All last week the forecast had been iffy, Saturday was the golfball hailstones ... Sunday morning I woke up and it was belting down rain and the BoM said 'more to come'.  So we made the call to cancel round 5.

As it was, the rain stopped at around midday, and by 1pm the track was dry.  There wasn't much we could do at that point.  The conditions for sprinting were perfect by then.  We'd probably not have been able to run a full program anyway, we wouldn't have been able to set up the track properly until around 12:30, and start the flying 200's at around 1 or so, which would have meant that we'd not be racing 'til 2, and it started raining again at around 5, so maybe ... but it's too late now to change it.  I do think the BoM should only get paid when they're within 10% of their predictions though!

Round 6 ... is 5 weeks away.  The Vic Masters are next weekend, indoors (but I bet DISC leaked over the w'end!) and then Emily's racing at the Aussie titles on the following weekend.  Come along on the Thursday evening and cheer her on as she races the 500m ITT.  We're expecting her to be starting somewhere around 6-6:30pm on Thursday the 18th of March. As this is normally a 'spin' night, spin is cancelled for the 18th.  Come and cheer on Emily and have chicken and chips with us afterwards at Nandos in Ivanhoe instead!

I'm waiting on an update to my video editing software (PowerDirector 8.0, in case anyone's interested) to resolve an uploading to YouTube issue, so have a few moments to kill between editing videos for the sprint round last weekend.

I'd like to write a big report for the club teams championships last Saturday and the sprint round on Sunday, but this will be a very brief one.

CTC, a team of three of us, myself, Dino and Russell Poole are the Blackburn 'Open Masters' No.1 team.  I'm the first rider, Dino is No.2 and Pooley is our third after the Wizard couldn't commit.  We did ok, the event was a bit of a mess, no starting gates(!) and no split timing etc, but it was the same for everyone (except we'd spent a lot of time practicing gate starts!).  We ended up qualifying fourth so we just scraped into the final, to race off for 3rd place against Hawthorn's team of The V-Train, Aaron and some other guy who's name I don't know.  They'd qualified about four seconds faster than us, so we were never going to be in it,  but we went a little faster and they went a little slower but it was still three seconds too much, so we had to settle for fourth place.  Better than last year, so that's good ...

Round 4, I did my best flying 200 for the season, but still too slow, on a perfect day, I should, in hindsight, have used a bigger gear than 91.8", I'd felt strong during the week and probably would have done better on 94" or so, but it is what it is and 13.6s would have to do.  B grade was big, 10 of us, and I was one of the slower ones in qualifying. 

A very long story cut short, I beat Craig Towers, Ed Osbourne drilled me a new one, and Stewart Lucy took advantage of a huge tactical blunder on my part to win easily too, so not the best day's racing for me!  Still a lot of fun and the series continues to get good feedback.  There's a crew over in South Africa that want to copy the format and some in NSW as well, so that's very pleasing.  Our dream of a national series is gaining some momentum!  Jodie Dundas did a great job on the video camera, Lucie took ace photos and Sue ran the day like clockwork.  We got help from Will Thomas on the scoring duties as Anne Apolito was unavailable.

In other news, Emily teamed up with Caitlin Ward to roll the JW17 club team sprint by 2 seconds, quick kid, that Emily ... more medals for Dino to find homes for!  Thanks to the Thomas's and Bev for looking after Em on the day.

And if you haven't heard (get out from under the rock!) Mike Goldie from Carnegie-Caulfield was hurt in a low speed tumble at a training session at DISC last week,  from all of us we wish him a speedy and uncomplicated recovery.

After round 1, I felt crap for weeks.  Really weak and lethargic.  Every time I tried to lift heavy or sprint hard, nothing .. Flat and empty.  My diet, sleep and work had been out of kilter and nothing felt right.  To top it off, Lucie got crook and now we both have a cold.  Anyway .. Round 2 went ok, I qualified reasonably well with a 13.7 something, I was glad to be under 14 at least, given how I' been feeling that was pretty good.  The bye was a stroke of luck, I dealt with Wayne reasonably easily :

And Chris Hickey and I had a very very close finish

Both Chris and I though I won it, the photo was ambiguous and Sue and Kim in the middle thought Chris, so Chris got the win, and thus, I was to race for 3rd against Peta Stewart.

Peta's no slouch, that's for sure, and while I'd qualified faster and was probably a bit quicker, she drew the lead and I (foolishly) let her keep it.  She did a great job of boxing me up when I wanted to go and held off for a good win, so I got 4th again!

