This was the Whidbey island training camp - also my first time riding a ferry that I remember (pretty fun, actually).

Turns out Whidbey island isn’t flat at all. It ended up being the first fairly long ride day that I actually felt good at the end. I did a lot of bridging up to attacks instead of riding at the front, which was a great workout, but not very good for reinforcing good riding habits. All in all, it was a great day, I was toast at the end, and I got a chance to put in a good dig with Tim Ellis (he’s strong).


Check out the ride here on my TrainingPeaks profile for the elevation, speed, etc. Unfortunately, my PowerTap wheel build was bad, so it was back at Neuvation getting fixed (seems great now).

This last weekend, I got a chance to go to the Recycled Cycles (the team I’m on for 2009) training camp in Bellingham, WA.

Turned out to be a great time. The weather cooperated and it was a sunny 36 degree day (on average) - perfect for getting in my first ever century. We had a follow van, which was fantastic for passing out bottles, carrying food, and rescuing bonked riders.

There was a nice turn off at 62 miles for those so inclined (including the guys that made dinner for the night - thanks Blake, Carl, and Smoothie), and afterwards, we got to push the pace a bit. Long, slow endurance rides are the weakest part of my riding by a lot, so doing exactly that for a weekend was just what I needed for training, I think.

Sunday was nice too, except that one guy hurt his shoulder after slipping at about 6 mph on black ice - I had to stop at around 65 miles since I wasn’t as accustomed to saddle time on hard chip seal roads, but it was still a good amount of distance for me, and it’s nice to put that milage in the bank.



Unfortunately, I feel very behind on training for the year - I’ve done basically no interval work, no distance, no anything really except very consistent commuting. I still seem to be able to hang on in rides okay, but if I’m going to have a successful race season, I need to actually get some hard rides in.



See more about the weekend at the Recycled Cycles blog, Chris Tremonte’s blog, and Raleigh Commutes.

I hadn’t met the Raleigh Commutes guy before (I still only know him by “Sally”, which I’m pretty sure is not his real name). I’m disappointed that he’s not on the team (don’t think he lives close by) - he was rock steady, strong, and predictable all Sunday - just the sort of bloke you’d want around as a riding partner. Ah well...

Looking forward to the next training camp already...

The excellent Seattle cycling body, the WSBA, has a “Meet the Teams” ride every week, from Pert’s Deli, where new riders can ride with teams, get a feel for the people involved, and eventually find a good place to ride for the upcoming year. I thought this was absolutely fantastic, so I went out for a ride with Recycled Cycles Racing.

Turned out to be a fantastic morning - weather was wonderful, there were lots of people out, and I got to see a good portion of Lake Washington. The pace was sometimes numbingly slow, but that was due in part to it being a no-drop ride with 40 people. Fantastic turnout.

Plus, the team sounds pretty cool. They seem a bit more serious than most, which I appreciate, requiring you to participate in at least 10 races over the course of a year. This means that when I show up to race, there’s at least a good chance that someone from the team would be out. Plus, they do fairly serious Sat morning rides of 3+ hours, which would be a great way to get the milage in.

I went and did the SVVC Time Trial today - it went okay, as I was able to average 340 watts, with a time somewhere close-ish to 22:49 (no official timer this week). After averaging 399 on the uphill TT at Army for 10 minutes, I'm wondering why my 20 minute power is so low. Just not excited enough about the race?

I'm a little confused here. Perhaps my power meter was malfunctioning at Army?

In any event, the SVVC TT is a great time - very flat, fun, and fast. I look forward to these every month.

The speed ride today was more fun for me than usual. Joe Whitman had promised to win every sprint - of course, he showed up on a sweet chrome-looking moped; this cracked me up a bit.

This also meant that when Chris attacked the large group (20-25ish), he got to draft instead of going alone, and quickly opened up a big gap. Jim jumped on it quickly, and for whatever reason, I responded as well. It was sort of fun, riding with a rider obviously better than myself, and still taking pulls! Of course, once the road started uphill, Jim dropped me like a bad habit. In any event, I was able to stay in the front group of 3-4 riders throughout the ride. I took a few more pulls than last week (especially when the pace was hard), but I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be.

Last week, I was pretty tired for the Penn State weekend after a previous speed ride, so I bagged this speed ride about 70% of the way in, and rode home myself at a turn off point.

All in all, I had a good time, didn't totally burn myself out, and got to put in a harder single effort than I've done for a while. Wish I had had an 11t cog on though.

Went on my second speed ride of the year this wednesday (don't even want to talk about the first one), and despite being very stressed out about school, managed a pretty decent ride (for me).

There was a big attack at the beginning of the ride by some of the local fast folks (Joe Whitman, Sean Melcher, Chris Ruhl). Unfortunately, someone hopped in front of me as the attack went up the road. They then proceeded to sit up, and let a 10 second gap open up. Ouch - that hurt a bit, as I was pushing around 1,000 watts to catch back up. For me, that's pretty hard.

As the attack continued to go, I was forced to sit in the first 10 minutes or so, as I was more than a bit blown from the attack. Of our starting group of about 20-25, we only had about 9-12 left at the first turn. I started taking turns again at this point, until we hit the first sprint. I was particularly happy that I was able to pull for about 20-30 seconds up the steep hill to the first sprint.

After this, I was able to keep taking around 60-70% of my pulls until the steepest hill, at which point only Joe, Sean, Chris and myself were left, and I was able to pull through around 100% of the time. It's nice for me to be feeling better on these rides. I wish I could pull through the whole time, but it's more important for me to be going hard the whole time than it is for me to be going harder for a shorter amount of time right now (endurance is a weak spot of mine). At the same time, I think I'll try to pull more in the future, as I didn't ever really feel like I was in danger of getting dropped, just that I couldn't do any more.

I was even able to lead out the last two sprints for everybody, which I was happy about. Still need to work on sprinting speed, but I feel like a lamer when I sprint after having sat in for parts of the ride.

My power file for the ride is attached here. Considering my FTP is around 320, this was a pretty decent ride for me.
StClair_Luke_3_26_2008

Sadly, I missed the ECCC Easter weekend at Pittsburg. It's pretty disappointing, since it was one of the first hillier races of the year. It features some power climbs, which are right up my alley.

I left the house at 6:30AM, and tried to get to the race. Unfortunately, it was too snowy, and I just couldn't make it. I'm sick of the State College snow, for sure.

Running is fun? Inspired by Jen in the half-marathon, I actually went for a training run (I'm getting really anxious about taking 6 days off of cycling). I tried to blast this out as fast as possible, and ended up running 6:50 pace, with my last mile around 6:20. Not bad for me.