Last weekend was the Blackburn Cycling Club's 'Eildon Junior Tour' and I'd drawn the duty of race announcer for Saturday and general dogs body for Sunday.  We went up to stay at Bonnie Doon on Friday after I knocked off from work at Cycle Science, and arrived there in time to grab a few moments of the Tour before hitting the hay.  I'd taken the big Fuel EX8 up to do a lap of the Hurt Hill Loop with some hope of having time and energy to do it. Saturday  we were at Thornton running the individual time trial, being stage 1, and then the finish of stage 2, the road race, for J11's through to J17's.  A long, long day, I think we started work at around 8:30am for a 10:30 start for the ITT, and finished at around 5:30pm after wrapping up the road race.   I spent most of the day yapping away over the PA system, which many here will know I'm fond of, but it's also quite tiring, and in particular, I was standing up all day. 

It was quite cold so my ushanka and down jacket came in handy!  At the end we formed a little convoy and drove back to spend the evening at Bonnie Doon again.  I was way too tired to even think about Hurt Hill, but did briefly entertain the notion of a jaunt to the scoops under the Maroondah Hwy bridge, but even that idea was put to rest.  Dino and I fired up the barby, chilli chickenwings were dealt with but my big steak was off! I had to throw it away!  The agony! After a meeting with a new rider, it was again time to sleep, before having to be up again at 6:30 on Sunday to do it all again.
Sunday and we're at Eildon, I helped out Merv at the start line getting the J17s and J15s under way, before scooting over to the finish on the Eildon dam wall to do the PA again and call the finish of the Sunday stage.  After that, we ran around like headless chooks setting up for the final criterium, only to have rain cause it to be cancelled after the J11's completed their 10 minute crit.  I don't think anyone disagreed with Brad Robins' call on the conditions, Brad did a great job through the two days as chief commissaire. Pack up and go!  I had to be at DISC before 5:30 to get the DISC session happening.

It's great to see how quickly Carnegie-Caulfield have a race report up for their juniors.  You can see it here. We (Blackburn) were stretched pretty thin for this event and I don't think we had anyone available to do race reports. That's something CCCC does extremely well, and we can all learn from how they do it.

We made it in plenty of time, and the DISC session went well and I got a few laps in, so finally got a tiny bit of riding in for the weekend.  At the end of it, I wasn't able to lock up, the sliding doors to the velodrome had been locked open with a real key (I have a magnetic keypass) so I couldn't close the velodrome, and the CSV office was similarly locked shut with a key, so I couldn't turn off the lights either!  We called the council and let them know before heading for home via a Chinese takeaway.  Dozing through the first stage of the Tour in the Pyronees ... so tired ... Cadel's next big test is tonight, Hautacam ... Go Cadel!

Here's a video I shot at the Blackburn ITT on Sunday morning. 

Very cold, very heavy air.  Everyone was slow slow slow! The enduro's worked hard, but the lazy sprinters (except one!) were all way off the pace.  A productive session, but not one to post the times from.

I used the new video camera at the Blackburn ITT in the morning, and once I get my head around the editing software I have, I may be able to put some stuff here or on youtube (use their bandwidth not mine!).  I got a lot of shots of concrete and bitumen, but some ok stuff of people riding their bikes.

A couple more people have signed up to go to the dinner, we still have around 10 places left, and it's getting close!

Tour lag ... *yawn* It's only day 2 ...

I'm in at Cycle Science today, and it's a cold, windy and rainy day, so it's going to be a quiet day.  Wednesdays are normally reasonably quiet compared to the chaos of the weekends and Friday evenings. Pete  (the boss) takes most of the morning off to see his dad, and leaves me here to look after things 'til lunchtime.  When it's bad cycling weather, it's very quiet. 

One of the fun things about working here is the new bits we get all the time.  A truck arrives and we get a whole pile of new bits to play with, or a rep shows up and shows us new bling bits and we waste time crapping on about the Tour, what's selling well, what's been on the shop floor for years (anyone want an older Trek 8000?  We've had that one for 4 years at least!), what do we think will sell well next summer (commuter bikes, I'm betting on) etc.  Today won't pay many bills, but it's still fun to work here, if you can call it working.  I've had one customer come in and talk about riding the new Eastlink bikepath and we had a look at some bikes that might be suitable for that, but other than that, a quiet day.

