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One of my resolutions for 2012 is to resume regular entries in this blog. Today I got up rather anxious from various stresses at home and work. I drove to the gym and decided to ride a hard spin for 20 minutes, a typical workout I usually do once or twice a week. It doesn’t take long and it keeps me at my threshold power and heartrate. I don’t usually do this more than once a week during the off-season, but have been using it more frequently lately, partly to burn off stress.
My power numbers have been steadily rising since December, from 238 watts to 251 to 253 last Thursday. Not far from my best ever of 257. I wasn’t feeling very strong this morning. I’d only managed 245 on Tuesday this week. Two days wasn’t much rest. On the other hand, sometimes you get on a roll. I decided to do the first 5 minutes very hard and see what happened. Either my legs would give out or I would make a try at the record.
I spent 10 minutes warming up at an ever harder pace. Then I began my 20-minute torture. The first few minutes are the worst. My legs aren’t stretched out yet and it really hurts. Sometimes the hurt gets the better of me and sometimes I seem to find more smoothness as time goes on. I made it through the first five minutes at 76 kcal, just one kcal behind a pace to match the 257 watt record for 20 minutes. I reached the halfway point at 152 kcal, one kcal better than my previous record for the first 10 minutes. Either I was challenging for a new record or I’d blow up soon.
I passed the 15-minute mark with a 77 kcal reading for the third five-minute block, so I was getting faster. I sprinted the last minute and finished the last five-minute leg at a record 80 kcal. My total of 309 kcal (which translates to 258 watts) was a new high and my last half of 157 kcal tied the previous high.
Riding well indoors is not a perfect predictor of riding outdoors. But a 258-watt effort for 20 minutes is impressive for me. It is exactly the same reading as for my best climb of Fox Gap in Pennsylvania. It compares with readings I get during the Whiteface Mountain uphill bike race.
Riding indoors requires a lot of internal motivation. On the other hand, there are fewer distractions, such as traffic lights, passing cars and potholes.
About all I can say is, I am in good shape for Groundhog Day. I hope I’m not burning out. There is a fine line there.
Jud
For the past 10 years or so, I have structured my riding plans for each year around a key goal or two. Whether it was the 100-mile, 10,000 elevation gain Hillier Than Thou time trial in September, the 12 percent, 8-mile climb of Mt. Washington in August, or a special event like the PA 1200k or the 400-mile hillfest of Quadzilla, my goals were clear and my training focused on them.
Now my life is more fractured and I have responsibilities to my family that don’t allow as much scheduling flexibility. I am scaling down my goals for 2012. I now plan a full brevet series and and a series of other rides, including the Whiteface Mountain race and possible some centuries. I intend to stay in good shape, though I probably won’t have the edge of some previous years.
Frankly, the most important thing is that I’m still on the bike enjoying myself after more than 80,000 lifetime miles in the saddle.
Jud
I will probably fall just short of 5,000 miles for the year, quite a large total of miles on a bike by almost any measure. But for me, it’s the lowest total in nine years. In fact, the last time I did not reach at least 5600 miles was in 2002, the year before I started randonneuring.
This year, family and work issues combined to make it impossible to spend as much time on the bike as before. But comparatively speaking, I still rode a lot. The two previous years, 2009 and 2010, I had finished with about 7200 miles each, close to my all-time high. So the drop was about 30 percent.
My family and work issues look like they will continue into 2012. But I’m still exercising 5-7 hours per week, even through December. I’m lifting weights and running twice a week and spending 3-4 workouts on the bike, half indoor and half outside. I credit my exercise with making a major contribution to my physical and mental health.
Not having a major goal in 2011 no doubt took some of the edge off my fitness, as did the lower mileage total. I probably peaked in mid-August, with the PA 200k which I finished in 8:45, only 16 minutes off my best ever time even though I took about a 15-minute wrong turn up a hill. My actual wattage average for that ride was 161, which was third for any 200k I rode. I did a full brevet series for the third straight year and sixth year overall.
