Wheeler crit #3 video

2015 Tall Chief Road Race and NWA plus the local stuff.

I started this post 3 weeks ago so I guess I'll finish it. I've got 2 road races in so far this year. This year so far has been a little weird in that a few of the races that were planned early on have been cancelled. Results wise things aren't going quite as well as last year, but not too bad. We've been in a position to win or get podium spots at the end of most of the races. There's lots of racing coming up, but I'm not sure what I want ones I'll be doing. For sure the crits around the pro-am and Tulsa tough, but everything else is just a week to week decision.

The last 2 wheeler crits have been fun. I'll probably do most of them through June before my schedule changes up. Anyway, here's my Wheeler highlight videos from the last 2 weeks.

 

2015 race season week 1

I guess there's not a whole lot to update personally this week. I decided to skip the race in Arkansas because of the bad weather. I don't have a problem riding and racing in any conditions, but I wasn't interested in a 12 hour+ white knuckle drive. Bob, Micah, Dylan and Rob all went and did really well. All the guys finished in the top 10 out of a pretty big field. Anyhow, next week is the Oklahoma season opener. Day one was canceled because of construction at the park the salt creek race is at, so it's the tall chief road race only. I'm really looking forward to finally racing, so next weeks post should be much more interesting.
I got some snow riding in Saturday and Sunday. Mostly just for fun, but I did do a few short intervals. Riding in the snow/ice is mainly just good practice for bike handling skill. There's a new website called Zwift that lets you ride your indoor trainer device and ride/race with other people in a video game format. I've been seeing a few pro's using it on Strava. I thought about giving it a try this weekend, but I didn't get invitation approved yet. It seems like all the guys on the team are pretty divided on the Zwift thing. most of the cat 4's think it's pretty cool and the 3's and up think it's the gayest thing ever. I guess without trying it, I'm in the middle somewhere. I don't really like stationary riding indoors, but it could be fun for the occasional indoor ride. We'll see...
Here's a few snow pictures I took:

2015 season primer

So it's almost time to get the season going. I haven't kept this thing up very well, but I've kinda made it a goal to post something each Sunday or Monday to keep the racing stuff updated. Hopefully more on board race videos too. The winter base phase has gone about as well as I could have hoped for. In fact, I think this may be the first base period where my power meter data looks about as textbook as it gets. Click on graphs to enlarge.

Weekly training stress in green and intensity factor in yellow.

A few years ago I switched from going off time and/or miles to using TSS to determine  my weekly training load. It's pretty easy to see the classic 3 weeks on - 1 week off base period. Historically, I've usually always gotten sick or something comes up or a bad weather week etc. that causes the schedule to get thrown off, so I'm pretty pleased with the winter so far. The tallest green bar was from our training camp week. I started my build phase a couple of weeks ago and this week was the first one that the weather and life shortened things, but this is the time of year when we generally start racing, so the weeks normally get shorter but harder. This past week was short but looking at the intensity factor dot, it was my hardest week intensity wise this season so far.

My Performance Manager Chart from last June until now.

I let my fitness dwindle pretty low last October, but I wanted to be as rested as possible when my base period started.  If you're not familiar with the PMC graph, the blue line is chronic training load =current fitness. The pink line is acute training load = current fatigue and the yellow section is training stress balance = current form. The black dots are my top 10 - 20 minute efforts and the orange dots are my to 10 - 60 minute efforts from last June until now.
I usually start feeling pretty good race wise once my chronic training load gets over 90ish or so. Right now it's just under 100. Rob and Micah have already raced a couple of races each. Hopefully next weekend we'll all get to race together next weekend in Arkansas. The weather is looking iffy right now, but either way, I'll update next week.

Pre 2015 preparation

Well, It's been a long while since I've updated this blog, so here's what's going on now. Normally after the Tulsa Tough I'll take a little break and then start the cyclocross season preparation. My typical CX plan is to re-establish some base fitness in July, then ramp it up in August, then full on CX stuff from then on. This year though I wasn't really super motivated to do the whole cross plan. I decided to keep doing the weekly wheeler crits until September, then maybe do a couple of CX races just for fun.

That didn't really go as planned. the closer the CX stuff got the more I wanted to focus on some other things. I've been basically doing the back to back road and CX seasons for the last 6 years, so I decided to skip it completely this fall and just get super recovered and fresh to start the 2015 road season right this go around. The plan was to do a FTP test on the 19th and actually start my preparation phase today. As luck would have it, I came down with a pretty wicked cold on Sunday, so the baseline testing didn't happen. Not a big deal. I'll try again soon. I'm pretty excited to get some miles in though. nothing like watching races you're not a part of to make you hungry to race again!

I got my welding table finished up and have a few projects going right now.

My custom home built welding table

I've been making lots of youtube videos also. I guess I've been doing that and working on welding projects with my small amount of free time instead of this blog, but I'll try to keep this updated more if possible. Time is super tight right now with Coatney going to school full time, but it's all working out. It's all about time management. Gotta use that time wisely if you want to get stuff done!

Anyhow, here's a couple of videos I've done in the last month or so that have been  doing well...

Pro-Am and Tulsa Tough recap

So I guess I'm in full on recovery mode for a while. I'm still riding some, but not racing for a few months or any structured training. The Pro-Am and the Tulsa Tough went ok. The results were so-so. I was hoping for a little better, but anytime you can do a huge criterium race block and not lose any skin is good thing.

This is the video I took from the Pro-Am. My co-worker Evan won. I ended up 17th. I felt pretty good the first hour, but struggled the last 15 minutes. I've slacked off on the training hours to go really well for 75 minutes.

The friday night race at the Tulsa Tough was my first ever Pro 1 race. This is a video someone posted on youtube. It's a pretty good representation of what the race felt like.

Saturday and Sunday
 I did the masters 40+ races. I got 6th and 15th. The following weekend was the Oklahoma state criterium championships. The 1/2 race on Saturday went pretty bad. Overheated and got dropped got 12th. Sunday went better. With the help of my team, I got the win in the masters race, plus won a bunch of primes.

I used my prize money from the past 2 weekends for supplies to build a welding table. It should be pretty cool once it's done.  Here's a quick video I made of part 1 of the project:

Major race block underway

I guess we're pretty much smack dab in the middle of the crit season. So far it's gone ok for me. The team in general is having our best season ever. This weekend is the OKC Pro-Am. I had originally planned on doubling up on Sat. and Sun, but that didn't/is not happening. 2 days down with 1 to go. I've been doing the pro 1/2 races and so far I got 21st on Friday and 19th yesterday. Not really what I was hoping for, but that's how it goes.
I'm planning on having my camera on board today, so that should be fun.

I made a little video with the windows movie maker thing. I plan on doing a few more. Mostly tutorial stuff. Anyway, this is it: