John K Scott’s Training Blog

Ok. It’s been a while since I posted. Well, that’s because I haven’t had a lot to post about. Seems like after the Harpeth River Ride on 6/12 (more on that below) I picked up some kind of stomach bug and haven’t been feeling well. Without going into TOO many details, I was going through what most people go through with stomach issues plus I had a slight fever and a little achiness. That came on Monday after the River Ride. I figured it was no big deal. Probably be gone in a few days and then right back at it. Well it’s now 10 days later (11 days off the bike). As of tonight I will have missed two planned races (today was touch and go but considering I’m still not 100% I figured it would be best to pass). I went to the clinic on Sunday and I am still waiting for results of …ahem…certain tests.  Through all of this, of course, I haven’t been able to eat all that much so I’ve also lost some weight. I blew right through my 165 lb goal for the remainder of the summer and weighed in at 161 this morning. While, under normal circumstances I’d be celebrating this, I am sure that my performance is  not actually going to benefit from weight loss like this! .

Things are feeling a bit better today so I’m hopeful that I can at least get out on my bike tomorrow morning just to reacquaint myself with it. I have registered for a 42 km Individual Time Trial on Saturday and a Road Race on Sunday. So at least a spin tomorrow would be nice. Those races should be interesting (understatement) due to the lack of training time and probable decline in condition. But I think I’ll line up anyway just to do it.

So. On to the Harpeth River Ride. Our team decided to volunteer and roll out on this ride together. The team picture is just before the roll out (I’m way in the back, center and unseen tucked behind a teammate). So I was up at 4 AM to go help with parking. Ouch. I’m not a morning person. It was HOT and HUMID. I was already sweating at 7 AM before the ride started. I signed up for the 100 mile route. In retrospect I should have bailed and done the 62 mile route. I have a feeling that the stomach issues that I am currently suffering from may have already been just starting on this day. It seemed like my energy was just not up to par. On top of that, in the mass start of this ride (over 1300 riders) I lost contact with the team almost right away and got blocked by some slower folk. So once I was able to spring free a bit I put in a bridging effort to catch the team. I mainly wanted to so this because my wife and daughter were waiting on Main Street in Downtown Franklin to cheer us on as we went by and I wanted my lovely wife and daughter to see me ride through with the team.

Well, I managed to bridge and pass by my cheering family with the team. Then I was dropped again shortly thereafter. I just didn’t have the juice to hang on. In retrospect that bridging effort was also probably a bad way to start a 100 mile hot ride . I latched on to another great group for a while and had some fun with them taking my turns pulling at the front when called upon. That helped break things up. Thanks TAO folks! Well, for a little back story…

A few days before this ride I went in for an extensive bike fit. I spent several hours getting measured and tested and all kinds of stuff. I’ll write more on that once it’s all complete. Well, as part of that fit I got shims put in the new shoes I just got and I got my bike back together kinda sorta the same way it was before. It’s the kinda sorta part that may have been the problem. I’m looking forward to having all of the fit numbers, new bars & stem and all applied to my bike!

So with that in mind, at mile 51 (rest stop) I was already starting to feel telltale signs that this was going to be a hard day. I was already starting to cramp and in places that I don’t usually get sore/cramp. I think this was probably due to not having my bike dialed in and the shims. I’m thinking I should have worn my old shoes. Maybe a 100 mile ride isn’t the best place to break in a new position? . Plus I think the cleats may be just a tad too far forward on the new shoes as my feet were really starting to hurt. Going to have that looked at. Anyway, at this point I was only about 10-15 mile from home. I seriously considered riding straight home and having my wife drive me to pick up my car. I sat in an air conditioned church an thought this over and started feeling a little better. I poured some water over my head and figured it was only 16 miles to the next rest stop so I’d give it a go.

I wasn’t feeling too badly for a while but my stomach started feeling a bit upset and I couldn’t tolerate my feed bottle (Perpetuem) any longer. I just started sucking on my clear water bottle. Then I started to get goose bumps like being chilled. Oh oh…that’s a telltale sign I remember all too well from last year’s ride. Heat exhaustion. Oh great! Then at about mile 64 or so climbing up a small bump in the road both legs cramped up on me so bad  I had to get off the bike (painfully) and lay in the grass and stretch out a bit. I knew deep down I was done. No mas. I managed to limp the next 2-3 miles to the next rest stop where I poured more water over myself, drank a lot and cooled down. Then I caught the sag wagon back in. So that’s two years running that this ride has defeated me. DOH! Both years were exceptionally hot. The year before that when I actually made it the weather wasn’t quite so hot. I think I’m sensing a pattern here. Looks like I have trouble with really hot weather. It also looks like I need to work on my nutrition/hydration on longer rides. Obviously something isn’t working. Or, maybe a combination of that and my stomach issues may have been starting up already that day.

