What Can Training With Power Do For You?

I didn't think that training with power could do much for me until I bought a PowerTap several weeks ago. Since doing so, I've discovered several things about myself that will certainly affect how I race.

First of all, my power to weight ratio sucks. Okay, well, it's decent in bursts. My 5, 10 and 20 second max power - my sprint power - is pretty high, and even though I'm a fat bugger, my power to weight for those durations isn't bad. Chalk it up to years of doing squats, and doing hard, powerful leg movements playing rugby.

Second, my five minute and twenty minute power, as measured by power to weight ratio, aren't bad. They aren't great, but I do have enough power at those intervals to be able to bridge up to a break over the course of four or five minutes, to do a two-lap move in a crit, or to stick in a long break on a flat course. So good so far.

Third, I have an enormous hole in my one minute power. It's just not that. Sadly, the one move I've done consistently in crits, is a kilo move. I've gone with guys who go a thousand meters (or about 1:15, more or less) out from the finish. That's *the one* kind of move I should not be doing. Consequently, I blow up after about 600 yards, and typically last year would get passed by twenty guys, then would pass ten or 15 on the way back in. The really good finishes I had last year, where I was setting the tempo, occurred when I started a move a couple laps out in a crit (five minute power, anybody?) or when I sat in, and didn't spring it until four hundred or five hundred yards from the end. This was *close* to what I should have been doing in races.

Fourth, do you really want to know what I should be doing? Take a look at the picture below. It shows mean maximum power on the Y axis, and time on the X axis. It's my chart from this morning's workout, which interspersed 12 seated "form sprint" accelerations from a stop, or stomps, in the middle of a 30 mile zone 1 / 2 ride.


That picture isn't too clear, but you can click on it for a bigger version.

Do you see where I drew the intersecting lines? I was going for 12-15 second efforts, not trying to keep the power up for a long period of time, just trying to accelerate sharply for 12-15. You will notice that the power starts at around 1320 watts, and hangs up over 1200, decreasing gradually, for 12-15 seconds. I could probably pull another four or 5 seconds of >1200 power out of this if I really had to. What's more, is these weren't super-peak efforts, they were hard but I was concentrating on maintaining perfect form, and I wasn't doing a standing jump, which is a bit more powerful. It is also the average power for 12 of these accelerations. My actual peak power on most of these was in the 1325 - 1350 range, with 5-10 seconds in the ~1275-1300 watt range. When I'm fresh (like after a rest week, and not in the depths of overload) and working really hard, I can pull closer to 1450 - 1500 watts for 15-18 seconds. I know this because the Cycling Peaks software shows me the power curve I rocked 3 weeks ago when I did a similar workout but had much fresher legs.

Know what that all means?

It means I'm a classic sprinter, and my most-likely-to-be-winning move is from 250 yards or so, maybe a bit longer depending on the course and the competition.

What the PowerTap has effectively indicated is that if I want to win, if I can't get into a good break a long ways out (and make use of that nice, juicy 20 minute power) then my next best bet is to sit in, pick a good wheel that goes kind of early, maybe at 600 or so, and ride that sumbitch up to within 300 yards of the finish, then jump for all I'm worth, sprint so hard my eyes bleed, I should be able to drop some people. There aren't too many Cat IVs throwing that kind of power, so I need to conserve, and then uncork it when it will do the most good. Screw the kilo moves. Not my bag, bay-bee, as the great man said. (Of course maybe this will make me a good leadout too... you never know).

Right now I'm at the tail end of Base 2 - my basebuilding. I'll have a rest week soon, then start a build period perhaps 10 days from now, during which I will begin racing in earnest for the season. I can't wait.

They say that success starts with knowing one's self. The PowerTap's harsh, unyielding eye will give you self knowledge if you admit your own ignorance and show a willingness to learn. Figuring out what your gifts are, and what your deficits are, is a pretty fair first step on that road to self knowledge, I think.

So yeah, that's one of the things the PowerTap can do for you.

