2009 Road Season Training

Here we go. December 2008. It's time to start training for the 2009 road season. That means, dust off the road bike and ride the hills. There are a lot of training programs on the street and the internet to follow. You just have to pick the right training plan that fits within your lifestyle. Pick and choose. I will follow the standard 4 week cycle with peaking in 6 months. Within a week, I will try to have two important ride days, Tuesdays and Saturdays, to improve my weaknesses. My early season training plan is as follows:

Monday - Rest Day or Group ride.
Tuesday - Hill Repeats or Generic Ride.

Wednesday - Fast pedal.

Thursdays - Interval Days (long or short distance or mixture).

Fridays - Relax.

Saturday- Head to the Hills, except for the 4th week of the cycle which is a flat ride week.

Sunday -Speciality day or Endurance Ride.

The training plan will change as soon as the Prarie City Mountain Bike races come around. I hope that helps.

On-One Pompino - Part 2

Here it is. The new version of the On-One Pompino. It now has Easton carbon fiber flat bar, Avid brake levers, and longer Ritchey stem. This conversion was made to the steering control system in order to have better off-road handling, stronger braking, and nicer ergonomics. I tested the new version on the off-road trails of Lake Natoma. I tell ya, it's sooo much smoother to ride and easier to handle. You can really feel the extra torque generated with wider handlebars when it's time to climb those super nasty short climbs. Bring on Golden Gate park!

BASP #3 - Sierra Point/Brisbane - Nov 2008

I had no idea that I was racing above an old City dump. Cauze, I think that I ran over several old washing machines, hubcaps, and beer bottles. Holly smokes. The terrain is terrible. Lots of 3" ripples everywhere. Nothing is smooth. For this race, I choose to battle against the C racers on my singlespeed cx bike. I re-armed the bike with new gearing, 42x18. This gear proved to be fairly good on the bumpy flat sections. However, once on the pavement, I lost time by spinning out, that is, too slow on the pavement. The two steep hill sections were perfectly fine with the 42x18 gearing, as long as, I had momentum going into the hill and a clear landing path on top. I did have a couple issues with the bike: 1) For the second race in a row, the seatpost dropped a little lower during the race and the saddle rocked back and forth. It's time to dump the seat post. 2) By going with brake only levers, the grip area is a little smaller and a bit sketchy. I'm certain that I lost plenty of time with the lame brake only levers since I was trying to keep the bike under control over the bumpy section. Very uncomfortable situation. So, it's time to drop the drop bars and install a mountain bike flat bar with longer stem. The flat bars will allow me to easily hammer on the most bumpy terrains while remaining in control of the bike. The Schwable front tire worked perfectly again. I choose to use a smooth-ish WTB tire on the back. It worked fine on the very steep climb sections and hooked-up perfectly on the flats. I'll probably stick with this tire combination for the rest of the series. I did have some problems with the pedals. At the top of the climb, I found myself popping out of them, which resulted in loosing 3 or 4 spots. This problem happened 3 times during the race. Overall, I'm getting better at racing the singlespeed. There is a learning curve on how to race it against the multispeed bikes. Lesson A: you just have to assume that you'll spin-out on the very flat sections. This means, you'll need to make up time on the remainder of the course.

Flowing Thru Barriers

The biggest hurdle for most new cyclocross racers is the barrier section. It's really not that difficult to do. Just approach the barrier slowly, get off the bike, gently walk over the obstacle, and remount the bike. Thru time and practice, you'll pick-up technique and speed. The video above shows Jeff of Rio Strada Racing. Jeff is one of the most smoooothest guys at the barrier section. He's got several methods to get over the barriers. I think the video above shows the best one. The best place to practice is at a park. Instead of using barriers, just use leaves or shadows on the ground. It's a nice start. It took me a couple of years to get the method down. Tip: notice in the video that Jeff gently places the bike on the ground after going over the final barrier. This prevents the chain from jumping off the chainring and you're automatically given a few style points.

Does anyone play the Accordian?

Cyclocross races are tough enough. It's especially worse when singlespeeders compete against multispeeders. At every hairpin turn, the singlespeeder must violently hammer out of the turn in order to regain speed, while the multispeeders can easily shift into proper gears to regain speed. Yes, the accordian affect that is found in criterium/road races is very much alive in cross races. In order to minimize the losses, the singlespeeder must strive to get better start positions at the gate, choose proper singlespeed gearing for the course conditions (dry, wet, sandy, grass, dirt), minimize loosing momentum in turns (perhaps take the outside line), staying in contact with the group, and saving some leg energy for the latter half of the race. I learned those lessons at the Discovery Park cyclocross race.

