Pictures tell a thousand words .. (Thank you Dino for the photos, Emily & James for braving it)

And so we trained tonight at Blackburn, a solid session, the two who are off to the Junior Vics next week did some gate technique practice and some short, sharp but low volume stuff as part of their taper.  I did the same as them.  It was pretty warm, so afterwards it's off to the aboc powerhaus to do some recovery ... The AIS recovery protocol for sprint is 10 mins at 15 degrees in an ice bath standing up.  Cue one big green wheelie bin, two bags of ice, a ladder and three hot sprinters.   

I never put my charges through something I'm not prepared to do myself.  Brrrr!

Dino got photos, I'll put them up when I get them.  Dino .. send photos, the people demand proof!

Just a quick one today, we were thinking of doing training at DISC on Sunday at 8:30pm, but I had insufficient interest to make it worthwhile, so we'll be at Blackburn instead, at 4pm (sprinters, 3:30pm please).  And just to further mangle the English language, James Dann and I spent a considerable chunk of today fixing holes in the track at Blackburn.

We've experimented a bit, we used a urethane filler to fill some big holes, including the dinner-plate sized patch in front of the clubrooms right in the sprinters lane.  The concrete patch that Snake Salsibury put in in September had started to lift so we bashed it out, turned the used concrete into chunky aggregate and then mixed it in with urethane putty.  we covered all our patches in fine sand to try and get some even traction, it'll be interesting to see if it works - the urethane is quite flexible, it may be too much so, but we'll test it out before Sunday to be sure.  If it's too soft we'll have to rip it out and use concrete again.  Time will tell ...

Hello everyone,
Normally we'd run a training session at DISC this Sunday from 5pm (sprinters start at 4:30 on rollers), but there's a development session on that finishes at 8:30pm.

Sooooo

Who's able to train that late?  A couple of you are preparing for major races soon and that session might be acceptable to you.   Please let me know ASAP if that time is ok, we'd be finished by 10:30pm.  I know it's a late one, if I don't get a few of you saying "yep, I want to do it" we won't run the session at DISC, we'll run it at Blackburn instead.

I don't generally like to write about bad stuff, and in the scheme of things, this isn't that bad - I'm not going to die ad I can do most things.  As some of you who read this know, I've had an ongoing shoulder problem for some 6 or so months (maybe longer, I can't remember now).  Anyway, it's pretty-much always painful, it catches, I can't rotate to squat properly etc etc ...

I've run the path through general GP's (NFI ...), misdiagnosis through GP's that should have done a referral straight away, to fixing a symptom; frozen shoulder, had two hydrodilations, that fixed the frozen shoulder, and lots of accompanying physio. 

Finally last week we had an MRI done.  Today I got the results.  I have a labrum tear, a reasonable size one.  May have been caused by any number of crashes, spills and other such rough and tumble stuff in the last year or so.  They won't operate to fix it because it's in a shoulder that's got osteoarthritis.  Ie: it doesn't get better and there's no point - rehab for the surgery is ~6 months and there's less than even odds that it would be any better.  Other things listed include a bunch of placebos and "this might work" stuff and various painkilling drugs, and a shoulder replacement.

Basically I'm paying the price now for playing contact sports for 20 years.  C'est la Vie.  I'll be 40 this year.  Wear and tear is catching up.

From this article :

Says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health: "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

Works for me!

Forgive me for not having written much in the last fortnight.  It's been pretty busy.  We've got our next lot of aboc kit all done, thank you to Dino for making that happen.  The new stuff is made by Giramondo and it's very good.  Locally made (not in some anonymous overseas sweatshop) and top quality.  That's not a sales pitch, I'm not trying to sell you this stuff, I'm just very pleased with it.

I've also done a bit of work on The Book, nothing worth writing about, but more background reading more than anything else.  What else?  Oh, yeah, xmas and new years are all out of the way and they (finally!) put me in the noisy tube to try and see what's going on with my cranky shoulder.  I'm off to see my doctor again on Thursday to discuss the results.  I've been asking them to do this for probably 6 months now, FINALLY they agreed!  Anyway, hopefully we'll have some answers on Thursday.  My power uotput is hovering around 1350 or so watts (peak) from small gear efforts, I haven't pushed anything bigger than 84" for some time, but my cadence is good so I'm moderatly pleased with how that's all going. I still want to try and get a 13.2s flying 200 at Blackburn this summer and 12.5 at DISC at the Vic masters would make me happy, although just a 12.9 would be acceptable, given the injury-disrupted year I had, maintaining the status quo is an OK result.

