Way back many months ago at (I think) one of the NTID conferences I've been lucky enough to go to, female sprinters were discussed.  One very common thing is that many of the ones that do very well in JW15 and JW17 often simply never go significantly faster once they get to JW19.

Why is this?

I have one thought about this, bear with my hypothesis, this is gut feeling not science :

When they're riding JW15 and JW17 the game is all about leg speed because they're restricted to tiny gears.  There's a certain amount of strength required (and you see this in the ones that do well out of the starting gate) but it's mainly a game of cadence.  This favours the girls who don't necessarily have a lot of strength but can spin like the clappers.

This is pretty obvious; girls aren't boys.  From a hormonal perspective, girls have roughly 10% of the testosterone that boys have.  Testosterone is the main hormone that drives muscle growth (amongst other things).  As such, it's really hard, without cheating, for girls to pack on significant amounts of muscle.  They can certainly grow stronger and put on some muscle, but unless they resort to training with the aid of the needle, they never get big and thus, strong enough to push bigger gears at high cadences.   The only female sprinters that ever looked like Sean Eadie were cheating (eg Tammy Thomas and Annalisa Cucinotta).  Combine this with old-school training methods that has them out riding lots of road miles, which blunts any muscle growth stimulii that they may get from sprint training and you get a kid that can spin, but will really struggle to push bigger gears and thus, go any faster when they're old enough to be able to push bigger gears.  We see this with some of the girls I work with, they're amazing as JW15's and JW17's but come JW19 the game changes, and it changes a lot.  The stronger girls start to take over and the super-spinners become less dominant.

Why do boys do ok in spite of mixing in lots of road riding?  They're awash with anabolic hormones in their late teens and for them it's not too late to undo the damage done to their fast twitch by endurance training.  But for the girls, their opportunity, I think, comes a lot earlier and is lost if it's burnt up by too much endurance training.

So, if that's true, or at least on the right track, what do we do to get the girls strong without cheating?

The time when they're growing the most is early to mid puberty.  This is when they have the most of the other growth hormone, HGH.  This is when they need to be in the gym getting as seriously strong as you can possibly make them, and doing high power and high torque efforts on the bike and NOT DOING ANYTHING CATABOLIC.  This means STAY AWAY FROM LONG ROAD RIDES!

Conventional wisdom says keep the kids out of the gym, I say nuts to that and I'm not alone.  I'm in favour of getting, in particular, the girls, in the gym as early as possible to get strong so when they're old enough to push big gears, they're strong enough to do it.  Keep them doing short, sharp efforts.  Anna Meares started as a kid racing BMX.  Short and sharp, high power, high cadences and high torque. Shanaze Reade and Willy Kanis are more elite track sprinters who started (and still do) race BMX.   You can add the required endurance work later, and that's endurance for dealing with the needs of a track sprinter, which is not the same thing as the endurance needs of an enduro cyclist and should be trained differently.  You may pay for this in the short term with them being a bit heavier as JW15's and JW17's because to put on muscle they need an anabolic diet (calorific surplus high in protein and low in the foods enduros live on, ie: simple carbs), but getting the girls strong AND able to push high cadences is, I think, the key to getting them fast in the long term.

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!

Thanks to Hilton Clarke and Tammy Ebert I got to spend the last two days over in Adelaide at the National Talent ID conference, which was a very worthwhile experience.  We had presenters from all sorts of interesting fields, including a police psychologist who specialised in negotiations in siege situations and an elite track and field sprint coach.  For a long time now I've wanted to speak with a track & field sprint coach, we can learn much from them and that was really valuable. 

The police psych may seem odd, but as coaches we have to deal with some ... fiery ... people sometimes (I had to deal with an upset and very angry sprinter very recently, for example) and learning how the police do it was very worthwhile.  They (the police) have an advantage, they always win in the end - the bad guy comes out horizontal or vertical, but always comes out, and they often have the luxury of time, where we may not, but the consequences are somewhat different too!

Jan Sterling, the former Opals coach, was also a speaker and she had a lot to say about continuing to learn and develop as coaches.  It's very easy to slip into an "I know it all" mindset when coaching, but it's something we have to be very much on our guards against.  Jan showed us a very powerful video about sportsmanship and suggested that (and I agree!) sportsmanship is something that coaches have a strong duty to foster in their athletes.  This is a longish video, but well worth watching :

Those kids knew what the right thing do to was, and that's something that their coach must have nourished in them. I hope that any athletes I work with (and I do myself) if ever in a similar situation, would also do, with grace, the right thing.

