want to have happen in a time trial is to slow down gradually over the course of the event, “give up” and finish with a whimper. Yet this all too often happens. I’m afraid most athletes have too little patience and also believe that some how going our extra fast will lead to a better time than finishing fast. The problem is that when going out overly fast you create a lot of acid build up which causes you to slow at a greater rate than would have been the case had you been more conservative early on.
In this graphic you can see what typically happens in a long TT. While this is a CP30 test the results are what normally happen when racing a TT. Note that the power line (black) descends throughout the 30 minutes while heart rate (red) rises. (There’s a 17-second gap near the right end where the device failed leaving a data gap.)

Notice that I’ve divided the 30 minutes into four quarters with data on how each went. The average watts (“Wavg”) for each quarter clearly shows how power dropped while average heart rate (“HRavg”) rose, especially in the latter half. (The other data here is Variability Index (“VI”), cadence (“cad”), and decoupling (“dec”) which I won’t discuss now but have done in previous posts.)

I like to have the riders I coach divide the time trial course into four quarters just as I have done in the above graphic and have a strategy for each. Here is how I suggest they mentally manage each quarter of a longish time trial.

Q1. In the first they simply try to hold back. This will feel the easiest with RPE (Rating of Perceived Exertion) being the lowest of the race — and far lower than what their mind is telling them to do. This may only be a 3% reduction of power but it feels much greater. The tendency is to go out much too fast and pay the price later on. Heart rate will mean little here. RPE is everything, especially if you don’t have a power meter. If you start breathing hard here you went out much too fast.

Q2. In the second quarter, if you don’t have a power meter, heart rate and speed are watched closely. Realize that if it’s a windy day or a hilly course then speed means little. Power makes this so simple. Just ride at goal average power in quarter 2. If using a heart rate monitor and RPE stay in your goal average zone with an RPE which is only slightly harder than for the first quarter. Do not let heart rate rise above goal heart rate. Stay in tune with your technique and breathing while being careful not to get caught up in "racing" your minute man. Concentrate on your own race — not his or hers.

Q3. The third quarter is the toughest. If you will slow down, this is when it will happen. The purpose of the first half of the race is to prepare you for this section. If you controlled your effort and stayed in the moment earlier you will now be able to maintain average power, heart rate or speed here, altho it will now feel much harder. In other words, RPE is now rising rapidly even though your body is not working any harder than before. During this quarter you may well say to yourself, "I'm not doing very well. Going too slow. I'm going to get passed." That's normal. Expect it. Everyone will think that during this segment. Maintain focus and effort. Play "pedaling games." Count pedal strokes as "1-2-3-1-2-3, etc". On "1" apply more force and let up on "2-3". That means that each leg will get a 5-stroke "rest." Or try a 5-beat. Nearly 25 years ago in his book, Bicycle Racing, Eddie B. suggested pedaling with "only 1 leg" for a few strokes while the other "rests." Do whatever you need to mentally get through this section of the race. It is by far the toughest even if you paced properly earlier. If you didn’t then this part is incredibly depressing. You are likely to surrender to your minute man here.

Q4. In the fourth quarter you know there are only a few agonizing minutes left. The end is mentally in sight. It’s just like the horse smelling the barn – you feel capable of increasing the RPE. Now you can race others IF you held back in quarters 1 and 2. Try to gain on someone up the road. Concentrate on that target. With a couple of minutes to go begin to increase the effort gradually. Try to pass someone. Go hard, but if you can sprint you held back too much. You should finish feeling as if nothing was left on the course.

Mental preparation is critical to time trialing. Riders have told me of their "TT tricks," like imagining where they would be if they were on their interval course at home or "mentally" singing a song that has the right rhythm for their stroke. These may come in handy in quarter 3. When doing your time trial interval workouts (you’re doing these, aren’t you?) try doing four long intervals with each using the strategy you will employ for that quarter in the race. Don't wait until race day to practice this.

