bit of intensity and fun...

The tour de France is over for another year, and now I should be getting more sleep, but I am left wondering what to do at 11:30 at night - with no tour to watch. It was a funny tour - and a few reports, forums and podcasts have been debating the excitement level. Contador was by far the strongest cyclist. One of the best at the time trial, and in the mountains. He was also in the strongest team - despite Astana trying its best to implode on itself and attack their own riders all the time - but I suppose you are going to get that - when you have at least 4 riders with a chance of winning the tour. If half the news reports are true, Mr Armstrong was doing his very best to undermine Contador - of course he was saying the right things, like "the team must win" etc etc. Now post tour the ugly war of words is on. I thought the number of stages that finished down hill (rather than hill top) affected the outcome significantly. Rather than attack with a few km's to go and gain a few seconds, riders were just riding solid tempo, as any gains on the uphill would probably be nullified on the down hill. The other subject that must come up is doping. Not many failed drug tests during - a couple from test prior to the tour though. I don't see this as necessarily good. I do think doping is far less prevalent than previously - but there will always be those that will try. So a few failed tests here and there is a good thing - it shows the testing is working! 
The last two weeks training has sort of gone a little pear shaped. I knew there were going to be a few challenges - just fitting things in - but I was a little disappointed that I really let it go far more than I should have. The biggie was swimming. Two squad swims only, and I really should have got my ass to the pool at least one other time each week - even if it was just a cruisy 1km of dog paddle. I did make one other trip to the pool for a swim and a gym - only to find it all shut down due to a bomb scare! Blimming heck! Don't these people have any consideration for my training?? It is hard enough to get it done anyway- stop making it harder! In fact that was the start of a couple of days of "this is just getting too hard". Plan to go for a run, at the planned time it is just bucketing down - not just heavy rain - you are actually worried about not dissolving! Go to jump on the windtrainer - flat tyre. Fix the flat, get started and the computer connected to the trainer crashes after 10 minutes. Get off, reboot, start warm-up again. Sigh... 

The big plus side was that we had a fine Sunday - and we could get out for a long bike! The cold of winter is not so bad when the there is no rain and no wind. I actually really enjoy riding on those crisp mornings - especially when the sun is on your back!  

At the weekend The local triathlon club organised a duathlon and a time trial option at the (almost) local motor racing circuit. It was a pretty casual affair, and my input from casual consultant to race day director felt a little like a hospital pass - but it was OK really (the race organiser did all the work!!). I think the days events turned out pretty well, a few things I would like to improve on organsiation wise, but it was a good change, and looked like most people actually enjoyed slogging it out around the race track! I had tried to get a few of the girls from the school cycling out there to run around there as a team - but only two turned up (all the others appear to have moved into slack mode). And both of them did the duathlon before. So I managed to convince a couple of the school boys that did the duathlon to also do the team time trial thing. Unfortunately we had to send Bex home - nice dose of the flu getting much worse, so our 5 person team was now 4. We were last to leave in the teams, and the two boys took off very strongly and poor Amelia was already on the back foot (or pedal?) after less than 100m. I called "easy" to get things back together and told Amelia just to sit at the back and look after herself as best she could. Daniel and Sam are both very good athletes in their own right, and were riding strongly. As it turned out we each ended up leading very much the same part of the course for each lap. Daniel pretty much do the back straight (awkward cross wind), Sam did the ugly head wind section (with a bit of each straight either side), and I took all the glory doing the tail wind and past the crowds at the start-finish line. Still can't believe they let me get away with that for a whole hour! We had to ease a couple of times for Amelia, usually when someone lapped through really hard (I think all the boys had a go at doing that!). For our hour of riding - we ended up averaging 39.9kph. I was on my road bike (drop bars - no aero gear), and averaged 315watts for the hour. That means it was pretty ugly conditions - as I would expect to average over 40kph on that road surface on my own with aero bars at around 275watts. So I was getting a fair bit of draft, and for that power should have been more like 42-44kph - even on the road bike setup. But it was good fun - no one caught us and we passed plenty of others! It was fun actually lapping out with others that are really good at doing it - rather than sitting at the back watching and yelling (as with school coaching).

The solid hour on Sunday rounded out a very solid week of training really - not a great deal of volume, but quite a bit of intensity. I don't usually cope that well without my easy training - so if there are 4 plus very solid sessions I usually get a little turned inside out. Monday was a solid swim - with 18x200 as the main set with a mix of freestyle, IM and kick (all the freestyle on 2:45 - which is just making it for me!). Tuesday was a Kick the school girls in the butt cycle session - an hour and a half with solid hill reps, then Tuesday bike class (hard) that night. Wednesday I thought was going to be an easier swim, as Anna was not going to be there - but she was! And it was decided that the 5km swim that was planned for Friday was now going to be done on Wednesday (which I was not planning on doing!). That was pretty much 4km in the first hour, and then another km just to round out to 5 - all at a solid steady effort. I was a bit tired after that! I took Wednesday bike class a little easier. Thursday morning was crack the whip and more hill reps with the school cycling training. Unfortunately a couple were riding quite well, so that made life a little more difficult. Friday morning run intervals were a little more on the shorter and sharper side - and I was not that sharp to be fair. An easy run on Saturday was good - although the loop I did took about the same time as the week before but was almost 6km shorter... So a solid week in the end...


Here is the power graph for the team time trial at Pukekohe race track. Most of the spikes (400+watts) are after I have done my lap and Sam is lapping through really hard - thanks a lot!!



Me playing with the girls at cycle training while doing hill reps - took a fair amount of power to drop them on a few of the efforts - 420+ for a minute and a half is quite solid...