Now that is pretty sweet stuff.

Looks like hella fun!

I went out to ride at the Veloway today instead of doing a race - I feel like I tore or strained a quad or something. Anyway, I decided to try to set up the camera and see how that works out. Works OK. Here's one lap around the veloway

I know, not many updates recently. All my rides are on strava, I don't see any reason to post them here too. http://www.strava.com/athletes/988745

I had a race last week which went fine. It was the "speed loop" which I have no trouble with but that I'll surely never win, it favors the sprint at the end way too much.

Today was the Grand Prix loop. Last time I got dropped with a lap to go, this time I think I pulled off a 15th or 16th place finish out of 75. I won't know until the official placings come out tomorrow or early next week. I really wish I could have pulled a top 10 out of my ass but I was deep in the red.

I'll post a video tomorrow, annotated with power/HR/cadence/speed.

Man the "kudos" crap on strava is so out of hand. It's like "likes" on facebook. Some people give kudos on every ****in ride. Why? Someone just gave me kudos on the 10 minute warmup I did before the race. Oh yeah, I'm super proud of that effort, that is the **** right there.

Just watched the veloway vid.

Kudos!

I uploaded this one today, it's the first demo of the software I wrote to extract data from the garmin and overlay it on a video.

Left side is power/cadence. Yes I know there's no data for the first few minutes. Right side is speed and HR except I didn't have a HR meter on so it's just speed and nothing.

Really neat stuff!

Race video is here


In glorious 1080p...

Nice recording setup. I wish I could put out 3/4 's of the watts you do for that period of time. Tough to tell from the vid, does anyone employ team tactics or is it pretty much everyone for themselves? Kudos for finishing!

In the 4/5 race there are not a lot of tactics of any kind, to be honest. I think the field is probably 70-80% guys like me, i.e. who are just trying to finish without crashing or embarrassing themselves.

Regarding power, I've made only modest improvements this year - some good gains on short term power (like 15-60s, maybe 20% improvement in watts/kg) but really very modest above that. I'll probably post some graphs soon since I'm approaching my theoretical peak for the year.

What I think I have done is learn how to make the most of what I have. I learned this year that if you know a piece of a course really well then you know how to pace yourself through it. The fast way up a hill isn't necessarily to start giving 100% at the bottom and so forth.

I'm still using the only method I know that has worked... I find a group that rides faster with me and I try to ride with them. Once that's pretty easy I find another one and so forth.

I have been doing this consistently for the first time this year, riding the RBM Saturday rides. I didn't have a great day Saturday, but I agree it seems like the best way. I have to get serious about my diet before I will make any big strides.

That seems like a really neat place to race, is it a go cart race track or something that you use for crits or was it built specifically for bikes?

Is RBM Richardson Bike Mart? I know they are supposed to have some pretty good rides.

It's a car racing track, although I don't know how much actual car racing happens there now. It's used for lots of things though:
bike races
gokart races (sunday I think)
police pursuit training
training for people to learn how to drive for racing
probably a few other things

It's extremely well maintained, the asphalt is absolutely pristine with no cracks, holes, bumps, etc. It's allegedly very grippy when wet, I've only ridden on it one time when it was sprinkling and it seemed OK.

Which model GoPro do you have? Thinking about getting one to mount on my racing canoe.

Hero 3+. There are lots of different models, I don't remember exactly which one I have. They all mount to the same mounting hardware.

The one big observation I have is that the "best" heros can record ridiculously high resolution and/or framerates, but the quality of the optics are pretty low so it barely matters. 720p at 60fps usually looks pretty darn good. Once it's on youtube it'll look less good.

My company is sending me to London sometime in mid-july. I know there are a few cyclists in england, I'd be amenable to traveling a bit to do some nice scenic riding. I'll probably be sans wife and kids unless we can find some reasonably priced flights to london (so far it's looking like $1700+ per person)

Also if anyone has a suggestion for where to rent a proper road bike from, I'd like to hear it.

Also, is it crazy to want to ride in downtown london some? And where might I look to find some good places to ride by myself in the surrounding area? I'll still probably want to ride 200 miles/week while I'm there.

