On Sunday at our regular DISC training session, we did K1's for the sprinters.  I had a little help from Rachael Matties who started putting data into sprintTracker for me.

Here's what the data entry form looks like :

 This is only a small part of this application, but it's the one that will get the most use - we will use it to add data into an SQL (sqlite3 at the moment) database for all our sprinters times.  Yes, it doesn't do power (yet).  For now my goal is to have it able to store all our training data from both aboc and NTID Sprint sessions and allow us to analyse rider performances quickly.  Just getting the data into the database is the first step.  Once it's in there we can query to our heart's content.

So I've been busy - the application is written in a programming language called Python, using a GUI toolkit called wxPython and a database/object orientation toolkit called SQLAlchemy.   I'll be using matplotlib to generate charts and graphs, but that's another toolkit I have to learn to use and it'll take some time to get something useful out of it.  I'm very very rusty as a programmer, the last time I did any even vaguely serious programming was way back in 1996 and that was a horrid mismash of code at Westpac to maintain a DNS database written in Perl.  Ugly ... I'm not proud of it!  Anyway, sprintTracker will hopefully scratch an itch I've had for some time re keeping records of sprint performances that a conventional spreadsheet isn't powerful enough (or I don't know enough about!) to do.

Along the way I've had a shoulder injury that's kept me out of the gym, the doctors diagnosed it as a supraspinatus bursitis, which is an inflamation of the bursa (sort of like a bearing) around a tendon in my shoulder. It's sometimes known as a subacromial bursitis.  They (the doctors I saw) insisted I have a cortisone injection in the shoulder.  Cortisone is on the banned list both in and out of competition, and so I need to get a TUE for it, which is a pain in the arse but must be done if I'm to keep my racing licence.  Round 1 isn't that far away ....

What sort of a track sprinter (and track sprint coach!) can't track stand?  Me!  But, we're working on it.  I'm not the only one with this big gap in my skill set.  We're practicing a lot on Sundays at our DISC sessions while the enduros do their warmdown and last night I managed to roll to a stop and hold a track stand for about 10 seconds.  Progress!  Next week we'll be going up onto the boards to do them.  Still wearing shoes rather than clipped in, but it's progress and in a few weeks the whole squad will be bunny hopping up and down the track!  Or at least some will and the rest of us will be standing still watching.

This afternoon I'm off to get my left shoulder scanned with an ultrasound, I damaged it about two months ago, rest hasn't helped, physio made it worse, so it's time to find out what's actually wrong with it.  Wish me luck!  It's at the point now where I can't rotate my shoulder back far enough to do a squat and I'm not enjoying front squats as a substitute, even if I'm reaping the novice gains from a new exercise, I know I'm bleeding raw strength by missing my core exercise in the gym.  C'est la Vie!

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.

is the girl who beat Anna at Beijing for gold in the sprint.  She's worth listening to.

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'm pretty pleased.  Apart from a positive trend in my peak power output (up, not as much as I'd like, but still consistently going up is good, after a bit of a slump for a few months) I got offered a paid position with the NTID on Tuesday night when I was up at the AIS at the NTID coaching conference.  I didn't want to write about it here until I'd had a chance to talk to a few friends about it.  It's a very part-time position working as an assistant to Hilton Clarke with the Victorian NTID sprint squad.  This is basically what I've been doing for the last few months and it's been recognised by the guys at the NTID and they've committed to paying me to continue to do it.

As you can imagine, I'm very happy about this.  Paid coaching positions are few and far between and this is a great opportunity to develop further as a sprint coach and learn so much more, with a little bit of financial help.  I've done a lot of hours (I guess at roughly 250 hours since February, ~20 weeks, ~13 hours a week, give or take) helping that squad so far for 'free' (really, it's like being at school, I don't expect to get paid when I'm learning and aren't really a lot of use) as well as a bit of paid work while Hilton's been having his knee replaced, which will soon be over. Hilts will be back on deck and I'm sure the guys in the squad will be glad to have him back. 