I'm relieved, after a couple of quite painful days hobbling, today my ankle felt ok, ok enough to consider a strength session.  In the mail on Monday I received my new video camera (Sony VX2100), and then today, a tax refund cheque, a new book (Might as well win, by Johan Bruynell, famous for directing US Postal and Discovery to 7 Tour de France wins with Lance Armstrong and one with Alberto Contador) and an invite to my old school's 20 year reunion.  Along the way a very frustrating SCO UNIX install in VMware finally started to behave itself a bit.  Not a bad couple of days, despite the hobbling around and missing training at DISC on Sunday.

So when I finally got a spare 30 minutes, I put on the lifting shoes and headed out to the Power House. I've put some lights in at last, and can use it when it's dark.  I had a go at some unweighed squats, and felt ok.  Warmed up on a few sets of 20kg, 60kg and 100kg.  Felt good.  Ok, we'll try for 5 x 5 @ 142.5kg .. got 'em!  Work set tonnage was 3,562.5kg.  My form wasn't 100%, so I'll repeat the lifts at the same weight on Thursday, but I'm happy with that.  I didn't have time for any other lifts.

I didn't leave myself much time to recover from the squats before tonight's spin session, I finished in the Power House at about 5:50, and got picked up to be at Spin at 6 (thanks Bev!).  An hour later, warming up on the bike with a healthy turnout at the spin session, we had 18 of us tonight, that was good.  I quickly found that while I could clip in, clipping out was not so pleasant, twisting out of cleats with an ankle sprain .. heh .. ouch.  Enough moaning .. I managed to hit 1332 watts in the first 10 second max effort, not a PB, but ok, given the closeness of the squat session.  I might have a play with timing of that, to see if different times between strength work and bike work has a significant impact on peak wattage.  Had a bit of a chunder at the end of our lactate efforts, but more of a retch than anything chunky. No carrots anyway. They hurt, those efforts, lots of blood lactate, very high heartrate ...  We had a good session, the enduros all enjoyed, if you can call it that, their work for the night and there was enough food to keep even Tom happy.  Luckily Vanders is overseas .. he normally eats everything!  I'm sure he's a latent sprinter hiding in an enduro's body.

Everyone's gearing up to watch the Tour, there's a lot of home town expectations on Cadel Evans, who is going in as a favorite to win it. It's pretty exciting to have an Australian ranked so highly as a possible winner, whatever happens I'm sure he'll ride as well as he can and if the recent press is any indicator of the truth, he'll be graceful and decent no matter what the final result.  Many years ago now I was lucky enough to ride with Cadel for a few k's and while we didn't speak much, he was polite and a decent sort of bloke.  Camster and I were riding to watch a Bay Crit and tootling along Footscray Rd towards Williamstown, when we met up with Cadel and we rode the rest of the way together, as four of us (Cadel was riding with a friend).  Back then I was a half-decent B grade flatland roady and we (Cam & I) worked the front of our little bunch to speed Cadel to the crits as he was running late. It was kinda fun to be his domestiques for a few k. We'll be camped on the couch for the tour, cheering him on and also seeing how well the other Aussies go, Robbie again, who seems to have hit some form just in time, O'Grady of course, and even Baden Cooke is back, one to watch for as a bit of a dark horse in the sprints.  Bring it on, and go Cadel!

I got my strength work done this morning and was happy with it and looking forward to going up a gear tonight at DISC.   Then, time to do some coaching. Just after I had my human guineapigs in the Power House doing squats, dumbell presses and lunges (and they did evry well, both are rapidly improving their technique), I had to go and feed my real guineapigs.  I have two runs, one out the front and one around the back.  I had a big bowl of chopped carrots for them.  I usually feed the front ones first.

I stepped off the edge of the porch and rolled my right ankle, quite hard on what was maybe a loose brick.  I thought I'd broken it at first. I called Lucie and she came out and helped me up and upstairs, and we've compressed & iced (peas!) it, but it's quite painful on one side, I might have torn something, if it's not healing in a few days I'll have to go see a doctor.  No cycle training for me tonight at DISC. I'll have to hobble around on crutches shouting at people.  I can do that.  Enforced rest, not what I wanted right now, but C'est la Vie.

I'm going to have to do something about the front run, I might have room to put them all in the back run, which is very big and has easy access, with no big stepdowns onto uncertain ground.  This is the second time I've fallen off the edge, last time I got a scare, this time, an injury.