I’ll turn 55 next spring, old enough to qualify for the senior specials at Denny’s. With some careful riding, a little luck and good health, I hope to continue this sport that I love, but I may slow down and cut back a little. The superlong brevets, say 1000k and higher, take a big toll. I have done three of them and each one took months to get over physically. Maybe scaling back a little isn’t such a bad idea.
Jud
I’m spending a lot of time at home now on weekends, taking care of various new responsibilities. That means less time for riding a bike and no time for longer brevets. If I wind up with five hours a week of exercise total, including two days of weight training, that’s about average now.
Surprisingly, my power numbers are reasonably high, despite the decreased workload. Last week I averaged 455 watts for one minute, which was my highest total in more than a year. With the cold weather coming, I was going to cut down any way, so it won’t feel that different for the next few months. Hopefully, my responsibilities will lessen in the spring. If not, I’ll learn how to adjust.
The recent election for Randonneurs USA board members has featured a lively discussion on brevet safety. Some people advocate keeping statistics about how safe or dangerous our sport is, or having RUSA keep them. While there may be some dispute over the relative risk of brevet riding compared with other pursuits, such as driving a car, walking down a street or flying in a commercial airliner, anyone who has ridden one of the longer brevets has probably seen or experienced first-hand some elements of sleep deprivation. There can be no doubt that sleep deprivation has a negative effect on safety for those operating vehicles, motored or not, on the highway.
Perhaps because of the notoriously long time it takes to get into and out of controles, Paris-Brest-Paris seems to have more than its share of sleep deprived riders. From my own experience in PBP 2007, I recall one rider who was caught about 900k into the ride riding in the wrong direction, toward Brest instead of Paris. Many of my fellow riders by the last 300k looked like zombies. Many of the accounts this year give the same description.
Michael Breus, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist who writes a blog called “Sleep Well” on webmd.com, observed in a July 28, 2011 posting, a few weeks before PBP, that extreme sports can lead to extreme sleep deprivation. He used the Race Across America as a prime example, citing a report that this year’s winner, Christopf Strasser, averaged one hour of sleep for the eight days it took him to cross the country. Strasser was quoted as saying that, by the end of the race, he did not know why he was riding.
We randonneurs debate a lot of safety issues, such as whether to use rearview mirrors or fenders, but we cannot seriously question the added risk that riding without sleep for 24 hours or more causes. I have experienced first-hand the hallucinations and irrational thought processes that come with prolonged lack of sleep. Motor coordinator suffers too. Dr. Breus suggests there is even evidence of increased risk of heart attack.
Read this description of sleep deprivation, from webmd.com:
“Many studies make it clear that sleep deprivation is dangerous. Sleep-deprived people who are tested by using a driving simulator or by performing a hand-eye coordination task perform as badly as or worse than those who are intoxicated.”
“Driver fatigue is responsible for an estimated 56,000 motor vehicle accidents and 1,500 deaths each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Since drowsiness is the brain’s last step before falling asleep, driving while drowsy can — and often does — lead to disaster. Caffeine and other stimulants cannot overcome the effects of severe sleep deprivation.”
“The National Sleep Foundation says that if you:
“have trouble keeping your eyes focused
can’t stop yawning
can’t remember driving the last few miles”
“you are probably too drowsy to drive safely.”
Think about that advice the next time you start to feel drowsy on a bike (or behind the wheel of a car driving home from a brevet). Having trouble keeping your eyes focused? Can’t stop yawning? Don’t remember the last few miles? Then get off the bike. Pull the car over. Take a nap.
One of my riding buddies is a cardiologist. He has told me many times that he doesn’t think that riding 1200k on a few hours sleep is doing anyone very much good. In fact, he thinks that the human body is not capable of handling that kind of stress for that long. He didn’t cite me studies or other data, but he is a respected practictioner who reads the literature.
Most people, according to the prevailing wisdom among doctors, need between 6 and 8 hours of sleep each night. Most riders could not finish most 600k rides in the required 40 hours if they had to take a six-hour sleep break in the middle. Only the lucky few fast riders have that luxury.