Another element of successful time trialing that must be practiced is riding the hills so as to optimize performance. On all hills, including just small rollers you hardly even notice, ride slightly harder on the up side and slightly easier on the down side. This will help you gain time while giving your legs a small break. This also needs to be rehearsed when doing TT intervals. The accompanying chart illustrates how this was done. Here you can see a single six-minute interval from a workout. The early portion of this interval was slightly downhill as you can tell because speed (“MPH”) was high. So power was allowed to drop slightly here. In the latter half of this interval speed was low because of a slight uphill so the rider increased the power. Again, this should be rehearsed when doing time trial workouts.

Michael Schott Memorial  Circuit Race Sunday April 5, 2009

Marblehead, MA
2.2 mile fast/rolling circuit race around Marblehead Neck
Promoted by CCB International
Held under  USA Cycling Permit
All USA Cycling rules apply

Any rider warming up/down on the course, once the races have started, can be disqualified

*Masters 35+, must be Cat: 1-4
*Women can race in any field, according to USCF rule 1K2 Entry fee includes USCF insurance surcharge. ANSI Approved Helmet required. No tank tops, aero bars, or mountain bikes
*Camera at the finish

Register @ www.BikeReg.com 

Online service fee applied based on Bikereg.com standard service fee rates.

Day-of-race registration: $30.00 ($25.00 for 4/5 field)

Please note that the race has filled in pre-registration the last 17 years

Rain or Shine!
No Refunds after 3/30/09
Questions or comments, contact:
Geoff Hamilton – 781-631-3111 (no calls after 8pm)
Race Day Check-in:  Located at Devereaux Beach
Sign-in begins at 7:00am, closes at 10:30am.

Direction
Take 128 North or South to 114 East (Exit 25A, Marblehead, and Salem).  At your second set of lights after coming off of 128, take a left (you'll see a gas station on your right)and then follow 114 East through Salem, past Salem State College, into Marblehead, approximately 6 miles.  Turn Right (at Fire Station) onto Ocean Ave, go through 1 set of lights,the registration area (Devereaux Beach) will 1/4 mile ahead on the right.

Many of you have seen Tyler Hamilton going commando through the slushy streets this winter.  As a North Shore native, he's since taken up roots in Boulder, CO.  However, we've come to learn that his recent stint in the area was due to his mother having stage 2 breast cancer.  Our hearts and prayers go out to the Hamilton family for a healthy recovery.

Great article by the Times: Link
Canadian Rider Has Made Unorthodox Climb to the Top By JULIET MACUR

Those who have heard the tale of Svein Tuft have wondered, could it possibly be true?

How he dropped out of school in the 10th grade, lured by the freedom of the outdoors. How he evolved into a barrel-chested woodsman with Paul Bunyan biceps. How he ventured, at 18, from his home in Canada into the wilderness on a $40 thrift-shop bike hooked to a homemade trailer.

They have learned of the way he traveled sparingly, towing only his camping gear, a sack of potatoes and his 80-pound dog, Bear. The way he drank from streams and ate beside an open fire. Or hopped trains across Canada, resting as the land flickered by.

Now 31, Tuft is out to prove that all the raw travel and personal drive can translate into something beyond his survival. Recruited by one of the world’s top cycling teams, he is about to begin a more disciplined journey. It starts next weekend with the Tour of California, where he will race with the Garmin-Slipstream squad, and is likely to continue this summer at the Tour de France.

“He’s a late, late bloomer who lived a lifestyle that has been completely incongruent with any professional cyclist out there,” Jonathan Vaughters, the team’s director, said. “In Europe, you are pressured to succeed by the time you are 18, and if you don’t do it by the time you are 21, then you’re done. But Svein? He’s somebody who has lived life according to how he wanted to live it.”

Tuft figured out he was a natural racer at 23. He was home from a cycling trip to Alaska when his father suggested he try racing. In his first event, a local road race, he was in the lead when he dropped out with a flat tire. Two races later, he won for the first time.

From there, he blossomed. But Tuft also felt trapped between a life in the outdoors and one in the structured world of professional competition.

