After yesterday’s debacle I was keen to get out and ensure that the Shimano/SRAM hybrid was OK in the hills. Kevin suggested I try out the climb to Col d’Eze, so after figuring out where it was on the map I plotted a route. This all took a bit longer than anticipated, as without internet in the apartment, or a data package on my French SIM, I was restricted to paper maps, not Google Maps. Old-skool!

Off I went at 7am this morning, greeted with clear blue skies and nary a car on the roads. I had two Michelin maps stuck in my back pocket to assist with route-finding and things were looking good. Getting on to the road to Col d’Eze required a couple of U-turns as I realised I’d overshot the required turn, but I was slowly making my way uphill at gradients between 7 and 12%. Avenue de la Condamine was my target, and once there it was simply a case of following the road until I reached the Col. The relatively constant gradient made it easy enough to settle in to a rhythm and I reached the top around 8am.

Near Col d'Eze looking back towards Nice

Just to rub things in, I texted Kev to point out that he was probably sitting on a bus on his way to work, whereas I was sitting atop the Col on my way to Monaco! Rather than drop straight back down to the coast I decided on the longer, more gradual downhill which would take me above Monte Carlo and would reach the coast closer to Menton. The morning traffic had picked up a bit and I was settled in behind a group of cars when a rider wearing a Monaco club outfit went past. I decided to follow him and, since he obviously knew the roads, I was able to speed downhill with relative abandon, using him as a guide to how tight upcoming corners were. Over the course of about 10km I only lost about 150m to him, so I was pretty happy with that and since we were travelling a lot faster than the cars, I didn’t have anyone behind me waiting to get past. Good fun.

I reached the coast at a small town between Menton and Cap Martin. I was off the edge of the detailed Nice map I had, and the other map covered the whole South-East of the country so it wasn’t detailed enough to figure out which streets I needed to take, so I decided to stick to the coast and follow the road signs for Nice, being careful to avoid ending up on the autoroute! This was probably the best part of the ride: the Mediterranean on one side, the mountains on the other, and riding through all the famous towns in the area: Cap Martin, Monte Carlo, part of the F1 course in Monaco, Cap-d’Ail, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, a coffee stop in St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, then back home to Nice.

Rascasse Corner on the Monaco F1 track

Near Beaulieu-sur-Mer, looking back to where I've come from

...and where I'm going to.

The harbour in St. Jean Cap Ferrat

Almost home: near Villefranche-sur-Mer, looking towards Nice

Home four hours and 70km or so after I’d started, and it was still only 1130am. Despite the roads being narrow and cars having to wait behind me in parts, no-one honked at me, no-one told me to get off the road, and everyone left a decent amount of room when going past. A big difference from bogan Sydney drivers! I could get used to living in this part of the world.

My first few days in Nice have been great. Spent the first day getting set up with a French SIM card, some food for the apartment and re-building my bike after the flight, before heading out for a ride along the coast to Juan-les-Pins, where Sean’s wedding will be held. All went well until I reached Juan-les-Pins, at which point my rear derailleur stopped working. It was stuck in the hardest gear too and kept trying to shift completely off the cog. Not what you want when you’re 25km from home in a foreign country where you don’t know anyone. A guy in a car garage saw me messing around with it and offered to help, at which point my schoolboy French let me down. I assumed the cable had come loose, but I had no idea what pliers was in French, so when I tried to ask him if he had any pliers I was in fact asking him if he had folded himself??!! We managed to figure things out in the end though and at least lock the derailleur in an easier gear so I could ride home.

Once back in Nice, a quick trip to the bike shop revealed that the shifter mechanism was broken (dodgy baggage handling!) and needed replacement. Of course, no bike shop in Nice stocks SRAM, so I had to go with a new Shimano shifter, then, because Shimano and SRAM aren’t compatible, I had to pay for a new Shinamo rear derailleur as well. Given that there’s no way I was cycling in the Alps with only two gears, I didn’t really have a choice in the matter, so €210 later and the bike was good to go, though looking a bit unsightly due to the Shimano cables exiting out the side of the lever instead of being routed under the handlebar tape like SRAM.

Oh well, all good things come to an end, and in my case my training has been undone by a knee injury! I first noticed a niggle in my left knee after the long day of climbing in the Royal National Park a couple of weeks ago. It felt like my patella wasn’t tracking properly, but was scraping on something. Since I’d been fiddling with the float on my pedals and my seat in the days prior to the ride, I assumed that was the problem. I put them back to their previous settings and had no trouble with the knee over the following two weeks so thought nothing more of it.