Apart from that, we had a lot of round-table talks about coaching methods, sprint development, talent identification and so on and I had a productive meeting with Tammy and Josh (NTID program directors, basically) and now I have a new t-shirt to wear.  More to come on that front soon I hope, but it was a great trip and I learned a lot and benefitted a lot from it.  I hope I can pass on that benefit to those of you I work with.

I also touted the sprint series to Gary West and Sean Eadie .. Watch this space!

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!

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!

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.

A good friend of mine is a marshal arts instructor (g'day Dan!).  He writes an interesting blog on his training.  Unless you're into Judo and Jiu Jitsu it's probably a bit dry but you never know. He's a good author and a great communicator.  It's always worth having a look at what other athletes use and one of the interesting things he talks about is super efficient training.  He's not training athletes in strength or speed, he's teaching techniques.  With my Strength & Conditioning hat on I'd say he should incorporate serious strength work for his people, but we'll have that discussion over a beer one night.  Stronger people are harder to kill, after all.  He'd counter that he'd be able to beat me up despite my strength advantage, and he'd be right, but if he was stronger, it'd be easier for him to do it!

What does he mean by super efficient?  Roughly, training for one thing can be used to reinforce other things.  How to apply this to cycling, for example?  We can do tractical drills with gear restrictions - teaching tactical riding while forcing higher cadences to be burned in - we do this when we limit the gears riders can use in tactical sessions.  Doing sprint drills on ergos placed very close together - so we get our strength & power work, but also get used to going flat-out while banging elbows against another rider.  Doing sprint drills with reaction work mixed in, spin people will get a chance to deal with this in the next few weeks, we have some new drills for you.  I'm sure there's other examples.  Food for thought ...

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!

1466 watts last night at the second spin session of the year.  That backs up on the last week where I got 1473 watts. That's good, it shows that the improvement isn't a fluke.

We had 17 at the spin session I think - a few regulars from last year aren't coming and I'm going to give them a call and see what we're doing wrong and try and fix it.  Other than that it's going well, apart from everyone else having terrible taste in music.  That can't be helped sometimes.

Today I have to duck down to DISC to pick up the keys to the motorbike so we can motorpace at our sunday sessions, which start this Sunday.  I've got 4 people coming so far!  Anyone else?!  The dinner is getting closer too, please let me know if you're keen to come by email.  I might set up a signup sheet for it but for the dinner I'm happy to keep it informal but I need an email so I can keep track of it.

Tonight's the night in the 'haus when I'm going to be attempting 165kg squats.  It's only 2.5kg more than I did on Sunday.  That's not a lot more weight, really.  We'll have a full 'haus too, the Apolitos and Merv are coming to train.  After that it's off to Blackburn for the AGM for the club.  I've got all the food except pita bread there already.  Hot dogs, dips, spring rolls, ricotta triangles etc.   Hopefully more than 5 people turn up!

This last two days have been mainly easy days, I lifted moderately heavy on Wednesday in the 'Haus (5 x 5 @ 150kg squats, 1 set of 10 130kg deadlifts, total tonnage 5,050kg) after Tuesday's spin session and on Wednesday night had a couple of short E1 rides for a total of about an hour and a half's riding.  Thursday was just an easy tootle to the LBS and back, no lifting and today was again around 45 minutes all-up E1 stuff. 

Tomorrow I'll lift heavy when I get back from the Baw Baw if I'm not too knackered from riding the motorbike out there. It's time to bump it up to 162.5kg squats again. I'll be trying for 5 sets of 3 reps, and depending on how that goes will up the deadlifts to 140kg.  130kg was hard, but I think I can manage 140kg for 10.  We'll see about that anyway. If it's not done on Saturday I'll do it on Sunday after Lucie and I go for a kayak paddle ... My arm's slowly getting better after the bursitis incident on Monday, I guess I'm starting to get old though, injuries take a bit longer to heal and mystery injuries crop up without explanation.

Speaking of lifting ... I'm a bit ashamed to say I was a bit bored on Thursday and watched a bit of 'the biggest loser' (the biggest loser is the person watching that rubbish... never again).  They had the punters all lined up in a semi circle with Olympic bars on their shoulders - except they weren't on their shoulders, they were way back off their necks on padding.  A big no-no when squatting heavy - it increases the moment arm around the lower back and increases the risk of lower back injury because to keep the weight over the lifter's feet they have to lean further forward, and they'll slump sooner or later and put a huge dynamic load on the lower back.  To make matters worse, they were doing it to failure and they were loading up the weights while the punters were holding the bars.  This made for asymetrical loads and twisting on the lower back as the 'trainers' (dangerous idiots) pushed the weights around while the punters were holding them up.  You wouldn't dream of doing that to experienced and strong lifters, let alone this bunch of untrained gumbies.

