Nutrition Changes

The first time I rode the whole way to work, 39 miles, I probably had a bottle of Michaelade and a bottle of water. About 30 miles in I started to feel bad and knew I needed to find a donut shop quick to get some carbs in me. Since then I always ride with a spare gel. Also, I took along some kind of snack on my 40 mile commutes. As time went on and I got stronger, I kept my nutrition the same: one bottle of Michaelade, one bottle of water, and a snack (gel or rice cakes or a waffle snack). I was always fueled up and recovery was much better than it used to be.

Then this past summer I got to reading The Rules. Rule #91 says no food on rides under four hours. Hmmm. How is that possible? I did some thinking and decided that I needed to experiment a bit. I was much stronger than I was when I started doing these long rides. Perhaps I didn't need as much fuel as I did before?

First up: the snacks. Thanks to the Feed Zone Portables cookbook, my ride snacks had improved quite a bit. Peanut butter and jelly rice cakes. Bacon and egg rice cakes. Chorizo and egg rice cakes (not for the faint-of-heart). I actually looked forward to my ride snacks rather than sometimes dreading yet another gel. However, I tried a ride with just the drinks and no snack...and I was fine! When I finished a ride I would drink a chocolate milk and, not only did I feel fine right after the ride but my recovery was still good.

Next up: the Michaelade. I had ditched the energy drink on bus-assisted rides home (only 26 miles) long ago but now I would try ditching it on a ride to work. Since it was during the winter I wouldn't be sweating as much. I did a 39 mile ride to work with just water...and I was fine! Recovery was fine, too. That may change during the summer when those morning rides find me sweating a lot but, for now, I'm not missing the carbs or electrolytes.

How about long rides? Could I get away with just a lunch break in the middle of an 80 mile ride? Last weekend I tried just that, though I did take along Michaelade mix just in case.

The ride was okay up to through the halfway point, which was lunch at In-n-Out. Felt good. Went through a whole water bottle and I drank two cups of lemonade and another cup of water for lunch, so hydration was not a problem. I got going again but about ten or fifteen miles later, I started feeling not-so-great. Not bad but more tired than I should have felt. Time to put that spare drink mix into action! Long story short: I should have had the energy drink in the first place. This was reinforced by poor recovery over the next few days.

Remember that all experiments are usually successes: if you learn something, even if it's not what you expected to learn, that's a success. I learned that when I'm going to be riding much more than three hours, I need, at the very least, an energy drink along with water. Since I took a lunch break I don't think I need to take additional snacks (I did the same ride several weeks ago and felt that a rice cake, in addition to lunch, was a bit much). I want to eat enough to fuel the ride and recovery but not too much, because I'd also like to lose more weight.

So, what's this post all about? That one's nutrition is one's own nutrition. Using recommendations from a book or magazine is a good start but you need to find out what works for you. Then, once you've figured that out, it can change! As you get stronger, leaner, faster, your needs can change. Then there's the weather. One bottle of water may suffice for a ride in the winter but in the middle of summer? Probably not so much. Experiment (with proper backups) to find what works for you. You will learn what you need in different conditions and that knowledge will keep you fueled up during your activity and recovering properly afterwards (and, just like at the gas pump, not topped off).

My First Criterium: Not Ready for My Second Yet

Rode my first criterium today. Got my butt kicked, of course, but we learn from these things.

I had been getting much stronger in the past couple of months so I figured, what the heck. I signed up for a race down in Dominguez Hills, a popular SoCal course. Got there in plenty of time, felt fine, warmed up great. We went off and I held on for a couple of laps but then the pack got away from me. I time trialled as long as I could but got pulled off before the field could catch me with two laps to go. Oh, well. Getting lapped in one's first crit is not an unusual occurrence (and I wasn't the only one in this race).

So, what to do now? First, I put the race into Strava. I knew from looking at my computer that I averaged over 22 mph for the race, which is a huge improvement for me. However, this was a race and not a time trial so all that matters is how I did against the other racers. Fortunately, on Strava you can compare your performance with others that uploaded the same race. That's nice because I can see how much improving I need to do. Looks like I need to up my average to 25 mph before I tackle this race again. That is actually very good to know.

