Sunday, June 23, 2013

Training Summary - Week 8

This concludes week 8 of the training plan, 4 more to go. 

I have been mostly mountain biking up to this point. I'm getting bored riding all the same trails, so this week I decided I would mostly ride the road bike, and arranged to do a 100 mile ride with my friend Ron on Saturday. We did the Copper Triangle, a route that goes from Copper Mountain, to Leadville, Minturn, and back to Copper. We extended it by starting and ending in Frisco, which makes it the Copper Lollipop.

The big, and not so good news of the week, is that during the above ride, which was not that long or difficult relative to the other rides I have been doing lately, I developed some significant soreness in my left IT band. The soreness is continuing off the bike, and is the first significant issue I have had with my IT band since I had surgery to correct the problem over 7 years ago. Obviously the timing of this is not good, and I need to make it go away very quickly. I'm starting some IT specific stretches and I'll probably try to get a steroid shot early this week. I'm crossing my fingers.

This coming week is the largest planned training volume of the program at 28 hours, 18 of which will be during a long overnight next weekend. I'm still figuring out where to go. These overnights are difficult to plan because I have to end up back at the car at some point.



Ron, always texting

View heading up Fremont Pass

Bridge near Minturn

Monday, June 17, 2013

Training Summary - Week 7

As I mentioned last time, I was in Orlando most of the week for an important trade show. I was hoping that I would be able to train in the evening either in the hotel exercise room, or at a local 24 hour fitness. Unfortunately with long days working the booth followed by long dinners, I was only able to get a single, one hour workout in on Tuesday evening between 11:00 pm and midnight. Fortunately, most of the weeks training was scheduled for Friday through Sunday.



I flew back to CO on Friday morning. Mickey and Sam met me in Denver for an early Father's Day lunch because Sam was going to be at a mountain bike camp, and I was going to be spending the weekend on a two night training ride.

After lunch I headed to Buena Vista where I planned to start my weekend riding two or three more segments of the Colorado Trail. Nothing was really going right. I couldn't find my iPod, or my bike computer. My rear tire wouldn't hold air, and it took me over an hour to unload my car, pack and get going. I found a bike shop to put more sealant in my rear tire, but it didn't work. I had to keep pumping it up until the next day I finally gave up an put a tube in my tubeless wheel. Saturday morning I checked my spot GPS tracker and noticed that the low battery light was on. I had told Mickey that I would bring spare batteries ( Which I forgot to do ) so that there would be almost no chance that I would lose contact. So I was forced to ride by to Buena Vista to buy batteries, and then drove my car back to the Mt. Princeton parking lot to continue where I left off.

Towards the end of segment 13, I ran into Pete, another rider training for the CTR, who had also finished in 2011.

The CO trail in this area runs along the front of the Collegiate peaks. Looking at the elevation profile, the area doesn't look terribly daunting, but I found the trails difficult. The trails had lots of short steep climbs with loose sand and rock. I spent a lot of time pushing my bike, and getting off and on over and over. I keep doing the math in my head to figure out how long this race is going to take me, and the answer is not good. I'm in the best shape of my life, and I'll be luckyif I can just finish before I have to go back to work.


Relaxing Friday night


Shining my Niterider bike light into a water bottle made for a nice camp light.



Rise and shine in camp 1


Meadow near the end of segment 14

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Training Summary - Week 6

I have to admit that after last weekend, as good as it was, I found myself high in fatigue and low in motivation. I started asking myself why I must choose goals for myself that are ridiculously hard, and considered changing my goal to set the world record for most pounds of Cheetos consumed in a single day. OK, enough whining!

The above, combined with a big software release at work, resulted in my first training week where I really missed workouts, and didn't get the hours in. I did finish the week out with a strong weekend, but ended about 5 hours short. Next week I'm in Orlando all week for a trade show, so next week will be even more difficult.



It has been two weeks since I attempted to ride Fall River Road in RMNP. I attempted it again today, and except for a couple of snow fields at the top, it was rideable. So I rode it twice.

The second time, I locked my bike to a very secure, sun bleached road marker pole, and walked the final snow field to the plowed road near the top to the visitor's center. ( Both shown below ) After a snack, I did some obligatory hiking around the soaking wet alpine tundra for an hour or so.

As I headed back past the visitor center towards the snow field, a conscientious park employee pointed out to me that there was a sign that said "No pedestrians or bikes beyond this point". I may have snapped at him a bit when I said "THAT'S THE WAY I CAME UP, AND MY $7000 MOUNTAIN BIKE IS ACROSS THE SNOW FIELD, AND THERE WAS NO SIGN ON THE WAY UP SAYING THAT I CAN'T GO BACK". Apparently my argument was compelling since no park rangers arrived to arrest me.

Alpine Visitor's Center

I walked the final snowfield to the visitor center. The visitor center is just out of view on the other side of the snow field.



Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Training Summary - Week 5

Last weeks training was the highest volume of the program so far.

The big event of the week was a long overnight during the weekend on the actual Colorado Trail. I wasn't feeling great this week so I deviated from the training plan a little bit, and put in some extra hours on the weekend. I really wanted to go far on the weekend, so this worked out well.

My weekend ride consisted of riding segments 1-3, plus the Bailey detour to Kenosha Pass and back.

In total it was about 135 miles of mountain biking, 17,000 feet of climbing, and almost 17 hours of pedaling. It was difficult, but I wasn't completely at my limit. I recovered quickly. My performance was much improved over last Summer's experiment on the trail. My average speed on Saturday where most of the climbing occurred was 7.7 mph with a fully loaded bike. I stopped less and went further in a single day..

I worked on nutrition and hydration strategies. In particular I set an alert on my computer to sound every 15 minutes to drink and eat, because I tend to zone out and forget until it's too late. This worked well for the water, but I'm going to continue to fine tune what and when I eat. I also tried to take some electrolyte supplements every hour which I did pretty well the first day, but mostly forgot to do the second day.

Clearly, I want to enjoy the scenery and the experience of these long rides, and I do. However, assuming a rider has the fitness to do these rides, the next issue becomes physical and psychological pain management. I always ride with music, but music is more of a background thing. I experimented with listening to books on tape this weekend, and they are very effective at making the time go by faster.

On Saturday while riding segment 3, I rode through a large group of riders resting at a trail junction. Seeing all the gear on my bike someone said "Cool", and then someone else said "I'll see you in Durango". I said "I'll be there", without seeing who was speaking. It was a cool exchange.

At Kenosha Pass I met another lone camper ( David ) who provided me with a beer, a camp fire and some good conversation. It was cold up there, but the sky was clear and the stars were bright. I should know, I woke up about every 20 minutes to look at them. :-)

Below is a map of the course I took.


As always, here are the totals after week 5.