2017 Plans

Tis the Season…oh apparently it’s nearly Christmas too!

Anyhoo, after much pencil chewing it looks like this is the 2017 Schedule. Obviously this is dove-tailing into Becca’s plans and we are off to Wisconsin in the fall for some IronMoo as well as another trip to Northern California for the new Ironman Santa Rosa 70.3 and a trip to Boston for the Marathon in the Spring!

• Dec 29 - Jan 1; Four Days to Fitness - 4 days, 65miles+ per day with plenty of elevation
• January 27-29; Belgium Waffle Ride Camp - three days on the course
• February 12; Rock Cobbler 4.0 - gravel 100ish miles
• March 18; Redlands Strada Rosso IV - gravel 100ish miles
• April 8; Mullholland Challenge - climbing challenge 12,000' 100ish miles (possible HRS if I do it back-to-back twice or so)
• April 30; Amgen Tour of California L'Etape Mt Baldy Stage this year so lots of climbing 
• May 21; Belgium Waffle Ride - gravel 150ish miles
• August 26-28; HooDoo500 - 3 day stage race 500ish miles, 30,000’ of gain
• Oct, Nov and Dec; CX Racing
• November 4; Mike Nosco Memorial Ride the usual 80 mile route with 10,000’ of gain

I am also dipping my toe into the Ultra Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA) Year Rounder Challenge; 12 Centuries or more in 10 months!

As you can see it’s a schedule of mxed surfaces but the gravel and road compliment each other pretty well. I am a believer in having A, B and C events and the list above breaksdown as follows;

A, this a race so it’s all about results, balls to the wall;

• Belgian Waffle Ride
• HooDoo500

B; looking to dial in and race test things for A events, it’s a “training race” to monitor my performace

• Rock Cobbler 4.0
• Redlands Strada Rosso IV
• Mullholland Challenge

C; basically a training day

• Four Days to Fitness (obvioulsy!)
• BWR Camp (again obviously!)
• L’etape
• Mike Nosco

Definitely no grass growing between our toes this coming year! As usual there are plenty of horizons coming my way…

2016 Plans

Races are like vacations, it’s always good to have one, ideally two planned out. At least tentatively, so with that in mind this is the in pen and pencil plans…

• February 7;  The Rock Cobbler 3.0, 100m gravel grinder…sorta – registered
• February 6-14; Tour of Sufferlandria, the usual shenanigans!
• March 19 ; Redlands Strada Rossa 100km
• April 24; Belgium Waffle Ride, 135 miles and 11,000’ of gain on and off road
• May; Trainerroad 8 Days of California
• June 4; Dirty Kanza 200

This will dovetail into Becca’s plans for the year which look like this;

• April 2,  Oceanside 70.3
• July, Vineman 70.3
• October, Arizona 70.3
• November, Ironman Arizona

I am sure there are few other adventures that are off of the radar right now but that will come into focus as the year pans out.

Oh snap!

…and not in a good way!

I got the call when I was a mile from my car after finishing the Westlake Century on Saturday. My shoulder hurts, I may have put out or worse broken my collar bone! Becca had been at the park with the kids and taken a tumble off of a Razor Scooter!

I drove home, deposited kids elsewhere and headed to urgent care. A long wait and an x-ray later it was confirmed as a broken collar bone. Prognosis 4 weeks of nothing followed by another 4 weeks of nothing!

Needless to say beyond the obvious this will have a trickle down impact, more will follow over the coming weeks!

Ironman Arizona; a guide to Sherpaing and Spectating

This is the second time I have chased Becca round an Ironman race, the first time was in St George in 2012. That year was a very different race to this year, you can read her reports for St George here and for Arizona here. I decided that I would list some thoughts that anyone sherpaing and/or spectating in the future might find useful.

Overall

• Race day is all about the athlete. They have trained 6+ months for this probably longer if they have had a build up year, this day is really their reward. Don’t spoil it by being pissy about anything, just indulge them. 
• That being said remember to look after yourself. Eat and drink. Wear sunscreen and chapstick. Have cash on hand and anything else you think you might need.
• They may talk a lot, they may say nothing, by now you will know have a pretty good sense of race day nerves and how they affect them. If they need pumping up do that, if they internalize everything let them do that. Don’t do anything different and don’t give them anything else to worry about.
• Wear running shoes, you’ll be on your feet a lot of the day and may have to actually run a bit.
• Electronics. Get everything charged the night before. Camera’s, phones, whatever you have get it charged and bring extras ways to charge. I had three iPhones and an iPad for social media coverage and tracking, I had several outlet chargers in the car, a charger case for my iPhone and a USB charger too.

