Monday, May 27, 2013

Training Summary - Week 4


This last week was a lower training volume week, to allow for some recovery from the previous three weeks. Monday - Friday was nice and easy, and I think I needed the time off. I wasn't feeling that great. The usual summary is below.


On Sunday, the plan called for high altitude riding combined with a couple hours of hiking to get the legs in shape for the inevitable hike-a-bike sections on the CTR. I decided to ride Fall River Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The road was not yet open to cars which was why I chose it, but I was hoping the park had done some Spring maintenance on it. Unfortunately at about 10,500 feet the road became unpassable without snow shoes. I climbed the road twice to get in the needed time and then hiked for a couple hours on a nearby trail. It was a beautiful day with lots of great scenery. See video below.


Monday, May 20, 2013

Lighting Systems Part 1

Some night riding will be required if I want to complete the CTR in the shortest possible time. I may not be fit enough to ride all day and ride a significant amount at night, but there may be days where I get a late start, or days when it makes sense to stop due to cold or dangerous weather. So having the option to make up time after dark is very desirable.

I have experience night riding just for the fun of it, and at races like the 24 Hours of Moab. I'm comfortable riding technical single track at night because even the older Niterider lighting systems that I own are extremely bright compared to standard camping headlamps that most people are use to.

However, the CTR creates some challenges for the typical high lumens bike lights. These lights use a lot of power, and therefore have dedicated battery packs that require hours of charging between use. If things are going well, there will be limited opportunities to recharge the batteries during the CTR. One option is to carry extra batteries, but the batteries can be very expensive, and are heavy. Some lights have multiple power settings that allow for up to 6-7 hours of use, but that probably wouldn't be enough to get through the CTR. Also, cold temperatures in the mountains could reduce the battery life.

So my goal is to find a lighting system that is as bright as what I'm currently used to ( roughly 500 lumens ) but that also has a low power option that will provide 15 hours of use or more when the terrain doesn't require as much light, like when climbing. In the past, high end lights typically had a detached battery pack that the rider stored in a pocket or backpack, and a power cord that ran from the battery to the light mounted either on the rider's helmet or handlebars. There now exist excellent lighting systems that package the battery and light into a single package. These tend to be lighter and have no cord to manage, but won't have the lumens or battery life of the external battery systems.

It turns out that these days there are a great many different light manufactures and models. It's not my goal to review all these systems, but you can check out this article on MTBR to browse the various options.



There is a lot of information in the above article, but it was difficult to determine which models had lower power modes. I decided to fallback to the incumbents, and go directly to the NiteRider and Light & Motion web sites.

The products that stood out for my needs was the NiteRider Lumina series. These lights are combined lights and batteries, range from 350 - 650 lumens,  have low power options with up to 18 hours of use at 40 lumens, and are quite light ( no pun intended ). These lights have a solid looking handlebar clamping system ( The 650 also includes  helmet mount ) that is much improved over previous handlebar mounts from NiteRider. To top it off, the high end 650 model can be purchased online for $118-$140. Considering that  my last lighting system from NiteRider cost over $400, this light seems to be a bargain. If they pass my field testing, I may just buy an extra and use it as a backup.

I purchased the Lumina 650 online for $104 and although I haven't used it for any technical night rides yet, it looks like it will work out very well. The 40 lumen mode is still very bright and the beam it casts is very good. I'll have a chance to to test it on some of the over night training sessions coming later in the plan. I have not tried using my GoPro at night, so I might try to capture the night riding experience in a video that I'll include in a follow up post.








Training Summary - Week 3

This week was an interesting training week. The prior weekend I felt invincible on the bike, climbing with ease. But this week started off difficult. The first workout was road bike climbing  intervals, and I just couldn't get my heart rate up. The second workout was an easy mountain bike ride, and again I couldn't find the power or any skill for that matter. I was putting my foot down everywhere. If this continued, I would start to worry, but I chose to assume that this meant I was training good and hard.

Things turned around on Thursday when I did mountain bike intervals up the Horsetooth tower road. I did 4500-5000 feet of climbing before work. See the nice pictures below.


Pre-sunrise at the marina


Longs peak from the top of Tower Road

Friday I had a short 1 hour recovery road ride planned. I procrastinated throughout the day, and ended up missing the ride in exchange for watching a movie with Mickey. It was worth it.

The weekend training plan consisted of the first overnight to work out gear selection and to start getting accustomed to the extra weight. The plan was for 4 hour Saturday, camp out, and 4 hours on Sunday. Lory State park has six back country camp sites, so I planned to ride Horsetooth Mountain Park, and then head over to Lory and meet up with Mickey and Sam who would backpack in from Lory.