Tomorrow's an intense day.  Weights and velodrome sprint efforts, so today was an easy E1 cruise for an hour just to tick over the legs and burn off last night's pizza.  That was the plan anyway ... I took off from aboc HQ with the idea of having a look at the Eastlink path, seeing how it went from the Mitcham Rd crossing and on.  I got on at the bridge over Eastline at Mitcham Rd, and found that it was closed off firmly at Park St, so followed a fit climber-type along the Mullum Mullum creek road.  That sucker is hilly!  So much for E1/easy cruising, it was roll down, granny gear grovel up, repeat!  Once I got onto the path again, it was nice, not very practical for training or commuting as it's full of sharp bends and has poor sight lines, but a pleasant amble to Ringwood, then down to Canterbury Rd, jump the fence and then to Burwood Hwy before coming back home along the road.  All up I got my hour and my HR average was at the top of E1, but that hides the frequent E3 and above efforts.  Hrm....

Here it is, the first aboc skin suit.  I hope to have them in production in a week or two.

After a decent night's sleep (relatively) and a paltry 3km on the bike commuting to Cycle Science yesterday, today's weight session was good.  I managed to get reasonably good form on 5 x 5 squats at 140kg. Rightey-oh, I'm now pushing more with full squats than Anna Meares is.  In a way that's a bit of a mark, she's one of the best track sprinters, and while she's a girl, she's still faster than anyone I know who's riding today.  I think she'd give Big J a run for his money and also Fast Eddie and The Wizard.  For the benefit of those who haven't been reading this and also coming to the Bontrager Summer Sprint Series, Big J is Jeremy Mclay, Fast Eddie is Eddie Wilson and The Wizard is Barry Woods, who didn't race the sprint series last summer, but assures me he'll be there to mix it up this coming summer.

Tonnage for today, squats :

3,500kg (25 lifts of 140kg) not including warmup etc.

Leftover spag boll for lunch was yummy!  Go you molecules of protein'y goodness, build more strength such that I may ride faster!

I'm taking some guineapigs (people, not my oinkers in the garden) to the Mermet center tonight to do my first supervised strength coaching session with Peter Cayley.  I think I have it sussed out.

This morning, 5 sets of 5 @ 135kg deep squats, then some bench and a set of deadlifts, then eat and recover.  Tonight at Spin, a new PB, 1358 watts. It's up 10 on my previous.  I'm happy with that.

Let's see if it can translate into faster times at DISC on Sunday at the aboc DISC session.  Time to push a bigger gear and see how it goes.

In other news, you can see Anna Meares squatting 4 @ 140kg here.

I think it's time I switched gears, 91.8" is too little for me I think, but 53km/h is only 123rpm.  I should be able to spin faster than that. I think I need to do more spinning drills to get my leg speed up.  All this weight training may be good for strength but it's important to keep spinning.

Today, after finally finishing "Practical Programming for Strength Training" Mark Rippetoe And Lon Kilgore, and lessons learned from the AS&C course, I've changed my lifting program.  I'm basically a 'novice' in terms of strength development (not surprising, I've only been in the Power House for 4 months).  They define a novice as someone who's still able to improve at every workout (subject to a few backoffs and unloads every few months when you plateau), an intermediate who needs a structured week to improve, and advanced as needing month blocks or more as you approach your genetic limits it's harder to improve.  They say do 5 sets of 5 until you're no longer a novice lifter, as it's the most efficient way to use the time lifting and is a good balance of strength and hypertrophy.

The basic idea at this point is to keep it simple,  I'm doing squats every session, in 5 sets of 5 reps, with the aim of the final set being very hard to complete.  If I get all 5 sets of 5, next session, the weight goes up.  These are full (as full as I can on a reconstructed knee anyway) squats.  Today, 5 x 5 @ 130kg.  That's a tonnage squatted of 3,250kg. When you look at it like that, it's quite a lot of weight.  Anna Meares did 4 reps at 140kg the week before she rode an 11.178 flying 200 at Vodafone, I know I can do one set of 140kg 5's because I did that last week, so I'm stronger than Anna at squats! She's a little faster than me though...  A predicted indoor F200 time for me at the moment based on flying 100's is around 13.7s, and that's waaaaay too slow.

I'm doing jump squats every second session, deadlifts every second session (alternating them, basically) and lunges every second session.  That doesn't quite add up yet, I'm still working on the details.  Also doing bench every session, and either wide arm pullups or bent over rows every second session, so each session is around 4 exercises with a mix of pushes and pulls on the major groups.  Three Power House sessions a week, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. This meshes in with ergo sessions on the bike and DISC on Sundays over winter.  Over summer we'll be doing a lot more work at the Blackburn velodrome.