So, the grand total was about 67 miles. Still had fun even though I’d much rather had finished the ride under my own power. Here are the ride stats…

66.64 miles, 4:14:40, 3179 ft ascent, 146 watts avg power, 148 bpm avg hr, 2487 calories.

My CTL reached 69 which as high as I’ve had it since the end of last season. TSB dropped to -35 after that ride. With the extended involuntary break my CTL has plummeted to 53 as of today. TSB is 34. So I’m well rested at least.

Hoping to get out for a moderate spin tomorrow. Stomach is feeling a bit more normal. Actually had some baked chicken and mashed potatoes for lunch which was a feast compared to the white bread toast, bananas & applesauce I’ve been eating this week. Seems like it’s sitting well. Fingers crossed.

Giving Lance The Look

So, after my 72 mile ride on Saturday, I decided to take Monday & Tuesday off just to let my TSB (low number means high fatigue) come back up a bit. Last year I pulled out of this ride at about 80 miles in with heat exhaustion. Guess what. Tomorrow’s forecast is HOT, HUMID with lot’s of climbing in 100 miles. The chart says my fitness was higher this time last year. I suppose that makes some sense since I lost some training time in May. So I figured I’d just let my legs recover from Saturday this week and get out for a couple of morning rides.

On Wednesday I went out for my typical morning training ride. As I was approaching the Lynnwood climb which has become a staple of my morning ride I saw another rider go through the intersection ahead of me and start up the hill. I got a green arrow and started up myself. I figured I would set myself a nice sustainable tempo up the hill and see if I catch him without pushing into the red zone. No dice. Though it was nice to have a carrot up the road. I bombed down the descent hitting a top speed of over 47 mph and kept a solid pace on the flat after that and caught him just before the next stop light. Turns out he is a transplant from Chicago and knows one of my teammates. So I got to ride along with him for several miles and we had a nice chat. It also turns out that he’s a pretty talented racer so I don’t feel so bad about not reeling him in on the Lynnwood climb or getting more winded than he did on some of the little bumps we went over together. Funny, my avg speed for that part of the ride increased a bit . I started to sprinkle on us a tad and shortly after I got home the sky opened up. I sure hope he skirted that on the remainder of his ride!

21.11 miles , 1:07:50, 952 ft ascent, 220 watts avg power, 150 bpm avg hr, 971 calories.

This morning my only goal was to go out for an hour – fifteen or so and keep it at a nice easy century pace. I have trouble with that. But I did it and I really enjoyed the laid back pace with very little heavy breathing. I’m going to have to do more of that kind of riding in the fall!

21.08 miles, 1;12:57, 769 ft ascent, 172 watts avg power, 137 bpm avg hr, 817 calories. CTL is at 62 and TSB is at 3.

So, now about the picture above. Leah and I went over to the Nissan building in Cool Springs to pick up my ride packet for tomorrow. Nissan/Team Radio Shack had a booth set up where you could get your picture made with Lance (green screen of course). I figured I’d shoot Lance MY look. Bring it on big boy! C’mon over to Franklin!

I gotta say I look pretty good in the Team Radio Shack jersey!

Friday was nothing unusual. 69 minute training ride with climb up Lynnwood way thrown in. Did it slightly faster than the prior two times with 3 bpm less avg heart rate. A sign of some fitness coming back? Maybe. Was trying to keep the pace in the endurance zone for the most part and succeeded.

21.13 miles, 1:09:46, 978 ft ascent, 212 watts avg power, 148 bpm avg hr, 956 calories.

So the I found out the team was planning on riding the Harpeth River Ride on Saturday 6/12. I wasn’t sure if I was going to do it before that or not. I really hadn’t been on any really long rides (50 miles has been about the max so far this year) yet so I wasn’t sure if I’m ready to go out and knock off 100 miles. They have shorter options, but heck, what fun is that? I might as well get my money’s worth!   So I figured on Saturday I’d better go out and put some longer miles in my legs just to get my body at least a little used to the idea. I was aiming for 65-70 miles.