On Monday the cold really started to kick in and for this week I've been in and out of bed whilst setting the world record for litres of snot expelled by a human.  Hrm.  Anyway .. I have been able to do some anaerobic work, my squat strength is coming back, I ground out 3 x 3 @ 185kg this morning and got 1 x 5 170kg deadlifts, the deadlifts was a new personal best for me, so that was gratifying, and I pressed 3 x 5 @ 57.5kg, my press isn't my best lift by any stretch but that was a PR too, so despite being a snot-generator it was a good session, and young Will trained with me and did well as he learns the art of black iron training in the 'Haus. 

This arvo is keirins at Blackburn.  I still can't breathe too well, so I doubt that I'll be able to do well, but I'll have a crack at them. Once I shell this virus for good, round 3 will be a scorcher.  I'm going to go 13.2 for a flying 200 outdoors soon, I can feel it ...

And Em just rode an excellent time at Shep today (500m ITT) in windy conditions she's 2.2s faster than this time last year.  Go you good thing!

Yesterday Lucie and I got to play with some big bits of Meccano.  Specifically, one of these.  It's around 200kg and pretty heavy duty. It took us about an hour and a half to put together and was way more fun than any Ikea furniture to assemble.  The PowerHaus is slowly coming together.

Today Swervin Merv and I tested it, I finally had a little bit of strength and did some 180kg squats and some snatches after a terrible week of being feeble and slow.  Maybe that's not 100% spot-on, I rode ok on Sunday at DISC, my standing 125's were ok and motorpaced I was reasonably quick, but on Tuesday I was TFU at both morning and afternoon sessions at Blackburn.  Must be getting old, it's taking three days to recover from a hard session.  I haven't felt good under the bar since just before round 1, three and a half weeks ago.  Overtraining?  Maybe ... Certainly poor sleep and bad food hasn't helped.  We have an ergo session tomorrow night which I'm looking forward to, hopefully some decent wattage and torque will present itself.

Still, round 2 of the Summer Sprint Series is this Sunday, I don't feel as good as I did last time, but it's 4 days away and there's time to come good.  Speaking of the SSS, those of you that read Ride have now got THE article.  Lucie's photos, my writing (with some help from Dino).  I think it came up pretty well.

PS: Doug Reith, we need you at Blackburn.  Whatever you want, you ask for it and I'll do my best to make it happen ...

I felt a bit ordinary on Saturday at Blackburn's SoT opener, Sunday was worse, hayfever and generally blah, on Monday I was supposed to do a Texas Method high volume set in the 'Haus, but the warmup was bad and the lifting, supposed to be 5 x 5 @ 180kg squats, I got 1 x 2 and called it a day.  Did some press and that was about it.  Lower back, kidneys sore etc .. Hrm ..

Today (Tuesday) I'm feeling a little better.  This morning Dino, Pat and I were at the BBN velodrome to do some training, but the rain came in and I was feeling very stiff and sore, so I motorpaced the lads for a warmup and then called it a day.  Brad's Tuesday afternoon session was probably a washout too (the rain is good, I'm not complaining!) so I missed that, not that I had the beans to do it.

I'm up late tonight uploading videos for the SSS (still?!).  It's 1:45am and I'm done.  Here's Steelie giving me a lesson!

I stumbled over this on one of the crossfit websites today:

When an athlete says "can't", a coach hears "won't".  To unlock your true potential you need to remove "can't" from your vocabulary.  Or at the very least, be honest with yourself and what you truly mean when you say it.  Try replacing "can't" with "I don't want to try because I might fail" and see whether your attitude matches your goals.

Last week was a busy one with real-world work, but I did manage to consolidate my 185kg squats on Wednesday with the Sprint Squad which I was happy about, but it does mean I have to increase volume or intensity (work up to 3 x 5's at 185kg or go to 187.5kg for 3x3's) which is going to be bloody hard!  It's now only about 7 weeks until the first round of the Summer Sprint Series for 2009-2010, so it's time to switch from an emphasis on strength and power to endurance - not the sort of endurance that gets trained when riding for 90 minutes through Lysterfield on a mountainbike though.

Which was what I did yesterday with Alex Vaughan!  Alex, 60 minutes MAXIMUM and EASY!  I don't want to get out of E1 unless it's to go below it! Not up and down bloody hills for an hour and a half!  Alex has become quite a good MTB rider in the last few months, and I am a complete gumby on mine (yes, I get off and carry the thing over log jumps!) and he gave me a royal flogging through his favorite bits of Lysterfield!  Argh! 