What now? Well, this race is part of a series and the next one is in December. I know I'm not ready for that so I think I'm going to take November off the bike and give my body a break. Next, I know if I want to do more of these crits then I need to get serious about losing weight. Like, 20 lbs. serious. That means I'm going to have to make a real effort to eat clean once I get back on the bike. I think I can do that. When I do get on the bike, I need intervals, intervals, intervals. I still don't have a power meter but these intervals will be sprints so I just go like crazy for ten seconds. I can keep track of my progress on Strava by occasionally hitting certain segments hard and looking at the results. When I've brought up my performance by 3 mph, I'll know I can try another race and see if I can hang on this time.

Sometimes It's Just About Being There

I like Strava. I don't get to go on many group rides so seeing how I do against others and myself is sometimes as close as I can get. It also helps me to improve as well as humbles the heck out of me. Nothing like riding a slightly downhill segment as fast as I possibly can, then finding out that the pros rode that same segment 10 mph faster during last year's Amgen Tour of California while they were just cruising. Yikes.

On Sunday I did one of my go-to figure eight routes. Not too long but lots of climbing. I've been riding stronger lately so I was curious how I did on one of the hills on the route. My second best time, so that was okay. However, I noticed that my personal best put me in the bottom 15% of the riders for that climb. That's not surprising, though, because I am not a climber at all. I can get over hills, I just do it very slowly because I'm so big. Sucks but that's just the way it is. I looked at the leaderboard again and noticed something else: there are just not a lot of people doing that climb. Almost 3x the number of people do the descent but because that climb is so hard (not so long but steep, isolated, and it can get hot out there), most cyclists aren't even trying it.

Sometimes it's not about how fast you go up the hill. Sometimes it's just that you go up the hill at all.

An 80-Mile Round-Trip Commute to Work by Bike? WTH?

How in the world did I find myself making an 80-mile round-trip commute to work by bike? Like most things exercise-related, I built up to it.

A few years ago I worked at a company that was close enough to me (11 ½ miles) that I could ride my bike to work every other day or so. 23 miles round-trip isn't so bad if you've been riding at least a year. The ride to work was a net downhill and it was close enough that I could get away with "showering" with Action Wipes. I would already have a change of clothes at work waiting for me. Things were working just fine.

Then I moved and changed jobs. If I wanted to ride to work this time, it was going to be 25 miles each way and significantly more climbing. I did it a few times, still using Action Wipes, but then I had my accident and that stopped my riding for almost a year.

When I was ready to ride again, my new employer had an actual shower I could use. It was in a basement but it was still better than Action Wipes for the new ride. This time it was 28 miles each way, 1,000 feet of climbing to work and more home but I could do it in about 95 minutes to work and 1:50 to home. A workout but totally doable. What I would do was drive to work in the morning with my bike gear, a change of work clothes in bags, and my bike in the trunk. When it was time to go home I'd change into my cycling clothes and ride home. The next morning I would ride back to work, put my bike in my car's trunk, grab my work clothes, take a shower, get dressed and go to work. It worked out rather well until the end of daylight savings time because there were certain parts of the route that I didn't want to ride for extended periods in the dark.

Then last July I changed jobs again (it can be like that when you're a computer programmer) but this time my commute was much farther. To ride my bike would not just be a lot farther (40 miles each way) but, obviously, take a lot more time. I started out slowly, only doing the round-trip once a week. I would also take a bus for part of the way home, turning that commute into 26 ½ miles. Then I started doing it twice a week, still taking the bus part-way home. The first time I did the full ride home turned out to be a day when I got food poisoning at lunch. I finished the ride home but the last few miles were pretty tough. It wasn't until that night that I figured out why.

When daylight savings ended I took a month off, then I started riding during lunch. I would try to keep the ride down to under an hour and that worked out fine. I work at a place with some nice rollers nearby so I could hit certain hills hard when I was feeling up to it.

With daylight savings back, I was back to my bike commute. This time, though, after a few weeks I would ditch the bus and do the whole ride home. Because of my schedule, I can do the round trip once every other week, and on the opposite weeks I can do it twice. On the weeks I can only do the round trip once, I try to get in a good ride on the weekend.

