Numbers for February....

Here are my numbers for the month of February...which given the shorter month are still showing some progression.

Total hours ridding: 48 hours 57 minutes
Total miles ridden: 935.86 miles
TSS total for Feb: 3028 (highest since July 09)
Longest ride: 66.89 miles

Power numbers:

1 min: 601 watts
5 min: 425 watts
20 min: 378 watts
1 hour: 304 watts

Weight lost: 8 pounds

Jack Frost TT = Fail (kind of)

Well, I was hoping for a much better day on the bike today....but fell well short of my goal of 31 minutes at the Jack Frost TT. There are several likely contributing factors, but most of the problem was I'm still fat and need to lose weight.

The morning started well enough. I woke up early, got ready, had the car warmed up (a bit of frost on the car this morning) and made it to the parking area about half an hour earlier than originally planned.

When I got there, I went to sync my watch with the start time, but they had yet to start the clock. So I searched out the race officials and asked which one of their watches was the clock going to be started by....one guy spoke up and said it was his, so I asked him what time he had and I was about a minute faster than his.....So that's what I went by when planning my warm up.

Bike hooked up in the trainer, everything on and ready to warm up. I wanted to get in a good 30 minute warm up today, just enough to get a good sweat going and get in some good threshold efforts before heading to the start line. 10 minutes before my start time, I jump off, put my trainer up, hand the keys to my wife and head to the start line. I pull up and it's about 10:23 (my start time was 10:30) so all was good.....then I look at the start clock and it says 00:06....which means they have 10:06???? What the???? Their clock was a good 15+ minutes slow.

So much for my warm up. I tried to keep things going by taking trips up and down the road to stay warm, which is a bit hard when it's 45 degrees out and you planned to be going full bore just a few minutes after getting off your trainer which warms you up quickly. So I slowly got colder and colder.

Finally, it was time to get started and overall my legs felt pretty good. There was a head/cross wind all the way out....not a big wind (3-6 mph), but just enough to let you know it was there. Having an early start time (I had to ask for an early time since I was heading to a memorial service just after the race) didn't give me many carrots to chase. I caught most of who was in front of me in the first couple of miles and had nobody in front of me after the turnaround until about 3/4 of a mile from the finish.

Overall....I finished with an unofficial time of around 32:45 (+/- a few seconds) which is well short of what I wanted. I don't know where this will place me since the results haven't been posted yet, but I'm guessing it's not great.

Basically, I still need to lose 20 more pounds and keep working on my threshold workouts. Starting in April I'll be doing more 2x20's for the TTT in May which will give me a bit more endurance, but I think I need to work a bit on my speed before then, maybe a few more 5 minute VO2 max intervals between now and then.

Overall.....not a bad day considering the weather was beautiful, but I failed to meet my own expectations knowing I can go much faster than I did.

Oh well....Two more weeks until the next TT which will be a bit shorter, but will have a bit more elevation change than Jack Frost did.

Edit: The results have finally been posted and it appears my effort was only a "Moderate" fail. I took 3rd out of 63 racers in the 40-49 catagory and 25th overall on the day (which my overall was better than last year by a few places).

Losing weight...

Unfortunately this past year I let things slip when it came to weight. I kept my fitness level fairly high during the off season but lots of Skittles, Carmel (store bought and home made), strawberry whoppers and just general over eating and not watching my caloric intake led to my weight going north of 220 pounds.

With the race season just around the corner I started my weight loss back on January 4th weighing in around 220 pounds or so. As of this morning I weighed in at 203.4 pounds....so 5 weeks and 17 pounds lost so far.

Below is the graph showing the weight loss progression:






At my current rate of weight loss I should be back down to....what I consider race weight....in 4 weeks and if I can continue the weight loss I'll be down to 180 pounds in around 7 weeks.

To this point I haven't seen a loss in power and actually turned my best "Solo" time up Pumpkin Ridge ever yesterday with a time of 23:28. Last season I had to drop to my small ring in a few places for the best times...however now I'm able to big ring the climb the whole way with just a few instances of cross chaining (i.e. 53x23 or 53x26). The fact that I'm heavier than I was then, but turing in faster times tells me my power is better than last year especially at this time of the year.

I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of time I can turn in next weekend at the Jack Frost Time Trial. I'll be happy with anything under 31 minutes (assuming good conditions) since they extended it to 14 miles this year, but would like something closer to 30 minutes flat.

20 minute power test...

Since it's February and it was a beautiful day (upper 50's) in the Pacific Northwest it was time to get out and ride. I'm still suffering a little from a cold, but I wanted to get a good baseline for my 20 minute threshold power to see if I'm where I wanted to be right now or not.

So....I headed out to my basic test climb....Pumpkin Ridge to give it a good effort. Overall, I felt pretty good, but feel I could have squeezed out a few more watts overall especially if I had somebody there to push me.

End result: 378 watts for 20 minutes....375 watts for 24:28 that it took me to climb the hill.

My average HR was 160 which is right where it should be for an effort like this, but again, if I had somebody to push me it would have been closer to 164.

Coming into this year I wanted to be putting out around 380 watts for 20 minutes so this puts me right on schedule for where I want to be power wise. Now only another 22 watts or so to go before I get to the 400 watt level.

On a side note, I've also lost another pound....down to 207.6 now and another 12-17+ pounds to go. My goal is to settle in around 195 pounds, but may try and see if I can get to 180 pounds just to see if I can do it.

Two seasons ago I was down to 187.5 for a couple of weeks and I was climbing very well at that time. Currently I'm putting out a lot more power than I did two years ago so if I can get my weight down....it should be a good year on the bike :)