I've done my best but I'm far from perfect when it comes to running some of the drills, in particular some of the motorpacing stuff is quite tricky to get right and I have a lot of practice and instruction to receive before I'm competent.  Getting the pacing right is critical in drills like motorbike entries, each rider needs a different entry speed, different rate of acceleration and so on, and some need me to go very fast indeed (getting close to 80km/h) which I'm still not comfortable doing.  I hit 80km/h on Saturday pacing one of them, and that's scary-fast on the velodrome on a motorbike.  In some ways it'll be frustrating to have to go back to being the assistant at the training sessions when I've been running the show for about a month, but I'll suck it up and it'll be a good, humbling experience when it happens.

Martin Barras (former Australian Sprint coach) is going to be at DISC on Thursday as part of the level 2 coaching course that's running there at the moment and I'm going to sit in on his session (and not ask any questions, ok!  Yes I will behave, Brendan!) and see what interesting things he has to say.  At the level 2 course I did back in November last year in Adelaide, Craig Colduck was one of the presenters.  Craig was Martin's strength coach and we got the chance to see a lot of the nuts and bolts of his programming style, getting a chance to see how Martin did it directly from him will be great.

We had a good turnout at our DISC session tonight too, I'm pleased to see growth in our little sprint group, I'm gradually handing over the reins to Nathan for the enduro programming and session running, having two of us means I can concentrate on my sprinters while Nath looks after the enduros, so far it's working well and I think everyone who attends is benefitting from having the two of us working together.

We're running an invitational sprint round at DISC on the 9th of July too, which I need a few more riders to attend, if you're interested you can read about it (and the invitational criteria!) here.

And ... I'm going to the AIS/NTID sprint camp in Adelaide in mid July to help out, I'll miss one of our DISC sessions, but Nathan's ok to run it on his own and the sprinters will have plenty of stuff to do without me.

Finally, I've got more track powertaps to play with, I think we've got, between myself, Hilton, the VIS and NTID six of them.  I swapped over the axles in two of the VIS ones today to use studs (conventional track nuts) from the rather fiddly bolts they originally came with.  Darryl Perkins is building the most recent pair of hubs into two more wheels which we should have in a week or two.

It's all go ....

Over the last few months I've collected quite a bit of data from the NTID and aboc sprint squad sessions with track power meters.  We haven't done anything with the data yet, but just collecting and having a quick look at it.

Now the data isn't perfect, but it's reasonably good and I'm going to use it to try and sort out which of the drills we use at track training are the best at producing overload.

Huh?

In the gym, we manipulate three main variables - intensity (how heavy the weight is), volume (how many times we move it and how far) and recovery (how much time you get between reps and sets).

This is because we want to overload at least one of these variables every time, to disturb homeostatis and drive an improvement.

On the bike, we need to do the same thing.  We need to manipulate intensity, volume and recovery - but we don't have the same easy way of manipulating intensity that we do in the gym.  With, for example a squat or a power-clean, we just add more weight to the bar.  Simple .. We can micro-load with humiliator-plates if we need to (0.5kg plates, everyone loves the humiliators - they're tiny, but they make it so much harder!).  Up goes intensity.  The other two variables are trivially easy to manipulate as well.

On the bike, how do we do that?  Up the gears?  Ok, except that we never really get a 'fail' on the bike, the rider can turn any gear we put under them (on a velodrome anyway).  Up the speed, by chasing a motorcycle or another rider etc, and up the cadence by using small gears at high speeds.  These are all ways to do it, but I don't think we've ever really looked closely at how well they work.  The traditional sprint drills we use are all based on experience (which is not to be discounted!).  Now we're collecting a lot of data, we can start to see which drills get the best overload events out of our athletes - which ones produce the highest peak power, for example, or the highest power at a specific cadence range, the highest torque and so on.