The only way to ensure adequate time for sleep for longer brevets (those that last 600k and longer) would be to include a required sleep stop (or sleep stops) each night, with a corresponding extension of the finishing times to accommodate this. RAAM, in fact, has experimented with a two-tiered system where riders could opt for riding with required sleep breaks or not. It didn’t seem to catch on.
I suspect that instituting required overnight sleep periods would encounter resistance in our sport, too. But the more I learn about the subject of sleep deprivation, and the more I see what it does to randonneurs on long rides, the more I think it is an important, maybe essential, step. There is a line we cross, where the risk becomes too great to continue. In my opinion, sleep deprived riders cross that line.
Jud
I am sitting in my living room at the laptop, my smart phone on the small table to my right. Every few minutes, my smart phone beeps, signifying another email. Nearly all of them are from members of my local riding group, the Cyclepaths, to congratulate my good friends and riding companions Shane B. and Roy Y., who have just completed Paris-Brest-Paris. Well done, guys.
For those who haven’t attempted PBP, or any 1200k event, for that matter, the pats on the back, the expressions of awe at the accomplishment of riding 750 miles in less than four days, seem well-deserved. And they certainly are. Roy and Shane may not think so, given the prodigious efforts that they made to finish, but they are probably fortunate in some respects, in that they are fast riders who, barring physical or mechanical issues, can ride quickly enough to put time in the bank for sleep.
Where PBP becomes an even more punishing test of endurance is for the slower riders who cannot get much sleep. Roy and Shane only got 8-9 hours of sleep on this ride. But that is probably average or even more than average for PBP participants. Sleep deprivation is rampant in the PBP field and is a prime cause of abandonment. In the 64 hours or so I rode in PBP 2007 before dropping out between Fougeres and Villains de Juhal, I got exactly 2 hours, which I’m sure played a big role in the Shermer’s Neck that caused me to drop out.
Examine the rider tracking on the PBP website. You will see PBP riders who are right at the controle closing times at each controle, caught in a vicious circle where they need sleep in order to ride faster to get time for more sleep, Yet some people seem to survive on almost no sleep (not me, nor most riders, I suspect). Some get little bits here and there and somehow endure. Many riders somehow hang on for days on the verge of abandonment, then miraculously make it to the finish in time.
This is not to diminish the efforts of those who fail. I was one of them. It’s more to say that finishing an event like this, which is so hard, and so long, and so painful (especially to the places on your body that contact the bike, such as hands, feet and butt) is proof of a remarkably tough inner spirit as much as it is of strong legs. The gifted and swift riders who dominate the slower brevets are often matched or surpassed by the slow pokes on the really long ones. Mind eventually trumps body, it seems.
It really is true, that old piece of randonneuring advice. Just keep the cranks turning. Otherwise, you will never know how far you could have gone.
Jud
A power meter is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, it can be very flattering to watch your power readings rise, as your conditioning program produces tangible results. That happened to me last year at this time, when I was trying (and basically succeeding) in peaking for the August 2011 Quadzilla ride in the Finger Lakes of N.Y. and again in October 2009 when I successfully completed the very challenging Endless Mountains 1240k.
This year, having dropped my goals of PBP and Hillier Than Thou, I spent May through most of July without any real goals, other than to ride a lot and have a good time. My power numbers suffered. But last week I got the word that Hillier Than Thou will take place September 18th after all, so I have quickly designed an abbreviated training session.
As part of that plan, yesterday I rode the Hawks Nest 200k out of Water Gap, PA. This ride for me had two purposes: First, I wanted to see what wattage I could average for 200k. Last year at about this time, on July 31, 2010, I had my second best 200k ever in terms of power, averaging 168 watts regular and 191 watts normalized power. The regular power number was second only to the 171 watts on a PA 200k back on May 27, 2006.
This year my power numbers on two previous 200ks were not outstanding, but there were reasons for that. I did the Nockamixon 200k permanent back in March, clearly not the height of the cycling season here, and averaged 134/177. Then very recently, I did the Bear Mountain 200k on July 31st and averaged 125/174. There, too, I was riding with a group, waiting for stragglers and using the course as a series of hill climbing intervals.
