I had to defer the DUCCs session this morning due to rain.  Given that it's freezing cold outside and windy it's a good day for being indoors.  I've just been to the butcher to get the 4.5kg of mince beef for tonight's spag boll for Spin and it's bloody cold out!  So today's jobs - work on sprintTracker to get it to the point where I can (still with a lot of manual hacking) enter some individual efforts into the database.  I'm also going to keep chipping away at the sprint drills page.

I did get a good chance to speak with Martin Barras last week, his sprint progression is this :

1. strength
2. power
3. acceleration
4. speed
5. speed-endurance

He has his sprinters gym work set to lead the program by around two weeks.  For example :

In a strength block, they're concentrating on strength in the gym and on the bike (squats, deadlifts, legpress (if you must ...) in the gym, K1's on the bike).  They max out on strength in the gym about two weeks before they do on the bike, and start working on power (cleans, snatch, hang clean pulls, clean pulls, ballistic leg press etc) before they switch the emphasis over to power on the bike, and so on.  The rough gym to bike matchup is this :

I'm going to see if I can get more information about the gym work that Craig Colduck used during the speed and speed-endurance blocks.  Craig wrote a famous article that I have a copy of here.  I'd also like to compare this to how Gary West is programming these days and also John Beasley.  There's many ways to skin the cat!

I had to leave the NTID conference early on Wednesday, missing a few interesting talks, hopefully there'll be a DVD or at least a booklet summarising the ones I missed, which looked pretty worthwhile.  I came home in a little (80 seater) turboprop plane chock-full of families with babies (why?!)  but survived the ordeal of daddy encouraging little Johnny kicking the chair in front of him without having to channel Hilton on daddy .. Just ..

We had a solid night in at DISC with the NTID squad, it was bloody cold, started at about 12 or so degrees and warmed up(!) to about 14 by the late afternoon.  This meant that times would be a bit slower, but everyone rode well and it was a good session.

Thank you to Stewart Lucy for running the spin session for me on Tuesday, and to Dino for heating the bolla to feed the troops.

I'll get the next track and spin session programs up soon, and am looking forward to a good flaying on Sunday at DISC with the aboc Sprint Squad!

While the NTID isn't paying me, I am getting a few perks.  I'm off to Canberra (sitting at Tulla at the moment in the departure lounge) for a two day conference on talent ID at the AIS.  Some interesting speakers, on I'm looking forward to is a bloke from the air force who's going to talk on the things they look for in fighter pilots.  If it's as interesting as the talk at the NTID Cycling conference in Adelaide in May by the police psychologist it'll be excellent.  I have to leave early (on a little Dash-8!) to get back in time to be Hilton-Virtual at the NTID training session at DISC on Wednesday, but will still get the keynote speakers.

This does mean I miss Spin tonight, but that's ok, I did the ergo session yesterday on my recovery day so my sprinters, I have hurt like you will and it is good!

See you when I get back ....

Hilton Clarke had his knee replaced on Thursday last week, and while he's away I'm looking after his NTID and VIS sprint squads (and a couple of CCCC ringins), we had our first completely Hilton-Free-Day on Saturday afternoon.  The session was all K1's which is basically a load of gate starts over short distances, the format being 3 sets of 3 reps of starts, each set has reps going up quarter, half and three quarter lap, and each set goes up a gear.

Generally they all did pretty well, I had to get a little bit cranky at the end, as the drill usually finishes with a small gear quarter lap effort, and some of the lads mucked about during it, it was pretty funny, but at the same time, they're there to train and I had to make sure they did their efforts properly.  Guys, if any of you are reading this, you can horse around between efforts, but you do your efforts at 100%, or you're wasting your time and mine.

In other news, Nathan's taking a bigger role in the DISC sessions now, he's looking after the enduro stream including programming for them, and is also doing more of that at Spin.  I'm happy that this is happening, Nathan's almost finished his level 1 and he's ready to take more responsibility for that side of things.

And we had a time trial on Sunday, run by Blackburn and with CSV looking after part of it. I was the announcer, but didn't have much of a job to do except call riders to the start, which was ok for the CSV Open, but the combine part was a mess, no-one's numbers matched what was on the starting list and the on-the-day entries didn't fit anywhere.  We need to stop the on-the-day entries altogether for TT's.