μπουκάλια ύδατος

- Sunday's stage of the Giro was inspiring racing. Danilo DiLuca, who was poised to lose the maglia rosa, didn't. He attacked hard on the final climb of the day, sailing up in it in the last ten minutes. How tough was the climb? Stage winner Ricardo Rico and his Saunier Duval teammate, super domestique Leonardo Piepoli, were going so slow that the tifosi were able to walk next to them. DiLuca had been around 5 minutes back but attacked and made up a few minutes near the end, looking less than exhausted when he finished.

- You know you're a cyclist when: your wife says, "your legs look like they are deformed. You have these big thighs, and it looks like a dog took a couple bites out of them near the bottom by your knees." I'm not sure whether she thinks dog-bitten legs are attractive or not but I am pretty sure it's a sign all the training is working. I get compliments from time to time, so at least some girls must like dog-bitten legs... As for the function, I was pretty gassed on the Sunday team ride, but managed to bridge up maybe a quarter mile or more to a breakaway by working hard with one other rider, taking some mid-30 pulls on the Clara Barton. This was hard because the faster group on Clara Barton tends to go at a reasonable fast race pace. How good a bridge move was it? In Dana's words, "I looked back and wondered, 'where the hell did you come from'?" So for deformed, misshapen, dog-bitten and fatigued legs, they work pretty well.

The Existential Question

So I've been really troubled lately by a very tough question. I've been losing sleep over this. It goes to the very core of my soul, the meaning of my life. Maybe you can help me find an answer.

Assume you're being chased by zombies. You stumble into a shed, and find a chainsaw and a sawed-off 12 gauge pump shotgun. You can only take one. Which one do you take, and why?

Right now, I'm leaning toward the chainsaw. I figure if you have to take out hundreds of zombies, it might as well be fun. And what could be more fun than cutting zombies in half with a chainsaw?

Besides, a 12 gauge pump will give you a sore shoulder in no time. Whereas with the chainsaw, all you have to worry about is splatter, and there are probably some goggles in the shed. At least if the owner has any concern for safe working conditions.

*****

Be All That You Can Beeeeee...

So I'm riding down to Hains Point this morning for a couple aimless loops on the way to work, to stretch out the commute to 20 miles. Nothing special. I'm riding along in zone 1/2, just relaxing as I usually do, hands on the flats of the bars, flexed elbows, loose shoulders, and my mouth flapping wide open to breath optimally.

In the space of a second, I see a little black bug - okay it wasn't little at all it was freakin' huge - about a foot away, flying right at me. It was either a bee, or a horsefly. It goes straight into my mouth and whacks up against the back of my throat. It felt like a jelly bean. Not one of those punkass Jelly Belly tiny jelly beans, but a big, old fashioned, Brachs pellet. The impact shocked me, and I inhaled. In retrospect, this may have been a mistake. Whatever it was, the King Kong Bug went shooting down my throat. It was still very alive and felt like it was doing a dance on the way down. The jitterbug, if you must know.

I think it caught on some little flapper or valve on my esophagus, because it halted right behind my sternum, and started clawing its way back up. This was pretty awful, and it felt burn-y. I kept riding though, and contemplated taking a swig of water. I tried to cough it out but it was wayyy to far down for that. I started to heave a bit. But wait, it gets worse.

I've been struggling with a bad head/chest cold for days, and I have a raging dry cough, with the attendant burning throat/esophagus feeling. Right when the bug got to the point where it feels like there is a razor blade scraping my throat, a point just below my adam's apple, it bit or stung me.

I locked up both wheels on the bike and skidded to a stop, and began to barf immediately. Somehow, I got off the bike, and was crawling around in the grass yakking. It wasn't normal barfing - I'm a quiet barfer and usually just hurl. In this case, I was making a yowling noise, like a dog makes when it has a stick caught in its throat.

YEeeeeeaaaaaarrrrrrr! Yeeaaaaaaaaaagggggcvccckkkk! Aaaaaaaarrrrrrruuuuunnnpppppptttthhhh!

Three or four riders - commuter types from the look of them - rode by as I was crawling along throwing up the limited contents of my stomach.

After a while, I stopped vomiting. I didn't feel well, but figured I needed to keep riding. So I took a swig or two of water, rinsed out, drank another couple swigs, remounted, and started to circle Hains Point. I don't know if the bee or horsefly was dead at that point - there was still some tickling in my throat and every time there was more tickling, it made my stomach heave. And every time I breathed, or thought about the thing, it made my stomach heave. But I kept what was left in my stomach down, it settled after a bit, and I finished the ride okay and made it into work on time.