I’d booked in to see a physio anyway and when the appointment came up I went along for an assessment. She diagnosed me as hardly using my core at all, having bad posture and accused me of being a tight-arse :) Well not quite, but she did say I had tight glutes and all those things were probably contributing to my knee issue in varying degrees. Exercises and stretches were prescribed.

I continued training but the problem flared up again when I did my next hard interval session, requiring me to put a lot of power out. It’s not painful, so I wasn’t too concerned and I stuck to my plan and went down to ride some serious hills with Simon the weekend before last. Although I was concerned at how the knee would cope, I needed to find out now rather than wait until I got to France. While the ride wasn’t too much of an issue, the knee was quite sore at the end of it and I was straight into the physio on Monday.

Ultimately it’s an inflammation and there’s no way of knowing whether I’m doing damage to cartilage or not without doing an MRI which isn’t practical since I’m off to France in less than a week. Hailey’s diagnosis was to take it easy for a bit, build back up gradually and see how the knee reacts, so I took last week off the bike completely, which was probably just as well as it took until Thursday before my knee felt OK again! I have only done one ride this week due to copious amounts of rain, but I’ve a long, flat ride scheduled for the weekend, so that will give a good indication of what’s going on.

If that relatively easy ride causes multi-day inflammation I may have to seriously revise my cycling plans in France. After all, if a 118km ride with 1800m vertical causes 6 days of knee pain, the 175km w/ 5000m vertical of La Marmotte could be a real problem!

In the meantime I just have to keep going my exercises and stretches and see what happens. Fingers crossed.

…with the sound of cyclists suffering! Two weeks ago I headed down to Port Kembla to go for a ride with a friend of mine, Simon. He was going to take me up two of the bigger climbs near him - Saddleback (avg: 6.6%, max: 14%) and Jamberoo (avg: 8.5%, max: 18%) - so I could see what climbing ‘proper’ gradients is like before heading off to France.

I had my full France set-up on the bike: compact cranks, an 11-28 on the rear, plus my new Garmin 500 GPS telling me all the details on the ride: speed, cadence, HR, plus new stuff like gradient and VAM (how fast I was going vertically in metres/hour).

As it turned out Saddleback wasn’t too bad, although there were one or two super-steep pitches where my Garmin told me it was 18%, though I’m not sure how accurate it is for stuff like that yet. Jamberoo was a whole different ball game as it’s just relentless. The first couple of kilometres are just constant 10-15% with no let up which is really tough. Myself and Simon climbed at our own pace, and I’d stop every now and again to wait for him, but also to get a much-needed break! Lugging 86kg up a 14% grade is hard bloody work! There’s a section where it eases off in the middle and then the last few kilometres are mainly around 6-7% with a few 10%+ pitches.

All up we rode 118km but my knee was pretty sore by the end of it. Will have to head back to the physio!

I racked up another good week on the bike this week, topped off by a 4hr ride yesterday. After failing to climb the Waterfall climb without stopping last week, I resolved this week to ride to Waterfall, descend the climb, turn around and ride home. I also wanted to try eating more on the ride and to see if I could keep the power down in the latter stages of the ride as well.

With this in mind, I made up a concentrated solution from carb/protein powder to take occasional swigs out of as I rode, and this worked out pretty well. I also stopped at two petrol stations along the ride to buy a muesli bar and some jellies, and also to refill my water bottles. In truth I may have overdone it, as while I had no problem maintaining the power all the way home, I was close to getting a stitch, which probably means I was eating more than my stomach could absorb under effort.

The other good news is that I made it up the Waterfall climb without too much pain. The top section was still tough, but I’d made a point of noting the exact distance on the way down, so this time I knew exactly how much suffering was left before the top. It definitely wasn’t as hard as last week, partly due to the fact that I’d eaten properly this week and partly due to the fact that I’d ridden 4h50 when I started the climb last week, rather than 2h00 when I started yesterday.

While reading up on the features of the power meter software I use, I discovered the Performance Management Chart above, which shows how much work I am absorbing. The most important line is the blue one which is an indication of my fitness level and it’s increasing slowly but surely. The pink line indicates the average amount of work I’ve done over the last few days, and the yellow line indicates how much of a hole I’ve dug for myself in doing the work - basically how knackered I am. The yellow line is basically the pink line mirrored about the blue line, e.g: when the pink line peaks at approx. 72 (right axis) my fitness level was 38 (right-axis) and my cumulative fatigue was 34. This makes sense as the fitter you are, the less of a toll a given work load takes on me.

Over the last three weeks my weight has dropped from 89.3 to 86.2 this morning as well, so, so far so good, things are moving in the right direction.