First two hours of the ride was a fun little jaunt with a teammate and a friend of his from the Chicago area. For the most part this first two hours fit into my requirement for a long endurance paced ride. Of course, as any ride with more than one cyclist there were a couple times the pace kicked up. We dragged poor Rob (the friend from Chicago) up Stillhouse Hollow. Let’s just say being a flatlander, he hadn’t seen a hill quite like that before on a bike. But he did great!

Then the second 2+ hours I was out on my own. I decided to explore south of Lieper’s Fork on the Natchez Trace as I had never ridden down that way before. South on the Trace and then back North on Lieper’s Creek Rd would be just the right little loop to get me back to Puckett’s Grocery to refill my water. All was going well and I was feeling good. Then I noticed the wind was still in my face.  Funny…the wind was in my face as I was pedaling Southwest on the Natchez Trace and it was still in my face as I was heading Northeast on Lieper’s Creek Rd. Not fair! Then I looked up and noticed the sun was more over my left shoulder than my right. Hmmmm…something just wasn’t right. So I pulled out my handy new Motorola Droid and realized I was headed pretty much South toward Columbia, TN. Oopsies! So I plotted a route on some previously undiscovered (by me) back roads and headed towards Lieper’s Fork. Turns out I went about 4.5 miles out of my way which included a pretty cool two mile gentle (about 3%) climb. So considering I roughly had to double back, that added about 9 miles to what I had expected. Not the end of the world except it was getting a bit hot and silly me didn’t have enough food and water with me (shouldn’t have cut it quite that close). So right about mile 65 I really started feeling it. The lack of calories and water, I’m sure, had a bit to do with that. But also my butt and feet started to hurt a bit. I think some of that was due to the fact that I had just been in for a fit on Friday and some of the parts didn’t get quite back in the right exact position (needed to order new parts to get new fit dialed in on bike). So, I think for the Century ride on Saturday I have gotten things back to close to normal and my use my old shoes for this longer ride just so I can break the “new” stuff in a little more slowly.

Anyway, when I finally got back in cell coverage (a whole other story) I called Nancy and arranged for them to meet me at Puckett’s Grocery in Lieper’s Fork for lunch. It was only 7.5 miles home from there but I was done. I downed a whole liter of water and grabbed an apple turnover to take care of my immediate thirst and hunger. Then I sat down for lunch with my wonderful girls and caught a ride home in the van. Total mileage about 72 miles. Mission accomplished.

71.83 miles, 4:25:42, 3503 ft ascent, 165 watts avg power, 144 bpm avg hr, 2733 calories. CTL 67, TSB -30.

View Endurance 6/4/2010 in a larger map

View Endurance 6/5/2010 in a larger map

Rode Saturday, raced Sunday (and worked the race the whole day) and rode Monday. Plus spending a lot of family time so I haven’t had a great chance to update since Friday.

Saturday morning I headed out just about 90 minutes at a moderate pace nothing exciting. Didn’t want to kill myself as I was going to race on Sunday. Managed to keep a nice, fairly easy, pace. Mostly in the endurance and tempo zones. That’s good for me. I usually got too hard on days when I shouldn’t! Here’s the ride…

27.6 miles, 1:32:19, 1206 ft ascent, 189 watts avg power, 148 bpm avg hr, 1133 calories. CTL 61, TSB -15

Sunday was race day. I’ll post a separate race report later. Let’s just say that I was in the sun all day racing and working the race. Got hot, a little sunburned and had a great time!

Monday I figured I had to get out for a ride just because I didn’t have to go to work. It would have been a shame to waste such a beautiful free day! My neighbor down the street, Tony, wanted to go out too so we went together. It ended up being a lot of fun. The fact that Tony was along for the ride really helped me keep a nice semi-easy pace which is what I needed as my legs were just a little sore from Sunday. Plus it made the ride a lot more enjoyable and instructional. Tony is an experienced racer, though he hasn’t raced for several years. However, his knowledge is still there and it’s awesome getting some free pointers as we ride.

I did a lot of work pulling us along on this ride (which I enjoyed immensely) and Tony had trouble keeping up with me on some of the longer climbs. However, even though this was only his third substantial ride of the year (he’s busy with family stuff most weekends) he was still able to make me hurt when he powered up some of the short punchy climbs. I have no doubt that if he even half seriously started a training plan on the bike he would be dropping me all over the place. And who knows, that may happen. He expressed an interest in possibly racing in the Wednesday night Nashville Cyclist Crits later this summer. Ruh Roh! Here’s the ride…

35.48 miles, 1:59:50, 1784 ft ascent, 192 watts avg power, 149 bpm avg hr, 1499 calories. CTL 65, TSB, -28.