We are nearing the end of daylight savings time so I'll be back to doing my noon rides and longer rides on the weekend. It changes things up and I can tackle some of the harder rides where I live that I can't do when I'm putting in all those miles to/from work.

Advantages of putting in all those miles to/from work:

• Saves gas. Really, it does. My drive is so long that replacing any of those trips noticeably helps my pocketbook.
• Burns lots calories.
• I can tune my race nutrition should I get back to doing longer triathlons. Been loving making different rice cakes.
• Improves your urban riding skills. Comes in very handy when riding in traffic during a race.
• Put in a lot of miles without having to wake up a lot of mornings at 4am.
• Toughens you up. Riding home at 5pm means it can still be very hot out. Riding to work at 6am means it can be a bit chilly and dark out. You learn what you need to do to get through it.
• Four words: guilt-free donut Fridays.

Disadvantages of putting in all those miles to/from work:

• It does take time. For me, around three hours. That means when I ride home I get there about 8pm and when I ride to work I get up at 5:30am so I can leave around 6am.
• You will feel tired at work. When you first start doing these, you'll get very tired. However, you'll adapt and won't be so tired. If you have a cushy desk job, like me, that's not so bad, though.
• Lonely ride. Let's face it, nobody else I know is going to do this crazy bike commute so I have to do it alone. I'm okay with that, though.

I am really, really enjoying these commuting rides. When/if I move closer to work, I'm going to miss them.

My Fun Disaster at the 2013 Hansen Dam Triathlon

Though I have moved out of the San Fernando Valley to Santa Clarita, I still consider the Hansen Dam Triathlon to be my hometown race. It's the race that got me started training and it's a fun course so I try to do it every year. I had to miss last year because of my accident but I signed up to do it this year. However, with my decision several months ago to shift from triathlon to track cycling, this hasn't been a good year for triathlon training. My cycling is better than ever, my runs are limited to once a week, and swimming is pretty much non-existent. Still, I signed up for the race so, if I wanted the race shirt, I needed to do the race.

The big problem is the swim. I just don't feel like swimming much so I haven't done it. So I decided I needed to do at least ONE swim before the race. So, like a good procrastinator, I got in the local pool on the Friday before the race (my first swim in since March 2012). It was pretty horrible. My engine is good but my arms? Not so much. I could swim fifties all workout. Hundreds weren't even so bad. However, when I tried swimming a 200, things got bad. I'm not even sure I made it the whole 200; I might have stopped after 150. When I was done I felt like I was going to be sick. How was I going to do 500 yards on Sunday? Ugh. Horror show. One hope, though: it was my hope that this small workout (just 700 - 800 yards) would serve as a wake-up call to my body and that, somehow, it would respond the morning of the race.

My running had dropped off lately. Between changing apartments and preparing for trial for my never-ending divorce (I know, I know: nobody goes to trial--believe me, it's not my choice), running has taken a back seat for the past couple of months. Still, I knew finishing a 5K would be no problem so the plan was to just cruise through it. A nice jog.

With just my commutes to work (26 miles from work, 40 miles to work), my cycling is better than ever. I'm faster, spending more time in the big ring, and stronger. This triathlon was going to be all about the bike. I wanted to average at least 20 mph during the bike. I didn't care about frying my legs for the run, I wanted that bike split.

Race morning came and I made the trip to the site. The weather was going to be great: not chilly and not hot. I was so worried about finishing the swim that I didn't even bother warming up. I wanted to save whatever strength my arms had for the race. The gun went off and I waded...slowly...into the water. When I couldn't walk anymore, it was time to swim. Nice and slow. The plan was to breaststroke near each of the three buoys of the 500 yard course to give me some rest time. I got to that first buoy and felt pretty good. Hey, I can finish this! So I did. It wasn't fast but I did finish.