Kevin and Mark Cunningham, owners of the Symmetrics Cycling team in Canada, found Tuft in 2004. He was mowing lawns. After racing in virtual anonymity for three professional teams, he had quit the sport because he said he did not want to be associated with its doping problems.

But the Cunninghams wanted him. They knew he had the potential to be one of the fastest cyclists in the world.

“At first, you have this idea that this guy’s a nut case,” Mark Cunningham said. “But he’s not. He’s super down to earth, kind and a straight shooter. I thought he was going to be this extreme sports, in-your-face guy. But he was the opposite.”

They coaxed Tuft onto their team with a promise that it would be clean and that he would be free to vanish into the mountains during the winter.

“We had to get used to saying, ‘Svein is missing,’ ” Kevin Cunningham said. “ ‘He’s AWOL again.’ ”

Last year, riding for Canada, Tuft surprised many by winning a silver medal at the world cycling championships in the time trial and also finishing seventh in that event at the Beijing Olympics. He won four gold medals at the Pan American Road and Track Championships.

Some say that was just a start.

A Long-Distance Pedigree

As a boy, Svein Tuft (pronounced Swayne) was known as Svein the Strong. He always knew he would not grow up to be a wimp.

His grandfather Arne Tuft, racing for Norway at the 1936 Winter Olympics, finished sixth in the grueling 50-kilometer cross-country skiing event.

His father, also named Arne, was drawn to Canada from Norway after reading Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild.” He started out in logging, then became a general contractor. Now, he camps in the Arizona desert for weeks without electricity or a phone.

Svein Tuft’s mother, Lesly Holness, is a fitness instructor. In Svein, she saw one determined boy. To her dismay, she said, he always enjoyed testing himself, with each challenge more extreme than the previous.

One Christmas, her son asked for an Army tent, which he pitched next to their house outside Langley, British Columbia. He spent the winter in it.

By 15, he had grown restless. His parents had separated, and he hated studying. He quit school.

“It wasn’t like I was into drugs or alcohol or anything,” Tuft said softly. “I wanted to explore, and I was searching for so many things. I just never felt right anywhere. At that age, you don’t know anything about yourself, and I was trying to find out who I was.”

For a few years, he was obsessed with mountain climbing. He rode a bike more than 50 miles from home into the mountains and stayed for weeks at a time, leaving his parents behind to worry. He said he and a friend once spent more than 24 hours hanging from a cliff face after their climbing rope snagged.

“He decided he was not going to do anything like the establishment,” Holness said. “It was very unsettling to all of us, but there was no stopping him.”

At 17, Tuft bought a used 10-speed. He welded together a trailer, using the frame of a heavy old BMX bike and the bottom of a plastic barrel.

And on one September day, after he had turned 18, he left with Bear, his German shepherd mix, and headed nearly 600 miles to the remote Bella Coola Valley in British Columbia. He said he rode 12 hours some days, pulling the trailer packed with about 200 pounds of gear and food — and his dog. When Tuft struggled to climb hills, Bear jumped out and sprinted along the roadside grass.

Tuft ate corn, beans or bannock, a flat bread. When there was a store around, he splurged on chocolate milk, which remains his favorite drink. He camped beneath spruce trees or open sky.

“A lot of people said, ‘Are you crazy, what are you doing?’ ” Tuft recalled. “But for me, it was all about being alive and learning how to get through a difficult situation. There were days that it was snowing and cold and you haven’t eaten enough that day to get the internal fire going. I really wanted to see how I’d react to that.”

But on that trip, he was ill equipped for the winter weather, which grew harsher as he climbed north. He wore only wool and brought no tent, just a bivouac sack and a blanket.

“When I was that age, I never thought I could die, but I thought, uh-oh, this is it,” he recalled. “I thought, how did you get yourself into this situation — what have you done?”

On a trip to Alaska in the spring, during which he covered more than 4,000 miles, he shared gravel roads with mining and oil trucks. People along the way asked about his journey and invited him to dinner, though he was obviously in need of a shower.

On one stretch of highway, his clothes were soaked, and he had a painful cough. In the distance, he spied an abandoned cabin. Inside, as if in a dream, he found kindling and a stove, jars of pasta and a bed. He slept there for four days.