So, it’s good to see the CTL starting to climb a little again after having a bad May. Doctor appointment on Friday to address the issues I was having in May (which seem to have mostly just disappeared) and also a bike fit on Friday morning. Hopefully it will make me faster! Race tonight again. Leah is going with me. Should be fun!

View Endurance 5/29/2010 in a larger map

View Endurance 5/31/2010 in a larger map

Same route as Tuesday. Nearly the exact same time and power. A little faster up .7 mile climb up Lynwood. CTL about the same. It’s Friday. That is all.

This was the first installment of a 10 race series held throughout the summer put on by Nashville Cyclist . This was also my first criterium. For those non-cyclists reading this a criterium is a race around a shorter closed course. You basically go round and round for a defined number of laps or amount of time. I went in a tad nervous as there is a lot of cornering involved in most crits (this course had 8 corners in just over .5 mile circuit) and they are many times pretty close quarters. I was also a bit nervous because of my health issues of late and the lessened training schedule I have been on. Everything turned out fine on both counts! This course was pretty wide open so the cornering wasn’t that bad and I found that I was actually pretty decent in the corners and got quite comfortable. In fact, I was able to move up a little bit on some of the corners when the opportunity was available. Also, other than being a little gassed from a pretty much all out 20 minute effort which is expected, I felt great! Especially considering my avg heart rate for the 20 minutes was 176 bpm with a peak of 182. I’ve NEVER seen numbers that high in training for that amount of time. Interesting. So, for the race…

The Cat 5 race was 20 minutes. The course was 8 turns and just about 900 meters or .55 miles. First lap turn 7 there was a crash right in front of me. I was able to react quickly and avoid it and catch back on to the main group shortly. It felt good to get that out of the way as it was one of my nervous factors. I think proved to myself my ability to navigate around these unfortunate incidences. I was able to hang with the main group through most of lap 4 where there was another crash. This one was also in front of me but not as close. Easily avoided. However I was already getting gassed and this is about where I lost contact with the main group. It wasn’t really the crash. I was in the process of getting gapped already.

I was hurting pretty bad at this point. My heart rate averaged 180 bpm from midway lap 1 through lap 4. For perspective, I think the highest heart rate I’ve seen in training is about 177 or 178 and that was fleeting. I was at 180+ for almost 5 minutes here! Something had to give and it was me. I had to recover a little (175 bpm for about 7 minutes if you can call that recovery LOL). While I was “recovering” I concentrated on taking smooth fast  lines through corners and I was actually able to pick off a few people coming out of some of the corners as I was holding more speed through the corner. Somewhere in lap 9 at about 13 minutes in I was able to ramp things up again just a little. I was actually able to pick a couple people off on the head wind section on a couple laps. I also think this is where I got lapped by the main field. Not sure exactly when it happened in there but it happened. .

Season goals for remainder of this series.

1. Don’t get lapped

2. Finish with the main field

Stretch goal – Finish at the front of main field!

So, for the last 4 laps of the race I just gritted it out as hard as I could. I passed some. Got passed by others. Kept pressing in the corners and pushed in to the line as hard as I could (which looking at the data sounds kind of funny ). Made the corner after the finishing stretch, shifted into my small chain ring, sat up straight armed on the bars to hold myself up and breathe and took stock of the discomfort my body was feeling with a big grin on my face.

Update:

Results posted. 18th out of 31 starters and 24 finishers. So at least not a DFL!

Oops…2 of them were Juniors. So 18 of 29 starters and 22 finishers.

Starting to feel more normal. Awake and refreshed in the morning. Not feeling totally dead after a workout etc. As I lamented after Saturday’s ride though, I feel my fitness is behind where I would have liked to be at this point (see last post). But damn the torpedoes I’m going to get out there and race anyway. I don’t care if I get dropped the rest of the summer. I should still be able to learn something and hopefully it will help me get faster in races going forward.

Set up a Doc appointment for 6/4. He comes highly recommended. He’s a D.O. (so more into integrative medicine), a long distance cyclists (so he should be more in tune with athletes) and supposed to be a great guy. Hey! Sounds awesome. Going to get a full physical and go from there with other tests (likely will get a stress test out of this as I was having chest issues). Hopefully we can figure out why I seem to keep getting pushed over the edge and getting sick so often and not really progressing as I think I should be. Hopefully the answer isn’t just, “You just plain suck!”

