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March 24, 2007
The Madone is Dead, but I am not!
So yesterday I was out riding my bike before work. The day was supposed to break into the upper 50's and was perfectly sunny. I did not have any early morning meetings, so I headed out for a quick 1 hour bike ride before heading into the office. Shortly after I turned around and headed towards home, I was crossing through an intersection, and was run over by a car that blew through the stop sign!
Next thing I knew I was laying on the ground, blood dripping from my nose and my body hurt all over. I started to go into shock as I was shaking uncontrollably. Shortly the police and medics arrived on the scene and the next thing I knew I was strapped to a head board, put inside a helicopter and flown to North Memorial Trauma Center.
Today, I went and picked up my bike and am amazed that I actually survived that accident. The bike is broken in 1/2 with the chain stays totally cracked off of the bike. The seat was ripped right off of the seat post. It's a sad sight!
As you can see, the bike is pretty busted up. When I picked it up at the police station, I was shocked at its condition.
This may be hard to see, but the corner of my handle bar has been grinded nearly straight through. After I was hit, the car dragged me and the bike for a bit.
The seat was ripped right off of the seat post. When I was laying on the ground waiting for the polic/medics I noticed the seat laying a few feet in front of me, and in the background about 25 feet away, was my bike stuck under the car.
Posted by kermisch at 5:32 PM
March 22, 2007
Route Mapping
Found a cool route mapping site called Route Slip: http://www.routeslip.com. You can find routes around the world and create and post your own routes. It also auto calculated mileage and elevation. You can enter in direction information as well that you can print and take with you. That piece of the functionality should be automated, but for now it is manual. I created an epic ride route of 120 miles from my house to St. Cloud and back. I am going to have to take a day off from work and go do that ride this summer.
Posted by kermisch at 1:09 PM
March 18, 2007
140 miles
That may not sound like a lot of mileage, but that is a pretty good week for me. All but 15 of those miles were out on the open roads as we had some excellent weather here this past week. Went for a 2:20 minute ride with The Brit, Sanchez, and Diesel on Saturday. They got over 3 hours in, but I had to cut it early. It may have been for the better, as my legs started to bonk in the last 20 minutes. I was starving and was in need of some food. The diet is still really poor, I just can't quiet get a handle on it. I rode on the trainer this evening, but really struggled to get motivated... The legs feel the efforts of the past week as I definitely had some pretty intense efforts over the past 10 days.
Posted by kermisch at 10:37 PM
March 15, 2007
Ride at the Edges
Got this quote from an article in Bicycling Magazine. The article spoke to 10 Training Fundamentals:
3. Ride at the edges. Once a week, go so hard your eyes hurt. Follow it with a ride so slow the snails yawn. The combination makes legs strong.
I wonder if I can go so strong that my eye's hurt! I have had every other part of my body hurt, but can't remember if my eyes actually hurt!
Posted by kermisch at 3:46 PM
Outside and having fun...
Took the The Chairman (cross bike) out yesterday and simply putz'd around for about two hours. Headed north west towards Elm Creek park and got lost. ended up in a town called Dayton, MN that I had never been too. Stopped at a local gas station and picked up a granola bar and a chocolate milk, since I was starving.
The legs felt pretty good. A bit heavy due to the sustained effort I put in on Tuesday. As I warmed up, the legs loosened and I started to feel good. The wind was pretty calm, but the temps were 20 degrees lower than on Tuesday. I had to suit up with full winter gear.
The roads out past Elm Creek were pretty sketchy. Traffic was heavier than I normally ride in getting out to Elm Creek. The surface of the road was pretty beat up, so I think riding on the Madone would be uncomfortable. I do think, there would be some fun riding as I think I could follow the Mississippi up to Rogers and then cut back on 101. Not sure how long of a ride that would be, but I think it would be fun.
Posted by kermisch at 1:13 PM
March 14, 2007
Power, Power, Power...
If I had not said it before I love training with power. Over the past four days I have gotten outside on three of them for a bike ride. My average watts have increased to over 200, while last fall I more in the 160 - 180 range. I feel a lot stronger and feel my pedal stroke has really improved. I also find that I am able to manage my recovery on the bike between hard bursts of effort by using the watts.