One of the key things to remember is that the Power House training is a means to an end, not an end in itself.  If I can end up deep squatting 200kg or so, that'll be great, but what I really care about is riding faster.  It's going to take time and patience, and I may end up being dog-slow at the end of it anyway, but there's only one way to know, and that's to give it a go.

I spoke briefly with Peter Cayley today, who is one of the top strength training people in this country, a member of Hawthorn Cycling Club and the Victorian Weightlifting Association.  He's agreed to supervise my training sessions for 10 hours for the requirement for my level 1 AS&C qualification.  I'm lining up some of my riders to come along and be my 'BYO trainees'.  We'll be at the Mermet Center in Hawthorn on Thursday nights for a few weeks while I rack up the required 10 hours under supervision.

Thankyou Peter!

The article.

Relevant quotes, Tracee starts with :

BRING on the price rise. I know that I'm supposed to be worried about petrol going up, but something about the hysterical predictions that we'll be paying $2 a litre for it by the end of the year has been strangely exhilarating. It's like a great, big penny has finally dropped. Except I don't feel panicked, I feel relieved. Relieved that we'll be paying more realistic prices for such a finite resource. Relieved that short-sighted government policies over the past decade have been exposed. And relieved that it's forcing so many people to rethink how and when they use their cars. Including me.

She rabbits on a bit about helmets, hair and lights, but then adds :

So now I'm about to enter a whole new phase of commuting. Well, at least I hope I can stay committed to biking it to work as often as possible. I figure that even if I relent on one or two days a week, I know I'll be doing more than I was when I was driving to work every day.

She'll save herself a fortune, and it's good for all of us. She finishes with this hopeful paragraph :

I just hope this petrol crisis has the right kind of outcomes. More personal responsibility, firmer buttocks and some real government vision on public transport and sustainable energy supplies — not a mad dash to keep plundering the planet's ever-diminishing fuel resources.

It's interesting that while many of 'us' see this coming, our govenments seem so keen to hide the scary truth from the great unwashed suburban mcmansionites.  Rudd, Brumby etc must be aware of peak oil and the issues it's bringing to the fore, very very quickly.  You could kinda forgive Howard, he was so blinded by obedience and cowtowing to the yanks that he couldn't see the elephant in the room (and with the baby bonus?  MORE people?  BRILLIANT! That's just what we need ... not enough water, not enough fuel, hey! let's encourage the punters to breed more, that'll be a great solution ...) But Rudd knows about peak oil and he knows what's coming (or his advisors are totally stupid).  What's happening in Oz at a government level to reduce the harm?  More of the same? It won't work, Kevin.

From Cyclingnews.com today, the good news is Saris are updating the Powertap SL 2.4's to use full ANT+Sport wireless (previously only ANT with their own propriatory protocol).  This means that you'll be able to use a PT hub with a Garmin 705, Qranium etc.  They'll be releasing an update to the older PT SL 2.4's to talk ANT+Sport 'soon'.

They've also seen some sense and got one with a steel freehub, so no more dig in.

Read about it here.

Looks like they're also throwing down the gauntet at Kurt Kinetic with an updated line of trainers.  Their older Fluid 2 is inferior to the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, I wonder how the new one will go?  I'm keen to get my hands on one for a look and a play. They do say 'the PowerBeam Pro resistance unit offers sustained resistance of over 1300W', so reading between the lines it's not a sprinters toy (1300 watts? pah!), but for enduros, maybe it's competitive with the KKRM or some of the TACX mag trainers.

In other news, Nath and I will be at DISC tonight for our first races since last summer.  No promises of any sort of form, I expect to be flat and slow, especially as I have a strength session to do this afternoon before I head out to DISC.

Tonight, despite a few regulars being missing, we had 22 people attend our spin session at the Blackburn velodrome.  This is a new record, I'm glad I made a big bolla sauce and brought extra pasta this week, as no-one went hungry at the end of the night.  We had a slight problem with missing whiteboard markers, but thanks to Alex, that was quickly sorted.

We must be doing something right, more people keep coming and they keep coming back.  Compared to last year, where we had an average of 8 or 9 per session, this growth is amazing.  I'm not counting myself and Nathan as we're coaching the session, but also doing the 'sprinters stream' which is a 40 minute block, while the enduros generally suffer for 90 minutes.  Nath and I are tagging at half time, with him taking the warm up and I take the main body of the session, and we do our ergo sets when the other is looking after the session attendees.

I'm amazed by how well it's all going.  So far the Sunday DISC sessions have been sustainable, they're just at break-even point and we have a good core of trackies who make it regularly, it's not growing as quickly as Spin, but it's growing and we're happy with it so far.