One of the concerns I had when I initially received my training program from Alex was that it didn’t include any rides longer than three hours. Given that La Marmotte, even if everything goes perfectly, will most likely take me at least eight hours, this could have been a problem. Alex told me just to go on an extra-long ride every couple of weeks, but otherwise to stick to the plan. With that in mind, on Saturday I resolved to ride for five hours with some small hills thrown in.

I’d ordered a second bottle cage and bidon which had arrived earlier in the week, so I stocked up on water, threw a few muesli bars in my jersey pockets and hit the road, armed with $50 for food refills and emergencies. The first part of the ride was straightforward enough as it’s my usual Saturday long ride, but once I got to Cronulla it was all relatively new territory. I’d ridden the route once before a few years ago as part of the Gong Ride so I knew where I was going.

There were plenty of cyclists heading South as well, though I resisted the temptation to tack onto the back of the pelotons and stuck to my own pace. Once past the Audley entrance to the National Park there was a nice, wide shoulder to the road and less traffic lights which made things more enjoyable, though I was also my first and only encounter with dickheads, as some arsehole hung out the passenger window and roared something at me as he went past, hoping to scare me off my bike. At best he got a mild look of surprise on my face, but no wobbles on the bike!

I entered the park at Waterfall and got to practice some descending, a skill which will be vitally important in France, then got stuck into the gradual climb up to Otford which felt a lot easier than the last time I had done it a few years ago. That must mean I’m a lot fitter, as I’m certainly not lighter! I reached Stanwell Tops after 2h 40m and I was still feeling good. The only problem I had was that my lower back was acting up, presumably due to the different position and different recruitment of muscles while climbing. A bit of stretching sorted things out quickly, but I’ll have to do lots more stretching over the next few months to really loosen up the muscles around the back/hip area. The last thing I need is back troubles when faced with two hours plus of continuous climbing!

Stanwell Tops was my rough turn around point, and I knew it would be a bit easier on the way back as it was gradually downhill for most of it. Unfortunately the first 10km or so was still rolling hills, so I wasn’t quite done with the uphill stuff yet, but once back to Waterfall I was back on the smooth, wide shoulder, with a slight tailwind meaning 40km/h+ was easy enough. Once I made it back to Cronulla I was back on my normal long-ride route and it was just a matter of counting down the kilometres until I was home.

The last half an hour was a bit tough mentally. I was starting to get properly fatigued and was struggling to keep the power up where I wanted it. As I headed back to the coast I was also riding into a headwind which didn’t help matters but I stuck with it and made it home without too much hassle: 4h 57m ride time, not including traffic light stops etc. for a grand total of 132.3km, my longest ride by 32km.

Now I’ll have to plan a six hour route in a couple of weeks!

It would seem that I haven’t commented at all on how my training program is going since I did the MAP tests and rented the power meter seven weeks ago. Pretty slack of me, so I’ll try and summarise it a bit here.

The basic structure of a training week is that I ride on Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs, with a day off on Friday, a long ride on Saturday and then Sunday off as well. The key sessions are a tempo ride on Monday, a hard intervals session on Thursday and then the long ride on Saturday. Each session has a required power band that I must ride in for the duration of the ride, with the power bands determined from my MAP test results as follows:

Long rides are in Zone 1, tempo in Zone 2 and intervals in Zone 4. Since each zone comprises a fairly wide power band, and since power fluctuates pretty easily on-road, I opted to aim for the middle of the relevant power band, so 200W for Z1, 230W for Z2 and 285W for Z4.

The first two weeks of the programme were a bit of struggle. The weather was atrocious for the first week, resulting in me missing scheduled sessions which wasn’t an auspicious start. The second week was much better and I managed to get all the required sessions done. The next two weeks were basically time off as first Mum & Dad were here for a visit and then I was in NZ for Bevin’s wedding, although I did managed to do some MTBing while over there so at least I wasn’t sitting on my arse all the time. On my return from NZ, if I had continued the program where I’d left off, I would have done one week and then had a rest week, so I opted to just restart the program from scratch so I’d have a full three weeks before the next rest week and that’s what I’ve been doing.

So far, so good, though I missed one session the week before last. I’m finding things getting easier as I go along, though I want to string a couple of decent weeks training together to see what the cumulative fatigue over a 3-4 week block will be like. I’ll have done three solid weeks this Sunday, so I’ll see how I feel then.

Totals:

Yesterday was the big day; my first ever MAP test! I’d done no cycling on Sunday, and nothing on Monday morning either, so my legs should have recovered from Saturday’s ride. The test was scheduled for 14:30, so I was determined to take things easy, get hydrated and to eat accordingly. The last thing you want on any max. effort test is to feel lunch sitting in your gut!