Over time, bike touring became second nature. He worked odd jobs, like splitting wood, baling hay and painting fences. His hands grew rough.

“All of those wonderful adventurous stories of riding his bike to Alaska, the railroad-car jumping, yes, those are all true,” his mother said.

“But I want everybody to know that, no, Svein was not an orphan. He was raised by two loving parents. He had his own room, a trampoline, a motor scooter. But he was just looking for something else.”

A Racer Reborn

In 2001, within two years of his first bike race, Tuft was on the Canadian national team.

“I guess I really wanted to prove to people that I could do it,” he said. “You always don’t have to fit into one kind of mold.”

In 2003, he showed up for the Prime Alliance pro team’s training camp near Los Angeles. He had ridden there from Canada.

“He had this really long beard, and he smelled very bad,” said Vaughters, who was in his last season as a rider. “I remember thinking, O.K., this guy is completely different than the image of the typical European money-driven cyclist who buys Porsches in his spare time.”

But Tuft was not pleased with the lifestyle. During his career, he had seen performance-enhancing drugs ruin lives. He decided there was no future for him in the sport, so he quit.

But the Cunninghams soon came calling, convinced that this mountain man was worth the trouble. Eventually, Tuft the bike racer was reborn, though he still considered himself an outsider.

In 2006, after winning his third consecutive Canadian road time trial championship, he moved into a trailer on Kevin Cunningham’s property. It was the perfect combination of old life and new.

If the sport’s drug testers needed to find him, he would sometimes provide only vague directions, like “end of the logging road, up the trail head at the top of the ridge.”

Though upper-body weight is taboo for bike racers, he worked out so hard in the off-season that he would thicken to 190 pounds, from 170.

Kevin Cunningham warned him: “Do not do another push-up. You gain muscle so quickly, you will look as big as a grizzly.”

Teams offered him more money to leave Symmetrics, but he stayed out of loyalty.

Yet when his team folded last year under financial strain, Tuft spoke with Vaughters once again. They focused on the Garmin team’s antidoping stance and its relatively laid-back approach. They agreed that Tuft’s talents were well suited to certain parts of stage races like the Tour de France and to relatively flat races like Paris-Roubaix.

Kevin Cunningham reassured him: “Just be yourself. It will be more corporate, but you will be fine.”

At a training camp in December in Boulder, Colo., Tuft stopped to see a reflection of himself in a store window. He saw a cleanshaven face and cleanshaven head, a dress shirt tucked into dark pants and a gleaming BlackBerry in his hand.

He shuddered.

“I said to myself, ‘Whoa, who is that guy?’ ” he recalled. “No way is that me. No way.”

Most of his teammates were used to a transient life in hotel rooms, not on forest floors. They lived in Europe and liked designer clothing and French wine. Tuft knows he will soon move with his girlfriend to Girona, Spain, the team’s training base.

When this new life unnerves him, he said, he looks at a tattoo on his right forearm: We will never be here again. It was his mantra while on trips with Bear, who died seven years ago.

“It was by far the most content I’ve ever been,” he said. “My bike was a piece of junk. I had nowhere to go, no place to be. Didn’t have anyone telling me what to do. If I felt like lying on the side of the road, I did.”

At that moment, Tuft’s BlackBerry buzzed. It was someone from his new team.

He had to take the call.

Hammer Nutrition has been a well respected and well known name throughout the athletic world for some time now.  Below they offer 17 Simple Steps for Effective Weight Loss. 