Summer Sprint Series round 4 is coming up soon (13th Feb) but before that is the Vic junior track championships (29th & 30th of Jan) and the Australian senior track championships (1-6 Feb) in Sydney, which as far as I know, I'm going to as an assistant coach.  More chances to learn from some of the best. 

At DISC, with the weather being warm, I'm finding a lot more confidence on the motorbike.  Over winter I was unhappy at anything much over 75km/h around the bends, now I'm comfortable at about 83km/h which is about as fast as we ever need to go.  The DISC motorbike's speedo reads around 5% over, we think 83km/h indicated is probably about 78-79km/h actual speed, which is faster than anyone can race, so at least in terms of speed, I'm now able to ride the motorbike fast enough for just about anyone.  I still need to get better at a skill that Hilts is a master of, riding at speed around the track while looking over my shoulder. It takes a lot of practice to get good at that and I've not yet gotten to a stage that I think is acceptably good but I'm better at it than I was this time last year!  It (the motorbike) skips around at high speeds especially when you cross the painted lines, but I'm used to it now.  Hilts has been very patient with me learning this skill, it's not as easy as it looks to get good at.

Dino and Pat and I have been doing our Tuesday morning sessions at Blackburn and enjoying a good solid flaying, we've had low (one last time, just me!) turnouts to Summer Spin but it's been holiday season and everyone's off riding outside as they should - it's really only the pure sprinters that need the uber-high intensity work on the ergos over summer, the rest of you, On Yer Bikes!

In November 2009 I started the level two coaching qualification.  On the 15th of December 2010, I received notification that I'd passed.  I'm now a level two cycling coach (specialising in track sprint!).  w00t!

People I need to thank :

Hilton Clarke and John Beasley for mentoring me and providing the opportunities I've had to concentrate on track sprint.

Lucie Akers for her love and support.

Tammy Ebert and Josh Sear for encouraging me and providing support and council and a career path with the NTID, which I would never have dreamed possible.

Dino and Emily Apolito for trusting me and being part of an amazing journey, which is only just beginning.

All the guys in Hilton's NTID & VIS squads for being patient while I stumbled around for the first 6 months of assisting Hilts - I don't make anything like as many mistakes as I did when I started.  Still have LOADS to learn, but this is a great place to be.

The champagne is on me!

 We're both on low 80's - I was on 50x17, Dino on 49x17.  Chasing the bike at the end of a training session.  Good times!

After a pleasant meal devouring many chickens at our favorite chicken-cookers last night after training, a few of the crew discussed Summer Spin, strength work and venues.  Specifically, we thought, as number at Summer Spin are low (as they should be, it's off-season for ergo) we might run them in the Powerhaus instead of at Blackburn.  Same time, but different venue. 

We'd still run our winter ergo sessions at Blackburn (I can't fit 20+ people in the 'haus, or provide parking and it would be bad for the Blackburn club to move it also).

I'd appreciate your thoughts on this, if you're one who comes to these sessions or you might be.

Please let me know.

Thanks!

6:10  E1 5 min
6:15  2 x 6s HCLR:1
6:20  20s HCRS (80) r/up 5:110 5:135 10:160+
6:27  20s RGRS (80) r/up 5:80% 5:90% 10:100%
6:34  25s HC-1RS (80) r/up 5:110 10:130 10:160+
6:41  30s HCLR r/up 10:120 10:140 10:max
6:48  6s BGRS (seated)
6:51  6s BGRS (seated)
6:53  10s HCLR

Dino, Em and I are doing that tonight in the 'Haus.

As sprinters, we risk getting fat a lot more than our chronically undernourished enduro cousins. I've banged on about this a lot over the last few months and have some success at dropping weight (fat!) over the last 12 months.  As I've mentioned, I did it by basically following the logical conclusion of reading Gary Taube's Good Calories Bad Calories (ie: ditch the simple carbs).

Gary's just written a new blog entry that I enjoyed (thankyou Lisa for the heads up!).  The vacuously true 'we get fat because we overeat' observation (true, but useless!) gets looked at in the article.  Have a read, it's good stuff.

I'm now pretty-much exclusively coaching track sprint these days.  I have a couple of enduros, but my main focus and development is with sprint.  The main entry pags of the aboc website talks about enduro.  Nathan looks after most of the enduros these days for aboc.  Should I change the emphasis on the main aboc page to reflect our sprint program more?

Your thoughts?

For personal reasons I couldn't do much at round 3, but my team proved themselves and it was a big success.  Thank you in no particular order to :

Dino, Anne, Nic, Krissy, Jodie, John, Pat, Alex and Sue for her support.

It was a top day for sprinting, some really good, close and safe racing, some PB's, some improvements and a lot of fun.