After driving over to Alex’s house he explained the mechanics of the test. It was to be done on his indoor trainer which is fitted with SRM cranks to measure the power being generated. The general idea was that I would be told to cycle at a particular power output which would increase every minute until I could do no more.

I really had no idea what to expect, or what sort of power output I’d be capable of. I’d made a vague effort to work out how much power bad been required for my Calga TT a few months back and had come up with 153W, so I figured anything over 200W would be good. Alex left me to do a 20 minute warm-up and get used to the SRM readout. It’s surprisingly sensitive, so maintaining a steady power output is very hard for an inexperienced user. I was fluctuating all over the place, often 20W over or under the level I was aiming for. I tried a couple of short efforts and managed to top 300W easily enough, so things were looking up.

Once I’d warmed up thoroughly, Alex decided to start me off at 125W and I’d be required to increase by 25W every minute. 125W is super easy, and I was soon past 200W and heading for 250W without feeling too stressed. I was concentrating on trying to minimise the yo-yoing around the target wattage and dealing with the gearing on the test bike. With only 7 gears there’s a large jump between each one, and when I chose to shift into my final gear around 300W it took ages to engage which was a bit off-putting.

By this time I was breathing hard and I knew the end would be coming up soon, though I desperately wanted to reach 400W. Every minute the pressure piled on and on and I could feel the lactate starting to burn in my quads. For some reason, my right quad was burning more than my left, so I obviously favour it to a large degree. By 375W I was consciously trying to work my left leg harder, reasoning that since it wasn’t burning as much it could clearly do more work, then, finally, I was there: 400W. Having reached that goal, the next target became to finish the full minute at 400, though that proved to be too much to ask. After just short of 30 seconds my power started dropping consistently below 400 and I was cooked. That’s it - show’s over, I could spin the legs over and try to get some breath back.

Alex disappeared to download and analyse the power data and returned shortly afterwards to announce that my mean maximal aerobic power (MAP) is 406W. I was pretty happy with that.

Emil, my boss in Canada, who’s a pretty decent track rider, reckons he’s never managed 400W in any of his MAP tests, but he’s 20kg lighter than me and it’s easier for heavier guys to put out bigger numbers. Anyway, that’s the baseline established and Alex is designing my training plan to take me through to La Marmotte in July. I’ve also got a shiny, rented power meter fitted to my bike for the duration of the plan: another gadget to play with!

Update: here’s the graph of my MAP test. The green line is cadence, so you can see I changed gear twice during the test. The yellow line is power, which, although it oscillates wildly, increases steadily until I can’t hack the pace any more, and you can see the line tailing off on the right-hand side.

After a couple of weeks off over Christmas, I’ve been back into the training in earnest as the reality of La Marmotte starts to sink in.

I ended up riding 219km this week, which is my biggest week ever, so I’m pretty happy with that. Saturday’s long ride of 90km was tougher than expected due to the 35C temperatures and a 30km/h headwind for much of the return journey. I was certainly glad to get home after that one and spent the rest of the day flaked out on the couch watching the Tour Down Under live on SBS.

My MAP test is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully my legs feel OK then and aren’t still dead from this week! Thankfully Tuesday is a public holiday for Australia Day, so I can recover from the test’s exertions then!

The other good news is that I’ve got rid of the Christmas weight gain and am now back to 88kg. My training load has been enough to encourage slow and steady weight drop up to now, so if this continues there’ll be no need for a semi-diet at all.

The biggest thing on the horizon this year for me is La Marmotte, a cyclosportive in France on the first weekend of July. A cyclosportive is a mass-participation cycling event, usually longer than 100km, where you’re given a timing chip and you cycle the route at your own pace. There are also food & drink stations set up along the route and the road may or may not be closed to traffic. However, there are cyclosportives and there’s La Marmotte!

La Marmotte is commonly regarded as the most difficult of all the European cyclosportives. It’s 175km, which in itself isn’t a huge distance as cyclosportives go, but what really sets it apart is the 5000m of climbing included in the route. This isn’t just any old climbing, it’s riding over four of the most famous cols in Tour de France history! First up is the Col de Croix de Fer (27km at 5% - yes, that’s 27km uphill!), followed by the Télégraphe (11.8km at 7.8%), the Galibier (18.1km at 6.9%) and then, after a long descent back to Bourg d’Oisans, you climb probably the most famous of them all, L’Alpe d’Huez (14.2km at 7.7%).

