Green lumps, cough cough gargle.

Spit, sneeze, cough, splutter.

Moan, whinge, sook!

Must get better soon ... Immune system, do thy job, post haste!

I'd like to thank Dino, Ann and Emily Apolito, they brought back some goodies that they gave to me from their trip overseas - including an aboc Sprint Squad t-shirt!.

Thankyou.

I've just put together the 13th spin session program for this winter, the A stream riders get their first full Tabata interval session.  The rest of the A stream for that evening is easier than it would be normally, but the Tabatas are sufficiently brutal that I don't think any will complain.  We'll fine-tune these as we progress and any feedback is much appreciated.

I've still got lingering and unpleasant flu-cold symptoms, so may not be able to train much for the remainder of this week - generally coughing up lumps isn't considered compatible with training.  Still ... these things are temporary and I'll be better soon.  I'm consistently repping out 180kg squats now, and did a set of 160kg deadlifts on Wednesday in the 'Haus, so that's not too bad, and on Tues at Spin I got a 1440 watt effort, which considering I'd just squatted sets of 180kg and was (and am!) crook, I'm happy with.  Last winter that would have been a PB, so being able to grind that out when tired and unwell is a good sign for this coming summer.

The 'Haus has been busy this week too, I've had the Sprint Squad, some of the DUCCs and a few friends over as well.  Teaching them Rip's squat.  I think they'll be moaning today.  DOMS is an old friend we know well!

Last night's Spin session had another big turnout, 23 brave souls attended and we missed a few regulars who couldn't make it.  The sprinters had a strength and power set to do, and the enduros had the usual mixed bag of intervals.  The A stream had their first crack at Tabata intervals.  They only had to do one half-Tabata (2 minutes) but that did enough to result in a few suggesting that they needed a rest afterwards - and they do! 

They'll be doing 3/4 Tabatas next week and the week after, full 4 minute Tabatas, but as we incorporate more of that stratospheric intensity stuff we'll have to reduce the volume, so the A stream will be finishing early when we do that stuff, it's simply too hard to recover from and get any sort of quality out of the remaining time.

As usual Nathan did a great job taking the warmup while I did the sprint stream, banging elbows with Dino, and then we switched over so he got some enduro work in while I took over the megaphone for the rest of the evening.  We finished with the traditional spag boll and Nath's wife had made us a bunch of very yummy chocolate brownies which were rapidly vaporized by the hungry riders. 

Tonight some of the Sprint Squad are heading over to the powerHaus for more strength work and this morning we had the DUCCs at the Blackburn velodrome doing race skills. It's all go at aboc HQ this week!

There won't be many of these around.  Rich Sawris from wheelbuilder.com has designed and made an updated adapter for the new current generation PowerTap hubs to work with track bikes.  He made one up for the early wired PowerTaps (Liz Randall has one) but the newer designed hubs needed a radically different setup.  We've got one of the new ones on order.  These are not currently available from the Australian PowerTap distributor (Trek Australia) which is unfortunate so we're having to get it from Rich.

It will be laced to an Edge Composites 68 clincher rim.  This is so we can quickly and easily swap the wheel from use at DISC, where we'll have a Veloflex Record on it, and at Blackburn or any other outdoor track where we'll run a more robust and generic road tyre.  The Edge 68 is a really stiff and aero rim, not the lightest around, but not a clunker, so it'll be usable for racing as well as training.  Not a cheap bit of kit, it's going to end up costing around $2,700 I think, all up, but a very useful piece of training equipment.  It's around half the cost of an SRM track setup and a lot faster to switch between bikes.   It will be available for hire when we have it.

We're running 4 Tour de France watching nights at Blackburn this Tour, as I was lucky enough to stumble onto a projector that could be convinced to work without too much expense and Lucie has a screen and my lappy gets SBS2.  Last night was our first.  Lucie's struck down with a bug, so it was just me rolling up with a carload of popcorn, fruit, nuts, laptop & projector etc.  Fortunately, Stew Lucy was there and gave me a hand to set everything up.  Thanks Stew!