So, this morning’s ride. I have decided to throw in a route on my morning rides that includes one decent climb. Since my climbing has sucked this year I’m going to do this hill on every morning ride for a while and record a split time up the hill and keep doing until it just plain gets boring and it ain’t no big deal! Then I’ll try to find a harder hill and do the same .

21.13 miles, 1:10:07, 943 ft ascent, 204 watts avg power, 152 bpm avg hr, 930 calories. CTL 58, TSB -5

Two criterium races coming up. One tomorrow and another (sponsored by our team) on Sunday. Not going to change my training for these races. I’ll just use them as training. Wish me luck and especially no crashes!

Nearly 3 hour 50 mile ride on Saturday as planned. It felt good to get out on the bike for a longer ride again. The goal was to take it somewhat easy yet make it challenging. Say a tempo zone. I felt pretty good the first 2/3 of the ride but the last 10 miles or so I would have just as soon been done. It really seems that for the speed I was going I was working harder than I should have been. In fact, I compared this ride with the same exact route I did one year ago. I did about the same speed and power but my heart rate was higher this year than the same ride last year (153 bpm vs. 144 bpm). This is consistent with my feeling that I was working harder than I think I should have been for the pace I was riding. I’m still not sure things are quite right with me. With all the work I have done this year I would have thought I would have been further along. Although, looking back my year to date hours are slightly down this year compared to year. Mostly due to illness. Too much of it this year. So I guess that could explain things.

Or maybe I just had a bad day.

Oh well, here is the ride.

50.49 miles, 2:53:10, 2507 ft ascent, 192 watts avg power, 153 bpm avg hr, 2157 calories, CTL 60, TSB -17.

View Tempo 5/22/2010 in a larger map

Well. Maybe. Went out for another ride yesterday. Had the day mostly off to go help with the 4th grade year end party at Leah’s School. Lot’s of fun and it was a gorgeous day. Luckily I had time to sneak in a ride when we got home which was more appealing than the alternative of firing up the laptop and logging in at work! So that makes two days on a row. Felt pretty good on the bike. I went out without any expectations, prepared to take it easy if I felt like it. I ended up making it a pretty good ride probably around tempo+ intensity. Between Leah’s half day at school, my need to get some work done and some rain, no ride today. That’s probably best anyway. Don’t want to hit it too hard just getting back on it.

Yesterday’s ride:

23.71 miles, 1:15:20, 884 ft ascent, 214 watts avg power, 155 bpm avg hr, 1049 calories. CTL up to 57, TSB 1.

With the forecast tomorrow, it looks like another rest day. 3 hours on Saturday hopefully.

View Endurance 5/19/2010 in a larger map

Got back from a long weekend trip to Wisconsin last night. We went up to celebrate Nancy’s parents 50th wedding anniversary. Friday – Monday with no bike. Although I wouldn’t have had time the weather was GORGEOUS up there and a ride would have been awesome. Since I’ve been feeling run down, my goal for the weekend was to get a lot of sleep. Well, that didn’t go as planned. I was hoping I would get a couple of those go to bed at 10 PM and wake up at 8 AM kind of nights. No dice. It was more like get to bed at midnight and get up at 8. However, visiting with parents was the alternate reward.

I decided to sleep in today and bring my bike to work. I have to say that today is the first day in a while I actually feel sort of normal. Lungs and chest area feel good. Resting heart rate is still a bit high (60 this morning) though I seem to really be having a hard time getting a good reading. It seems that once I am awakened my heart is off to the races. I can actually feel it speeding up as I reach for the cuff to take the measurement. The ride today felt pretty good. I ended up going harder than I set out to. My legs feel great and it seems my lungs and chest did just fine. Felt good afterward. This is the first time in a while I got off the bike and felt good. Maybe this is a sign that I’m getting over whatever it is I was under. Anyway, today’s ride:

23.15 miles, 1:13:33, 975 ft ascent, 220 watts avg power, 155 bpm avg hr, 1052 calories. And now the bad news. My CTL is down to 55 and TSB is 14. Although it’s not that far off from what it was this time last year and I had a negative TSB at this time last year. So, at least I’ve got that going for me! . The highlight of today’s ride was drafting a motor home for a half mile or so. It’s a lot of fun to ride at 30 mph with not all that much effort. Thanks for the pull dude!

I’m hoping to start building a bit of a mid-season base back up and keep racing and hopefully build and peak again toward the end of the season as long as my health holds out! I’m probably not physically fit enough to do much in the early races for sure but I still want to get some more race experience.