As part of some cross-training I hit the local pool for a splash today.  I used to swim quite a bit, played waterpolo etc .. but hadn't been in the pool for some time - at least 6 months, and that was a one-off!

I took it pretty easy, 500m cruising, then I did some 25m sprint|25m cruise efforts (6 of) and then warmed down with 200m cruising.  About 30 mins all up in the pool. It felt pretty good!

I've been working on some promo cards for the 2008-2009 Blackburn track racing, to compliment the Bontrager Summer Sprint Series cards we did a month or two ago.  Hopefully I'll get them finalised on Friday this week and then we'll get them for next week. The BSSS cards look like this

I spent most of the weekend up at Mt Sterling lapping up some really good snowfall, we skied up to Bluff Spur Hut and camped overnight (we cheated, and used the hut for cooking, but we did sleep in our tent on the snow this time!), and spent a bit of time playing on the summit in dry powder snow .. beautiful ... but I was back in time to run the DISC session on Sunday (just!).

On Saturday Shane took out in convincing style his time trial.  I don't yet have details, but by his report he 'smashed it', which is great!

I was stuffed from the weekend's ski-ing and felt dead during the warmup on Sunday at DISC, so decided to just run the session, I wouldn't get any quality out of it.  As we had a small turnout we varied the program a bit and the troops did some pursuits and a few mini scratch races with the emphasis on tactical experiments and skills.  Not that it was easy, they will all have slept well last night, but it was more focussed on racecraft than pure fitness.  As we're getting closer to summer(!) it's time to start integrating more tactical and race-specific work into training.

It's a bit of a fairytale, 7 months ago Anna Meares was laid up with broken bones in her back after a crash at the LA round of the World Cup.

Today she's the 2008 Olympic silver medalist in the one remaining track sprint event for female riders after her favorite event was removed from the Olympics (500m ITT) which she was the Olympic gold medalist in 2004 and world record holder.

What an incredible, inspiring and amazing comeback from that injury.

We remember her qualifying for the Australian team back at Revolution 3 at Vodafone.

And with the Blackburn girls

Anna, you rock!

Clothing companies, coaching manuals, riders, coaches ... all talking about lactic acid.

Get this:

There is no lactic acid in the human body. It's a MYTH! It's WRONG!

From the article on it in wikipedia :

• oxidation to pyruvate by well-oxygenated muscle cells which is then directly used to fuel the citric acid cycle
• conversion to glucose via the Cori cycle in the liver through the process of gluconeogenesis.

So if someone starts talking about how their wondergarment reduces lactic acid buildup, or how their magic drink helps the body flush it out post exercise etc... You know they're full of something, because there's no lactic acid there in the first place.

Richard Grace and I went away for the weekend, leaving on Friday to spend two nights up at Mt Sterling, for some much-needed holiday and some time on the snow and the last trip in his old Landrover S3 'Adventure Truck' before he gets a new car.  Those of you that haven't done it, XC ski-ing is great cross-training for enduro cyclists, but for sprinters, it's probably not so useful, but it is a lot of fun and you have to 'earn your turns'.  Which is to say that to ski downhill, first you have to ski uphill.

TBJ is at the intersection of Sterling Rd and Circuit Rd

It's here :

View Larger Map

We skied up from there on Friday in a reasonable amount of rain to the King Saddle shelter, where we decided to rather lazily pitch my tent inside the shelter (dry, out of the wind ... slack!).  Watching the rain fall and melt the snow was a bit sad, but there was a lot of snow .. so we had good hopes for the weekend.

And it was good!  Saturday was cloudy, and had intermittant snow and rainfall, we skied up to the Cricket Pitch via fork creek trail (it was quite icey and we didn't fancy the black run up Sterling Trail!), then did a long loop back to King Saddle via Baldy loop.  Very nice ... about 4-5 hours of ski-ing, and there was lots of snow.  That night a group from Ivanhoe Grammar showed up and shared the shelter with us, but they left us alone after their dinner and talks by their group leaders (15 y/o kids are gormless!).  They didn't trip over too much stuff and generally were well behaved kids.