Could they do it in any more of an unsafe manner?  I'm not sure ... That was a pretty comprehensive catalogue of things not to do when holding a bar on your shoulders.  They got away with it ... But it was terrible.  So very irresponsible.  They should have had them progressively deadlift greater weights or something if they wanted to do something like that, at least a failure wouldn't risk blowing a back to pieces so badly. They'd just not be able to pick the bar up.  Shame on you, whoever came up with that stupid and dangerous stunt.  Lifting isn't a dangerous activity if it's done properly with good instruction from people who know what they're doing and with progressive and managed overload.  These idiots, on the other hand, threw essentially untrained people (who were no athletes) into a situation where they had to hold a (relatively) heavy weight in a biomechanically poor and dangerous position (padded out from their traps) while it was loaded up to a failure and twisted and pulled while they were doing it.   If I did that to anyone I was working with I'd expect to go to gaol for gross negligence when they got hurt.

Anyway ... Tomorrow I'm off to take photos of the lads racing the Baw Baw, I'll be at Winch Corner where it's an ~20% gradient.  Good luck to you all doing it. Pay no attention to the chalk writing on the roads! I've also been in touch with the bloke who built one of the AIS's sprint training ergos (the 'Wombat') and arranges wind tunnel testing - watch this space, we may have some slots to get into the tunnel and test sprinters for aerodynamics.

We paddled a repeat of a month ago's Pound Bend loop.  Much more fun now there's more water in the Yarra. Although there's still not a lot of water, it's the low end of 'green', there's just enough to paddle.

Here's a map, courtesy of my 'new' GPS. It fits neatly under my PFD and I don't notice it's there and it works despite being under foam and my torso.  I had to replace my old Garmin ETrex that died recently with a new one, so I got another ETrex, but the new one (the ETrex 'H') has a much more sensitive antenna.  Good-o!

There you go!

Tomorrow weights with Em and Dino, and on Tuesday we start spin for the winter.  Bring It On!

Alex Vaughan and I took the MTB's for a blat along the Yarra Trails from Fitzimmons Lane (Westerfolds Park) to somewhere along there and back again for a 2 hour ride in the morning.  It was his first 'real' MTB ride and he had a ball, and so did I on the big Fuel EX8.  He had his new Cannondale Furio (lefty) and it's safe to say he loves it!

After that, we took a couple of kayaks for paddle down the Yarra, from (again!) Westerfolds/Fitzimmons Lane down to a park at the bottom of Westerfolds.  Not a bad way to spend the day!

Today's a relaxing day, but I'll be in the 'haus later, lifting heavy - it's a strength phase for the next while.  The aim being to get up to squatting 5 x 5 at 170kg by June.  Today's goal is 5 x 5 @ 157.5kg, I did 5 x 5's at 155kg on Wednesday and did them reasonably well, so I expect the 157.5's won't be out of reach.

The weather was perfect.  Cool overnight, around 4 or 5 degrees, days were sunny and cool, which made for perfect riding conditions.  Flinty, our Darth Vader crossover rider from the 11:53am-ers was the hard-arse of the weekend, he rode from Marouka to the summit of Mt Buffalo and back on Saturday, and PB'd Hotham from Harrietville on Sunday while the rest of us were flexing back at Dinner Plain basking in the glory of the day before.  HAF!  Shane Miller got KoM with a 1:25 climb, Karen Wiggins was QoM with a new pb by some 30 minutes.  No-one rode to Omeo, no-one hit any cows, no crashes, no hangovers and all smiles for the weekend.  We missed you, Neil! No-one cracked 100km/h.

Photos from the trip are here, thanks to Dino for taking most of the climbing shots.

I drove Dino's and Bev's cars for support for the weekend but did do some sprint work in the morning on Saturday and rode to Dinner Plain and back on Sunday, so got some use out of the bike I took up.  We also did some cross-training on Saturday evening with the sprinters who came up, bounding up the Marouka stairs to the amusement of the enduros sitting inside after their climbs.

Special thanks to Bev and Donna and Rich and Alex for your help on the weekend with logistics and cooking and cleaning up!

I got what I wanted out of summer 2008-2009 on the bike.  I got my flying 200 down below my initial goal (13.5 outdoors) way back in November (round 2 of the sprint series), revised the goal to a 13.2 outdoors, and surprised myself with a 12.916 at DISC on the weekend, which tops the 13.2 outdoors.  So, mission accomplished with interest.