Now here's the damnedest thing (other than the commuters riding by like nothing was happening). You know how I said my throat has been killing me? Well, the sting seemed to relieve the pain. I don't know why, but it instantly cured my throat, or at least knocked out 75 or 80% of the pain I was feeling. I don't get that at all, and given a choice between feeling the sore throat all day and going through the gulp/sting/vomit cycle, I think I'd rather just deal with the sore throat... but it's an interesting side effect of the sting or bite.

I don't recommend trying it the next time you have a cold.



[Update: Holy Cow! What Sarah said. It seems the Chinese use bee stings as a remedy for a variety of ailments.

A folk remedy for treating arthritis, back pain and rheumatism for 3,000 years in China, practitioners say that such pinpointed stings can repair damaged cells, stave off bacteria and ease inflammation.

Chinese physicians apparently employ this folk remedy and believe it is effective, but admit they do not know how it works, that “there are too many unanswered questions."

Naturally, "Western-trained doctors dismiss the treatment as unscientific and dangerous."

Yeah, well, I guess I just imagined my throat feeling better after the f***ing bee sting, right? Or maybe I'm Chinese, and just didn't realize it, and susceptible to crazy Chinese folks tales. After all, I do *love* me some dim sum, and at times experience a *powerful* thirst for the mighty Tsingtao lager...

I have with the pop version of science. A key element of scientific method - y'know, the empirical search for truth - is "falsifiability" - the notion that a theory is invalid if it cannot be disproved, or falsified. Too much science gets reported as fact in the media (even the scientific media, sometimes) when in reality, the scientific "truth" is a best guess of how things work, not the absolute, final truth. Real scientific truth should be expressed as, "we believe it works thusly." Science-as-dogma is usually expressed as, "this is the truth and if you disagree with "X" you are a denier of the truth. That is religion, not science. (Not particularly good religion, BTW... good religion usually comes with a better set of arguments than "because I say so.")

Believers in science-as-dogma will say things like "bee sting treatment is unscientific and dangerous." Yet the article I linked to points out that Chinese healers have been using it for specific ailments for 3,000 years with some success, and modern Chinese doctors (MDs) are employing it with success as well, though they do not understand at all how it works.

The upshot is that there are things that we just don't know - even if we're on the science beat for the NY Times and presumptively all-knowing. It's bad science to say "we don't have an explanation for 'X' therefore X must be untrue. Or "bee sting therapy must be bad and unscientific." No, bee sting therapy isn't unscientific. If anything is unscientific here, it's the willingness of Western medicine to dismiss a potential healing treatment, simply because it doesn't fit into current scientific orthodoxy. They thought putting leaches on suppurating wounds was a disgusting and ineffective medical treatment, a holdover from the middle ages. They've recently discovered it's a great way to help cure infections and to restore circulation to damaged areas of the flesh. So much for the absolute, God's honest scientific truth of 20 years ago, that using leaches medically is bad and unscientific.

I'm not endorsing bee sting therapy, especially not for sore throats. That was a godawful experience. I'm just saying that if it works for a lot of people then we probably shouldn't reject it out of hand simply because it doesn't come pre-packaged from big Pharma to fit neatly into our little world view, where all medicines come in pill form.

To insist otherwise, to insist that our previously existing knowledge cannot possibly be superseded by others' knowledge, is supremely arrogant, and the opposite of the humble attitude toward unknown facts that good scientific work requires.]

Rest Day...

A blessed rest day, after a week's worth of grinding. I can't tell you how nice it feels to just have a stretch, change the tires on the bike, and chill out. I wanted to go for a spin at lunch but decided to just chill, let the legs rest completely, then stretch at home after work.

Nice. I'm ready to attack this week's training.

Rest doesn't just freshen up your legs, it can freshen up your mind, too.