Though the most wonderful time of the year is now over, its time to take stock or find out what's left of it...and determine if the '09 season may need a kick start with some of these simple steps:

1. Reduce current refined carbohydrate intake by 50%.
2. Increase raw vegetable and fruit intake by 25%.
3. Drink a minimum of ten, 8-ounce glasses of water per day [choose either steam distilled or
bottled water that is “chlorine and fluoride free”].
4. Cease eating after 7:00 PM.
5. Reduce or omit meats [excluding salt-water cold water fish] and dairy byproducts.
6. Exercise activity is conducted at or below 75% VO2 Max Heart Rate.
7. PERIODIC Short-term weight loss of 2-5 pounds weight loss in 20 consecutive days, followed by
seven days NO calorie restriction before repeating a 2nd 20-day protocol.
8. Recommend no more than 1 pound weight loss each week.
9. Do not go below 1,500 calories per day.
10. Refer to the Food Guide Asian or Mediterranean Pyramid and Dietary Guidelines.
11. Focus on limiting fat and processed food intake rather than calories.
12. Encourage 30 minutes minimum exercise per day.
13. Include a variety of nutritionally balanced foods.
14. Minimize hunger, no-starve periods.
15. Encourage setting realistic weight loss goals and making slow, moderate changes.
16. Precedes an established lifelong “Lifestyle” protocol, balancing caloric intake with expense.
17. Remove man-made fats [TFA-Trans Fatty Acids-also know as partially or completely
hydrogenated vegetable fats]; found in almost all processed baked goods.

Curious what the day to day goings on are with Lance Armstrong or other various friends/superstarts?  Be sure to check 'em out via Twitter.  Here is Lance's personal feed: https://twitter.com/lancearmstrong.  Makes for some interesting reading and humbling awareness as to what you could be doing.

Over this long weekend, I happened to thumb through the NY Times Obit section, as my father would say, to make sure my name wasn't listed.  In doing so, I came across a story that really hit home.  Barbara Warren, a 65 year old world-class triathlete had crashed in a weekend Triathlon while descending down a rather obscure hill.  In doing so, she found herself with a broken neck and paralyzed throughout her entire body. 

Lying in a hospital bed, conscious but unable to breath on her own, Barbara faced the biggest question of her life.  Should she go on with full knowledge that life as she knew it, the ability to be an athlete, was over?  Only able to blink her eyes, she communicated to her sister that she wanted to leave.

Think of the countless times you've gone down a hill just like the one Barbara fell on.  Think of the number of times you've averted that rock in the road, a car backing out of a driveway or any number of instances that could change a normal ride/run etc into a life changing event. 

There is a certain mundane ritual like experience to athletics and life for that matter, that can consume us over time.  What may have started as an unquenchable pursuit, often turns stale with the day to day rigors and monotony that surround.  Yet, at times we're reminded of the fragility that exists in all aspects of what we take for granted. 

So as you look for new ways to find your primordial spark, in whatever aspects you're lacking, consider the simplicity in merely 'being able' as your single greatest inspiration.

Not that we need to cover this topic, but its always worth a refresher.  VO2 max is the maximum volume of oxygen that your body can consume during intense exercise.  High oxygen consumption is one of the key characteristics of great endurance runners, cyclists, rowers and cross-country skiers etc. 

The best runners have a VO2 max of 75 to 85 ml/kg...though compared to a thoroughbred horse with a VO2 of 150ml/kg we still have room to evolve.  Lance Armstrong reportedly has a VO2 of around 83ml/kg, while Lemond's was 93!  And if you think that's impressive, get ready to break out your xcountry skiis.  28 Year old Norwegian xcountry skier, Espen Harald Bjerke, holds one of the highest recorded VO2 in all sports at 97ml/kg!  If you'd like to read more about how Bjerke has optimized his training, this is a great read...it might surprise you on the approach he takes to intensity training (Article HERE).

So, where does this leave you and me?  Without dumping down some gas money on a lab to test your own VO2 (which there are many around here and we will explore in an upcoming blog), what are your options?  Well, as luck would have it there is a rather inexpensive test called, The Astrand 6 Minute Cycle Test.  With a proper indoor trainer, HR monitor and Stop Watch - you can come fairly close to determining what your estimated VO2 is.

In order to do the calculations and test, we've provided a link to the site.  Check it out and if you've done a professional lab testing, consider droping a note on the degree of accuracy.  Here's the LINK.

Remember, VO2 MAX is called MAX because its a defined ceiling.  Genetics play an important role in yours and although you can optimize against it through training, you cannot actually change the optimal value.