I'm glad I wasn't riding the CSV Open part of it - not because I don't like TT's (which is true!) but because the CSV guys just packed up and left with no results.  WTF?!  The results are up now, which is good, but at the time they just left.   Not good enough.  I don't know if Blackburn ended up getting the results done and having a presentation for the combine event because I had to get going, but they're not currently on the Blackburn website. It's not good enough these days.  It's embarrasing to be a part of when this happens, and more importantly, keeps happening over and over.

But .. We did run a good session at DISC on Sunday afternoon, Nathan had the enduros doing handicap starts and then some brutal efforts while the sprinters did powerjumps and then chased the motorbike around and around.  We all left well fried.  Today I was at Blackburn again coaching the DUCCs but only three showed up, so instead of doing blocking practice, we did flying 200s and match sprints.  The guys enjoyed that and learned a bit so it wasn't a waste of their time.

I did get a small bit of time to speak with Mal Sawford (CCCC president) about some inter-club stuff and in particular volunteer management, but we didn't get a chance to reach any conclusion, he had to race!  At least the ideas are on the table.  I still think that the northern combine model is worth trialing.  Here's more about how they do it. Mal is skeptical about its effectiveness in our combine because he is of the opinion that the NC races require a lot less manpower to run, but I think it's worth a try.  I guess that's up to the race committee people to sort out, but there is goodwill between the clubs and that's the main thing.

Last Friday Rob Monteath, helped a little by Nicko and I as furniture removalists, got new carpet (at long last!) in the Blackburn clubrooms.  This has been a longstanding thing that we've been (more stridently of late) agitating for at committee meetings since the old carpet was removed way back in October last year!

It's done now, and those of us that use the rooms owe Rob a big thankyou for making it happen.

This will make spin a lot quieter!

Also, we had a couple of people from the Whitehorse council come along and have a look at the state of the track.  Nicko, Rob and I gave them a tour of the track and showed them the various faults that need fixing.

In the long term (next 3 or so years) we're hoping that we'll get a new track built. In the meantime there's no budget available for much maintenance work, so the club will have to pony up for any tactical repairs that need to be done.  That's ok, as long as we know about it we can be prepared.

Well, there's no men from Snowy River here, no dueling banjos either, but I've been out to Bonnie Doon with Lucie for my last weekend away for a while, where we went kayaking on the Goulburn and then just chilled out for a day.  Nathan ran the DISC session for me on Sunday.

Coming up very soon Hilton Clarke has a knee operation that will have him out of action for a month or more and I have to fill his shoes with the NTID and VIS guys.  This means every Wednesday from roughly 2pm 'til 10-ish and Saturdays from midday 'til around 5:30 I'll be at DISC, either on the motorbike or on foot, shouting at people to ride faster, keep going etc.  It's going to be pretty challenging and exciting and I'm looking forward to it.

Combine that with our Sunday DISC sessions and Spin on Tuesdays, and a bunch of people training in the 'haus and there's not much time for anything else except a bit of IT work to pay the bills and sleep. If this keeps up soon I'll be a full time coach.  Nifty ...

Today I spent some time faffing around at DISC while we sorted out some issues with the DISC motorcycle.  Over the last couple of weeks it's become unreliable; the starter doesn't work all the time (which is how I came to have a burn on my calf, pushstarting it), there's an oil leak, the chain is worn out, the cruise control is broken and it won't go into neutral when hot a lot of the time.  It's in at Gassit Motorcycles now getting repaired, I hope.  We also had a good turnout at the DUCC's session, where the squad learned about laying off and attacking into a gap and did some more group tactical skills stuff.  They're a great bunch and are keen and motivated to learn, which makes them a pleasure to coach.

In a few moments some sprinters will be here to do some lifting in the 'haus with me, I'd better get some motivation, it's time to do some heavy lifting!

I spent the weekend in at DISC helping some of the lads as aboc, and as 'virtual Hilton', coach.  Dino rode a 12.021s flying 200 which was a huge PB for him, Chris Ray rode a 1:09 kilo (also a big PB), Cam Woolcock rode the toughest points race I've ever seen and for some reason was heavily marked (did they all know he was the sprinter in the pack?) and survived it.  As "VH" I looked after Lou Pascuzzi and The V-Train on Sunday at the sprints, Lou getting a bronze and Stew a gold and the champion of champions after some carefully considered tactical riding in the sprint finals.

I missed out on going for an MTB ride with Emily, but I'm sure we'll be able to do some more of that soon.  I was pretty cranky about missing that, but it is what it is and there'll be more chances for rides, especially after Dino splashes for some ay-ups and we can go at night.