We were a bit nervous, Blackburn has a history of not running these sorts of things with great attendance and despite my asking a few times, no publicity had gone out on the Blackburn mailing list (if they don't know, there's no way they'll go). Stew and I settled in to watch it on our own, but we were soon not alone!  A total of 7 brave souls came along and ate fresh real popcorn, heckled Graham Gate from Airport West, moaned about the laptop screen saver misbehaving at inopportune moments and saw a great attack by Alberto and some disciplined team riding by Lance when it happened.  A very entertaining evening with some great bike racing, and no Sniff and Stiff ads this year! Woo Hoo!

A pretty good night!  The next one is on the 19th.   Details here. We'd love to see a few more come along.  $5 gets you all the popcorn you can eat and I promise not to do any more hand puppet stuff when Graham Gate poses at Southbank.  Maybe ...

Sometimes, when coaching, I forget that it's not all about me.  The role of a good coach is, as well as all the program design, training planning and preparation and sorting the myths from the Stuff That Works, is to be very good at interacting with the people who've chosen a coach as their coach. 

It's a big responsibility.  As a coach, I have, for example, somewhere between 10 and 30 riders (depending on how you count them!) who've chosen me as part of their team to achieve their goals.  This means that I have 10-30 people to manage in a way, but each of them only has one career.  I expect that they've chosen me because they trust that I will do my best to be part of their team to help them achieve their goals. It's important, as such, to take the time to listen to them.  For example, our Spin sessions.  Riders don't come to our training sessions to hear about my latest squat effort or what I did yesterday, they're there to have a solid session that's tailored to their goals and to go home afterwards feeling positive about what they did at the session and about the people they trained with.

How do I know what their goals are? I have to ask them, sometimes coaxing them to talk more about what they want, how they feel and so on.  Sometimes it's like pulling teeth, other times it's hard to get a rider to not monopolise my time by chewing off my ear when I have lots to see to!  Finding the right balance here is tricky and we can all do better at it and it's important to keep fine tuning how we approach running training sessions.  As a coach I have to avoid the temptation to think I'm some sort of a celebrity.  Yes, I'm in front of 20 or so people at a spin class and they're all doing pretty-much what I tell them to do, but that doesn't give me cart blanch to expound on my latest adventures, even if it's very tempting.  I try to make a point of celebrating riders achievements but we all occasionally slip into the trap of thinking that because we're centre-stage that we're the important person present.  I know I'm not, or a least, I try very hard not to be.  I know I don't get that right every time, but it's something I'm very conscious of, and my friends know me well enough that they know they can tell me to pull my head in and I won't take it personally and that I'll respect them more for doing so.  At least, I hope they know that!  If you're reading this, and you know who you are, I think you know you can tell me when I'm out of line and I won't be offended or hurt by it! I'll probably even shout you lunch or something for doing me the favour.

My blog, my facebook stuff etc, that's where I can whack off about what I've been doing and am doing etc, but that's not appropriate at a Spin or DISC session etc, that's where the emphasis is on encouraging and developing riders and celebrating their successes.  Sometimes also people need to be told that something they're doing isn't being done as well as it could be, but again that has to be done in an encouraging way.  "That's no good" is not a good way to develop an athlete.   We need to identify the positives in something a rider is doing and work on improvements to the things that need improving in such a way that it doesn't offend or demotivate the athlete we work with.  Some athletes like a "that's rubbish, do it this way" approach but they're rare, most appreciate (and thus, come back again for more!) a more considered approach.   We all get it wrong sometimes but I think it's a good thing to consider regularly and to be constantly vigilant against falling into the traps of "I know it all" and "I'm the Star".

In today's Age, the NSW government has banned all departments buying bottled water, and a town has banned it altogether.

Brilliant!  Sanity!  Bottled water is an evil triumph of marketing and waste over sanity.

Way back in April 2008 (the 23rd)  I was rabbiting on about how I'd just squatted 180kg.  I did, but shouldn't have said squatted, they were quarter squats, not real squatsm and way easier - In my defence I didn't know any better at the time.  But, a strength coaching course, a lot of reading, training and coaching with the Olympic lifters in at the Mermet and 14 months later ... I know that a squat should be below parallel to be useful and also to be better for your knees.  So ... Today .. I'd set a goal of 180 proper squats by July.  It's the 30th of June.  Last heavy lifts were 172.5kg on Thursday last week (3 x 5).  Right.  The rain's thundering on the tin roof of the 'haus, cranked up the Star Wars theme, and go! 3 x 3 at 180kg.  Proper, genuine, real squats.  Done.