PowerTap Geekery

The PowerTap is a bee-yatch to ride with and I'm understanding why guys who take racing seriously get better with it. The thing makes even routine rides harder. Fer instance. Today's ride from Coach Bill G. involved 50 minutes at recovery pace, 50 at aerobic pace, 40 at tempo, then cooldown. Doesn't sound bad, right? Wellll... I'll set the stage. It's my last workout of the week, the legs are a little tired, and it was 52 this morning, and it started pissing down rain just as I rolled out of Crofton. So I was cold. The recovery part was okay, but I desperately wanted to go higher than 180 watts which for me, is soft pedaling so soft that I couldn't knock dust off a butterfly's wings with it. So I cheated a little, let myself hit 200 watts on occasion, but mostly kept it right at 180 or so. And froze. My teeth were chattering.

Eventually, 50 minutes was up, I was soaked to the bone, legs numb, and it was time to go aerobic. That's roughly 200 to 240 watts. No big deal, right? Well, it is when your legs are numbed and trying to lock up, and you just turned East, into the wind. For the first 20 minutes I was grinding impossibly hard trying to get my HR up and trying to keep my effort steadily in-zone. For the next 30, I was okay. But it was hard all the way. With the PowerTap, you tend to keep an eye on the power output, and you tend not to coast very much. You notice this when transitioning from heartrate training, because the PT lets you eyeball your heartrate while you track power. You can be riding along in an aerobic zone and crank out huge watts for a couple minutes going up a hill, and your heartrate won't hit a tempo level. Likewise, you can coast or soft pedal down a very long hill and your heartrate won't drop out of the endurance zone even though you do next to no work for five minutes. With the PT... it's grind, grind grind. My downtime has decreased, on average, from around 16-17% of the time (cadence of 40 RPM or less) to around 12%.

Anyhow, after a while, it was time to go tempo. Now, since I had my heartrate visible on the PT screen along with power, I figured Coach Bill wanted me to go tempo level effort by heartrate, not power. So I had to crank out a pretty heavy level of effort to get my heartrate into the high 140's to mid 150's. To do that, I averaged 298 watts for 40 minutes, a "normalized power" of 314, with an average heartrate of just 148, 3 beats over my 'aerobic' level as Joel Friel would describe it. But because I had very little or no downtime (the constant reproach of the PowerTap forbids slacking) this was a brutal level of effort. Maybe it was my head cold, maybe it was the cold, wet weather, but it was a heavy effort, maybe a dozen or 15 watts below threshold. When I eased up to start my cool-down, snot was strung all over my face, I had a huge coughing fit, and I felt not-quite-blown, but definitely badly worked, like a sweaty, foamy horse after a hard run.

The final stats on the day were a 222 watt average power, normalized power (measures only when you are actually pushing, basically) of 260 watts, 2018 calories burned, 2.5 hours riding time, 45 miles covered, Training Stress Score of 189.1 (or .0865, which means this was only a moderately hard effort for me...) and an average heartrate of 131, peak 30 minutes of 301 watts (this is tempo, mind you, not threshold...)

What does this tell me?

I don't know. I'll get back to you when I figure it out. Alls I know right now, is it wasn't quite as hard as the Coppi Sunday ride, but the last 40 minutes were on the average harder than the Coppi ride. The PowerTap can help prevent the surges that you get on group rides, which means you can train specific holes in your powerband much more accurately and efficiently. But it also means that when you train to a weakness, you can do so much more relentlessly and methodically than doing so with a heartrate monitor. Translation into English: the PowerTap lets you hurt yourself a lot worse, a whole lot quicker, than anything else. It should translate into good race results. Either that, or the development of a really highly refined masochistic streak.

Of course there is a little more to it than that and I make light of a lot of slightly complicated but useful stuff. The two most useful things that power training can do are measuring how fit you are becoming, and how fresh you are (or how tired you are). The single-workout data and tracking makes you work hard on an ongoing basis. The cumulative data (Acute Training Load and Chronic Training Load) tell you about how and when you are getting fit, and when you need a rest. In short, you are ready to race when you are fit and fresh; you need more training when you are fresh but unfit; you need more rest when you are fit but tired. If you're fresh, you can train harder and use the PT to do that. If you're tired, you can use the PT to do recovery spins, and to let your body adapt to the overload, and grow stronger. And yes, it's easy to track those fitness and freshness levels with Cycling Peaks, a fairly straight-forward software package that helps manage power data from nearly any power metering device.