So, what’s an overweight sometime cyclist like me doing entering an event like that? Well, Sean & Lisa announced that they were getting married in Antibes just as Jacqui started complaining that she wanted another holiday, so we decided to make a proper holiday out of the trip to the wedding. Since we were going to France and I’m a religious follower of le Tour every year, I wanted to take my bike and ride some of the famous cols while we were there. Myself and Kevin, plus possibly Tom, Niall and Ciarán are planning a 4-day cycling trip based out of Barcelonette anyway, but I also wanted to do some of the bigger climbs in the Haute-Alpes. Jacqui refused to act as support vehicle, and I didn’t really want to be cycling around with a pannier full of camping gear, so the simplest way to accomplish my goal seemed to be to enter La Marmotte. Now that I’ve done so, the enormity of the task in front of me is slowly starting to sink in!

However, to assist me in my preparation I’ve enlisted the help of a local cycling coach, Alex Simmons, who’ll draw up a training programme for me, starting on the 24th. First up is a Maximum Aerobic Power (MAP) test, where you cycle at ever increasing power outputs until you collapse, well not really, actually until you can no longer generate the given power output! This will give a good indication of how unfit I am and will therefore allow Alex to correctly set the relevant training intensities in my program. The program fee also includes the rental of a power meter, another gadget to play with. Should be interesting! Alex has previously training people for La Marmotte, so will also be able to shed some light on what to expect and help determine what a reasonable goal would be for the event. Should be fun.

Here’s a video someone made of last year’s event:

Training has been progressing nicely over the last couple of weeks. Above is a graph of my weekly cycling hours since September and I’m pretty happy with the results. I’ve been consistently above about 4.5hrs for the last few weeks and am feeling good on the bike, ready to step things up a notch in December.

I went down to Canberra at the weekend to visit John and brought my bike, intending to do a ride in the hills on Saturday morning. I had a couple of Guinness on Friday evening, but was still home at a reasonable hour, so made it out on the bike at 6:30am. Unfortunately, on the climb out of Coppins Crossing, a short pitch of about 8%, I felt terrible. My HR was through the roof, I felt exhausted and knew instantly that there was no way I was doing the planned 80km hilly ride.

I thought that maybe having beers the night before was the problem and was a bit pissed off that I’d wasted the opportunity for a hilly ride, but it wasn’t until I got back up to Sydney yesterday that I remembered that I’d donated blood on Thursday evening! No wonder I was wrecked, I was missing 10% of my blood, meaning there was 10% less red blood cells to carry oxygen to my muscles. Blood doping in reverse! So, that’s the reason for my paltry 2:41 this week!

My weight has stabilised at a little under 88kg, down from just over 93kg in September. I’m off any diet for the moment, and the plan is to keep my weight at this level until January, then to drop another couple of kilos to get me into the low 80s. I’ve committed to Alpine cycling in June, and the less there is of me, the easier it will be to get up climbs like Alpe d’Huez:

The target is to get to around 80kg or under by June, which shouldn’t be too hard to do if I can stay motivated to keep my cycling hours up for the next six months.

Totals

Nov.29: R 0:20 - C 2:41 - W 0:00
Nov.22: R 0:00 - C 5:05 - W 0:00
Nov.15: R 0:23 - C 4:40 - W 0:00

Well this week ended up being pretty easy. I had great intentions at the start of the week, but never got into it really, and decided pretty quickly to make it a rest week.

I would like to have a 3:1 ratio between training weeks and rest weeks, but I seem to lose motivation heading into the third consecutive training week, so I think I’ll stick to 2:1 for the moment until I learn to absorb the training better.

My long ride was still scheduled for Saturday, but a friend’s birthday on Friday put paid to that so I headed out this morning instead. I had a 90km route planned, heading down to Kurnell and back, and was on the road at about 6:15am. It’s great at that hour as the roads are super quiet.

I’m not going to bother going into the details of the ride, but it went well. I made it to Kurnell quite comfortably, grabbed a coffee and some banana bread, then returned home. I was feeling good towards the end of the ride, so detoured into Centennial Park and did a few extra laps to take my total up to 100km. I’d never ridden 100km before, so I figured that I may as well go for it this morning as the extra 10km was no big deal. The good news was that my arse gave out before my legs did - I’m still getting used to spending four hours sitting on a race bike saddle!

So, total distance ended up as 100.3km, in 4h 11m (incl. coffee stop, stopping at red lights etc.), average speed of 27.7km/h (excl. time stopped) and a total of 2548kcal burnt before breakfast. I had to spend a couple of hours on the couch recovering though!

Totals

R 00:00 - C 4:11:00 - W 00:00

Weight: -0.1kg

Had a decent week this week. Didn’t get everything I had planned done, due to crappy weather on Monday and a hangover on Thursday, but still managed to get some decent cycling in over the weekend. 30-odd km around Centennial Park on Friday was followed by Saturday’s long ride (see map above), then the TT on Sunday.