This week, I'm coaching and hopefully lifting in the 'haus tonight, coaching in the 'Haus tomorrow morning, running Spin tomorrow night with Nathan then I'm off to Adelaide for the NTID sprint conference for two days, back late on Thursday, Friday I intend to take easy and spend some QT with Lucie before Saturday I'm in at DISC again with Hilton and the NTID/VIS/CCCC guys and then Sunday is the first of our winter DISC sessions!  Gulp .. that's a big week!

Yesterday evening I got an email from velogear.com.au.  They're an online bike shop of sorts I think, I haven't had anything to do with them.  Because my review of the KKRM shows up a lot on Google they've asked me to review their (well, it's not theirs, they just sell it) fluid trainer.  They offered to sell me one cheaply or similar as payment for my time reviewing the trainer.  Some trivia, I now own 5 KKRM's!  I'll be grabbing another one today too, we'd better get lots of people at Spin!

I'm not sure what to do, I won't be buying any of their trainers (we have one at CS-M and I wouldn't get one myself or recommend one either), so I'm reluctant to spend the time reviewing it when I know it's not a product I'd ever get myself or suggest to anyone that they buy.

Hrm.  I guess I should say "No but thank you for considering me as a reviewer".  I don't think I want to get involved in reviewing stuff for personal gain.

Sunday saw the last round of the SSS for 2009-2010, the weather was iffy and heavy rain in the morning cast doubts on if we'd be able to race but with the help of a great team we dried the track and raced and the outcome couldn't have been better if it was scripted.  Claire Campbell won the Trevor Watson Trophy and the Roselli wheels by winning her final and Chris Ray had to settle for second place again, but it went down to the last lot of finals.  Alex Vaughan's consistency was rewarded by his third place in the aggregate, Dino Apolito, who set a PB in every round, by ~0.1s each time was awarded Most Consistent and Penny Robinson Most Improved.

For my part I finally managed to ride a half-decent flying 200, a 13.376 which was almost a PB, my last best time at Blackburn was a 13.3-something (hand timed) so it's probably an equal to my PB, which I have to be happy with, especially given that I'd spent the previous day on my feet all day yapping at the Victorian Omnium Championships, hardly the best leadup to a day of sprinting! I wanted to get a 13.2 this season but it wasn't to be.  Next summer ...  I didn't manage any wins in the rounds but I gave Ed Osbourne a decent race at least, neither of us could split it but the judges saw it was Ed's at the throw :

A pretty good race.  Ed snuck under me at the jump and I moved up once I noticed he had his wheel under me, I thought I had him with 20m to go but he found a little more, my line was bad out of the final bend and he got me by a whisker at the end in the throw. In my other two races I was soundly thrashed so I won't show you them!

The series is done now and it's time for a bit of a rest (as if ...) and then start training again for 2010-2011.   We had (again!) a fantastic team of people that ran the series, in particular Sue Dundas and Ann Apolito, and Jodie Dundas on the video camera and John "inventor of everything worthwhile in the last 1,000 years" Lewis running the electronic timing.  The timing was a big hit, next summer I think we'll try for a finish-line camera so we can really get fancy when it comes to close finishes.  We get a lot of them and judging is very hard, if we can use modern technology to help, that's got to be an improvement.

I had the DUCC squad at Blackburn this morning doing their first skills session of the season, we had four riders show up which was a bit disappointing, I'd like to see a few more, but hopefully momentum will build and we'll get more showing up as the sessions continue.

Tomorrow, Spin starts up and then we start DISC sessions on the 25th, mix that in with the NTID/VIS/CCCC squad work on Wednesday nights and coaching in the 'Haus and I don't know when I'll get to sit down and rest!  Heh ...

In the last two weeks I've done road miles.  Not a lot, it probably only adds up to 150km or so, but it's still road riding.   It's all been very low intensity (no burning off fast twitch, thankyou very much!) but a bit of weight control and just generally enjoying riding around a bit.

The bummer is it makes my average power outputs in WKO+ look even worse than they would normally!

Small things, small minds ...

A busy weekend is ahead, I'm commentating at the Omnium at DISC tomorrow and then on Sunday it's round 6 of the Summer Sprint Series (weather permitting) where we'll be having the presentation for the series aggregate and the Trevor Watson Trophy.  Then on Tuesday we have the first winter Spin session, then I'm off to Adelaide for an NTID conference.  So it's all go ...