(Ahhh... non-power users are now getting a little lightbulb going on over their heads... now you see how this can make you a better racer or even a stronger recreational rider?)

More on training with power here.

Food, Glorious Food...

I'm doing a 3-4 hour basebuilding ride tomorrow morning, so you know what that means... it's Carbo Night at Jim's House! How to make sure I'm properly fueled? That's easy.

First off, carbo night actually started last night, with some Papa John's pizza. To top off the carbo tanks, you actually have to eat plenty of carbs for two days. So I ate pizza last night, and tried to not burn too much glycogen on the muffin ride. That was the start.

I had a nice lunch that was filling, but relatively low cal - California Tortilla's Havana Chicken ("lowest fat" whatever that means) and a serving of black beans. Man, I love me some black beans.

For dinner, I went upscale. I got some fresh basil, some fresh garlic (looks like the new stuff, not the stored-over-the-winter stuff!), some angel hair, and went to work. I cut the top off the bulb of garlic, wrapped it in foil, and roasted it at 400 for about 35-40 minutes. I squished the roast garlic out from about 8 of the bulbs into the food processor. I stuck about 2-3 ounces of basil leaves into the food processor, along with a generous pinch of salt and some coarse ground black pepper, and fired it up. After that was mashed into a paste, I drizzled in a half cup and then some of olive oil, and spun it up again. Mmmmmmm... molto bene. I fired up a pound of angel hair pasta, cooked it to al dente, drained it, and mixed it with my pesto sauce. I served this up with some crusty french bread, and some nice hummus with roasted red peppers and fresh minced garlic.

To top it off, I'm savoring a nice Leffe blonde ale. I'm going to make sure I hydrate a bit more before bed - the beer and all the carbs can soak up a lot of water. I'm not too worried about calories. Tomorrow's effort, even with a modest paste, will easily burn off 3,000+ calories. I'm more concerned about being properly fueled up when I *finish* the ride so I don't feel compelled to binge eat.

Yeah, food can be pretty good, especially if you take the time to make the good stuff. Total prep time for that simple pesto - about 5 minutes of work, actually. You can count the time the garlic is roasting as down time - I went and read Velo News while it was cooking.

бутылки воды

- So, no sooner due I write the post immediately below, than I fail to take my own advice and chew out idiots on the Capital Crescent and other multi-use trails. I'm riding down to the Friday Muffin Ride at about 5:50 AM, and I pass this couple who were jogging. No big deal. The trail is just about empty, so I'm cruising, doing around 25. It's a slight downhill false flat, so this is recovery pace for me, wattage-wise. About 75 yards up the trail, I notice a huge golden retriever running alongside the trail. Just then I hear the woman jogger call the dog and whistle. The dog turns, runs into the trail, sees me, and freezes. I lock up the brakes and skid to a stop, sideways. Pretty nifty on a road bike, with me riding in the drops on 700x23 tires. I hear the woman hollering up in a plaintive voice, "Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh I'm so sorry." The first thought through my mind is that if I'd hit the dog, I'd be laying there with a broken leg or worse, the dog would be dying, and she'd be on me, probably kicking me in the broken leg and screaming at me about the dog. I kind of turned around and made this really loud growling sort of noise back at her, but then went on. I figured if I stayed this was only going to end in a fistfight with the boyfriend and I didn't want that. So I didn't stop to correct the situation. Thing is, I think they may take a warning from that. Of course if they didn't, it's the Cap Crescent, and I'll see them again. When I do, if the dog is still off the leash, I'm unclipping and taking a good hard kick as I go by. Whether it's the dog, or the joggers that I kick, I haven't decided yet. But I'm leaning toward the joggers.

- Team dinner for the Coppis and prospective Coppis at Listranis tomorrow. It's the Listranis in Arlington, at 2317 Wilson Boulevard, 7:00 PM. The new kit is in so if you bought some, go get it.