The Hawks Nest Course was 95 percent the same as last year, so it would be a good test of fitness, five weeks before the Hillier event. I finished it with a 161 average wattage regular power and 185 watts normalized power. That was approximately 4 percent lower than last year’s levels, but far ahead of the earlier 200ks this year. My time of 8:45 was comparable to last year’s 8:31, especially when you subtract 10-12 minutes for an extra climb I did by missing a turn. Take away the first very hilly section of 35 miles, where my power numbers were 178/205 and I actually had a slight negative split for the last 90 miles of so (151/175 compared with 156/175).
Riding for power is very different than riding for time. Riding for time, you want to conserve energy and pool resources. Than means riding with a fast group, if possible, and drafting others, rather than spending a long time in the wind at the front. Riding for power, however, is best done alone, into the wind. Drafting will only lower your numbers.
The hardest part of riding for power, I think, is mentally forcing yourself to keep the cranks turning at an aggressive rate. Your legs protest, too, but I think it’s concentration that gives out before muscles. I managed to keep my power up near the end by focusing on finishing with an average of 160 watts or above. This represents only the third 200k where I have ever been able to do that. I think my new goal of Hillier had a lot to do with my willingness to gut things out.
To me, riding a bicycle is fun for its own sake and for the companionship of other riders. I don’t need the added satisfaction of completing a century, a 200k or a 1200k, for that matter. But I like a challenge and meeting a tough goal is icing on the cake.
Goals are not essential for me, but they spice up my riding. Once I have a challenging goal, the whole warm weather cycling season becomes a kind of build up to the goal, then a cool down following it. Starting in 2001, when I first vowed to someday climb Fiddler’s Elbow Road, which I achieved the following year, I have pretty much two goals every year. My annual goal is to finish the Hillier Than Thou race in under eight hours. Then each year I have one other goal.
This year I have only one goal, and my training season is only about six weeks, instead of 10-12, but I think I’m on the right track.
Jud
This was my third intensity/build week on my abbreviated training for Hillier. I don’t have much time to ride during the week so I’ve been working hard at an hour spin class each Tuesday. It seems to help. Next week is a rest week, cutting way down on volume, after three weeks of doing 200ks each weekend. I’ll have two more high intensity/high volume weeks, followed by a tapering down week and then the event itself.
-J
Riding Behind Joe K. on the first leg of the Princeton-Belmar-Princeton 200k Permanent, originally uploaded by Shane Beake.
I joined a group of seven randonneurs Saturday on PBP. No, not that PBP. This is called Princeton-Belmar-Princeton, a very flat permanent ride owned by Paul S. This was the second time I have completed this permanent and we all got around the course in a very respectable 9:21.
This was exactly two hours faster than my time for the much hillier Bear Mountain 200k last week.I did not have power meter numbers for the PBP permanent because I was riding my 39-year-old Atala. I purchased this bicycle from Stuyvesant Bicycle on 14th Street in Manhattan in 1972. It was my first derailleur bicycle and I was 15 years old.
Five years later, in 1977, I rode it across the country with an American Youth Hostels group. This bicycle and I go back a long way.The bike has been repainted blue (from the original white) and now has an eight cog cluster on the back instead of the original five cogs. The lower riding position is a little more aerodynamic than the more upright setup I have on my Trek 5200. The lower setup doesn’t work well on the longer brevets, but does on the flatter, shorter rides.
The group included several people who are tuning up for the big PBP in France later this month, such as Shane B., Christine N., and Joe K. Good luck guys. I’ll be following your progress with great interest. We also had Al B., Rick L. and Dawn E. It was a very cooperative and friendly group. People went off the front here and there, but nobody was dropped off the back for very long.