The long ride is going well, though I thought the route I had planned would be over 70km. Hopefully I can get a 100km+ ride in by the end of the month and can also get some hilly rides in. I might head down to visit John in Canberra later in the month and ride the Canberra HIM bike course which is a hilly 90km.

Totals

R 1:05:55 - C 5:08:18 - W 1:00:00

Weight: -1.2kg

Yesterday morning I headed up to Peats Ridge to try my hand at a 25km cycling time trial. The Australia Time Trial Association (ATTA) holds a 43km and a 25km TT on a public road course on the first Sunday of every month. I had intended going up last month, but got sick so had to pull the pin.

The setup is very informal, but professional at the same time. There are no medals, no fanfare, just a couple of guys who have measured out the courses, put up warning signs so motorists are aware there’s lots of bikes around, and set up electronic timing. Registration starts at 7:30am and you can choose your start time. Riders go at one minute intervals, starting from 8:00am, with men, women, kids, those doing 25km and those doing 43km all interspersed. It’s a great way for people to test themselves every month on a fixed course, and as a result you get a lot of really fancy time-trial bikes, disc wheels and aero helmets on show.

I had no fancy gear, just a plain road bike, normal helmet and wheels, and I was due to start at 8:37am. I didn’t really know what to expect, other than there was a cone in the middle of the road at 12.5km marking my turn around point, and I’d been told not to go all out from the start, but to hod back a bit until the turnaround and then lay it all on the line on the way back. Given that I’d only been back on the bike for four weeks, with a two week break in the middle for a bout of illness, I was nowhere near fit enough to put the hammer down straight out of the gates, and was more interested in riding the course and getting a feel for things. In the back of my mind I wanted to average 30km/h if possible, and to ensure I didn’t finish last (the top guys average about 44km/h!)

I presented to the start a couple of minutes before my alloted time, and was pleased to see that the start was inside a trailer, with a guy to hold your bike steady and a ramp down on to the course, just like an ITT stage of the Tour de France. The guy in front of me headed off and promptly stopped 300m down the road with what looked like a puncture, so I was on the lookout for glass straight away. I got the 5 second countdown and then I was off. Out of the gate, accelerate up to speed, oops, shit forgot to start my stopwatch, shit! is my HR really 160, that’s too fast this early, slow down!

Looking at the elevation map during the week had shown that the course was very slightly uphill to the turnaround, and (obviously) very slightly downhill on the return, but once out on the bike it wasn’t nearly as uniform as that. It’s a fairly undulating course, which makes it hard to get into a rhythm; one minute you’re flying downhill only to then have to shift down through the gears as you hit an uphill bit and your speed starts to drop. Gravity giveth, and gravity taketh away.

The rider who’d left a minute behind me caught me after a couple of km and went flying by, followed a few km later by the guy who’d left two km behind me. I was expecting this, so it wasn’t too much of an issue, but I also knew that Matt, a mate from my triathlon forum, was starting 5 minutes behind me, and although he’d been to a few of these, I was secretly hoping I could stay ahead of him to the finish. A moment of poor mental arithmetic had me wondering if I’d missed the turnaround, until I corrected my error and realised I’d only done 11km, not 12km. Two more riders had passed me well before I hit the turn, so I knew Matt was next.

I made the turn in 28:40 which was a lot slower than expected, and was indicating a total time up around 55 minutes, so I was a bit disappointed. I ramped up the speed on a bit of a downhill and saw Matt about a kilometre behind me. Given he’d started five minutes behind me, my chances of holding him off looked slim. Thankfully, the return journey was slightly downhill and the undulations, while still there, were less severe on the way back, so it was easier to get in a big gear and keep the speed up. All was going well and the few times I checked I couldn’t see Matt behind me, then I hit The Wall (see the green line on the graph at 41:00).

You’re flying along on a slight downhill, topping 60km/h, round a slight bend and then you see it two hundred metres ahead. It seems like an easy uphill, but when you hit it, your speed drops right off, you drop down to your lowest gear and your heart rate goes through the roof. I reached the bottom of the climb doing about 61km/h and 30 seconds later was doing 13.5km/h. It’s bloody annoying, and as the hill goes up and around the corner, I wasn’t sure when it actually ended. I didn’t remember a long, steep hill on the way out??