I won't crack 1500 watts tonight on the Powertap ... But that's ok.  Time now to swing to a power emphasis for a month, the new wattage target is 1550 watts, by August, and 5 x 5 squats at 180kg by August too.  That should be do-able.  I'd like to get my power cleans better, up to 90kg, and consistant flying 100's below 6.5s at DISC, also by August.  The foundations are there now ... Now to use the strenght to generate power!

Too much strength training!  Or at least, not enough recovery.  Tuesday, squat heavy and then 30s sprint efforts at Spin.  Managed to crack over 1400 watts with ~45 mins recovery after the heavy squats - not bad considering.  Wednesday, um?  Can't remember!  Did something though ... Thursday, work all day at the LBS.  Quiet night in at home.  Friday, heavy squats, high volume (3 x 5 @ 172.5kg - very hard, for me anyway ...).  Saturday .. MISTAKE!  go for 4 hour MTB ride with Rich.  Too much.  I should have kept it to an hour or two.  4 hours was too much, especially after the heavy squats on Friday.  Got home with baked legs.  Had baked legs for an hour prior to then.  Not good!  This is going to break my training on Sunday ...

Too keen on Sunday in the 'Haus, trying to prove a point about doing Hard Stuff and not being a whimp ... Squat light-ish (3 x 3 @ 160kg) then a set of deadlifts motivated by sheer bloody mindedness, not sense - 1 x 5 @ 155kg.  Oh.  Um .. Now I have to sprint at DISC?  On these?  Errr.... Ok.... Warmup didn't feel too good.  Legs very soggy, not answering the question at the surge at the end of the warmup at all.  Our efforts were to be two by flying 100's then some short keirins.  Did one awful (AWFUL!) flying 100, the time was ok-ish, 6.8 or something, so a high 13 (I've done far worse, after all ...) but I really want to be consistantly under 6.5s at the moment, no chance when using legs that wouldn't move a small rodent, let alone push 98".  Climbing the bank felt like turning left at Winch Corner at Baw Baw.  No chance I was getting out of the saddle with any quality at all.  I pulled the pin for the night and just coached the troops for the remainder of the evening with Nathan.  Next week ... And Nath, remind me not to do stupid long rides on the day before a training session!  Ich Bin eine Bloody Idiot!

The Apolito's are home this week.  They're going to be keen to get their teeth into training.  We also have a new drill to break the A stream at Spin.  If you're curius, google for "Tabata protocol".  Oh yeah ...

My old server was an old Intel Celeron 2.8GHz  box, with a clunky old hard drive and was old, well overdue for replacement. I think it was 4 or 5 years old?  Way underspec to run modern CMS's like Plone (the CMS this site runs on) and such, that's for sure.

Tonight, the server got a big upgrade, it's now a shiny new Intel Core2Duo E7400 with 4GB of RAM, NetBSD 5.0 (amd64), mirrored 320GB hard drives and other nice fruit.

It should be a bit quicker and more stable, the old one was starting to get quite unreliable.  Good-o.  I've got to get up at roady-o-clock (before 9am!) tomorrow morning to help out at the time trial at the 1:20, so I'm glad this upgrade seems to have gone well.

Adding to the stable of serious spin trainers .. we now have I think 6 Kurt Kinetic Road Machine spin trainers for use at our Spin Sessions. Quite a few of them, and a Cyclops Fluid 2 and a Cyclops ProFluid.  The KKRM is the best of them, so we keep getting them.  They're indestructable and generally the best spin trainer we've ever tried, including the BT ergo, I think the KKRM is a better trainer than that.  They're not cheap, RRP is around $800 these days, but worth every cent.  I know when I pop a KKRM under a rider at a Spin session they will get a solid workout with no reliability issues.

And on another front, Trek/Bontrager have not been able to sponsor the Summer Sprint Series for 2009-2010, so we're in the hunt for a new series sponsor, and rumour has it we may get a write-up in Ride Cycling Review sometime over summer also.

Every now and then I buy a copy of Bicycling Australia, generally against my better judgement.  It's Ride's poor cousin at best, but like a McPlastics thickshake, every now and then I'm drawn to buy it, knowing I'll feel awful afterwards.