Mission Control

• Be patient, there is always waiting involved.
• Get your athlete to give you the bike collect chit, you will need this for later.
• Buy Sidewalk Chalk, you’ll need this for the run course.
• Take lots of photos, I mean lots. Trying to frame that perfect photo just ain’t gonna happen, point and shoot baby!
• Becca was carrying an MyAthleteLive GPS tracker so I could followed her through the day, $50 very well spent!
• You can also use IronTrac which is an iPhone App that presents the splits provided by the Race, this is only as good as the WTC though as it pulls data from their API and can be notoriously bad!

MyAthleteLive left and center, IronTrac right 

The Swim

• The start is cold and dark. Bring a headlamp and layer your clothes, you spend a lot of time waiting around. Then the sun comes up and it gets warm.
• Like coffee? Starbucks on Mill Street is open but it’s a zoo, bring coffee from your hotel or stop at a gas station, now is not the time for fresh you really just want hot and caffeine!
• If your hotel is not close enough to walk to the start, drop off your athlete and let them walk the last half mile. Park the car and come back to find them. They dropped the bike off yesterday and you do not need to freak out your athlete looking for a parking space.

It is possible to spot your Athlete

• Expect to carry stuff. At a minimum clothes that they will take off at the start and a track pump. Bring a back pack.
• If you’re luck you can see them at the start and for the cannon, if not walk down the south side of Tempe Town Lake till you get to Rural Road and get on the bridge. You’ll have a better chance of seeing them going out towards the turnaround and coming back.
• As a reminder, all that stuff you have been given, you’re still carrying it, that’s why you need a back pack.
• If you choose not to follow the swim you have three choices;
• The Swim out steps on the way to T1.
• The run from the Swim out to into T1.
• By the Bike out.
• Depending on your athlete’s swim time get a good spot to view from as they go fast.

Becca on the left, heading back

  The Bike

• The bike course is three loops so there is plenty of chances of seeing your athlete without having to spend 4-6 hours sat on the side of the road by the ASU Sun Devils Stadium.
• Head out the bike course and you can park in the following places;
• South of the Bike Course;
• Corner Alma School and E McKellips.
• Corner N Country Club and the Beeline, you may need to park a bit south of the junction and walk up.
• End of Gilbert, you may need to park a bit south of the junction and walk up.
• North of the Bike Course;
• Corner of S McClinktock and MCkellips.
• Corner Alma School and E McDowell.
• End of North Mesa.
• You may be asked to move on by the Police, be polite and do so.
• Based on the expected Bike finish time you can probably expect to see them;
• Inbound on lap 1.
• Outbound and inbound on lap 2.
• Outbound on lap 3.
• If you want to Chalk the run course head back into town after they have passed inbound on Lap 2.
• If you want to see them hit T2 head back into town after they have passed outbound on Lap 2.
• Use the time in the car to re-charge everything up!

One of over 400 photos from the day! Point and shoot baby!

  The Run

• Like the bike, the Run course is loops. This means you can cloverleaf around the outside in your car and then run shortcuts across the middle to catch up with your Athlete.
  
  
• If you want to chalk the sidewalk you have a great opportunity to while your Athlete is on their third bike loop, come up with something fun or pertinent. If all fails “Go XXX Go!” will work just fine!

• My advice is to start on the North side of Tempe Town Lake and then work your way around from the harbor and Curry Hill. From there head east towards the Bridge at Priest. From there you can cover the south side of the lake along the pathway and Rio Solado.
• Around mile 12.5 and 13 the runners are looping so you can see them at least twice.
• Don’t worry too much about anything East of Mill Street as most of the sidewalk is actually a gravel path.
• While you’re athlete is out on the run, this is a good chance to collect their bike from T2 and get it stashed into the car or hotel room if you are local. Only if you have time!

  The Finish

• Head to the bleachers when you can. It’s lots of fun to just soak up the party atmosphere.
• It’s a tradeoff between the higher seats which have more room and you can see further or the lower ones that get you closer to the action.
• Likewise do you want to stand as closer to the finish as possible or be further out down the chute. Either way it’s your call.
• Again point and shoot on the photos, I got a couple of good ones at St George (left below), not so at Arizona (right below).

• Let your athlete take there time going through the finish and the recovery area, there is no rush, let the savor it all, they have earned it.
• Let them tell you everything that has been going though their head for the last XXX hours…verbal diarrhea!

• Get them back to the hotel room and refueled and cleaned up and then head back to the finish. Make sure they are wearing their Medal!