No world-class transitions this year. I walked to my bike, switched gear quickly, and was off. Crap! I get about 100 yards and find out I have a flat. I hadn't even had a chance to get in my shoes yet! Grr. Oh, well. I changed the flat quickly (too quickly, it turns out) and was off again. I started my computer at this point because, while the official clock was ticking off during the flat fix, I only cared about my pedaling time. I was breathing heavily at first but was soon able to get past that and the race was on! I wanted to be in the small chainring to start but once we turned the corner onto Foothill, I would switch into the big chainring when we started that slight decline and stay there for the rest of the ride. I was passing people a lot, especially on hills!, which makes no sense. In fact, I passed about ten riders when we went up that little roller past the All Nations Church. I just got out of the saddle and stomped on my pedals. Nobody from that group caught me on the ride. I got to the top of Hansen Dam and was still going strong. Not quite as fast as I wanted but my average speed was inching up towards 20 mph. When you go past the middle of Hansen Dam, there is a very slight decline (at least it seems so to me) but I didn't get the speed bump up I was hoping for. I figured I just had tired legs so I pedaled harder. Then I found out why my speed wasn't what I wanted: I flatted again. What likely happened is that, in my haste to fix the first flat, I neglected to find out what caused it and remove the little pokey. Sigh. If I wanted to finish the race, I needed to walk it in. The big bummer was that the rest of the course was downhill so I was going to hit my goal. I declare a moral victory.

I walked it in, at least a half mile, jogging a bit when I turned the corner to the transition area to milk some applause out of the spectators. I racked my bike, got my running gear on, and headed out for a nice jog on the trail. When I finished, I simply walked around for a bit and then headed to In-N-Out for my traditional post-race meal of a Double-Double, Animal Fries (I only eat them after a race), and a shake. It turns out that I finished last in my age group but only by 12 seconds. Not bad when you consider I lost probably over 15 minutes due to my flats. Even with all my drama, I did have fun. I wouldn't mind continuing to do this race in the future. I would also want to figure out how to better keep my swimming up in the future. Swimming once a week or so could probably do it, as long as I keep my engine up on the bike and run. We'll see.

Why I Became A Team Kit Dork

You've seen them. Those guys wearing Radio Shack, BMC, Columbia-HTC, etc. team kit but don't look like skinny pros. Amateurs wearing pro team kit. What's up with that? Are they wannabe pros? Do they think they're fooling anybody? On the other hand, is it really any different than people walking around in a Raiders jersey? I have stayed away from wearing team kit because I wasn't sure about the whole thing.

I now have a confession to make: I have become (a bit) of a team kit dork. What's up with that?

I do have a defense, so hear me out. First, I am doing long commutes to/from work so I want to wear something visible. With (sub)urban cycling long distances, I want all the visibility I can get. I do these commutes with a flashing headlight and taillight to help car drivers see me better. The last thing I want to wear on these rides is some oh-so-stylish Rapha kit than blends into the background. Give me some bright colors! Where to find them, though? Looking around, it seems like striking jersey colors aren't all the rage right now. When I was laid up after my crash, I was watching a road race on the computer. I became curious: which team kit stood out the most in the peloton. I had two answers: Lampre and Rabobank. ProBikeKit had Lampre kit in my size, but not Rabobank, so I ordered me a jersey and bibshorts. It would be several months before I could try it out but when I finally did, it felt fine. I'm assuming that cars can see me well.

Problem, though: that Lampre kit, like most cycling kit, wasn't cheap. In fact, it was a bit of a splurge with my insurance money. A purchase like that wasn't going to be happening on a regular basis. What to do? I needed more than one high-visibility outfit for my commutes. While watching another bike race, my girlfriend commented that she liked the Liquigas (now Cannondale, which she likes, too) kit. Curious, I went searching for the Cannondale kit and that's when I discovered them: sellers in China offering team kit at ridiculous prices. Tempting but what is the quality of this stuff? I decided to place an order for one kit and see what I bought. After a few weeks, my Liquigas kit arrived and it looked pretty good. I have been on a couple of rides with it and it feels great. So far so good. So good, in fact, that I have ordered three more (2012 Rabobank, 2011 Milram (which isn't exactly high-visibility but I've always loved the cow spots), and 2011 Acqua & Sapone) from the same seller. I'll see how they hold up in the long-term but I am hopeful.