Sunday we got up and did a loop around the circuit road as it was very very icey early on, back to King Saddle via Hut Loop, finished packing our packs and then did another run to the Machinery Shed and then down to TBJ via Baldy Loop again, for about another 4 hours on skis (the last 3 with packs).  One of the drops down Baldy loop was just perfect, nice snow, a gradient not too steep to scare me too much(!).  Down to TBJ, get changed, and get going ... except the AW won't start!  We hand crank it (try that in your Toorak Tractor!).. still won't start.  After a few more cranks it eventually starts ... and we're away! 5km before we get to Mansfield and bang ... left hand rear tyre blows out.  Oh great!  I got Rich a new jack after the last flat tyre we had over summer when we drove up to Bonnie Doon and the old jack broke, but it's not quite enough to lift the AW up high enough!  Doh.  We flag down a passing 4wd and they have a trolley jack.  5 more minutes and we're on our way again.  the AW is determined to make this a memorable last trip!

2 hours later and a very very quick stopoff at aboc HQ to grab my kit for DISC, and we're away again, I've let Nath know to run the warmup, and when I get there he's just finished it.  The enduros do a few efforts, and then it's sprinters time, and we're doing standing 1 lap efforts ... oh ... they do hurt!

Then I take the enduros for some motorpaced accelerations, and then we do flying 100's.  My first one is a dog, 7.17s or something awful, but finally I manage to break 7s after a few weeks of being stuck on 7.1's, with a 6.7s, it's way off my target of a 6.5s F100, but it's not that far off and I still don't feel like I'm hitting the startline at full speed yet, so there's plenty of room for improvement. We finish off with a take a lap grand prix and I ride the motorbike for them, as I'm pretty knackered from all the ski-ing etc.

Home via Nandos for protein and carbs and lots of extra hot sauce! Sleep in my own bed ... ahhh

A bloody good weekend!

Today I rode out to a client site and saw one other pushbike on the road the whole time.  It's a cold and windy day out in the Eastern 'Burbs and it seems everyone's inside in front of a heater.  I might chop some wood for tonight, or just put on a jumper.

We missed a lot of the track cycling at the Olympics, it looks like Ryan Bailey's burnt out, but Anna Meares is a chance to do very well, Go Anna!

I do my hard sessions on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.  The hardest sessions on Tues and Sun, the moderatly hard session on Thursday at the moment.

A Tuesday is roughly at the moment :

Powerhaus : Squats then deadlifts or lunges, some upper body strength stuff (bench, some pullups or chins or something). At the moment, for squats I'm doing 3 warmup sets (20kg, 60kg, 100kg) then 5 sets of 5 reps at a work-loading of 140kg, which takes about 20 minutes, then the other stuff, all up maybe 50 mins in the haus. I'm still getting slow linear progression in loading for squats, so I'm not past the 'novice' phase of weight training, but that's probably going to happen in the next month or so, but by then the focus will be on power, with more kettlebell stuff and olympic lifts to get more wattage happening.

Then the spin session on Tuesday night, where we do short very high intensity sprints, about 3 hours after the powerhaus session, and then some anaerobic endurance stuff to finish off the session.

I wake up on Wednesday flattened.  Rooted ... No amount of protein etc on Tues staves off Wednesday deadness!  It's a day I spend on my feet working at Cycle Science, when all I want to do is sit down and push buttons and stare blankly at a piece of plastic.

Mondays aren't so bad, although Sunday is a similar pattern, just we do sprints at DISC instead of on ergo trainers, which is odd, maybe I'm not working as hard at DISC, or maybe Wednesday is accumulated fatigue from Sunday and Tuesday? Whatever it is, Wednesdays are dead days!

I kinda thought they would, but finally spent the 2 minutes required to send an email to the Australian Strength & Conditioning people to check ... the aboc Spin Sessions I run count towards hours for my level 1 AS&C qualification.  That's very good!  It means I have the 20 hours coaching sorted, and all I need is a few more hours with Peter Cayley in at the Mermet and it's done, and I have the L1 AS&C ticket.

Excellent!

A slightly off-topic milestone today, I benchpressed 100kg (5,4 and 3 reps) in the PowerHaus.  Not much use for cycling, but I'd been working towards it as part of strength training, and there you go ... Also managed 5,5,5,5 & 4 deep squats at 140kg, so a good strength session, finished off with 3 sets of 15 kettlebell swings (20kg) and 3 sets of pullups.   I hit DISC in an hour and a half to work on power.  First, I have to replace a couple of worn cleats as a matter of importance.  Last time I left cleats for too long I pulled a cleat at full power and broke a rib or two and spent 6 weeks unable to train.  Not this time!

Today's weather is good for indoor training, I have a session in the PowerHaus to do, and then tonight's DISC session, both will be dry, but not warm. I was due to do a motorpace session with one of my riders at 6am today, but at 5, when the alarm went off, it was raining quite heavily, so a quick SMS, and back to sleep!