I'll write more tomorrow when I'm feeling less nauseus after a smashing at Spin tonight.  The data (after a heavy set of deadlifts yesterday) - Ppeak : 1459w, Torque : 202.9 N-m.  Peak cadence (using the wild guess Powertap, but the graph shows it might be right) 198rpm.

That'll do.  Sleep .. trashed now ..

I appologise for being a bit quiet, after I got back from Adelaide I've had a lot of real-world work to do to keep the debt collectors away and also we had the (fantastic!) SSS round 3,  that sucks a lot of time.  Things will be 'normal' soon.

Thankyou to everyone that was a part of our Spin Sessions this last winter.  In particular I need to thank Bev Vennix for all her help with transport and cleaning up, Karen and Merv for help with setting everything up and also cleaning and Lucie for helping me to make the UberBolla, which kept getting bigger and hotter as we got more and more people coming.

Nathan Larkin did a great job running at first the warmup and as he got more comfortable, more of the sessions themselves which meant I could concentrate on the second sprint group and make sure Em, Jamie and Merv got their dose of hurt.

Along the way Jamie Dann, Em, Dino and Merv also helped dish out the lollies and refill bidons, stir the bolla and generally help out with the roll and collecting the cash. The new DUCCs were noisy and enthusiastic, but guys, get fluid trainers for next winter, those wind trainers are LOUD!  The group's most satisfying thing, to me at least, is having Tom Leaper training with us, riding next to novices and people who will never race a bike.  That says that we have a program that's suited to a very wide range of abilities and desires and a great bunch of people.

I count this winter's Spin as an overwhelming success.  Our record attendance was 31 riders and if we got less than 25 we were surprised.  We were part of some riding successes, many of you who came won races, made state teams and moved up grades and our program contributed to your success.  Without everyone coming along the sessions would have been a flop, thank you to everyone that came along to share the suffering.

We'll be back next year, same format, same price, same place, same time.  For summer, we have our fortnightly 'Summer Spin Sessions" which will be on Thursday evenings from 7:15-8:30pm, shorter and sharper but still ending in a meal.  For dates etc see this website.

Thank you again for being part of it.

From this extract titled "Rower's High"

Physical exercise is known to stimulate the release of endorphins, creating a mild sense of euphoria that has rewarding properties. Using pain tolerance (a conventional non-invasive assay for endorphin release), we show that synchronized training in a college rowing crew creates a heightened endorphin surge compared with a similar training regime carried out alone. This heightened effect from synchronized activity may explain the sense of euphoria experienced during other social activities (such as laughter, music-making and dancing) that are involved in social bonding in humans and possibly other vertebrates.

That might explain why it's much easier to train hard on an ergo (and keep coming back for more!) at our Spin sessions than on your own.

Amongst other things we spoke about on Tuesday, Tom asked "why are Tabatas only 8 reps?".  I had to tell the truth, I don't know.  Maybe quality dies off after 8 and there's no return?  That's the protocol and so that's what we did.  But.... We're always open to suggestions, so now there's a new drill, the Tomabata!  It's 10 reps of a Tabata interval (20s on/10s recovery) where a normal Tabata is 8 reps for 4 minutes in total.  Eh ghads!  5 minutes of torture!  Ok A stream'ers, when you're lying in pools of your own vomit at Spin next week, blame Tom, it was his idea!

I had a good chat with Tom Leaper last night at Spin and was very happy and surprised  when he told me he found the sessions more useful than crits and would like to do some over summer.  This adds to the impetus to do some form of group ergo training over summer, once our regular winter Tuesday night spin sessions finish at the end of September.

Tom liked the idea of once a fortnight on Thursdays, he doesn't race at Sandown on Thursday nights so that would work for him.  Tuesdays will not be viable as many of you will be racing at Sandown with CCCC and the rest of us will be doing track work either at BBN or DISC on Tuesdays.  Thursday does present a problem for me, it's my long-standing 'boys night' with the lads, but it may be possible to do both, and just be late to the pizzafest.

So .... Thursdays once a fortnight at Blackburn from 7pm?  Maybe?  I'll need votes, so please let me know if this interests you.  Blackburn runs a novice track program on Thursdays but I think we could overlap with that with no issues, but I'll confirm at tonight's committee meeting.

Those of you that come along to the Tuesday Spin sessions may or may not notice, but each week we increase the amount of chilli in the sauce.  This is because I like chilli!  It's also because chilli is good for you.

