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During last week’s edition of the Stroke & Stride series at the Boulder Reservoir - put on by the great folk of Racing Underground - I had the good fortune to win the season’s raffle drawing and these awesome aero-bars generously donated by Sampson Sports based out of Denver. I am very cognizant of the good fortune I have had this year in my sport. I like to think it is good karma returning to me. Anywho… these are definitely going on the Cervelo asap and the old (new) bars will go to Christy. Those bars are the one thing I have wanted to replace on the bike - aside from the brakes which are extremely light but don’t work so well, but they only fail at slowing me down, which isn’t such a bad thing most times.
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I put in my highest volume of run mileage of the year this week, many laps around the local HS track, 1 bike ride and a couple of long open water swims. This week has been an effort in finding the balance between preparing for the only race I will do this year, IM Canada and feeling somewhat recovered for the Boulder Peak Triathlon Sunday. I am looking forward to this race and feel I am in good enough shape to do well. “Well” as in: destroy my PR on this course that I have done now five times. Last year I was 3 weeks post Ironman Coeur d’Alene, 2 weeks post Vasectomy, 1 week post frozen bag of peas down my undies and definitely lacking any mo’ whatsoever, and the result showed. Just like that last image I put in your head: Ugly.

IM Canada minus 51 days…

Tour de France time! How cool is this image of Fabian Cancellara? He is a ballsy stud and this pic from the prologue sums it up (taken from here).
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Friday morning was the annual To the Top! ride up Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. 13 of us set out from Hygiene (on this route), not everyone with plans to head all the way up. Still, it was a very quick bunch and we made very good time with Kirk N, Steve P, Charles G, and Steven pushing at the front and others going their own sustainable pace. The clouds looked troubling when we approached the RMNP entrance, and Jason K and I were rained on for about 10 minutes but the sunshine came back out and allowed us to get to the top for (my) 7th time. Within a few minutes Christy and the girls arrived to pick my sorry and appreciative butt up. The numbers: 78 miles from my front door, 10,300′ of elevation gain. 12,183′ highest elevation, 44°F w/ wind chill at the top. A good day. Next year is another chance for you to join. Kudos to Kristina and Mike F for pushing through some bike trouble to make it up the Mtn., way to HTFU.
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Saturday I put in my longest run of the last 12 months. I logged 20 miles on my local hilly route and felt great maintaining a reasonable pace on tired legs. Prior to my confidence in my ability to run that long had somewhat waned since up to now I have spent my running time adding distance each week onto short, fast efforts (1000s, now mile repeats) to build some speed. Now, I can stop bugging Coach Mike Ricci from D3 Multisport about not enough run volume and shut-up and listen to what he says. I feel great, fit and much fresher most days than last year’s build up to IM Coeur d’Alene, which doesn’t seem right, but I like it and the results are proof it is working. Thank You, Mike. Whatever stubborn reluctance I had to be a good listener is now gone.
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Sunday is the Boulder peak Triathlon. I love this event. Where else do you get to climb a ridiculously steep sumbitch pitch then - after a brief speed limited section - bomb down the other side at breakneck speed pedaling & wishing you had more gear. There are 214 of us registered in the M35-39 age group. I start in the 7th wave, behind all the female age group waves. I like when that happens, makes for a fun bike ride.

Ironman Canada minus 55 days…

Anyone that knows me knows that I am not a big fan of using a lot of training toys and pouring over training data. I spend 40+ hours per week writing algorithms and working with terabytes of data for a data mining company so I have no affinity for letting that creep into my hobbies. I do not own a Power Meter and I infrequently use my heart rate monitor.
Not to say that I do not know what I am doing. Over twenty years I have read many of the more popular training books (this, these three books, 8 titles on this page and everything here) and digested hundreds more magazine and online articles on bike and run training (I even read some stuff on swimming). So I do prefer to rely on my own experiences and that accumulated knowledge.

Over the last several years I have been intrigued by the lab fitness testing offered now by many sources now including the pioneering and prominent local resource the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine (Twitter), but never could bring myself to pull the trigger and actually schedule an appointment. Last week an opportunity presented itself that I could not refuse: VO₂ max, Lactate Profile and Fuel Test testing in exchange for the sharing of all my data at a public meeting of the Boulder Triathlon Club.

Lactate Profile test
This is the test where you learn your training zones. Starts with pedaling for 4 minutes at a set wattage than the attendant pricks your finger in order to draw some blood to test for Lactate rate. Then the wattage/resistance increases and you do it all over again - totaling about 70″. My numbers were lower than I had estimated them to be, which I am not sure what to conclude from, other than I wasn’t exactly fresh from the test and I am not going to change anything that I do as a result. I know my body well and I’m sticking with what I know. Seems like great information to have if you didn’t have a lot of personal experience to rely on. Perhaps I’ll do another test in the fall when I am rested and compare the numbers.

VO₂ Max test
Concluding a short break from the LT test I was back on the bike (and the world’s most uncomfortable saddle - some white Specialized torture device I can’t imagine anyone actually uses) for a brief warm-up and 5 minute buildup from 100 to 200 watts. The protocol is to increase the wattage 25 every 60 seconds. My sole focus was to keep pedaling cadence steady at my customary rate of about 90-92. Up to 275 watts was no problem; 300: starting to get uncomfortable, 325: I can handle this, 350: burning legs, 375: what you got?, time, 400 ouch, time to not think and instead replay some Linkin Park in my head dig it out… digging deeper…, at 425 watts I was a mess: gasping for more air than the O₂ regulator would give me and out of the saddle trying to maintain a cadence over 85 when the lid blew off and I was toast: reduced to a 186lb pile of exhaustion after 30 seconds or so.
The result: my VO₂ Max of 63 is good, but had I started training hard at 10 years old probably would never get to the Olympics. No surprise there. Nice number to know, not sure what I do with it now, though. I surely will never be fitter in my life so it’s all downhill from here, nice to now how far I fell should I do this again, I guess.

Fuel Test
This is what I was really interested in learning. How much fuel do I burn and how much should I think about replacing? Essentially: how do I eat over a long session? I learned that I burn over 1000 combined CHO and fat calories per hour at the pace I plan ride in B.C. The take away is that if I exceed 275 Watts for any length of time I can expect a caloric-catastrophe and end of any hope of achieving my goal. Below that I’ll be fine if I eat as planned. Long term, I could do more to increase the fat burn rate but that would require a lot of slow miles. Not too interested in doing that any time soon.

A big thank you to Neal Henderson of BCSM for the testing and arranging the nutritionist consultation…

This past weekend I volunteered at the 5430 Sprint triathlon at the Boulder Reservoir. I got to be one of the body marking people in the morning, later on I had the unenviable task of transition nazi: “10 minutes until transition area closes!… 5 minutes until… get out… now…". Later on I was the dismount your bike at the line guy.

After watching the first 20 pro and neo-pro competitors come through gracefully I learned just how important this job really is: dozens of people seemed intent on riding their bike all the way to their rack. Shoes falling off the pedals, water bottles flying, skid marks all over the pavement and probably 8 penalties assessed for either going way over the line or coming in with their helmet unbuckled. I saw a couple of horrific over-the-handlebar crashes the result of too much speed combined with too much front brake…