Thankfully it was reasonably short, and at the top it was a three km run into the finish. Near the top of the hill I’d looked back and seen another rider a few hundred meters behind with Matt just behind him, so I put my head down and went for it. The other guy went past about a kilometre later and though Matt was definitely catching me, I didn’t think he’d get me before the finish. I kept the speed up, HR up around 180bpm, and, as I came around the last bend, I saw the cones marking the finishing line a few hundred metres ahead of me and realised I’d hold him off. One last burst and I crossed the line with the clock reading 1:26:34. I’d started 37 minutes after the gun, so my elapsed time was 49:34 for an average speed of 30.2km/h at an average heart rate of 167bpm. I was happy with that. I’ve got another four weeks of training to see if I can beat that time next month.

After watching a few triathlon mates finish their races, it was off to Pie In The Sky for a well earned coffee, and a pie of course!

It’s been a pretty good week this week. I got back into exercise properly after a couple of useless weeks and managed to do almost all the sessions I wanted to. I missed one weights session and one run, but made the rest. This morning’s ride went well too; to La Perouse, then ‘round the back of the airport (to avoid the airport tunnel), then down to Brighton-le-sands and on to Sans Souci, before turning for home. 64km all up and I felt pretty good at the finish.

I refuelled with danish pastries and biscuits, which Jacqui thought was a waste of all the exercise, but, as I pointed out, if you can’t eat some junk food after having burnt 2100kcal before breakfast, when can you?

Totals

R 40:52 - C 6:05:19 - W 1:00:00

Weight: down 1.2kg

Now that the weather’s improving, the morning’s are warmer and I’ve got all the bits and pieces I wanted for my new bike, I’ve kicked off spring’s exercise program. I started properly two weeks ago, getting out on the bike a lot more and also starting to do a little running.

If we do decide to head over for Sean’s wedding next year, I would like to do some cycling in the Alps. I haven’t decided where, or which of the famous cols I’d like to climb, but at the moment that’s immaterial. If I’m to climb something like the Col du Galibier, for example, which is 18km at an average gradient of 6.9%, then I’d be looking at probably over an hour and a half of constant uphill effort, which I’m nowhere near fit enough for, and at 90kg, nowhere near light enough for.

Therefore, I’ve resolved to get out cycling regularly and make that the main focus of my training programme. An ideal week at this stage is two, one hour weights sessions, three runs of approximately 30mins each, and four bike rides. Three rides of approximately one hour, and one long ride at the weekend. Two weeks in and it’s going OK. I still haven’t managed a perfect week, but I’m getting most sessions done, though the dust storms which hit Sydney this week coincided with two of my bike rides, the first on Wednesday and the second on Saturday, which was a pain in the arse.

Next weekend I plan on heading out to Calga to have a go at the Australian Time Trials Association’s (ATTA) 25km TT which they run every month. I figure if I do the same TT each month it will be a useful guideline as to whether I’m getting any better or not. Should be fun, though hopefully this cold and sniffles that’s materialised this afternoon doesn’t develop any further!

Totals: Sep-20: R 40:46 - B 4:32:00 - W 1:00:00 Sep-27: R 29:43 - B 4:23:08

The Tour finished last night, or 2am this morning if you were watching it live in Sydney like me. It’s my July ritual, now that SBS are providing full, live coverage, and Jacqui knows that once early July rolls around I own the TV from about 10pm every night, unless it’s a rest day (for the Tour, not me).

This year’s race was somewhat disappointing. The return of the Team Time Trial was a farce. It hasn’t been in the race since Armstrong last competed in 2005, and all of a sudden makes a return just as Lance returns. Sure enough, Astana dominated, finishing the stage with their riders in 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, providing them with a stranglehold on the race. More importantly, riders who were hoping to make a difference on GC such as Carlos Sastre and Cadel Evans, were effectively knocked out of the race after the 4th stage, losing 1:38 and 2:36 respectively. Hopefully next year Prudhomme goes back to a non-TTT course.

The return of Lance Armstrong turned the race into a bit of a soap opera as well, with more focus on the internal goings on of Team Astana than on the race itself, and his constant spin was a bit annoying. Contador was clearly the better rider, and all public pronouncements since Armstrong announced his return have been designed to reassure Contador that he’s the team’s No.1 rider. However, actions speak louder than words and it became apparent pretty quickly that Armstrong was No.1 and he would do everything possible to destabilise Contador, all the while uttering reassuring sound bites, proclaiming that he was riding according to team orders. Technically this was true, though as Bruyneel is firmly in Armstrong’s camp, “riding to team orders” does not mean “riding in support of Contador”.

Contador, to his credit, saw the writing on the wall a long time ago, and came to the race prepared for battle. He beat Lance in the prologue and put time into him on every mountain top finish, even when it wasn’t strictly necessary, just to hammer home to Lance that he had no chance. He mostly went along with Lance’s games in the media-despite heavy criticism from Lance and Bruyneel about disobeying team orders-but let his legs do the talking on the road. What they said was loud and clear: “I can take anything you throw at me and still kick your ass.”