This is by no means a comprehensive list but it’s some of the relevant stuff I could think of. This was my third time at Ironman Arizona in as many years so if you have questions please email me or hit me up on Twitter!

#honeymoonhijinx

Yeah we had our own hashtag!

So in lieu of a proper honeymoon due to Becca changing jobs and a whole bunch of other stuff and in the same fashion as we tend to do things; married in January, Reception in April and Honeymoon in May we had our Honeymoon!

Two days off work volunteering at the Amgen Tour of California, a big workout day, see earlier post, and VIP Tickets at the Amgen Tour! What’s not better than doing what you love with who you love.

Stage 5 Pismo to Santa Barbara. We had been given a spot 4kms from the finish. We were posted at road junctions making sure that nobody pulled out into the race. The junction had a nasty pothole in the middle of one of the lanes and I was given a Whistle and told to direct the riders away from it! And yes I ended up on TV! Fast forward to 7:00 minutes in and you’ll see me on the right in a yellow shirt. We hit the expo at the end were lucky enough to see Taylor Phinney coming out of Doping Control, Becca swooned and snagged an autograph on her Volunteer shirt!

   

 
Taylor Phinney in red and me in Yellow!

Stage 6 Santa Clarita to Mountain High. This time we were at the start and right by the 0km which was a couple of miles after the riders actually started. Again I was stuck in the middle of the road directing traffic so I have no photos. Most people were ok with detour and some less so and were very happy to tell me about it…I just smiled!

Stage 8 Thousand Oaks. Becca and I picked up a couple of VIP tickets to the Michelob Tent off of Living Social and it was our Honeymoon so what the hell! We got there early and saw the riders roll out. The route was the same as we had ridden at L’Etape last month prior with the addition of three short loops to ramp the sprinters up for the finish line. Here is some more onboard footage of them coming down the final descent at 80kph…that’s 50mph and 20mph faster than me!

The race was awesome and it was great to see fellow Brits win both the Stage (Mark Cavandish) and the overall (Bradley Wiggins). We hung around at the end and got our groupie on, I had brought a couple of books to see if I could get them signed. I scored lucky with Cav’ and Wiggo signing theirs for me! A word of advice; please and thankyou go a long way, Brad was not happy signing as he was with his wife and children and the people surrounding were getting pushy. I seriously think that asking nicely won him over, I was one of only three or four folks to get an autograph!

I also got John Degenkolb’s autograph on a route card;

And a photo of us under the finish banner…

And that was that but of course I took a million photos which I am sifting through!

You can read Becca’s version of events here.

Back to reality!

Challenge on!

Both Becca and I are heading to Vineman in nine weeks, it’s the third time for her and the second for me. We were last there in 2012 and for me it was a work up for IMAZ, Becca is following the same plan this year with IMAZ in November.

As I have mentioned in the past she is by far a better swimmer, we’re both pretty good runners and up until recently I was a stronger cyclist but she is closing in fast!

This year I start two waves behind her in the swim, that’s 18 minutes. She will pull away even further in the swim from me and gain another 10 – 12 minutes exiting the water in around 35 minutes. Conservatively that puts her nearly half an hour ahead! In 2012 I finished the bike in 2:52:21 and Becca was finished in 3:22:48 (in 2011 her finish was 1:51:10). Potentially we could be neck and neck but I know this year she will be faster…a lot faster on the bike…looks like it could come down the run!

I hope mine goes better than in 2012 when I really suffered in the heat finishing in 2:06:06, Meanwhile in 2011 Becca ran a 1:51:10!

 

My 2012 finish in 5:58:39 and Becca’s in 2011, a kick ass 5:32:10

Either way a couple that trains and races together…well you know!

BFFs (dog edition)

Last November Becca and I brought Cali home, she is a (we think) either cross Blue Tick Coon hound or an English American Coon hound…either way she won our hearts and is an awesome trail runner! Currently she has no problems running for 90 minutes. The problem is she is still a puppy and she loves company and goofing around with other dogs…can you see where this is going?!

So meet Sprocket;

He is a 2 y/o Beagle…which was ironically what we went to look at when we got Cali!

Happiness is a bathmat!

You can follow them on Instagram, mynameisSprocket and aDogNamedCali although expect them to pop up in mine and Tribecca’s feed…they both keep going over their data plans looking at YouTube cat videos!

Happy dogs!

Knighthood Training Week 3

Week 3 completed with a little shuffling mostly due to a complete fail to get out of bed on Tuesday morning…hey I am only human!