- Had a nice tempo ride yesterday with the local bike shop, Family Bikes. The fitness is definitely coming but I had to burn way too many matches on the hills. We were keeping up a steady 17-18 on some of these hills I normally spin up at 12-14... Jonathan fortunately made a kinder, gentler call on the route and we headed back on sort of flat ground, rather than attempting to set the land speed record down Old Herald Harbor Road, and the Reverse Land Speed Record - that's where you see how slow I can go - going back up River Road. The paceline work was really easy, including covering Jon on a long attack then taking a pull prior to the 'townline sprint' - but the hills were brut-ile. For you power geeks, I finished with a .95 I.F., for non-power geeks that means it was a moderately hard ride for me. Nice, but way too hard for a rest week so I took today off, and have tomorrow as a regularly scheduled rest day.

- It's nice seeing the Giro di Italia under way. I really like they grand tours. They are racing, but not racing. It's clear to me that most of the ride each day isn't truly a race, unless you are going for the sprints or King of the Mountain points, or on a breakaway. The last 50 kilometers or so, that's real racing. When it gets into the serious hills, that's real racing. But, for the most part, for the men who race at this level, they are cruising along at 27 or 30 MPH fairly effortlessly for most of each day, just another day in the office. And that's the intimidating part. It's not how fast they go when the hammer drops, that is simply insane. It is how fast they go when they are just cruising along, which is warp speed. And when you see a guy drop back into the team cars, get a load of water bottles and cruise back into the pack, in a manner that looks almost effortless, you forget that he is car surfing at 35 MPH. Like the ad for the other sport says... These Guys Are Good!

Things Pissin' Me Off...

It's a rest week this week, so I'm riding recovery, keeping it under 225 watts or so, just chillin'. Naturally, I've had several really close calls. Man, that'll teach a guy to go slow.

The first one was going up the Cap Crescent, on the evening commute. I slow down behind two walkers (a mother and a young child), as two riders are coming up in the oncoming lane. There's no room, the two riders are slow rec types on hybrids. No need to be a jerk, right? I then notice a girl bombing up on a time trial bike, no drops, just aero bars. "Track, track, track" she screams. ("Track." Yes, really.) The mother jumps into the weeds, dragging the kid. I'm on the right hand edge of the paved path. Tri Girl comes flying by, mostly in my lane. I decided to gently voice my displeasure. "Way to scare the pedestrians, jerk!" (Hey, at least I didn't drop the f-bomb).

The second one was three. Riding up the Crescent today, again doing recovery, I spun up to the little bridge by the elementary school and coming down it, passed a woman and this guy I'd seen coming a long way off. I was not going hard - again, 220 watts maybe, 14-15 MPH uphill, very low effort level. So I pass the guy, he's on a black bike, bike shorts, toe clips, white cotton T-shirt, no helmet, kind of weaving. I just spin by, like I said, recovery. The guy all of a sudden switches on, pulls up next to me on the right, and accelerates, then slows, then accelerates, then slows. I'm doing like 18, easy spin, recovery, constant wattage. Finally I try to slow, then the guy slows. I see a couple bikes in the oncoming lane, they're going to make me crash out since Phred has forced me onto the yellow line, so I punch it up to 300-400 watts, for 30-40 seconds, put maybe 100 yards on the Phred, and settle back into an active recovery pace. About two minutes later, I hear pedal mashing noises and panting from behind me. It's Phrucking Phred again. So I just keep spinning because at this point, I'll be damned if I let some BTG (Bike Trail Guy) screw up my training and goad me into crushing his laboring @55. Eventually, he comes around me, in the drops, mashing for all he's worth. Shoulders bobbing right to left, got the hooks in a death grip, and he's holding his breath so hard to keep from letting me know he's panting, that he's shaking. Did I mention he waited to pull out until a couple oncoming bikes were very close? So he pulls past me, nearly causes the oncoming bikes to crash, and takes off for all he's worth. Meanwhile, I'm on the bar flats, chilling, Hr at 130, 220 watts constant. I didn't yell at him but I should of. At the time, I thought it would be pretty smart to just let him go, and head on home so he could pleasure himself thinking about how he crushed some racer dude on the Cap Crescent. I think by now he's had three or four happy endings, so I can tell the world what a complete ass the guy made of himself. I really should have called him out, and it's a screwup that I didn't.