The May-June 2009 edition is no surprise.  A few years ago BA published some stupid article glowingly praising a fraudulent snake-oil product called "Oxy Shots" (go ahead, have a look at the website, it's .. breathtaking!) which claimed to improve oxygen saturation in the bloodstream by drinking (yes, drinking!) oxygen.  Absolute bull, but there you go, and the muppets at BA endorsed the thing, gave it a whole page and the reviewer had never heard of placebos (despite apparently having a coaching qualification ...).

So what have they done this time?  "Lact-Away".  Yep, A page's 'review' of a product that claims to buffer the body from something THAT DOESN'T EXIST THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Our old friend Lactic Acid!  Really!  Blood lactate is a fuel and is used in the Cori cycle to produce glucose, it's not a performance inhibitor and LACTIC ACID DOES NOT EXIST IN HUMANS!  The reviewer even mentions that she (I assume ... Shannon Johansen sounds female) started feeling like she was lactating more readily than usual.  She breastfeeds while riding?  Ok .... Strangers in the house and all that?  Bizzare ... Anyway .. How would she know her blood lactate levels without a test?  You can't feel it.  Given that the active ingredient in this stuff is vinegar and salt (if you want to buffer the PH of your blood, sodium carbonate is known to work, and there's protocols for it and it's almost free at the supermarket, not that I recommend it), suggesting that the mugs buy a $125 bottle of this stuff to 'see if you're the one that gets a 20% improvement' is a poor joke at best, and downright irresponsible at worst.  Looking for a magic potion to improve performance?  BA, EPO works ... maybe you can promote its use?

If you really want to know what causes muscle pain and performance decreases, read this article.  It's a little dry .... Here's a relevant quote :

In summary, it appears that the intracellular accumulation of lactate per se is not a major factor in muscle fatigue

And even more interestingly :

Experiments in which lactate was infused into whole animals while the muscles were stimulated to fatigue by nerve or direct muscle stimulation, found that the presence of extracellular lactate, which likely decreased pH_i, reduced failure of sarcolemma excitability and restored force production (emphasis mine!)

"Lact-away", no, actually, I'd like MORE blood lactate.

So that's my BA thickshake for this 6 months or so.  Fools and their money, and I was the fool again!  Hopefully I'll resist the urge next time.

Melbourne will be hosting the 2012 UCI Track Worlds.  Good-o!  It's an Olympic year (just like '04 was when Melb last had the worlds) so it won't be as important but the world's best will be here for it.  Good-O!

Wednesday I was supposed to squat heavy, but I hadn't recovered from Tuesday's lifts and spin session and I struggled with 160kg and only managed 2 reps of the first set before bailing out.

Today, 4 x 4 @ 170kg squats.  Not easy ... but, done! 

Some of you may remember the very exciting news a few months ago ... Yes, aboc Sprint Squad t-shirts!  Remember?  Yeah... Of course you do!

Anyway ... Dino and Emily have some (do you feel uncool for not having one? Give it time ...). They're also in France on holidays. Here's some photos :

I heard at Spin on Tuesday that only leaders wear yellow in July.  Right!

After Lucie and I spent a very relaxing weekend at Bonnie Doon, planting trees and burning weeds, no bikes, no Internet, no weights ... It was back to it yesterday.  I got a bit carried away in the 'Haus, and did 3 sets of 5 squats at 165kg, the last two of the third set were really really hard!  I had to sit down for some time to recover!  It's not often I see 157bpm or more when doing strength work.  Finished off with three sets of three cleans at 60kg.  Pretty weak, but I was well shattered from the squats.  My form was ok, they were definitely power cleans, not squat cleans!  Throw the bar up, there's no way I'm going to squat to get under it, if it doesn't get to sternum-height, it can just hit the floor...  Oh, it's 5:15pm, I start spin at 7 ... Um ... Food, fast!  Bolted down some chocolate Big-M.  Ok ....