This week was also a test week on a new pair of shoes. I have the devil’s own job finding cycling shoes. For the last two years I have been using my Time Ulteam Tri shoes which I wear with no socks and as a result of 1000’s of miles they have taken on a very distinct odor of their own! Added to which our dog decided to have a bit of a chew on them! They are now discontinued but I did manage to get one of the last pairs I could find online as a reserve pair for racing. But I have been looking for road shoes to wear with socks for months and last weekend I was able to get a pair of 2013 Bontrager RXL Road shoes 50% at a LBS sale! So on with the week!

Monday; off, rinse and repeat, every Monday if off!

Tuesday; aforementioned fail!

Wednesday; Taylor. I just pushed the whole week back one day. Tuesday became Wednesday, Wednesday became Thursday and so on. The carried over day off showed with an extra 1.5 miles over this ride last week! 3x20-minute sets of 30-second Billats @ 120% FTP where the recovery intervals match the work intervals with 30 seconds of rest between each Billat and 7 minutes of recovery between the sets of Billats. I totally misread the plan though and today should have been a different ride altogether…oops! GC Data.

Thursday; Black. Easy ride, nothing to see here. 1 hour of aerobic endurance ranging from 50-80% FTP. GC Data.

Friday; Thor. This seemed appropriate enough as my bike’s name is Thor, after Thor Hushovd, we have the same bike!

Left foot/leg was a bit crampy. This was a tough one, micro sprints really tough to get up to in short time, macro intervals very doable! A massive 8 sets of 3x12-second sprints at 200% FTP followed closely by a slightly suprathreshold 4-minute effort at 105% FTP. Rest following the sprints is minimal and won’t allow complete recovery while rest between Sprintervals is 3 minutes long with the intention of allowing just enough rest to effectively repeat these challenging sets. Sprintervals aim to increase fiber recruitment via short, powerful, pre-interval sprints such that the subsequent intervals feel more manageable as a result of more muscle activity. GC Data.

Saturday; Emerson. This is the second time I have ridden this, this time felt easier than last time but a lot of work nonetheless. PM started dropping out during last interval? I moved cleat back on left shoe 2mm and it was much more comfortable than yesterday. 5x10min intervals spent slightly above or slightly below FT (3U/2O); with 5 minutes rest between intervals (RBI). 5x10-minute Over-Under intervals alternating between 3 minutes @ 95% FTP & 2 minutes @ 105% FTP with 5-minute recoveries between intervals. GC Data.

Sunday; in much the same way as last weekend this was another recon of the L’Etape du California route which was finally announced as 4 laps of “Rock Store” a 21 mile circuit. Here are some great photos from 2010 when it was last used.

It’s not really a surprise but it’s nice to have final confirmation. So the goal of this ride was to complete 2 Rock Store climbs. For those not familiar Rock Store is a local favorite ride in the Santa Monica Mountains named after the biker café at the bottom of it. Now depending on “exactly” where you measure the start it is essentially a 2-2.7 mile climb, the elevation gain over is about 900’ and the grade varies from 3-9% with the majority of it at 7-8%.

For the L’Etape we have to ride four loops for 81 miles but today we wanted to focus on the actual climbing section. We had agreed to cut the first loop short but taking a short cut back down to the start of the climb. I rode the first climb hard. The second one I eased off and tried to sit into it more!

Of course the joy of Strava, especially on a popular segment, is the data overload;

As you can see above there are 8 segments that I can use for this climb, of course the key is consistency so I am using the longest one “Rockstore (store to top) 2.6 miles, 905’ gain, 7% grade. I have ridden it only 4 times, three in the last two weeks.

But I am getting better! Of note the difference between hard and sitting in is only 16 seconds! GC Data. Here are the weeks digits!

Here are a couple of photo’s from the day…none of me though! Becca needs to work on that I think!

 

A Badass Kitten and a Bactrian Camel…carefully they both spit!

So that was the week…onwards to Week 4!

A Family affair!

With the Tour of Sufferlandria completed on Saturday, Sunday was wide open as to what to do so going for a bike ride seemed like a wise choice. Actually I was the only one on the bike but it turned into a real family affair. TriBeccaTO (henceforth known simply as Becca) decided that she wanted to run the trails as she is training for The Great Race of Agoura a trail HM in March so we decided to take my Mountain Bike, her trail shoes and for good measure Cali our new dog. The plan was to run a loop around Chesebro which would cover most of the trail section of the race

We set off without incident but Cali decided that she had to keep up with me which meant that Becca ended the 9 mile run with one arm longer than the other from all the pulling. It was an experiment to see how she would do with the bike and a runner and it’s not one we will be repeating!

We did however stop and get some great photos!

Monday is a day off and then I start training for my Sufferlandrian Knighthood!