Now that it’s all over, Lance is forming his own team with Bruyneel for next year and Contador will be on the move somewhere else, probably to Caisse d’Epargne. In a real scumbag move, Armstrong didn’t bother showing up to the team party to celebrate Contador’s win, preferring instead to have a few drinks with the investors in his new team. Wanker.

When I returned from Canada last year, I bought a cheap and cheerful bike so I could get back into triathlons without having to spend a couple of grand on a nice machine. The bike was fine, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was a bit too big for me. I never seemed to be able to get comfortable on the saddle, would get niggles at the back of my knees after riding for a while, and if I wanted to ride further than about 40km, I’d start to experience discomfort in my lower back. The end result of all of this was that I wasn’t doing very much cycling at all.

July 1st marked the end of the financial year, and after a bit of diligent saving, I have some spare cash set aside, earmarked for a new bike. I’ve decided to make the upgrade to a full carbon frame, but before doing so, I figured that the best thing to do would be to get a professional bike fit. I booked an appointment last week with Steve Hogg, who’s well known as a bike-fitter amongst the cycling community, and a regular contributor on cyclingnews.com answering readers’ fitting questions. Rather than being fit on my existing bike, I got Steve to assess me and work out my ideal frame dimensions, which I could then use to determine which bikes would be a suitable fit, and which were no hopers.

The process was really interesting, not least because Steve’s approach differs from the usual “measure limbs and adjust accordingly” approach used by your typical bike shop. He quickly noticed that all the various muscles surrounding my hips and lower back were extremely tight, with my right side worse than my left, resulting in an imbalance which was causing most of my issues on the bike.

When standing up straight, the distance between my hip & shoulder on my left side is 4cm greater than that on my right, and I also support 6kg more through my right leg than my left! That’s the direct result of being a lazy bastard and not bothering to stretch after golf, running or cycling, so he gave me a choice between signing up for a yoga class, or following the exercises in Kit Laughlin’s Stretching & Flexibility book. Since I already own the book (though clearly haven’t been using it) I chose that option.

Once my major structural flaws were noted, the rest of the process was fairly straightforward, with some adjustments to my cleats to get my knees tracking properly, followed by working out my ideal seat height and handlebar position. The whole process took a little over two hours, and I left with a detailed breakdown of the major flexibility/structural issues which need to be addressed, a detailed understanding of how those issues affect how I feel on the bike, and a template of my ideal bike setup.

Now it’s time for some bike shopping! :-)

The Giro d’Italia started on Saturday, and as is usual now, SBS is covering it. However, since the Giro is not as popular as the Tour, they’re not doing live coverage of every stage, instead providing a 15min stage summary in the morning (Sydney time - so a couple of hours after the stage finished in Italy), and a longer, half hour summary in the evening.

However, Tom mentioned in an email last week that he has bought himself a SlingBox and rigged it up to his Sky TV setup box back in Ireland. He provided me with the details to log into it and try it out, whereupon I discovered that he has Eurosport, and, as it turns out, Eurosport cover most of the cycling season.

So now, I can log into Tom’s set-top box in Ireland, get it to record the Giro stages live, and then log in when I get up in the morning and watch the day’s stage! Pretty cool. It works well, and the video quality is pretty good. Isn’t technology wonderful :)

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to buying myself a new road bike. I’d sold my last one before we headed off to Canada two years ago, and my return to triathlons was going to be seriously undermined by the lack of a road bike.

In a bid for frugality, I decided to forego the heights I’d attained the last time and focus on something a little lower down the bicycling chain. Malvern Star are an Aussie brand, renowned for making kids bikes, who’d lost their way over the last few years when it came to road bikes. However, their new 2009 range has been getting rave reviews for putting decent frames together with good component packages at excellent prices. Just what I was after.

It took me a while to find a dealer stocking the road bikes, but once that was done, and $1100 later, I was back to being a cyclist again. A few hundred more for pedals and a decent helmet and I was ready to burn up the tarmac.

Imagine my surprise when I headed out at 6:30am one morning to find that, despite lots of running over the previous few months, and despite a resting heart rate hovering around 40bpm, my legs still felt shite on the bike. I guess that proves the specificity principle - that being fit in one sport doesn’t necessarily translate to being fit in another.

No doubt perseverance will prevail, as it almost always does, and as I slowly build my weekly mileage things will start feeling better. There’s a lot to be said for riding down to La Perouse in the early morning, though so far I’ve avoided travelling in the other direction to Watsons Bay. I still hate going uphill!