Here's the thing. Both of these dipsticks pulled really dangerous stunts out there. Phred in particular flirted with three crashes. This is *sooo* much more dangerous than the typical crit... I'd rather go down at 30 with 10 guys going in the same direction, than get forced into the opposite lane while I'm doing 20, only to get hit by two people heading downhill at 25.

I've resolved to call more people out on their crapulent behavior on the trails. We have to share with pedestrians, other riders, and, God forbid, roller bladers. Cruising 25 in areas tightly packed with two-way bike and ped traffic... unacceptable. Buzzing down the line, splitting 4 pedestrians... unacceptable. Trying to play racer in traffic, and riding wildly and dangerously... unacceptable.

Yeah, it means I'm going to be an arrogant ass. And yes, nobody listens. At least for now. But if everybody starts taking just a little bit of care, I suspect it will help 'clean up' the trail over time. Here's the thing - I saw maybe 50 bikes on the trial tonight. Precisely two of the riders were badly behaved. We don't need to get everybody to ride better, we just need to get 5 or 10% of riders, to ride better.

We have to do it. There are no grounds for complaining about conditions, if you don't take responsibility for cleaning up your own corner of the world.

De Flessen van het water

- Iker Flores. Just because.

- Been training with the power tap for a couple weeks. On Sunday, the PT told me I was putting out threshold power, but my Hr wasn't climbing above aerobic zone. Know what that means, boys & girls? Rest week. Somebody is overreached, if not overtrained. That's cool, it's been about 6 weeks of base1, and my legs are *cooked*. The slowdown for a week is welcome.

- Iker Flores.

- Ivan Basso admitted he was doping. Hmmm... that's brave. What, he couldn't have held out until the evidence was introduced in court?

- Jon S. any my boys raced 12 Hours of Lodi and did pretty well, 3d place in the evil Singlespeed class. Pat Maslar also placed in the Solo division. Well done, boys! They're beasts, just in case you were wondering.

Bottiglie dell'Acqua

- My official entry from the excellent Racing Union's First Annual Poetry Slam contest. The rules are it has to relate to a crash you have had. This one from my first group ride with the Coppis, a Friday muffin ride where I went down on some non-existent black ice, or construction debris, or perhaps by hitting a pile of my own hubris.

I was the star in the corner,
Cookin’ your legs like Chris Horner,
Ridin’ real hard up on the inside,
I went down in a nasty low-side.

Skinned up my knees like Lewinski,
Screamin’ like a hopped up jet ski,
Hoping not to crash on the next ride,
Next time I’m gonna pass on the outside.

Cut like a shrimp at Benihana,
It's like I crashed my Suzuki Katana.
I’m watchin’ from the curb with my shorty,
Easin’ the pain wit an ice cold forty.

But I’m comin’ back, betta than eva,
Like Bond James Bond, I never say never.
‘Cuz I’m the fat man with mad bike skillz,
And Gros has me workin’ on the handlin’ drillz.

So pimps and hustlers better step aside,
I’m the wide boy on the carbon ride,
Breakin’ some legs, takin’ a toll,
Brave Soldier and Tegaderm is how I roll.

Yeah, it sucks. But like my racing, my hip-hop rhymes are the best a Racing Age 40 white boy novice can do.

- Random PowerTap thought: The PT encourages peddling efficiency. I noticed that when I was pedaling squares - like hammering at high speed in a big gear on the flat and stomping it - that the wattage readout bounced up and down wildly. 250, 450, 299, 505, and so forth. This may have averaged out to perhaps 330 watts, but within a minute my HR had climbed up from recovery, to tempo. When I concentrated on smooth pedaling, including a 'wiping your feet' motion on the bottom of the stroke, and smoothly pulling up with the hip flexors, I could pull the same or nearly the same average wattage and move at the same speed, but without the HR blasting through the roof. I pulled 275 - 300 up the Cap Crescent, and the HR remained in zone 2 until I reached the little bridge on the top. This aligns with my experience in races, which tells me that when an acceleration goes (like an attack, or sudden speedup of the pack), it's best to ramp up the speed gradually unless the initial move on the front of the pack must be covered. It's not the speed that kills you - it is the maximal and near-maximal efforts that burn up your matches. Smoothness and efficiency equals durable, lasting speed. Hey, why am I telling you guys this? You're the competition.

- That's enough. Really.