How can I order three more if money is supposedly a concern? Honestly, for what I paid for that Lampre kit last year, I can get four of the other kits from China. And it seems to be good stuff, too! As I understand it, most of the official team kit comes from China, anyway, so why not cut out the middle man? I have to admit, though, that price is the biggest factor. Good quality stuff for that cheap? And it's exactly what I am looking for: high-visibility cycling gear. It was really hard to say "No" to all that.

I haven't become a total team kit dork, though. I won't be wearing it on group rides with the LBS or when I start track cycling. I am reserving it for my commutes and solo rides around the area. That keeps me from being a total dork, right?

At The Crossroads

This started off as one of my standard event reports for the recent California Classic Weekend but things have been swirling around in my head...

The century ride was fun. Aid stations every fifteen miles really helped. I had plenty of nutrition on my own but my feet and butt needed a break. While my fit is much improved, I need a new saddle to get me through rides of much more than two hours. I'm eyeing the Selle SMP Pro but we'll see. I also need to fix my numb feet. I thought loosening my shoes would be the answer but, clearly, that is not the case. I do have an idea regarding insoles, though, so we'll see if that helps. As far as riding went, I was pleased. I had to save something for the run the next day but I did okay. I was especially pleased with my performance up "the hill": three miles averaging 9%. I didn't fly up but I didn't stop or walk and was able to get out of the saddle when I wanted to. Very nice. My goal for next time is to have the fastest time on Strava for that very fun downhill on the ride. It's possible.

The half-marathon the next day was kinda tough. I wasn't in as good running shape as I was two years ago so that wasn't a surprise. What was really tough was my heel getting sore around ten miles in. It wasn't so painful that I had to stop but I could tell that I am not going to be able to do a marathon unless I get this problem fixed. That will likely mean surgery. I'm really not in a position to even consider that right now.

What has my brain swirling was triggered by what happened at the end of the ride. While it wasn't what you'd call a bunch sprint, a bunch of us were trying to cross the finish line first. What happened was that I did...fairly easily. At 50 years of age, I don't think that's supposed to happen. It got me thinking about track cycling again. Do I really want to keep heading down this triathlon path when I don't like the swim training and I have a physical problem that is keeping me from running a full marathon? When there is this other sport, track cycling, which I am much better suited for physically, and where, for the first time in my life, someone commented that I may have a talent for it?

The last time I tried track cycling I had to stop for a couple of reasons. First was a bad IT Band problem that I developed after only two sessions, likely due to bad (rental) bike fit. The second was that I needed to work on basic track-specific skills like pacelines (much tighter than on the road), track stands, etc. before tackling group workouts and races. Then two months later was my accident.

I took another look at the Home Depot Center Velodrome and they seem to have a much more structured way of progressing from beginner, as opposed to the "jump in the deep end" approach at Encino. I'm thinking that using the money I would have spent on my planned iron-distance triathlon, or even the half, would be better spent at the track. I will likely find out in fairly short order whether I have a knack for it or not.

So now I find myself at a crossroads:

• Off in the distance is the goal of doing an Ironman. It was never a "bucket list" thing or life-long dream. It was just something I thought would be an adventure. It's now looking like it's not going to happen in the foreseeable future.
• Over there in August is the Hansen Dam Triathlon, which I have already signed up for. No getting out of starting swimming workouts soon, I'm afraid. It's just a sprint so it should be fun. I'm thinking that one of that or the IronBruin or the Merced Gateway will be my only triathlon I do in a season.
• The velodrome is what I am really looking forward to now. The speed! The newness! The tighter jeans as my thighs get bigger! Yes, even at 50 I can still put on quite a bit of muscle. I know because I was doing it before my accident.
• Finally, road cycling. Even if I went crazy with the track cycling, I would still need to bike on the road and, more importantly, I really want to keep riding on the road. It was the part of triathlon training that I always liked the most. Riding to work, longer rides on the weekend, centuries and whatnot. I really like it.

Hey, as long as I'm active, getting fit, and having fun, I'll be happy. It just looks like the focus won't be on triathlon like it has been for the past few years.