Most recent race video here:

Not a very good showing. Course had 2 extremely tight turns - nearly 180 degrees, no curvature. I slowed a lot on these and then had to sprint a lot to make the time up. Finished near the end of the pack.

Had lots of very hard rides this week. Rode with a racing group tuesday, got dropped in the 1st lap. Did the rest with a few guys I swept up.

On wednesday rode 25 miles and climbed about 2500 feet. Nearly killed me. I had a 22 tooth cog as my largest gear and it was quite difficult on some of the climbs.

Thursday was the driveway. Friday I took off.

Today I went on a regular ACA ride and had a pretty good time and kicked some ass all around. I showed up on my commuter bike - a big heavy aluminum frame bike with a cargo rack in the back. 24 pounds bone dry. I got some kind of funny looks. I won the "race" section by probably 20 seconds, totally destroyed them. Was the first one up the only big climb on the ride even though I started at the back. Every little sprint segment I just destroyed. I actually picked up several PRs which is quite funny on this bike, esp since none of them were wind-assisted.

So, uh, I should probably have an easy or off day before the driveway. Just so tempting to do these tues/wed rides that are so hard.

Actually this is the video

Yesterday I went again to a ride run by a local amateur racing team. The ride is run more or less like a race. It's intended to drop as many people as possible, just buckle down and hold on.

The first time I went, I got dropped in lap 2 of 2. The 2nd time, I got dropped in the first lap. This time I made it to the end. I think the main differences between the 3 times were who showed up and how good they were feeling. There are some strong cat 2 and 3 riders in the group.

So the ride is in my neighborhood more or less, my normal stomping grounds. It goes out, does 2 loops, and then back. The 2 loops are the race part. I have gone 3 times, so 6 times around the loop. The loop has about a half dozen segments on it.

So my 6 fastest times on all those segments have been in these 3 rides. This ride is so good for me, this last one was basically 99% of my ability, I was literally about to give up and then it was over.


Anyway obv haven't been posting much. Technically this week I am at my peak but there are no races to do except the Driveway. For the next few weeks I am supposed to ride hard once a week or so and then take it easy the rest. I'll probably go into "transition" mode (7 hours week of easy riding) for a few weeks, then do another build phase timed to peak at the early fall races.

After early fall it's off season and I'll have to look at next season's schedule to figure out how long my break should be.

Another race video. Nothing too exciting. I sort of mentally blanked out during this race and didn't plan things very well. I made a few advances towards the middle to test out how difficult it was to move to the front. It seemed pretty easy and I decided to wait until 3/4 through to go for it. When the time came it sort of just didn't happen, I guess the pace picked up a bit. It's very easy to have a plan and totally lose mental control.

Well, obviously I basically stopped logging training information here, obviously. Not that I stopped training or racing. It just got kind of boring entering it in when it's all already in Strava for the most part.

Training started again last week. I'll be doing "base miles" for the next 10 weeks or so. I'll post my training schedule and race schedule some time soon, I have a new website I wrote to track this stuff. Not quite done yet.

I upped my training hours to 550 this year I think (need to check) from 450 last year. Maybe I just have it at 500. Can't remember now.

Going from end of season to base miles is such a comedown. I'm trading 7 hours/week of pretty intense riding for 12-14 hours/week of piddling around. I'm kind of grumpy as a result.

My first race is next weekend. I went out there yesterday to check out the course. It's a 6 mile loop that we'll do multiple times. It wasn't the race I really wanted to do, but due to a conflict it's what I've got instead.

Course is hillier than I expected from looking at people's courses on strava but I think it'll be OK. There's probably only one hill that takes longer than 60 seconds to climb. I think it'll end up being a discriminator though, and the pack will get split there.

I'm kind of dreading it, I know it's going to be hard work. This is my first real road race (i.e. not a crit). I'll be racing in the category 4/5 masters race (35+). Even though I'm old I've stayed away from masters races, but in this case the open age race was full already.

gl

Yes, gl. I noticed you posted the pre-ride on Strava, is the race the same number of laps? If so, 43 miles is a race. I imagine pacing will be a real challenge.