It’s been a pretty good week for riding for me. There was a good climb of Bear Mountain last Sunday. Last Saturday I rode a B ride with the Western Jersey Wheelmen. As always, there were lots of hills. I decided to test myself on Lindbergh Road, a familiar climb to me. I later found my five-minute average was 305 watts, just one watt below the highest reading I’ve had on that climb and only two watts lower than my season high on Adamic Hill Road.
However, the Adamic climb was done in March and the 307 watts is far below my season five-minute highs for 2006 (323 watts), 2007 (333 watts), 2008 (339 watts), 2009 (336 watts) and 2010 (324 watts). So this Friday, I went on on my test course, otherwise known as Dutchtown-Zion Road in the Sourlands.I had tried this climb in June and was very disappointed with my 304 watt average for five minutes. I wanted to see if I’d gotten stronger. My strategy was to go very hard for the first half of the climb and then try to hang on at the end where the road gets steeper. This might sound counter-intuitive and likely to lead to blowing up before the end. But I find that the tendency on flatter sections is to ease up and on the steeper sections it’s easier to maintain power, even when fatigued.
I finished the climb with an average five-minute wattage of 323. This reading was especially encouraging, because my cogs are worn and my chain slipped twice on the lower section, breaking my rhythm and probably costing me a few watts on my average. This reading was tied for sixth best ever. Of my top 1o five-minute readings, five of them have now been on Dutchtown-Zion Road.
The best news of all this week was the return of Hillier Than Thou, which will be held on September 18th. I now have to come up with a training plan, which I will discuss in a later post.
Jud
Before the start, Len Z. and I discuss our more mellow approach to riding (photo by Christine Newman)
The NYCk 200k is not just a classic brevet. It is one of my favorite bicycle rides, period. And the 2011 edition was perhaps my favorite ride of the course of the four that I’ve done.
The Bear Mountain climb is a little less than five miles, starting from the base at the Hudson River past the right turn onto Frances Perkins Drive to the top and its inspiring views of the Catskills. The grade is probably 6-7 percent, nothing terribly steep. But it usually takes a half an hour or more to climb. A lot of the later section is out in the open.
This year I rode the NYC 200k with fellow Cyclepaths club members William E. and Mitch M. We deliberately tried to conserve our energy in the 40 miles before the big climb. For that reason, perhaps, and maybe because I used a slightly lower gear, I felt more comfortable on the ascent.
I managed to get into a good rhythm and actually felt reasonably good on the last section up Perkins, where I had typically faded in the past. My power meter numbers back this up.
All in all, I did my fastest climb of Bear Mountain, finishing the whole thing in 28:53. The power numbers were much better than in the climb I did with Shane and Bob a month ago. My 20-minute power, for example, was 235 watts this time, compared with 202 then.
I think my climbing form has improved a big lately. I climbed Lindbergh generating 305 watts for five minutes, one watt less than the highest reading for that climb in New Jersey’s Sourlands ridge.
My goal-less summer is not quite goal-less, either. I’m planning on doing a couple of centuries before I’m done, maybe one or two at a fast pace, depending upon how the rides go. I’m actually enjoying the mellower me.
In the NYC 200k, William and Mitch rode the whole way with me and seemed to enjoy themselves, too. We were joined by Ted from Connecticut and later Zach from New York. Even the final climb up Churchill at the end, always an unwelcome finish, seemed more manageable. I actually recorded my highest 2-minute power reading, 319 watts, up that climb.
Pacing was a lot better for William and Mitch this year. Using my power readings, last year we reached the controle in Stony Point at mile 35 at an average 137 watts. We averaged only 107 watts the last 90 miles. This year we breezed into that control averaging only 120 watts, but finished the rest of the ride with an average of 129 watts. Clearly, we left something in the tank this time.
We finished the ride in 11:21, an hour faster than last year, when William and Mitch struggled in the heat and not having low enough gears. Experience counts for a lot on brevets, of course. And there is something transforming about a beautiful ride on a nice summer day.
Jud
Having already completed the PA 600k three weeks ago, and having completed a full Super Randonneur series with the NJ 400k two weeks ago, I had little incentive to ride the NJ 600k this weekend. Instead, I wanted to do a long, hilly club ride.