Saturday morning I started getting a stomach ache, which is not something that I'm used to. I started riding about 2:00 pm, and rode every hard ride I could think of including Stout, Herrington, Wathen, West Ridge, Spring Creek, The service road, Mill Creek and Howard. Despite the extra fifteen pounds of gear on the bike, the riding went well. Unfortunately by the time I reached the camp at around 7:00 pm, my stomach was killing me.

It was fairly cold and very windy at this point. This combined with the fact that Mickey and Sam had seen a bear hiking in resulted in both of them being hunkered down in the tent. After resting a bit, we cooked dinner and went to bed. The girls in the tent, and me in my new bivi sack.

By midnight my stomach hurt so bad that I was writhing in pain in my sleeping bag. I thought that I had some strong narcotic pain medicine in my first aid kit to handle situations like this, but when I got up to look they weren't there. I took an aleve with not much hope that it would help, but within an hour I was feeling a lot better and was able to sleep, despite the 30 mile an hour winds.

I felt well enough to ride for 4 hours on Sunday, but didn't feel as strong. I still don't know what caused the issue, and I'm still not feeling that great.



In summary, the week went well. My mileage was low, but I did mostly mountain biking and I did a lot of climbing. The totals for the week show 17643 feet of climbing this, but if I turn on elevation correction in GarminConnect, the total is almost 21000 feet. 

Here are the totals.



Thursday, May 16, 2013

Not this year

Clearly when doing a ride as long as the CTR you want to minimize the weight of your bike and your gear. Despite that, this is one piece of gear I won't be buying. Although I do have birthday coming up. :-)




Monday, May 13, 2013

Training Summary - Week 2


Despite some wet weather this week I managed to complete all the training. The weekend rides ended up being really good, and I spent most of the time up in the trees at Horsetooth Mountain Park.

Below is the a summary of the last two weeks of training. The hours include 3-3.5 hours/week of core strength and stretching in addition to the riding.




Below are a few pictures taken while training this week.


Sunrise on Pineridge. Not a bad way to start the day.


Spring Creek in Horsetooth Mountain Park


Training with T


I'm hoping that whatever ate this was still full when I went by.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

The CTR Course


The images below detail the route and elevation map of the CTR. These images were generated using the GPS track provided on the CTR web site, and were created using an online tool called  Bike Route Toaster http://www.bikeroutetoaster.com.

Also below are captured Google Earth tours of the course, split into four videos. They are kind of fun for a couple of minutes, but they're not quite as riveting as Iron Man 3 trailers. They do give a good feel for how much time is pent above treeline. 











Monday, May 6, 2013

Training Summary - Week 1

My goal for the first week was to do everything I could to complete all the training hours on the days they were scheduled. I wanted to set the tone for the next 12 weeks.

For me to do this meant I had to plan ahead and be disciplined. Each evening, I set the coffee maker to start brewing at 4:45. I packed my computer for work, put out both my workout and regular cloths, filled water bottles, and set multiple alarms on my phone to ensure that I would get up early. ( 4:30 - 5:30 depending on the day )

Monday and Tuesday went well. On Tuesday, the training plan called for a 20 minute time trial at 100% effort. This test will be used as a base line. I chose to do the service road at Horsetooth Mountain Park. I'm pleased to report that I had a personal best of 17:59 on this hill climb. This was much faster than I had ever done the hill before, and therefor was a great confirmation that my training is paying off, and a motivator for the next 12 weeks.

Unfortunately after Tuesday the weather conspired to shut down my training. But I would have none of it. I spent about 4 hours on a spin bike in the gym Wednesday and Thursday. Friday, things had dried out enough that I was able to get a road ride in.

The plan specified 7 hours of mountain biking over the weekend, but the trails were way too wet and snowy for that. I was planning to ride my road bike instead, but the bottom bracket on my road bike was in desperate need of service. It was creaking so bad that riding it for an hour was intolerable, so seven hours was out of the question. I took it to the shop first thing Sat morning, but they were unable to work on it until Monday.

So I quickly packed the car with food, gear and my mountain bike and headed to Fruita CO, where it was dry and the temperature was 80 degrees. I made great time and was able to ride from 4:00 to 8:00. I road most of the next day as well, and made it back home around 11:00pm, just in time to start week number 2.


Here is the training summary for the week. I didn't quite do all the training hours, but it was close. My Friday recovery ride was about a half hour short, and I missed the Sunday strength workout because I was driving home from Fruita.

Planned Training Hours: 17:45
Actual Training Hours: 17.19


Below are some pictures of Fruita.



Colorado River from the Horse thief Bench trail.


If you look carefully, you can see that there is a house built into this rock outcropping. 
I have ridden past this many times and never noticed before.