Bev picked me up at 6 as usual, we loaded the car and I was lethargic indeed.  Very dead legs.  A slow start, at 6:30 there was just a few people, but by 6:40 we had 18 people packing the rooms, not including Ratty Rattus, who has found a home in the kitchen, it seems.  Warmup started at a shade before 7 so about 10 mins of E1, then a couple of 5s HCLR's on the minute to get the legs moving.  Ok, they went alright.  The next block was 3 x 10s big gear sprints from a very slow start on 5 minute blocks.  The first one, 1471 watts.  Ok!  After the heavy squats I thought I'd be lucky to crack 1400, but 1471, I'm happy with that.  The next two were a bit weaker, 1413 and 1369, so the squats and power cleans had some some damage, but that's ok.  Quality's dropping off, time to change exercises.  The next effort was a chunder-drill, a 30 second sprint.  These are spectacularly painful.  Phosphagen runs out after 6-8 seconds, fast glycolysis at around 25 seconds, the last 5 seconds is desperate indeed.  Only the one to do, and I got it, started at 1158 watts, by the end of the 30 seconds, down to 610! HR up to 182bpm though.  Ouch.  Big time.  Last effort for the night is a pair of 15 second HCLRs just to do a bit of final leg speed stuff.  They're not too bad.  Happy with the night's work. 

I'm supposed to squat heavy again today.   Um ... maybe!  Going for a swim at lunchtime to see if that opens things up a bit first!

For anyone curious, here's the 30 second max effort graph :

Yesterday one of our Spin attendees called me, asking if we'd sell her copies of the spin program we run on Tuesday because she liked it and couldn't make it after moving to the country.  I'd never thought of selling it, but certainly we can give it out.  So, from now on, every spin session will be documented online so you can see what we did, and do it yourself if you feel like it. We already do that for our DISC sessions, this seems a logical extension to that.  Look here for the sessions for 2009. 

If I get sufficiently organised, we'll have the sessions planned beforehand so you can see what we're going to do.  That might scare people away though ... Heh!

I've spent a bit of time knocking up a website for the Eildon Junior Tour.  It's a basic Plone site, no frills, content is king ... Anyway ... After a relaxing and totally bike-free few days at Bonnie Doon, it's back to the millstone today.  The plan is a set of medium weights in the 'haus at about 4pm, then spin like a loon in the sprinters stream at Spin tonight.  Tomorrow, if my legs are ok from today, lift heavy - I've done a couple of sets of 3 reps at 170kg squats now, it's time to up the volume and go for 5's before I bump the weight up.  The 3's felt reasonably easy last week which is a good sign.

Nathan ran DISC on Sunday for me, it'll be good to hear how that went from him and some of the others who went along.  It'll be back to me running it this Sunday though, so no rest for the keen.

News from the Apolitos is that they've got a nice view in some village in France.  Very nice ... No bikes yet though. 

Recently I had a lucky break with my real job, a disposed of video/TV/computer projector, with a bit of fiddling around, started to work again, so I have a 'big screen' TV of sorts, when hooked up to a laptop anyway.  It's not HD, but it's pretty good all the same. I also have a TV receiver card for my lappy - mobile SBS ... And SBS, as all who read here will know, do le Tour, mostly live.  Good-o.  They're responsible for many many sleepless nights over July for the last few years.

Anyway ... enough with the preamble.  The Tour this year promises to be one of the best ever.  A super-team clash, Saxobank (formerly CSC), with Sastre (maybe blown after the Giro?), the Schlecks coming into form, vs Astana's powerhouse team who have 8 TdF wins in their starting line and a second place or two (Armstrong, Contador and Leipheimer) as well as Popovich and the master of tour tactics calling their shots (Johan Bruneel).   Add to the mix Cadel Evans who's hitting form right on time as well, but with a suspect team (again!).  Can Cadel benefit from the struggle between the two superteams?  Who knows?  It'll be fascinating, that's for sure.

So we'll all be watching.  I have a big screen, Blackburn has clubrooms with a gas heater, a big fridge (or just put your drinks outside, it'll be cold enough ...) and an oven and stove for the making of fresh popcorn etc.  Who's in?!  I'm going to confirm with the club tonight at the committee meeting, but I'm proposing the following nights :

Friday 10th July : stage details.

Sunday 19th July : stage details.

Tues 21st July : stage details.

Sat 25th July (Ventoux!) : stage details.

These will be open to all Blackburn and aboc people.  $5 to come along and we'll provide the popcorn and snacks.