Don't believe me?  Fair enough - wise people don't believe anything they're told by random unqualified bloggers without further investigation.  So here's some supporting material.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/hot-news-chilli-may-be-answer-to-your-ills-20090902-f8fh.html

From the article :

CHILLI could one day replace aspirin for the prevention and treatment of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, according to University of Tasmania scientists who are looking at the way the spicy fruit affects the blood.

A research fellow at the university's school of life sciences, Kiran Ahuja, said the two active ingredients in chilli - capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin - have the potential to lower blood glucose and insulin levels, reduce the formation of fatty deposits in artery walls and prevent blood clots.

So how about that! It's also reportedly good for ulcers (not causing them .. curing them!) and is full of vitamin C.  Is it like oxy-shots?  No, this stuff is real!

 And on another front, I dropped in at Andrew Steele's Croydon bike shop yesterday to get some glue for the new wheel (which hasn't arrived yet ...) and we spoke about the series - he's keen, his track bike was out in the shop getting some attention. 

While discussing it I was bemoaning the fact that no wholesalers wanted to be involved, not even FRF, who I though would given that they've just started importing FFWD wheels (which are the same wheels as Bouwmeester who have a local reputation) and that they'd have a captive audience of 30 sprinters who will drool over a 5 spoke and a disk wheel and would be very tempted ....  You can lead a horse to water and so on ... Even the big article in Ride didn't sway the position.  So Andrew offered to help out.  The series will now be the aboc Summer Sprint Series (aSSS!) presented by Riviera Cycles and AvantiPlus Croydon.  Andrew is sponsoring the series with a high end pair of Specialized S-Works shoes which will be our runner-up prize, and Gary Jackson from Riviera and I are going 50% on a nice set of carbon track wheels he's (Gary) building.

 So that's boxed up and sorted now, which is a big load off my mind.  Now I have to rally the troops (the volunteers!) to get everyone fired up for a great series this summer.

This week I got unstuck doing squats, I'd been bogged down at 185kg for about 3 weeks, not able to consistently get three sets of three with any sort of form.  This week I bit the bullet and got up to 190kg, and have now done two sessions of 190x3x3's.  That's ok ... Tuesday's turnout at Spin was healthy despite the dreadful weather that kept a number of people home, wisely choosing not to travel.  Tonight at DISC I suspect I'll be pretty slow - Yesterday's squats have significantly disrupted homeostasis and I'm feeling very flat!  Thanks to Hans Seyle ...

I've seen a draft of the full article for October's Ride Cycling Review and it looks pretty snazzy.

We have to plan ahead to summer now.  Our DISC and spin sessions will be winding up at the end of September and two of the DISC sessions in September won't run, the 6th because it'll be father's day and many regulars won't make it and the 20th because that's the practice day for the 2009-2010 SSS.  So what'll we do over summer?  Last summer we did some unstructured sessions at Blackburn on Sundays and also at DISC on occasion, but this summer there seems to be a bit more demand.  We also ran a Tuesday morning session at BBN last summer which worked well, and we may revive that one.

We've built some really good momentum at Spin over winter with, as mentioned, huge numbers (peaked at 31!) and it would be a shame to lose all that, but I'm not sure how we'd fit anything in.  Over summer there's crits on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays where most of the racing riders will be, and the trackies will be doing afternoons at Blackburn or evenings at DISC if they're not doing more endurance stuff on the road, but the DUCCs and a few of the non-racing people want to keep going. I'm welcome to your suggestions please.  Remember Blackburn's Summer of Track on Saturday afternoons and of course (how could you forget?!) the Summer Sprint Series for the sprinters.

I'm thinking we might do a race skills (road bikes and/or track bikes) on Saturday mornings again.  Maybe once a fortnight?  It's a trip for some, but for others it might be worth doing and maybe we can sell the idea a bit - I have a basic syllabus that I developed for the DUCC sessions that can be expanded on and fine-tuned and with some marketing may be worth doing more of.  No-one actually teaches race-craft that I'm aware of except us and that's a possible way to not only keep the regulars involved over summer if they're not racers, but also to allow more honing of race skills for those who do race but want to work on tactical development.  Again, if you're interested or have any suggestions, contact me please!

Over the last two days I've lifted :

3,2,3 squats at 185kg (one more rep than last week's best effort) on Tuesday just before Spin.

10 x 150kg squats yesterday and then 5 x 162.5kg deadlifts.

Today, easy spin to CS-M and back on the bike and maybe some ergo time tonight if I get the chance. It's windy, the ride to CS-M will be directly into a big headwind! Lucky it's only 2km!

Got to go, or I'll be late for work!

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!