Today I'll be doing a light set in the 'Haus, a warmup squat set then some snatches or power cleans at a light weight just to remind my legs that they have a job to do tonight at training at DISC.

At last nights (record again, 31 people!) Spin, Vanders (that's Angles to the 9:23-am'ers out there, if any of you read this) came to train.  Not much of a big deal, he's a regular, but the difference, a few days before he'd binned it snowboarding and broken his arm.

I'm certainly not one to say train when you're injured if it'll impede your recovery at all, but that's a pretty HAF effort from Vanders!

We had a huge night, I'd had some bizarre premonition that we'd have a big turnout, despite the A stream having two Tabata intervals to do (they were warned!), so Lucie and I had arranged an extra-big pot for pasta and I'd made the biggest bolla I've ever made on Monday, 3kg of mince beef, 4 big cans of crushed tomatoes, 3 big jars of tomato paste, 2 kg of mushrooms... It was heavy ... anyway ... A few regulars weren't coming, but a few newbies came along and most of the regulars were there too .. so thirty one people.  No need for a heater, we had to open the big sliding door to keep the place cool and make room for them all. Nathan and I were stuffed at the end of the night, even with the megaphone it was hard to communicate.  The noise during the final E3 rampup was ... significant!

I wonder how many we'll have next week?

The DUCC training session this morning went well too, they quickly got the point of blocking and how to spot blocking, when to use it and how to do it such that it's harder to detect than just soft pedaling on the front.  They're a good crew and very keen to learn, working with them is a real pleasure.

Warming in the 'Haus I felt pretty flat, got a headache and generally still snotty and clogged up from this lingering 'flu.  The aim, 3 x 3 @ 185kg.  The result?  1 x 185kg, and only just!  So technically I got the PB, but I didn't get any reps or sets at it.  Will try again tomorrow if I feel ok.  I finished off with some light cleans and snatches so I felt like I'd done something at least ... Now off to Spin to see how that goes.  At this rate, pretty shabby, I bet!

Blergh.  Taking another enforced day off (difficult when self-employed).  Hurry up, immune system, and win this battle!

Green lumps, cough cough gargle.

Spit, sneeze, cough, splutter.

Moan, whinge, sook!

Must get better soon ... Immune system, do thy job, post haste!

I'd like to thank Dino, Ann and Emily Apolito, they brought back some goodies that they gave to me from their trip overseas - including an aboc Sprint Squad t-shirt!.

Thankyou.

I've just put together the 13th spin session program for this winter, the A stream riders get their first full Tabata interval session.  The rest of the A stream for that evening is easier than it would be normally, but the Tabatas are sufficiently brutal that I don't think any will complain.  We'll fine-tune these as we progress and any feedback is much appreciated.

I've still got lingering and unpleasant flu-cold symptoms, so may not be able to train much for the remainder of this week - generally coughing up lumps isn't considered compatible with training.  Still ... these things are temporary and I'll be better soon.  I'm consistently repping out 180kg squats now, and did a set of 160kg deadlifts on Wednesday in the 'Haus, so that's not too bad, and on Tues at Spin I got a 1440 watt effort, which considering I'd just squatted sets of 180kg and was (and am!) crook, I'm happy with.  Last winter that would have been a PB, so being able to grind that out when tired and unwell is a good sign for this coming summer.

The 'Haus has been busy this week too, I've had the Sprint Squad, some of the DUCCs and a few friends over as well.  Teaching them Rip's squat.  I think they'll be moaning today.  DOMS is an old friend we know well!

Too much strength training!  Or at least, not enough recovery.  Tuesday, squat heavy and then 30s sprint efforts at Spin.  Managed to crack over 1400 watts with ~45 mins recovery after the heavy squats - not bad considering.  Wednesday, um?  Can't remember!  Did something though ... Thursday, work all day at the LBS.  Quiet night in at home.  Friday, heavy squats, high volume (3 x 5 @ 172.5kg - very hard, for me anyway ...).  Saturday .. MISTAKE!  go for 4 hour MTB ride with Rich.  Too much.  I should have kept it to an hour or two.  4 hours was too much, especially after the heavy squats on Friday.  Got home with baked legs.  Had baked legs for an hour prior to then.  Not good!  This is going to break my training on Sunday ...

