Local Hero

Last week after getting bored on the trainer I decided I would download the new sufferfest video, Local Hero. Tonight was the first time I did it and boy did it kick my ass. I was expecting it to be the cycling version of a lame workout video, and it would not be the hard. Boy was I wrong, TT with spartacus and out sprinting Thor are not easy things. You warm up with an easy cyclocross race then go to a crit where you have to do a couple accelerations to grab wheels etc, but then the real workout starts where you do 3x6minutes time trialing with Porte (easier), Millar (medium), and Cancellara. (hard). The six minutes are broken into 1 minute (7/10 100 rpm), 1 minute (7.5 100), 2 minutes (8 100+) and then back down. These kicked my ass and put the legs in the hurt zone for the rest of the video. Next, I had to do the road race which was broken into I think 5 3 minute laps with 2 minutes rest in between (I don't remember exact number of laps because the brain was fried after the tt). These laps consisted of high cadence hard stuff as well as some low cadence climbing. After doing hard 6 minuters these did not feel as hard, but I was still hammering. To finish it up you have to sprint for the win but this is not your typical 30 second sprint for the finish it last 2 minutes (build the first minute, harder for 35 seconds, then sprint with everything you have for the last 25 seconds). After the sprint I thought I was finished and had no more gas in the tank, luckily for me they decided to have a couple more sprints after. These ones were terrible and I my legs didn't want to turn the cranks anymore.

If anyone is looking for a longer, hard workout I would definitely suggest downloading Local Hero. It has been 2 hours since I completed the workout and my legs are still sore. Then again if you have troubles really pushing yourself this video may or may not work for you being that everything is perceived effort and if you want to get the most out of it you really have to push yourself.

Can't Sleep

So I have started another recovery week since they say to take an easy week every couple weeks to keep motivation high and prevent over training. Its only day two and I feel ready to hammer so I'm thinking of throwing down tomorrow during my scheduled bike. However, I hate recovery weeks. I try to cut back on how much I eat since I'm not burning as much, but this just makes me hungry 24/7. Also, I can't sleep. I don't know if I just have excess energy or what but I struggle to fall asleep at nine which then makes it hard to get up at 5 to go do an "easy" swim. O well only a couple more days till I get to hammer for another three weeks.

Tour Down Under

Yesterday was the final stage in the tour down under and marks the end of Lance Armstrong's cycling career . . .  possibly. We all know he is similar to Brett Farve and Michael Jordan with their god complexes and they never seem to actually leave, although I hear Farve has also finally retired. Congrats to Garmin-Cervelo and Cameron Meyer for holding on for the win, to bad it was all over shadowed by Lance and his drug allegations. Every site I visited this week was being blown up about Lance Armstrong and if he used drugs or not so here is what I believe. I believe Lance Armstrong did use drugs, but can you really blame anyone in the pro peleton for using them? Most of these guys have been cycling all their lives starting their pro careers in their late teens early twenties and being amateurs before that, from the cyclists I have talked to this requires about 4 hours a day or 28 hours a week of riding and this doesn't include all the time for travelling, stretching, massage, etc. This does not leave much time for getting an education or having a career other than cycling. However cycling is not as main stream as sports like basketball, football, etc. where they can afford to pay you a million dollars to sit on the bench. The money in cycling comes from winning and endorsements (that come from winning). When you are in a profession where everyone cheats, 5 of the last 6 Tour de France winners have tested positive, admitted to doping, or are currently waiting to hear (Alberto Contador), its hard to believe he is clean. This is the only thing I will write on the subject because I really don't care. I watch cycling with the view that they are all doping and that is just the way it is. I hope for lance's sake and his cancer foundation that nothing comes of the investigation, but if it does i'm sure cancer will have a new poster boy soon enough.

Its been awhile

So it been a while since I have posted anything on here, but there hasn't been to much interesting going on. My training schedule is now set and I am swimming with the masters group on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. My swimming is finally starting to come along nicely. This morning was an easy swim with the tri club and we had to do 5x200 (kick the 1st 100 swim the 2nd) and the swim was supposed to start fast and get slower. The first was 1:26 and the second was 1:25 and it felt super easy. The cycling has been going well I am now doing my long rides at Forest City Velodrome just to break up long trainer rides. I am also doing there skills and drills on Monday nights to get more "comfortable" on the track and eventually get my track 2. Running has been pretty much non existent. Birthday weekend really killed my running last week but this week it will pick up. Ran an easy 12.6k yesterday in an hour and felt good, I plan on doing a harder tempo on Friday so we will see how that goes.

Training Schedule

So the last week I have been spending more time making a training plan than actually training. Next year I am going to have to look into getting a coach because everyone you talk to and everything I read online is different from that. Do I want to do less is more? more is more? core, no core? long slow base? hammer everything? mix everything together? I've decide I'm just going to go hard and see what happens. Its going to my first season of being a "triathlete" and I believe the best way to find your limit is to go past it (doesn't always work nicely at first but I have bounced back from some bad ones . . . red feather grade 11 cough cough). I guess this is kind of the front runner in me where I would rather go out hard blow up and no I gave everything than not go hard enough and wonder what if. I'm still young and if I blow up this year I still have next year and plenty of years after that. It takes 10 years to reach your peak so I think that gives me 5 years to experiment and find what works for me and then another 5 to hammer. That will bring me to 31 and if you look at most triathletes especially long course this is prime time. I will be making the final training plan this week.

Computrainer Round 2

I killed that shit. I don't know what I was doing the first time I was on there, but it definitely wasn't cycling. This time I was 2 minutes faster and averaged 50 more watts. Time for the 10k was 17:04 which I was pretty happy with since its only the beginning of January. My left leg was still only doing about 48% of the work so I need to work on that a bit and my pedaling efficiency went down a bit. I'm going to keep hammering out some trainer rides and hopefully everything will improve when I decide to throw down again.

Back In The Swing of Things

So school has started up again and with that so does phase 2 of my base building. Similar to phase 1 with swimming 6 days, biking 3, running 3 and one day where I do a bike focused brick. I think my swimming needed the break because in the pool the last couple times I have seen a big jump in my performance. Swimming with faster people has also help with that. Hopefully I can keep improving and get down close to 1:20s. Do develop some more power I bought some larger paddles as an early birthday present. Today was the first workout with them, and it is definitely a lot harder on the shoulders. Over the break I kind of got used to the warm weather when I was able to run in shorts one day and all the snow melted allowing for one outdoor bike. Tomorrow I am doing the 10k tt on the computrainer at multisport zone so we will see if the last 4 weeks on the trainer have helped.