What to do for next summer?  I have a few years left as a MMAS2 rider, so I think the Vic masters sprints are something I'd like to at least make the semi finals of.  To have done that this year I'd have needed to have ridden a 12.5 to get into the top 8.  Possible?  Can I find half a second in a year?  That would also have me riding in the A grade group at the sprint series.  I don't think that's too far out, or too easy.  So for 2009-2010 my main goal is a sub 13s flying 200 outdoors and a 12.5s flying 200 indoors.  I'd also like to squat 5 x 5 at 180kg and get my cleans up to 100kg.

I'd like to get my standing starts quicker so I can be a better asset for the Blackburn masters team sprint as well.  I have no interest in kilos or 750m ITTs for now.  As much as I admire the kilo champions, it's an event that sucks to do.  It's too long to be a sprint (1 minute+ is too much for anaerobic systems) and too short and fast to be an enduro race. It takes a special breed of psycopath to ride the kilo well and I'm not one of them.

I'd also like to keep the aboc website at the top of the google search results for cycle coaching in Australia, so will need to keep on writing articles and hopefully entertaining you all with my writing.  Suggestions for articles and content are much appreciated, please send them on through.  Along the way there's plans to write a book on sprint training for cyclists (yes, I'll be picking the brains of the best around here to do it) and also a guide to bike fit that dispels some of the myths (like KOPS, Lemond methods etc) that will be the product of the experience I've gained fitting hundreds of people at the LBS over the last few years. I'm going to improve the facilities in the PowerHaus (better lighting, more space etc) too.

What else?  Continue to work with the Foxy Ox and to build up aboc as a coaching resource, run more camps up at Hotham, break even on our winter DISC sessions, find a few seconds in Em's legs so she can shine at the Aussies next March and keep on having fun coaching and racing.  To keep on riding with friends as much as I can squeeze in and get my kayak roll working again.  Look at maybe doing a level 2 AS&C or Cycle coaching course if time and budget permit.

Of course, this season isn't over.  Round 6 is in two weeks.  Bring it on!

After Sunday's round of the BSSS, I was pretty trashed, I think the Saturday's kayak trip didn't help much either (6 hours in a boat!).  I got a good swim in on Monday night (2km, 500m w/up, 10 x 25m sprint,25m cruise on the minute, 200m tempo, 6 x 25m sprint,25m cruise on the minute, 500m w/down), but when I got into the PowerHaus on Tuesday night to do heavy squats I could only do one set of 3 at 160kg.  Still pretty fatigued I expect ...

Took an easy Wednesday, with just a doddle-ride to the LBS and back.  This morning we were back at Blackburn doing efforts though.  Dino, Pat, John Lewis and I had a good session.  The sprinters (Dino, Pat & I) did 3 x standing 150's in big gears for strength work, I used 105" (51x13), not sure what the others were on.  I was getting up to ~48km/h from a standing start over the 150m.  John has turned to the dark side and is pursuiting, so we did a couple of pursuit-specific things for him, a 3 lap 'settle in' start effort and then a couple of 2 laps on/2 laps paced for 8 laps efforts to get his pacing underway.  The sprinters finished off with 5 lap revouts - chase the motorbike in a little gear for 5 laps as it goes from 35km/h to around 55km/h.

Tonight Dino & Em are coming over to join me in a session in the 'haus, then I might see if I can go for an MTB ride with Vanders for fun.  Saturday's forecast is 43 degrees, so Blackburn's track racing will most likely be cancelled (good!).  On Sunday I might be kayaking again, it's good fun and good cross-training!

A long time ago I played ice hockey.  I wasn't much good, I did play one game of Senior A but that was because the Sharks A grade team was desperatly short of players to field a team and all the rest of the B graders were sooks ... but I digress ... After Dino, Em, Mason and I did a session at the Blackburn velo on Saturday morning (sprints, standing starts and match sprint tactics) I had a spare afternoon, and after dropping Lucie off at the Monash Gallery (she works there a bit) I headed to the ice rink in Oakleigh with my old hockey skates. 

Hockey skates are worn tight, very tight.  I wear a 44 or a 45 shoe, my skates are a 41.5. Suffice to say that they're not very comfortable.  Normally I'd wear some very thin socks but all I could find was some worn thin cycling socks.  C'est la Vie ... I skated around the rink for a total of about 35 minutes, did a few stops and fast-ish laps and was amazed that I could still skate backwards and do some of the basics (hockey stops etc).  I was pretty unco, but the basic motor still worked. I had to stop every 10 mins to take the skates off to let my feet recover, and after the last block of skating I noticed the blisters.  Ok, that'll do!  Mefix is pretty good on blisters as well as road rash, which is convenient.  Later in the day Dino & Em came over and we did a session in the 'haus to complete the day's training.  All up, pretty good.