Too keen on Sunday in the 'Haus, trying to prove a point about doing Hard Stuff and not being a whimp ... Squat light-ish (3 x 3 @ 160kg) then a set of deadlifts motivated by sheer bloody mindedness, not sense - 1 x 5 @ 155kg.  Oh.  Um .. Now I have to sprint at DISC?  On these?  Errr.... Ok.... Warmup didn't feel too good.  Legs very soggy, not answering the question at the surge at the end of the warmup at all.  Our efforts were to be two by flying 100's then some short keirins.  Did one awful (AWFUL!) flying 100, the time was ok-ish, 6.8 or something, so a high 13 (I've done far worse, after all ...) but I really want to be consistantly under 6.5s at the moment, no chance when using legs that wouldn't move a small rodent, let alone push 98".  Climbing the bank felt like turning left at Winch Corner at Baw Baw.  No chance I was getting out of the saddle with any quality at all.  I pulled the pin for the night and just coached the troops for the remainder of the evening with Nathan.  Next week ... And Nath, remind me not to do stupid long rides on the day before a training session!  Ich Bin eine Bloody Idiot!

The Apolito's are home this week.  They're going to be keen to get their teeth into training.  We also have a new drill to break the A stream at Spin.  If you're curius, google for "Tabata protocol".  Oh yeah ...

After about a week of 'flu and general malaise, I'm just about right.  I had a gentle ride on Saturday and didn't feel awful, which was good, and did some light lifting in the 'haus on Sunday morning which also went well.  Lucie and I spent Sunday afternoon at my Dad's place in Baxter using the flame weeder to kill weeds around his pool and start some burnoff fires.  Very much fun!  Tomorrow morning is supposed to be the second DUCC training session at Blackburn but the BoM says :

Forecast for Tuesday

Cloudy. Isolated showers during the morning, becoming more widespread during the day. The chance of thunderstorms with hail from midday. Possible snow about the nearby hills at night. Winds northwesterly averaging up to 30 km/h increasing to 30 to 40 km/h during the morning then tending west to southwesterly around midday.

Jokes about the Swine 'flu abound .. I've had a decent cold with 'flu symptoms for almost a week (aching bones, sore joints, headache, sneezing and coughing etc) - I don't know or care if it's the aporkalypse 'flu, but I'm starting to feel better today.  I didn't train on Tuesday or Wednesday at all and won't do anything today either but with a bit of luck and another good night's sleep or two I reckon I'll be ok to go again on the weekend.

We keep getting more people at our spin sessions.  Last Tuesday we had 24 spinners, a new record for our sessions.  People are overflowing out the door and more want to come.  If everyone shows up we'll need a bigger venue and I'll need a bigger pot to make the dinner in.  We're already up to a 2.5kg mince beef and 2kg of mushrooms feed and that's about the limit of my big cauldron.

Yesterday we had the Sprint Squad in the 'Haus and it was heavy strength day.  Everyone set new PB's in their lifts and I felt good, so went for 3 x 3 @170kg squats, and I got 'em!  Woo hoo!  We also did benchpress and deadlifts to finish off, I got 5 deadlifts at 150kg too, which was a new PB for that lift as well.  The others all PB'd in everything too.  A very solid session.

Afterwards we had a thankyou BBQ for all those that helped out at last summer's Sprint Series.  aboc put on the bangers and bread and some chilli chickenwings and a good time was had by all who made it.  It was particularly good to see the Dundii again and to get a chance to thank Ann Apolito and Sue Dundas for their work last year and of course Lucie for her photography, my Dad came too (he was a photographer at one round) and had a good time.

Today we had the first round of the Blackburn time trial series for 2009.  I was pretty anxious about this, we'd had some 60 pre-entries and were expecting more to roll up and enter on the day.  Blackburns' reputation for running time trials is .. unfortunate .. over the years a number of high profile events have gone awry and with a huge field I was pretty concerned that things would go wrong, but Richard Stringer put together a great team and everything went faultlessly, or at least appeared to, and that's all that matters!  In the end some 110 riders raced the time trial and the results were done within 10 minutes of the last rider finishing.  Fantastic.  They need to be put up on the club's website ASAP too (very important these days!).  Hopefully that will have been taken care of also.

Em and I rode the big aboc Trek T1000 tandem in the time trial and I'm pretty sure we came dead last, but we did win the tandem division.  My alarm didn't go off and I was lucky that I woke up at 6:55, but I didn't have time for breakfast, having to fly out the door.  I rode the tandem solo to the city, along the way hooking up with Bev and Karen who both delighted in dropping me on every hill!  Hungry like the wolf but no food, I rode the ITT with Em and we did a solid E3 effort, then on the ride home (again solo on the tandem) I bonked ... Groveling up Whitehorse Road at 15km/h wasn't fun.  The refueling process was started as soon as I got home, we're training at DISC tonight and I need some matches to burn!