The second big break for me was breaking the 1000 watt barrier on a short sprint over HWY 55 trying to beat a light. I came off of a fast downhill and punched it through the light up and over a small rise. For a brief second or two, I broke the 1000 watt barrier and recorded 1088 watts!
My main goal will be to break the 1000 watt barrier on my favorite secion of road to do a sprint finish. On my way home, there is a secion of road that dips down slightly allowing you to build a decent amount of speed. I then take a 90 degree right turn onto a rode with a slight rise for about 300 yards. I tend to come out of the turn at 20 - 23mph and then do a full on sprint just over the peak of the rise. The total effort lasts just over 30 seconds. Yesterday I pushed over 915 watts in my effort. The test to me is that this is always at the end of the ride with the legs feeling warm and at times heavy. It is a good benchmark for me to test my sprint ability against time and time again.
Posted by kermisch at 10:12 AM
March 7, 2007
Not a Morning Person
There are some athletes out there can get up at the crack of dawn, roll out of bed and excercise while the rest of us are dead asleep. You know that army saying... "We do more before 8AM" or something like that. Well for the last several days I had set my alarm for 5 AM to get out of bed and get my workouts out of the way. Each night, I fell asleep between 11:30PM and 12:30AM. When the alarm went off, all I could muster was the strength to turn off the alarm and rollover and go back to sleep.
Unfortunately this meant that I missed Monday's workout and will miss today's workout since I am hopping on a plane tonight... I am not happy about that, but I don't think the workouts would have amounted to anything anyway due to my fatigue (read laziness).
Posted by kermisch at 7:50 AM
March 4, 2007
A Ride Outside!
Today the weather was over 30 degrees. Even though there was 20+ inches of snow over the past week, the roads were rideable. So I saddled up on The Chairman (my cross-bike) and headed out. My street and many of the side streets were pretty sloppy, which really tested my handling skills, but I did stay upright! I rode down to REI to look at some pannier racks and then headed back. I had a great tail wind to REI, but a nasty head wind for the ride home. It was a nice easy ride outside and it felt so good to not be on the trainer!
Posted by kermisch at 8:25 PM
Power Test
This past Saturday I did my second power test of the year on the trainer. I warmed up for about 50 minutes and then started a 30 minute test. The test is supposed to be an all out effort. I started out conservatively, not wanting to blow out in the first 10 minutes. I was able to sustain my pace pretty well, but struggled to push it up a notch for any sustainable period. I still had some energy to punch it at the very end, but I definitely feel that I could have performed a bit better. In the end, my threshold wattage went from 235 - 245. My power to weight ratio went from 3.13 to 3.31.
Posted by kermisch at 8:09 PM
March 1, 2007
Temp workout
Yesterday I did a 60 minute tempo workout with 20 second accelerations every 5 minutes @ over 400 watts. These were to be done seated. I did a 10 min. wu with 3x1min efforts to warm up the legs. I then jumped right into the temp interval. I kept my watts at about 190 for the 60 minutes. The first three 20 second sprints averaged 395 - 405, the next four intervals pushed up to 415 - 430, and the final four started to push towards 450 - 470. The final sprint averaged 503. While these were short bursts, what I really wanted to ensure is that I could easily return to a tempo pace with out slacking off. I was able to do this well and inbetween each sprint, I varied my position from a standard top-bar position to in the drop to time trial. I am definitely starting to feel the fitness come into play and am reacting well to the increased intensity during this build phase. Below is a summary of the workout from Training Peaks:
Posted by kermisch at 11:53 AM
2007 Tentative Race Calendar
April 21 Durand Road Race
April 24 Opus Crit
April 28 Ken Woods Memorial Road Race
May 1 Opus Crit
May 5 Gluek Road Race
May 13 Excelsior Crit
May 15 Opus Crit
May 26 Carlton County TT
May 27 South Range Cycling Classic
May 28 Cloquet Criterium
June 4 State Crit Championship
June 23 Mankato Crit
July 8 Hopkins Crit
Aug 5 Campus Crit
Aug 11 Birchwood RR
Aug 25 State RR championship, Avon
** Thanks to the Ridley Rider for posting his schedule, as that meant I did not need to go research my schedule, as we will be racing the same races (minus the Mt. Evans Climb).
Posted by kermisch at 10:51 AM