Today Luc & I are going to hire a big kayak and do some splashing around a lake.   Tomorrow's the Blackburn Australia Day Madison and I'll be racing in some of the support races (enduro stuff, blah) and commentating on the main races.  I'm looking forward to it!

I have the usual organiser's anxiety - will anyone show up to race?  Will the weather be kind or cruel?  We're down on some of the regulars due to family commitments, illness and the GVBR (!) which doesn't help.  But, we'll see, there's not much more I can do now to attract more people.  Adam King at Carnegie has again posted a news item for us. CCCC's website is the place to put things to be seen, BBN's is, by comparison, moribund at best.

Our second go at Brad Robins' sessions at the Blackburn velodrome on Tuesday evening was shortened by rain such that the sprinters only got two efforts for the night.  They were reasonable quality, motorpaced up to high speed in little gears then 200m, but only two of them.  I'm not sure that these sessions are a good use of our time, almost 3 hours for very few efforts which could be done in 2 or less hours and still allow for full recovery.  Still, we'll stick it out for another week or so before making any decisions. It's hard to run that sort of thing when you have a mix of enduro and sprint riders and the enduros are working on time-consuming stuff, I don't envy Brad, I do the same sort of thing over winter at DISC, where we have the luxury of not having to worry about weather interuptions or bad light etc.

This week, training wise has been a peaking week.  I did heavy squats on Tuesday (3 x 5 @ 155kg, new PB, 2,325kg volume), then some clean pulls, then Brad's rain-shortened session.  Wednesday was a cruisy E1 ride with 3 seated big gear hillsprints mixed in, Thursday morning Dino, Pat and I chased the motorbike then did 400m sprints once up to speed on tiny gears 3 times each.  I was doing ~53km/h on 79" ... which is about 140rpm.  We can and do do HCLR's at around 190-200rpm, but it's very different when you're having to put out a lot of power at the same time.  Thursday evening and we're (myself, Em and Krissy) all in at the Mermet doing squats and some olympic lifts.  Today, lazy day .. nothing!  Tomorrow a 'show up, pay my $10 and come last in everything' day at the regular Blackburn Summer of Track races, and Sunday ... round 3!

Wednesdays are still dead days! Some good news from the troops that raced at DISC last night, Emily winning a kilo handicap off 60m, Dino winning a motorpace (again), Krissy winning a scratch and points race and Jodie (30m) and Krissy (scr) combining in the kilo h'cap to get Krissy a solid 4th place.

I'm about to head off for a day working at the shop after a couple of very long 'real world job' days.  I managed to fit in a set of squats yesterday (5 x 5 @ 150kg) and some work on the ergo, peak power was only 1341 watts, but it was 20 minutes after the heavy squat session and my legs were very tired so that's not bad. The next week is power work on the bike and the gym, with a bit of speed-endurance (30s efforts) starting into the mix, before round 2 on the 2nd of Nov.  Pre-entries have been trickling in for that, and we've got 13 pre-entrants already.  Two weeks to go!

Yesterday went as expected - enduro stuff, after the scratch race I was dropped down to C grade pretty promtly! ... So today, some cross-training in the pool (500m w/up, 10 x 25m sprint/25m cruise on the minute, 500m w/down), then some strength and power efforts at the velo (3 x S150's, 2 x F100's) and I'm about to hit the gym, then dinner and a movie .. it's all good!

The saga of the new disk wheel :

Wheel arrives on Friday last week.

I go and get some glue (thanks Steelie at Le Tour!)

I order a tyre from Bob Farleigh - Tufo S3 Pro if anyone's interested.

It arrives on Wednesday this week. Good-o.  We have a wheel to stretch it on, but it's an Ayara deep section and ... we've run out of valve extenders, and we don't have any disk wheel inflators either. Ok... order them from Bikesportz (sic - what's with the z?  Can't they spell?), they arrive on Friday.  Pop tyre on the Ayara and inflate in the morning to get it stretching.  In the evening on Friday, on with the first coats of glue on the wheel and tyre.

This morning (Saturday) - final coat of glue on wheel and tyre, and slap it on.  Scare the kiddies at the shop with 175psi.  Then off for a swim. It's a summery day today, two days in a row we've had hot northerlies blowing and it's only mid September.  Average rainfall in Sept, around 80 or so mm, and so far (almost half way through the month) we've had ... 8mm.  Hmmmm. Everyone still driving their cars when they could walk or ride most times ... smart animals, humans ... anyway ... the swim, 500m warmup, 8 x 25m sprint/25m RR, 30s rest (so roughly 1:3 intervals), 200m warmdown, then ride home again.

Tomorrow, try the new wheel out at DISC!