Project California Update

Cervelo's released a second video documenting the testing of their new R5ca (code-named Project California). Pretty cool walk-through of the composite fabrication process and Brett Lancaster's demo of the bike.

Race Report 1: Rev3 Quassy

Just wrapped up my first race of the season, the Revolution3 Quassy. In general, I'd say I'm a little disappointed with my result. But, I learned a lot from the race and it was definitely good preparation for Lake Placid.

Saturday:
I headed up to Middlebury, CT with my girlfriend Posie the afternoon before. Complications with the rental car and my bike saw us get underway a little late which was unfortunate. Rolled into Middlebury around 6pm, dropped Posie off at the hotel and headed over to the race site. I only had 40 minutes to register for the race, get my race wheels on do a short spin and check-in my bike before the 7pm cut-off. I had wanted to do a short pre-swim, bike and jog but bad planning on my part screwed that up.

I had eaten a huge breakfast and lunch so I just snacked all afternoon and evening and went to bed well-hydrated and slightly hungry.

Sunday Pre-race:
Woke up at 4am, threw done a bottle of Ultragen, a bagel covered in jam and two bottles with salt pills. Had a quick shower and got dressed. I laid out all my gear the night before so I was ready to roll at 4:45. Posie and I drove over to another hotel to pick up one of my training buddies and then we headed to the race site.

I checked on my bike, met a few guys in my division and prepped my transition gear. Did a short run-through of swim-exit to the bike, bike exit and bike-off to the run. Then I just tried to relax with Posie away from the other racers. Put down a lot of fluids--it was already getting really humid--and had 2 GUs.

Swim:
Men's 25-29 left in the first wave at 7:03. I seeded myself on the inside in the second row and this really burnt me. I tried to power through the first 600m as my coach had recommended but just couldn't get around the mass. There was a lot of head clubbing and people swimming all over each other. I couldn't get any rhythm and it was probably the worst open-water swim I've ever had.

After about 10 minutes of swimming I finally got on someone's feet and cruised the rest of the swim. Unfortunately, this guy wasn't that fast and the lead group had broken away. I probably made the wrong decision to stick behind him rather than try to break away.

Came out of the water in 33 minutes which was really disappointed. I've really worked on swimming this year and was hoping for something more like 29 or 30 minutes. You can see me checking my watch... and not being particularly happy.


Bike:
I made a smooth and quick transition to the bike which I was happy with. Once on the bike, I cruised steadily for the first 20 minutes through some steady rolling hills. As always, the disc and deep front gave me a little boost.

I didn't bike as well as I had hoped, but felt pretty happy given a number of mishaps. I kept my power around 220-230W. The first half of the bike was manageable because the descents were straight and long and the climbs were steady and long. The second half of the bike was tougher because of all of the rollers. I either spiked too high or lost momentum. I think I need a better strategy for handling rollers.

Anyway, from a power perspective I was reasonably consistent given the course. I had a number of zeros I didn't want, but the roads were slick and I didn't want to go down--there were a number of crashes. Was disappointed that my power wasn't higher, but my legs felt reasonably heavy from the past few weeks. I need to work on hitting downhills even harder.

And, the problems I hit:

1. At mile 15 on a 35mph downhill, I hit a massive pothole and my nutrition bottle bounced out of my back cage. I only had 2 Gus with me for the bike because I was planning 200Cal Gu, 200Cal sport-drink and 500Cal CarboPro. In retrospect, maybe I should have turned around for the bottle but I was going fast and downhill so I kept going. I expected to be able to throw together enough calories from gels at aid stations. Unfortuantely, none of the aid stations had gels so I had to guzzle as much sport-drink (Cerasport.... disgusting). This killed me.... tasted awful and bloated me heavily. Also, calories weren't marked on the bottle so I just had to estimate each bottle at 100Cal.
2. I must have hit some glass or something because I had a slow fat start to leak and didn't notice it until near the end. It killed me on speed in the last 5 miles or so. I didn't stop to fix it--figured I was better to keep rolling especially since the disc was a rental with insurance... Hopefully the right move.
   

Run:
All I can say is that it was a very, very tough run course and it was very, very humid. I'm disappointed that I didn't push myself harder on the run, but I was drained from being low on calories on the bike and just cruised the run course to the best of my ability. I had lots of kick in the last mile and obviously left stuff out on the course. I'm mad with myself for not pushing harder, but am glad that I was at least able to keep everything in control on the run. I reeled in a bunch of guys--20 or 25--and think I looked pretty good throughout.

Post-race:
Hit the chute with a lot left in me. Sat down, kicked back a bunch of waters and put some ice in my hat. I hadn't realized how humid it was until this point... my heart rate took a long time to come down and I was absolutely drenched.

Posie patiently waited as I ate a little and got a post-race massage. The therapist was hilarious and really fixed up my legs and back nicely. Two young girls--5 years old at most--were sitting near me and just stared as I got worked on. Just as I was starting to doze off a bit, the therapist asked me how old "my daughters" were. That brought me back pretty quickly.

Take-aways:

1. Open-water swimming.... I need to really work on this. A lot.
2. Bike. Pretty happy with this bike given the circumstances. Big thing is that I think I should put my nutrition bottle on the downtube.... this bottle won't bounce out. Then if I ever do lose bottles out of the back they'll be replaceable sport drinks.
3. I held things in control here and reeled guys in. I obviously will need to empty the tank completely at Placid but this wasn't a bad run. Did a much better job of handling salt/hydration than in Arizona... even given the humidity.
   