5 days in an insulated-from-reality-bubble.  Wake up, go to velodrome (via shops) - assist Hilton, assist Sean Eadie, push riders, council riders, congratulate/commiserate riders.  12-14 hours later, go back to motel, take 3 hours to unwire enough to get some sleep, repeat ...

Wow.

My first taste of real international elite competition and I'm hooked. Sprint camp was one thing, this was a step up.  In a way it was more of the same, we had a lot more support - mechanics (Ian, Gary, Tony, thank you!), to look after all the bikes, wheel changes etc, support staff to handle all the odd jobs (Josh, Emily, thankyou! you guys were great).  Hilton ran the warmups from his throne in the pits and we both looked after the riders during racing.  We had a squad of 7 core riders and a few we helped out, at some points we were over-supplied with people to help, at other times there wasn't enough of us.   We did good things, we made mistakes, we learned.  We learned and we learned ..

Our sprint guys did very well, we got some medals to bring home and everyone learned a lot.  A highlight was seeing Imogen and Taylah racing in the Keirin final with Anna Meares (and Immy's ride to qualify for it, glued to Anna's wheel!), Nathan's storming first lap in his team sprint and Jaron's jammed in the middle of a 4 wide sandwich in the J19 keirin final.  As a first year senior Nath was always going to be behind the 8 ball, but he rode well and has a good picture now of where he has to be (and he can be!).

Some talent to watch out for, a Kiwi girl, Stephanie McKenzie.  She won the J19 500m and the sprint, and her 500m start was the best 500m start I've ever seen from a girl.  Girl's don't rattle the start gate, Steph did .. Wow.  Watch for this one in the not too distant future.  Guess what her background is?  Gymnastics (explosive power and strength) and Olympic weightlifting.  Is there something in this "get the girls strong" idea after all?  Anna didn't ride the 500, but any time you get to see her racing is great, she won the sprint and the keirin in the style that we've come to expect.  She's a class above the rest at the moment.  The world cup will be interesting indeed.

I'm not going to fill this page with details, 5 days of living and working in a surreal bubble has fried my head and I'm still catching up on sleep, but suffice to say it was an amazing experience and a lot of good will come of it.  I have a tentative agreement now to be able to do over to the AIS for a couple of weeks and hold Gary West's stop watches etc (learning, learning ...) at a date to be determined and Sean Eadie and I did a little work on The Book.  Hilts and Josh (NTID manager) and I had a meeting about how my work with Hilts is going and I got some good constructive critism, there's a few things I need to really concentrate on which is good.

In the mean time, It's round 3 this coming Sunday.  Hrm, I think I've been on a track bike once since round 2?  If I'm lucky ... I don't think I'll be riding any PB's!  heh ...

Last week I had a bit of a cold, which meant I stayed away from the NTID training session on Wednesday (didn't want to give anyone my bugs) but by Thursday I felt ok.  By Friday, my voice was getting pretty croaky, and by Saturday I'd almost totally lost my voice.  Now, I'm not a shouter like Hilton, but I do shout at my riders, and every attempt I made to shout encouragement was a feeble squeak!  Not ideal for coaching at a championship ... Quite amusing for everyone there though, I'm sure!

The Metros ...

It was a hectic weekend, I had the aboc'ers to look after as well as the VIS and NTID riders.  Saturday morning was pursuits and I didn't have too much work to do then, I did walk the line for a couple of riders, including aboc'er Cam Woolcock who got himself a medal, Liz Randall (also a medal, gold!) and Emy Huntsman (NTID endurance) - I made a mistake while giving Emy her pacing, a bad one that may have cost her a gold medal.  I need more practice if I'm to do this again at a championship - In my defence, it's not what I'm concentrating on, but I probably shouldn't have done it for Emy.  Emy, if you're reading this, again, I'm sorry.

In the afternoon it was time trial time (sprint!) - the aboc Sprint Squad was there in force, Dino, Emily, James, Chris, Cam, Yasmin.  All of them rode well, we got a couple of gold medals, a silver or two and a load of PBs on a slow day (thick air and cold).  The NTID and VIS girls I was also looking after (although mainly just carrying bikes, Hilton had the floor) rode solid races and as you'd expect, won or placed in everything.  That sounds like a big deal, but it is what we expect.  The NTID and VIS program cherry picks the best talent, if they don't win everything we're not doing our job.

Sunday ... Sunday's the biggie for me.  I love match sprinting. Also coaching the 500 (Emily & Yas, don't worry, the 500 is a very high priority!) but match sprinting stuff is where there's actually something to do on race day, the TT's are all won in the weeks and months leading up to them from the point of view of a coach, match sprinting has a lot more on the spot coach involvement, at junior level in particular. For the TT, all a coach has to do is make sure the rider is at the right brain-space at the start and warmed up well.  Match sprinting is another level.