In other news, my new weight training shoes arrived, and I was keen to use them, squatting (full) 3 x 10 @ 130kg (2 mins recovery between sets), then a couple of sets of jump squats (2 x 10 @ 90kg, 2 mins recovery), then some very feeble chinups and finishing with lunges.  The reason for the 3 x 10 for the full squats is that I'm still finding my limits.  I can 1/4 squat 5 x 210kg, but full squats are harder and I wasn't sure where to start.  Once I find some sort of limit the reps will drop and the sets will increase to work on strength.  This fairly hard leg session did steal a bit of thunder from my ergo set at Spin, peak power was down at 1318 watts from last week's PB of 1348, and I was stuffed for the last 15 seconds of our 45 second HCLR's (on the 2, quick, find HRMax!) so my power dropped away quite quickly during those efforts.

For anyone interested, here's my graph from Cycling Peaks

To make sense of it, what we did tonight was :

1. 10 min E1 warmup
2. 2 x 10s big gear slow start sprint on the 5 (the two big peaks, this is where we're hitting Pmax)
3. 5 x 10s sprint on the minute, these are in a medium gear from a rolling start
4. 5 min E1 recovery
5. 2 x 45s HCLR on the two
6. E1 warmdown

And that's the sprint session for the night. I wish we had some way to incorporate weight training and non-power work (the track bike has a Polar S720 and a speed sender so I get time, HR and speed, but not the great god, watts!) completely into Cycling Peaks. My charts for TSS etc are feeble, but it's not because I'm not training! 

Finally (I can't sleep for hours after running Spin ...) my accountant says I'm getting a tax refund for '06-'07 which I did not expect, so I might be able to spring for a good video camera to use for the Summer Sprint Series and for pedaling and weight training analysis.  I'm looking at a Sony VX2100 which is a good quality camera with all the fruit as recommended to me by Nick Bird from Media Production House/Waterbyrd Filmz.

Wikipedia defines hero as

A hero (from Greek ἥρως hērōs^[1]), in Greek mythology and folklore, was originally a demigod, the offspring of a mortal and a deity,^[2] their cult being one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion.

Later, hero (male) and heroine (female) came to refer to characters that, in the face of danger and adversity or from a position of weakness, display courage and the will for self-sacrifice, that is, heroism, for some greater good, originally of martial courage or excellence but extended to more general moral excellence.

What do we use heros for?  Inspiration I think.  So who, or what, inspires us? Lance Armstrong?  Sure, he fits the classical definition, adversity, certainly he had to overcome cancer, which is one of the biggest hurdles anyone could overcome and that's something many of us have been close to in some form or other. Lance represents hope, survival and the will to sieze the day. I'm still wearing my Livestrong band. I don't expect I'll ever stop doing so.

But anyone 'real'?  I think so.  I'm not inspired by Cadel Evans or Ryan Bailey or Anna Meares, because they're not people I can really relate to. They're born gifted athletes, and I have much respect and admiration for them, and I'm a fan, when Anna set that blistering time at Vodafone on Thursday last week I had a lump in my throat and couldn't stop cheering her on, and watching Ryan Bailey kick so hard it's almost inhuman to win sprints is incredible to watch, Cadel's endurance and courage ... Amazing stuff, but it's far removed from where I am.

The people I work with, those of us not born with genetic advantages that put us miles ahead before we start, but those for whom finishing mid-field in a D grade tour is a major achievement, for those who being promoted to B grade is the highlight of their cycling, for those who started off tootling on hybrids who can now rattle off a 100km ride without drama, or who have had serious injuries but who commit to taking the risk of training and aiming for goals, and putting everything they can into achieving those goals.  You all know who you are, you're my inspiration.  Thankyou.

It's been a long time coming (I think over a year) but we're finally almost ready to get the aboc skinsuits done.

Rowbust have got a PDF template for me, and I've been hacking away with Illustrator to come up with a design roughly based on Richard Grace's suggestion, pictured on the left.

We're at the stage of firing around drafts, the current (v2) draft is a pattern, so you'll need to do some mental jigsaw rearrangements to visualise the suit, but here we go :

The bottom half :

I hope to have a test print of this in the next week or so and then we'll take orders.  I will need a minimum of 10 to get an order in. I expect they'll be around $160 for the suit. Expressions of interest? email me!

Nick and Eleanor from Waterbyrd Filmz have just released a promo video for Blackburn.  Check it out (tip: watch the high res version) :

A selection of the best shots we got from Revolution 3 are on Cyclingnews.com. Check it out here.