First race of the year

I've been training my ass off for the past 5 months and it's finally time to get down to business. My first race of the year will be the Revolution3 Half Ironman tomorrow. Since I'm peaking for Lake Placid and have a lot of time to train over the next four weeks--I start a new job at the end of June--so I'm not really tapering. Will just have to give it my best and know that it's going to be a tough day. That said, I'm hoping to place well my first time racing Men's Under-30.

Catch you on the flipside.

Back in the swing of things

My coach Alex McDonald had a rough season last year with a pretty bad injury that kept him out of competition for most of the year. About a month ago, he came back to racing with Oceanside California 70.3 and had a pretty solid result for his first time in a year with a number on him.

Yesterday, he raced the Ochsner Ironman 70.3 New Orleans and had a phenomenal 11th place finish in a very competitive pro male field. He's back.

Check out his race report.

Pretty amazing kick

Great little video of 2004 Olympic triathlon silver medalist Devan Docherty (NZ) kicking at the end of an ITU race to take the win. Short-course racing is such a different beast.

Tucson Training Camp: Mount Lemmon

On the second full day of the training camp we decided to ride up Mount Lemmon, part of the Santa Catalina Mountain Range. Before we headed out, our "leader" Ryan explained that it would be a very steady climb with a pretty reasonable grade. We should expect a pretty consistent 8-9% grade for about 25 miles and that we'd end up climbing about 6800 ft.

The peak of Mt. Lemmon as viewed from Mt. Kimball

My thoughts at the time: "Well, that'll be a good, challenging and steady climb but at least it's not too high... we should be fine in terms of altitude."

We drove out to the base of the mountain in the Catalina Foothills around 1pm and got our bikes all prepped in the parking lot of a strip mall. Given the grade, we expected the ride to take about 3.5 hours and figured that 4 bottles of fluids should be enough to keep us going.

The first few miles out to the base of the mountain were a slight incline but nothing tough. Then, as we reached the beginning of the climb and I looked up, I realized that it was going to be a long day. Three hours of steady climbing with no free-wheeling was.... well, a long climb.


The climb consisted of a single long winding road that carried us through a valley and up along the mountain to the peak. Our group of four broke up pretty quickly because we all wanted to hold tight to our own power zones. Having ridden somewhat hard the day before and wanting to save the legs for the next two rides, I locked myself in at about 230W (80% of threshold) and just started pedaling away.

At the base of the climb, it was about 80F and at only 10mph I was pouring sweat pretty quickly. As I worked my way through the early miles, I saw between 30 and 40 cyclists descending the climb and gauged them at about 40mph... Grinding away at the climb, it was a little disheartening to know that they had already been to the top and were done with their days.

As I hit the 4000ft elevation marker about 25 minutes into the ride, I got confused. How had I already climbed 4000 of the 6800ft in only half-an-hour. And that's when I realized two things:
1) I had been incredibly stupid and we had actually started the climb at 2300ft, not sea-level (obvious....)
2) The climb would take us north of 8500ft and that meant that altitude was going to be an issue.

For the next hour or so, I just chipped away at the climb, passing a few riders along the way. As I hit interesting vistas, I took a few quick shots on the iPhone. The neat thing was to feel the temperature gradually drop as you climbed and the dusty terrain turn somewhat lush.

Around 6000ft, I caught up with a guy who lived up in Washington State and was on a training trip of his own. We held together for the rest of the climb and he told me about a number of the other great rides he had done in the area.

As we passed through 6700ft, we started seeing a number of fairly large snowbanks. And then, at 7000ft, the altitude finally hit me. I had expected the effect of altitude on my power output to be a steady drain, but it was really quite dramatic. I went from holding a steady 220W to about 185W in only the course of about 20 minutes. My VI stayed pretty steady around 1.01, but I just couldn't get anymore power out of my legs. My vision started to narrow just a bit. It was hard to describe except to say that I just felt weak. My legs weren't screaming, I just couldn't get any power out of them.

Power early into the climb.

Power near the peak. Notice that it's steady but much lower.

The road kept on winding but around 7900ft it seemed like we had approached the summit. We took a final turn and there we were at 8300ft! Fantastic. I pulled over to take a quick leak and then started pedaling again along a now level road. Unfortunately, this level road quickly turned into a fast 400ft descent. The problem was, we were still pedaling out along the road and I knew that we had to get back up to around 8500ft, so every foot we gave up, we'd have to climb again...

After the descent, we climbed some more..... And then we entered into Summer Haven. The ski resort was another few hundred feet up, but I was satisfied turning around at this point.

Me, at the peak. Notice the snow in the background...

The whole climb had taken about 3 hours... My buddies were a few minutes ahead of me and as I turned around to start the descent I saw them whipping past. Wiped from the ride and low on fluids, I decided to keep it safe and not attack the curves aggressively. As you can see from this vista picture at 7000ft, it's windy and it's steep.

Words that describe the descent: fast, curved, cold! (Covered in sweat from the climb and with the peak in the high 40s, I was shivering for the first 2000ft of the return trip.)

I hit the bottom about 40 minutes later (the longest continuous descent I've ever done in my life) and cruised back to the car. I was pretty beat and low on calories and food so I jumped in the car, kicked back a huge recovery drink and nodded off.

Definitely my toughest climb to date but an absolutely awesome ride. Challenging, steady and great views. If you're interested, here's someone else's video of various parts of the climb and descent.