Yesterday was meant to be an easy 1 hour or so tootle in E1 around the local 'burbs, but I found myself out at The Basin at the foot of the 1:20.  I had to .. against my better judgement.  Time?  27:03!  Now that is a slow climb.  I did it in E2 mostly, HR around 158, and it was E3 for about 5 or so minutes of the effort, but only just, average power was around 220-240 watts but I slacked right off at the false flat and noodled that at 180 watts.  For me, E3 is over 160bpm. Ended up about 2 hours on the road, and not quite the easy ride I had planned, the final slog up the Boronia Rd hill was the icing on the cake for this lazy fat hill-phobic cyclist!

Friday I also snuck in an hour on the bike, just a tootle to Dullcaster and back to a client site, so I was lucky with the weather for my tootling days this week. I'm looking forward to tonight at DISC, indoors, dry ... no hills ...

A hard day today, I did an easy 10km tootle from a client site in Doncaster to home at midday just as a leg turning cruise, then a very hard squat and clean & jerk session in the Powerhaus.  Expecting to be down on watts tonight at spin, and my first two 10 second sprints were a bit flat, I got 1309 watts on the first effort, 1294 on the second, but I wanted more and got a little angry. Last effort, 1389 watts, a new PB by about 40 watts.  That'll do .. The rest of the night was a 5 min E3 effort and 3 x 30s high cadence efforts on the 2 minute (chundertime!).  Job done.  Sleep time ...

I want one of these.

Slap it on the roof of the house, tap it into the grid ... and the DVD player in front of the rollers and ergo trainer is running off wind (and not my wind!)

Today's Age, again ....

The headlines :

Tax breaks for cycling to work

End special deals for 4wd's (get the great big land barges OFF the road!)

Insist on fuel efficient cars

Abolish the fringe benefits tax lunacy that encorages people to drive more

I'm not so keen on the tax break, I don't think we need middle class welfare, but the argument for it is sound.

Today's Age also has an article on population.

About time a polly had the courage to bring it up, we still have too many people, not enough water etc, but at least it's on the table now.

In today's Age :

Reaping the benefits of exercise could be as simple as popping some pills, according to scientists who have found that drugs can turn mice into marathon runners - even without any training.

.

After four weeks and no training, the mice ran 44% longer than ordinary mice. "That's as much improvement as we get with regular exercise," said Dr Vihang Narkar (Vihang Narkar), lead author of the paper published in Cell.

.

But the researchers stress the results will bring no advantage to sports cheats, as blood and urine tests for the drugs have already been developed.

Uhuh.

A great thing for the general public, but more evidence that gene doping is real and coming soon to a sport near you.

I don't think this made it onto TV here, but here it is, track sprinting at its best :

While Nicko and Nath ran the DISC session on Sunday, I was up at Boonie Doon, it rained most of the weekend, which was good for the trees we planted around the gradually evolving MTB crit course I'm building (Vanders, I'm making the berm below the jump bigger!), I went for one ride before the heavens opened, from Peppin Point to the bridge, and that was luckily before it started to get really sloppy - the tyres I had on the EX8 were for hardpack, not good for very slippery wet clay.  Luckly I managed to get a foot out on the occasions that the bike decided to go whatever way it wanted to, with zero traction.  Heh ...

Looking up at Mt Sterling from the balcony at the house, I think there's some snow there, which will be good for Rich & I when we go up for a week's XC ski-ing, and I'll take some more suitable tyres.  We might do a little more snow MTB'ing for fun too.

I watched the final ITT of the Tour, and Cadel just didn't have enough left in the tank to take the race.  This year's tour lacked a lot of the excitement of last year's, the Tour has always been a soap opera of sorts, but this year it was just a bit dull.  The only really interesting stage was l'Alpe d'Huez, and even than was more because Sastre finally showed his class, not because of any really inspired riding.

When I did my S&C Level 1 course, one of the things we were told was that chances are, if we're working with strength athletes, that they're not getting enough protein.  I was a bit surprized by this, but ok ... the coach that tells me I need to eat more steak has won my heart and mind!