Hopefully with some careful analysis of the data I've collected, with a bit of help from Dr Dan at the VIS, we'll be able to identify which of the drills we use are the best at overloading our athletes so we can train them smarter.  Watch this space!

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!

A coach isn't supposed to know everything.  We're supposed to be able to refer people to experts or chase up things ourselves for our riders though, so when we get stuck we can find out from the experts on a particular subject.  For example strength training or diet etc.

When I was at Uni (waaaayyy back in 1989 or so) I studied Engineering (chemical) - I was a DNF, but I did still learn a few things.  They had us do a unit of materials science, not because we were going to be civil or mechanical engineers, but because they wanted us to be able to ask the right questions and to spot the obvious stuff-ups that happen all the time.  One of the things we learned (if we were paying attention) from that was how to choose your team, how to pick the right experts.

This is a tricky thing, it's hard enough in the hard sciences but in the wishy-washy worlds of exercise science and nutrition and strength training where it's generous to even call them sciences in some cases, how do you pick your team?  Who do you refer to when there's no clear truths?

An example, strength training.   There's as many ways to do it as you can think of.  What do the top teams do?  Is what the top squads do relevant to novice or intermediate development?   Remember that at the top level the athletes are already bloody strong or they wouldn't be at that level.  I know of at least three different schools of thought with regards to strength work for sprinters.   There's the Craig Colduck "match the training in the gym to the bike riding as much as possible" approach where they use a lot of ballistic leg presses to try and duplicate the joint angles used in a pedal stroke, there's the John Beasley/Apollo's Gym "build strength and power in the gym, then train the body to use it on the bike" where they use a lot of the Westside gym methods (excluding the doping that Westside is using) and there's other approaches that say just use the gym for hypertrophy and do all power work on the bike (for example Paul Parker from Cycle Finesse is of this school of thought).  There's others, there's many other schools of thought and that's just at the high level.  Once you get into the details of rep ranges, exercise selections and timing and so on it gets amazingly fractured.  There really isn't a one best way to do it, although there probably is, but there's no concensus even amongst the experts as to what it is.

So how do you pick your strength coach?

I'd suggest going through an interview process.    Before you sign up to anything, have a sit down with the coach and ask them a lot of hard questions.  Ask them about the different ways of training, ask them about the effects of different rep and rest combinations, ask them about isolation and full body exercises and why they recommend one against the other.   Ask them about injury risks and injury management, ask about progression from novice to intermediate and advanced strength training. Ask about integration of strength work with your sport.  Always ask why and how for everything.  If they can't give you a well-reasoned argument that they can explain to you in terms you can understand, move on ... Be especially wary of coaches that are certain of things.  There's always doubt and uncertainty in athletic training, anyone who claims otherwise has stopped learning.

Do the same with dieticians.  Ask them about what their take  is on the food pyramid, on the material presented by Gary Taubes, Atkins and so on.  Just because someone spent a few years at university and has a bit of paper doesn't mean that they're competent and up to date.  I've done enough technical interviews with graduates in my IT career to know that a qualification is only one small part of the puzzle.

Do the same with cycling coaches too!  If you want a coach to help you ride and race, don't just go and sign up with the first one you find.  Interview us, find out our training philosophies and ask us hard questions.  Always ask lots of hard questions and don't be satisfied with "that's just how we do it" answers.  Be skeptical, demand high quality answers.  There's only one of you and you want to get the best you can find to be part of your team.

At the Australia Day Madison, way back in January, the Blackburn club's big whiteboard was damaged.  No-one took any responsibility for fixing it, and we use it at ergo sessions.  It's a pretty important tool for us.  So I guess it comes to those of us that are put out by it being damaged, to fix the damn thing.  I'm pretty cranky that the club didn't take responsibility for it despite it being mentioned many times at committee meetings and so on, but there you go.