The weather forecast for this morning was not promising, calling for a better than even chance of showers or thundershowers. Indeed, the radar map on weather.com showed some heavy rain to the west, in Eastern Pennsylvania. So I scrapped the idea of riding in the hills with the Western Jersey Wheelmen, to the west of me, and opted for the Princeton Freewheelers, to the south.
Now I do about a ride a month with the PFW. Their terrain in central New Jersey tends to be flat to rolling and so their faster rides tend to very fast, pacelining rides. I’m not much of a sprinter and I tend to ride better on hills, relatively speaking, than on the flats. But I think of the PFW rides as good training for riding in groups and increasing my cruising speed.
My lower power numbers this spring have caused me to struggle to keep up with the PFW B-plus groups that I usually choose. On April 10th I rode with a Sunday afternoon B-plus group and got dropped and ended up doing the last 10 miles alone. Then on May 30th, Memorial Day, I got dropped again three times on a B-plus ride, the third time benefitting from Ron A., an old randonneuring friend, who towed me most of the last 10 miles or so.
This morning I had a choice: I could try a third time to ride with the B-plus group, led by Ed P., and risk getting dropped a third time, or I could simply join the B group, which is about 2 mph slower, averaging 15-16 mph instead of 17-18. Nearly always up for a challenge, I tried the B-plus group, but I vowed to conserve energy to avoid getting dropped.
My weight has hovered at just over 160 pounds for the last month or so, which makes my climbing better. But my overall power is down about 15 percent, which makes me especially susceptible to getting dropped on the flats. I vowed to take it relatively easy on the hills, to catch my breath, so I would be ready for those dreaded power surges on the flats.
I tend to like a smooth, steady pace, but pacelining rides often are anything but. Each person who takes the front seems to have his/her own riding pace, with a relatively relaxed pace followed by a maniacal surge. Fortunately, the surges were more manageable today.
Equally important, I resisted the urge to take any pulls at the front. I feel a moral obligation to take pulls during rides, as I feel like a freeloader otherwise. But this time I knew that taking pulls could cause me to get dropped, as I would be approaching my limits. Again I was fortunate, for of the 10 or so riders, half of them did almost all of the pulling and I was able to discretely drop to the back when the rotation caused me to be two or three riders from the front.
For me, a key part of not getting dropped in a paceline is focus. You have to adjust to nearly constant changes in pacing and road conditions. That means if your attention wanders a gap can form at the most inopportune time. And if the gap is right in front of you, you suddenly are taking a pull, wether you like it or not. As much as possible, I found another wheel to follow.
To my delight, I was able to stay with the group the entire ride, even as we approached a 20 mph average at the end, aided by a tailwind. I had an overall average of 20.4 mph for the first two hours of the 46-mile ride, my second highest ever and highest in nearly five years. That did not, however, mean that it was one of my strongest rides, just one of my smartest.
My regular and normalized power numbers this morning — 170 watts regular and 203 normalized — were typical for a flat PFW B-plus ride for me. Indeed, my numbers for the April ride (173/201) and May (168/199) ride were very similar. But I averaged only 18.6 mph in the April ride and 19.0 in the one in May. The difference was in the pulls I took on those rides and in the additional shelter from the wind I took today.
So I proved to myself that I can still keep up with the PFW B-plus group, if I follow other wheels and stay off the front. But I like to contribute to the pulling. So I think next time I will take a couple of pulls and see what happens. What’s the worst that can happen? Getting dropped again?
Jud
I am on the first week of a four-week intensity building phase, what I call the build/intensity period. I was able to ride an hour on the spinner at close to my red zone level on Thursday and ride a fast flat ride this morning. I injured my back in the weight room Monday so I lost my Tuesday intense spinner workout. Normally in the build period I like to get three intense rides a week. Right now my only goal is doing well at the Princeton Freewheelers century ride in early August. I’m trying to build back my power and speed. My two earlier goals, PBP and Hillier Than Thou, are not possible this year.
-J
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