I'm still in the process of adapting my weight training and ergo and DISC sessions to suit my available time.  Fine-tuning etc.  Last night was a moderatly difficult ergo session at aboc Spin, I probably should have lifted light tonight instead of going for 5 x 5's at my max.  I got 3 sets out ok, the 4th I got 4 and the fifth set I bailed on the first squat!  Still a PB, last week I lifted 5 x 3 at 167.5kg, and tonight I got 3 x 5 and then 4 at the same weight, but not the planned 5 sets of 5.  I'm not displeased, but my legs are still trembling!

Em, Dino, Merv and I did some kettlebell work and some rope pullups and some pushups to round out the session.  I think tomorrow will be a nice, quiet day!

So, looking at the program for lifting.  I'm roughly an intermediate lifter now (been lifting seriously for a bit over a year and am up to a reasonably decent load).  One heavy low volume day, one back-off day and one heavy high volume day a week will work out I think.  I should have made today the back off day and just done sets of 155kg or something else as an unload.  I'll try for the 5 x 5 again on Saturday.  So the plan :

Tuesday : High Intensity Low Volume - HILV (and then spin session).  3 sets of 3 lifts - this is the new max lift day - If Sunday the previous week was successful, add 2.5kg to the lifts.

Thursday : Repeat Tues spin session.

Friday : Back Off lifts - drop 10%, do 5 x 5's - so at the moment,  that's 5 x 5 at 150kg.  That's easy, but prevents detraining.

Sunday : High intensity High Volume - HIHV (and DISC) - repeat Tuesday's HILV weight, but go for 5 x 5.

Monday - lie in bucket of own vomit and blow bubbles!

I'll see if that works for the next week or so.  Remembering the target is 170kg 5 x 5's by June. I'm almost at 167.5kg 5 x 5's now.  It should be possible without too much drama. I may need to shuffle around a little, use Wednesdays as the back off day (when I coach the sprint squad in the 'haus), do the HILV lifts on Monday and the HIHV on Saturday.  It'll be a bit flexible, but that's fine.  The ultimate aim is faster flying 200's and faster standing 250m laps, so the on the bike work is critical.  The weight training is to build muscle, the on the bike strength and power work is to teach these cranky old legs how to use that muscle.

This afternoon, after a morning's moping about, Dino and Em came over for their PowerHaus session.  I had to give it a try.  My target; 160kg squats (5 x 5) and 120kg deadlifts (1 x 10).  Got 'em!  4,000kg squatted, 1,200kg deadlifted for the session for a total of 5,200kg lifted. Em and Dino also PB'd volume (squats) and intensity (deadlifts).  A good session indeed for all involved. Now it's protein time!

While I was moping I made some new chocolate-chilli icecream, this time with 86% dark chocolate.  It's in the freezer and I'll try it tonight. Mmmm....

I wasn't watching the Roubaux last night, I was sleeping.  I woke up at about 2am, with a very painful left elbow. Painful enough to wake me up and I sleep through anything!  Huh?  I don't remember hitting it on anything or doing anything odd or unusual.  The kayaking wasn't hard and doesn't involve much elbow bending anyway.  It felt like a nasty bruise on the outside of my elbow (the bit you can't see).  It was hot and very tender to touch, and no matter how I moved it would not stop hurting.  Hrm.  Got up, checked the 'net for a local doctor who was open on a public holiday. While I was at it I checked cyclingnews for the result, no luck again for Big George Hincapie, but Tom Boonen ... wow.  Three wins for Tom. This morning I trundled off to see the local quack (open on a public holiday, good-o).  He takes one look at it and says 'Bursitis'.  Huh?  What's that?  He gave me a script for some anti inflams and an antibiotic (the heat, probably an infection).  It's ok to use it, he says, but not if it's painful, and it should be ok in a week.

Not a bad time to get an injury I guess, next weekend I'm going to take photos at the Baw Baw and this is mainly a strength phase of training and I think I'll be able to squat and deadlift without too much trouble. It's more annoying than anything.  On the way back from the quack Lucie and I stopped in at the local stupormarket and grabbed the ingredients for tomorrow night's first spin of the winter.  The clubrooms are probably still jam packed with junk that we'll need to move out to make room for everyone. At least with a dodgey elbow I can get everyone else to move things!  Small victories .... Ha!