So, with a thank you to David and Jamie Morgans who helped with rivets and bolts on a day when no shops are open, the whiteboard is now repaired and slightly enhanced, we added permanent holders for the clock to remove the need for the old bent coat hanger and reduce the likelyhood of the clock being damaged.  We had to drill out some old rivets, re-set the alloy frame around the board, replace the displaced retaining bolts, rivet it all back together and then add the mounting bolts for the clock.

Job done ... 

In other less interesting news, I actually did a few road miles today (wow!) - Stew from the DUCC's rolled up with Alesandro (a new DUCC from Columbia, and some climber) with a mechanical, they'd managed to tangle up a chain and bend a link.  We fixed it and I got talked into a ride.  We tootled out to the 1:20 along the Dandenong Creek Trail, saluted the statue of Oppy, I grabbed a couple of dim sims at The Basin fish & chippery while those two did a 1:20 effort then we noodled on home.  That's two road rides in a week.  If this becomes a habit I'll be back racing crits next summer.  Nah .... But a few more miles in my legs might help a bit with high intensity endurance and recovery.

Tomorrow I'm lifting with Stu in the 'Haus, then Dino, Stew and I will do some track work at Blackburn, then I'm in to work for Hilton again with the NTID/VIS squad at DISC in the afternoon. On Sunday, Lucie and I are going kayaking up at the Goulburn!  Good times!

Vic masters sprint day on Saturday.  No excuses, I have trained all year, gotten stronger, thought I'd gotten faster.  Even lost a little bit of weight!  To no avail ... Flying 200 was 12.95something, slower than last year (12.91) despite better aero gear.  Didn't qualify for the finals.  I didn't do the kilo (never again after last year, the kilo sucks!) and in the Keirin I didn't want to get involved in the stupidity happening at the front and gambled on doing a Bradbury when they all crashed. 

They crashed in the first run of the race, Turbo got brought down most unfairly and I think no-one was watching it happen, the perpetrators didn't get suspended and from where I was, it was clear that they should have.  Modern Keirin does not include pushing down onto a rider who is in the lane and causing them to crash.  Maybe back in the 1970's, but not in 2010.

In the re-run, almost the same thing happened again, I sat off the back and watched, then when the pace went on I didn't have the legs to go with it. 

So, no better than last year.  I think that means, that after a year or so's dedicated sprint training, that I'm not ever going to be any good as a sprinter.  I can live with that, I'm enjoying the sprint series, I'll never be any sort of elite, but that's ok, I love sprinting and will keep doing it and keep trying to chip away at my PB in the flying 200.  I just won't ever be able to give guys like Lou Pascussi any competition, but that's ok with me.  We're all playing with the hand we're dealt at birth and I figure if I can get the best out myself, that'll be enough for me.

Everyone else had a good day.  Dino and Mick were the best of the Vics at the sprint and keirin respectively, I still don't know why Queenslanders and Tasmanians are allowed to enter, and win, the Vic state titles, I'm sure there's a reason for it but I don't know what it is.  Chris Ray rode his best kilo in competition (after a F200 and a bunch of sprints) and got 3rd in the sprint and I think placed in the Keirin as well?  Craig rode well given his very upset year with a lot of personal stuff to contend with too, and on the Sunday Cam and Mick rode scorchers too. 

It's been a hectic new year so far.  I've spent some 18 hours coaching in the 'Haus since Jan 1st, and about 6 hours coaching at DISC and Blackburn.  Not bad for 7 days and a more-than-full-time job!  I spent this morning motorpacing in at DISC with Liz Randall, then tonight we had another Summer Spin Session where we did some full recovery sprints, but they were still damn hard!  Time now for sleep ...

Recognise this man?

That's Chris Hoy.  Squatting around 225kg.  From this article.

And just for a laugh, this is how not to build leg strength.  Really, bodybuilders are a zany bunch of guys ... Zany ...

You read right, I'm selling books now.  If you've been doing strength training with me in the 'Haus, some of this will be old-hat, but it's how we do it.  Mark Rippetoe's 'Starting Stength: Basic Barbell Training' 2nd Edition is THE book on strength training techniques for beginners to strength training and for those who've wasted years in gyms doing silly BS on isolation machines, like most of us who knew no better at the time.