Re-Start Cross Training

After a tough and disheartening cross race at Discovery Park, it's time to re-start cross training. On Tuesday, it's uphill dismounts at a casual pace. Ride uphill for 30 minutes while dismounting, running for 10 seconds, remounting, and getting up to speed again, repeat every 2 minutes. At this early stage of training, it's about form and not killing yourself. On Thursday, 1.5 hour ride on flat terrain with plenty of short, moderate intensity, intervals/dismounts. The short interval/dismounts will start from a complete stop, ramp up to maximum speed, maintain speed for a bit, slam on brakes for a dismount, remount and buildup to speed, maintain speed, and then recover and repeat many times. The purpose of this workout is to simulate going into barriers and exiting with acceleration, and also, going into hairpin 180 turns and exiting with acceleration.

Discovery Park CX

After having a fun honeymoon in Hawaii and gaining 5 wonderful pounds of fat, I decided to resume cyclocross training by doing two races at Discovery Park: Masters B 35+ and Singlespeed. During the 1st lap, my 3 week absence from the cross bike really showed. I was gasping for air and searching for extra leg power. Early into the 2nd lap, I decided to waive the white flag and do the remainder of the race at endurance pace. It was very frustrating to see the peleton slowly disappear. On the last lap, I popped clutch into neutral and slowly drifted to the finish line at "no wake" pace. Now, it was time to get mentally prepared for the 2nd race. I grabbed the singlespeed bike, drank plenty of gatorade, and lined-up for the next race. The singlespeed bike was armed with 42x17 gear ratio. I tell ya, the singlespeed race was very painful. I had quad cramps, hamstring and calve pains in both legs by the 2nd lap. Again, I had to shut down the engine and complete the race at endurance pace. Somewhere during the race, my saddle became loose. I don't think OSHA would approve of it. So, I pretty much stood up and pedaled. For me, the 42x17 gear ratio is pretty big for the grassy races. I'll have to check how it functions at Granite Bay and possibly change to 42x18. Photo courtesy of Madcat Bicycles.

Pena Adobe CX Race

The 2008 cyclocross season has been really fun even though I'm finishing near last place in the Master B 35+. I wish I had time to train but I have a lot of other fun things to do. Life needs to be balanced. And, you can't spend your entire life on the bike. The cyclocross race course at Pena Adobe was a technical one with loose turns, a gully crossing, and uphill dismounts.

Summersett Custom Bicycles

Summersett Custom Bicycles has been making the most spectacular custom bicycles for a while. And, here's my single speed mountain bike. The frame has an eccentric bottom bracket and bottle opener for FatTireBeer, and it's painted screaming yellow. See my favorite links for the official builder's website. Very standard components: 32x18 freewheel, Hope discs, Marzocchi fork, Spot rear hub, and King headset. Standard components, yet screaming fast bike!!!

Bianchi Pista

Why just have one fixed gear bike when you can have two. The second axe is the Bianchi Pista. It's been highly modified into a city cruizer and daily commuter. Flat bars, courtesy of the Hankinator, cross lever for the front brake, extra long stem from CityBikeWorks, and 48x16t fixed gear, OURY grips, rear blinky light, shimano mtb pedals, and WTB saddle. That's about it. I can't really afford to put more $$$ into this bike. So, go cheap and let the bike fly.

Specialized Langster

Everyone needs a fixed gear bike. Here's my Specialized Langster. It's armed with 48x18 fixed gear for the easy days on the bike trail, drop bars, brake levers, and wtb saddle. The great thing about fixed gear bikes is the ease of cleaning and maintaining. There's really nothing to maintain, except keeping the chain clean and taught. I choose to ride the fixed gear bike on the most unimaginable horrible days where it's raining cats and dogs and the frame is sandblasted with road debris. Do you really want to ride your gucci bike on those days? Nope. Instead, jump on the fixed gear bike.

Bianchi Axis

The Bianchi Axis. It's got a few upgrades over the stock model. The notable components are: single chainring set-up 42T, bashrings by cyclocrossworld.com, XT rear deraileur, Schwable CX Pro tire (front), WTB Crosswolf tire (rear), Mr. Tuffy liners, and a big cassette. The wheels are stock and functions marvelously. Amazingly, the stock saddle, WTB, works great also. The aluminum frame is fairly plush compared to the Redline bikes. You'll see me riding this bike at most cross races.

On-One Pompino Singlespeed Cyclocross

The On-One Pompino Singlespeed Cyclocross bike is re-built again. It will be raced for the final three Sacramento Series cyclocross races. The current set-up of the bike is 42x17 gearing, which is primarily used for flat terrain only. Instead of using the normal cantilever brakes, I installed XTR v-brakes. The levers are the standard brake-only type. It does have barrel adjusters on the brake line to adjust the distance between the brakes pads and rims. The picture to the left was taken a couple of years ago at Howard Park, Ione.