Yesterday the stupormarket had lots of little bits of porterhouse and rump steak, cut thick, but small (150-200 grams) quite cheap, so I bought a few, and today, I've had steak for breakfast and lunch!  Mmmmmm.  Protein is yummy! I've just done my session in the powerhouse, and tonight will be riding in to the Mermet, coaching there, doing some cleans, then riding to a mate's place afterwards.  That steak is good fuel!  I'm almost benchpressing 100kg (97.5kg, 5, 3 and 3 reps, which is getting close).  Bench isn't a terribly useful exercise for cycling, but it's still good to see improvement, it wasn't that long ago that 70kg was hard, now it's a warmup.

Peter Cayley's not in at the Mermet tonight, so I'm taking my charges in but we'll be unsupervised.  I wanted to ask him about a nutritional challenge, when you're training for strength you need to keep your food intake up (or you catabolize all that muscle you're working hard to build up ... bad!), so the challenge is, if you're in a strength or power phase of training, how do you keep body fat under control?  Sensible eating, sure, but the balance is pretty fine - I'm not in the best shape at the moment due to a combination of too much pizza and a lot of time off the bike working and coping with life's curveballs, but I need to be building strength and power at the moment.  How to address both at the same time?  A close look at most elite track sprinters shows that they're often a bit overweight, so I suspect they're erring on the side of too much, not too little, but I want to pick a few other coaches brains to see how they approach the issue.

John Nicholson's going to run the next DISC session this Sunday as I'll be up at Bonnie Doon planting trees and hacking about on the EX8, it'll be good for my people to get some exposure to his methods, especially my sprinters. If you didn't know already, Nicko's a former world champion track sprinter (1975 & 1976).  He has, you might say, some clues about track sprinting!

Firstly, I'd like like to thank everyone that came to the aboc dinner earlier this week, we had a record attendance (29 in total) to hear a fantastic talk from Stu 'V-Train' Vaughan, as he showed us his 'Cycling Journey' from 125kg couch potato to world masters pursuit champion in 4 years, by way of marathon running, cross-country ski-ing and triathalon, before Stu finally settled on bike racing as his sport.  In particular, I'd like to thank Bev who did a heap of the organising for the dinner which made my job a lot easier, and Dino for taking some photos for me.

I've had a lot of positive feedback for the dinner and Stu's talk, so thankyou V-Train for taking the time to tell us your tale.  It'll be a hard one to follow.

And to le Tour.  Wow .. CSC did what everyone expected, ah-la Lance Armstong in the past, but with a two-pronged attack in the end, with Carlos Sastre launching up l'Alp de'Huez at the very start of it, and gaining a lot of time on Cadel (and everyone else).  Cadel bogged down in a flurry of false attacks and stutters driven mainly by Valverde (being paid by CSC?) and Andy Schleck which conspired to keep the chase group's pace low (attack and recover is always slower than a tempo effort up a climb).  Sastre remarked afterwards that he knew it's faster to climb at his own pace than it is to attack and surge etc, it was unfortunate to see Evans get caught up in that, maybe he'd have been better just riding his own tempo up the climb and if he towed the rest up and they attacked him at the end, it wouldn't have mattered, he needed to limit his losses to Sastre more than he needed a stage win.  The fact that Menchov managed to get back into the bunch just by riding tempo shows that it's sometimes better to get dropped by a surge and just ride your own pace than it is to go over threshold.  Ullrich used to do that, he'd get dropped by surges, but would catch back because the surging riders would, once they settled, drop to a lower speed than Ullrich's tempo.

The final time trial on Saturday night will be a nailbiter.

It's now blurring into week three of le Tour.  Simon Gerrans has just won a stage in the Alps, Cadel's lost the yellow in what we can only hope was his bad day on the tour where he didn't look strong and the race is far from having a clear leader, with 6 riders within 50 seconds of Frank Schleck's tenous grip on the yellow jersey (everyone has a bad day on the tour).  Tonight's a rest night for the Tour, phew ... some sleep at last. The next two stages in the Alps will sort that out though.

A good article on bikes as transport in today's Age some exerpts from Chris Saliba's article, called

A bike often gets you there quicker

A recent report says that 52% of typical car trips in Australian cities are under five kilometres long. That's about a 20-minute ride. Broken down into energy costs, such a trip will set you back about 200 calories.

...

I soon learned how much fun it was whooshing along and enjoying the fresh air. I was hooked and couldn't have cared less what people thought. I now have a large basket attached to the back of my bike and can easily do all my shopping as well as commute. As far as I can see, bikes are a great positive. They save you money on petrol, burn up body fat, help the environment — and they're fun. On top of that they're very reliable and, in some situations, faster than cars.

uhuh!

Our DISC session last night ended with a few of us utterly trashed.  Need. New. Legs.