Hilton was going to be busy loading vans to take over to Adelaide, so I was left on the floor to run the show for all the guys.  I think I had about 15 or more riders in my care : Dino, Emily, Ruby, Courtney, Madeline, Adele, Caitlin, Yasmin, Stuart (V-Train!), Clint, Emerson, Jacob, Luke, James, Chris.  I think that's it?  Anyway, Hilts had the NTID and VIS guys do their warmup, I had the aboc'er do theirs (different! but all coaches do things differently). 

Then things got messy.  It started when the organisers decided (but didn't tell us) that they'd changed the flying 200 from 3 laps to 2.  This is a big deal for the 15's and up, they train for 3 laps and last minute changes like this are simply not acceptable, it stuffs up their timing.  We made a fuss about it and Hilts managed to get them to change it back for the 19's and above, but it was unfair and caused a lot of angst and slow times by our riders, save for Courtney, who unofficially (the electronic timing didn't work ... I'm not joking, it was a bloody disaster) smashed the JW15 Australian record.

Then some of the races got dropped from the program.  I'm not going to mince with words, this is unacceptable.  The kids that show up to race care about their racing.  They train and they work hard.  To have their races chopped from the program to save a few minutes is not on.  I'm still very angry about this.  One of my guys was heartbroken and there was nothing I could do about it.

After that, the rest of the day went well.  My job was to council the guys on tactical decisions and hold them on the line.  It looks like I have a conflict of interest when I'm involved in coaching multiple riders who are racing eachother, but I'm careful not to tell one rider anything confidential about the other and I think they all trust me to be ethical in this area - it's important that they do, and that I am 100% on this.  If any of you read this, I assure you I will never tell your competion anything about you and I will never tell you anything you don't already know about them either.  My main job while in the thick of it is to get the riders feeling confident and motivated (a challenge indeed sometimes!) and to encourage them to be assertive and aggressive on the track, to make their move and commit to it. The older, more experienced sprinters need less tactical guidance and I mostly left them to themselves except to check if they needed anything and give them an ear to talk to if they needed it.

Again, everyone rode well and the NTID/VIS combo swept the field, as they should.  My aboc'er did well, with another bootload of medals and a lot of very valuable experience gained for the Vic titles coming up soon.

At the end of the day, Speed is the best tactic.  90% of the races will go to the faster rider, but the thrill is in getting a slower rider over the line first.  It happens, and we did it a few times on Sunday.

Leanne Cole got some good photos, go have a look.

Phew .. that's done.  I'm off to the Oceanias tomorrow, back on Sunday.  More of the same.  Bring it on!

What were the Chinese guys doing?!
Congrats to John Beasley and Josiah and "the rocketpocket man" heh!

Next week I'm off to assist the NTID and VIS guys at the Oceania track championships in Adelaide.  That's why we moved Spin forward a week.  I'll be carrying Hilton's bags mainly, but it's another great opportunity to gather experience at elite level, even if all I do is carry heavy stuff and push buttons on stopwatches I'll be soaking it all up and learning as much as I can.  It'll be quite different to the NTID sprint camp I went to way back in July, where I pretty-much ran the show for all the NTID sprinters for two days, it'll be a good intro to how it's done with more coaches present etc.

I'm supposed to be in at DISC today with the squad (my usual Wednesday, 11am -> 9:30pm or so), but I've got a bit of a cold, it's not enough to stop work etc, but it is probably contageous, so I've pulled the day off so I don't share the bugs with the guys in the squad who are racing the Metros this weekend and/or are going to Adelaide.

Last weekend I was given one of the most enjoyable jobs in cycling, I was asked to commentate at the Country Track Championships.  This was heaps of fun, I hope I added some value to the event and didn't make too many mistakes.  Two days in a row of full-time commentating is not as easy as it sounds.  The next time you get cranky with Phil and Paul, just try doing it yourself!  Maybe it's the non-stop yapping that's brought on this cold?

Anyway, I'll be right in a day or two.  I spent some of today getting equipment for the 'haus, we now have a pair of 20 and a pair of 25kg bumper plates.  These are expensive things, some of the guys are strong enough to need them now (good!).  I had another visit to the physio which was positive - my cranky shoulder is slowly improving (about time!) - I got out on the water on Monday evening and surfed some standing waves and felt very happy in whitewater, so that's good.  I hope to be able to get some heavy squats done soon.  It'll be a long rebuild, I reckon I'll be pretty happy with a 120kg squat to start with!  But .. slow progress is good.

Here's an example of a power file from a flying 200 at DISC from a seriously fast cyclist.