I'm selling it over at the PowerHaus.

That's it for the spam in my blog ... I promise!

Thanks to everyone who came to DISC last night for our training session.  The AIS-inspired K1 drill went well for the sprinters and the revouts .. what a blast!  Em's legs were a blur! We were very happy to have Fast Eddie come and train with us, and hopefully he'll be a regular, he's looking strong and is blisteringly quick and is one of those genuinely good guys that's great to have around.

So what else has been going on?  I've been to Adelaide and done the first part of the level 2 cycle coaching course.  Mixed feelings on that.  Some of the presenters were excellent, Craig Colduck (strength coach) and Shona (AIS recovery) in particular were superb.  Some of the presenters were presenting some quite dated material and some were clearly poorly prepared and not willing to explain what they did in much detail.  To be fair, that wasn't always their faults, John Beasley was brought in at the last minute to fill a gap and even with limited preparation he was a solid presenter.

It was a pretty intense 6 days and I met some really good people and caught up with some old aquaintances as well.  There's a lot of work to do to finish the level 2 but I don't see it as being terribly difficult, just time-consuming.

We had the third round of the SSS just after I got back, and I rode a shocker of a flying 200 (despite near perfect conditions!), a 13.8-something.  I knew I'd be flat after the 6 days in Adelaide doing bugger-all, sitting down a lot and eating sugary food too much.  My warmup in the 'Haus on the Sunday morning was no false alarm, I was flat and weak!

But I did manage to win a couple of races, despite being in a hole.  I'd qualified slowest in B grade, which wasn't a good sign, but Leon Simms didn't bring his race-face and I got him in the first heat :

But in the second, Ed Osbourne has a savage jump and he used it to smash me to bits!

Too easy, Ed!  Well done!

In the third heat I was up against Wayne Arazny.  Wayne has a habit of racing Glenvale in the morning, which means he comes tired and hasn't the snap I know he's capable of.  After a f200 and two sprints, he's toast, and it shows :

So two wins, but with a bad F200, I'm not in the finals this time.  C'est la Vie.  Next time ... There's two solid months of training between now and round 4.  I'm a bit burnt out, but with an easy week I'll be right, and I'm gunning for a 13.2-something at Blackburn this season.  That's the goal.  I've done a 13.4, I can find another 0.2s ... Somewhere!

The round went really well, our team was superb (Thanks Sue and Jodie and Anne and Lucie) and everyone had a ball.

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.

The week before round one of the Summer Sprint Series we had a working bee at Blackburn.  There's a lot to do, the track was covered in litter, the clubrooms dirty and full of junk and detritus.   A bunch us adults were there to clean up, some of the kids were there, a few sat down at the other end of the track and watched us working.  With a bit of prodding these kids reluctantly did a tiny bit of work before finding some way to skive off and hide. A bit too important to help out, it seems ...

Then Mick Thomas arrived and the first I knew of it was Will, his son, coming up to me and asking how best he could help.  Will's a great kid, he's a hard trainer as anyone who's been to a spin session knows, he loves Tabatas and loves to train, and he gets results.  He works very hard and loves his sport, and he sees his part in the big picture.   Mick can be very proud of young Will.

Will's had a bit of a setback and can't race for a few months, but instead of whinging and carrying on like most of us would, he's seeing this as an opportunity to work on some of his limitations.   Mick and Will have signed up for 12 weeks of PowerHaus training and ergo work.  Today, while Mick is up in Shepparton with Bridge, Will trained with me in the 'Haus.  He's a fast learner and will get strong quickly, he listens, he wants to learn and to understand and he asks intelligent questions.  The best thing, at the end of the session, when we were both trashed by it, he said he wanted to come along to Blackburn and help out at the races this afternoon.  Now that's a good kid. He's going to be a bit embarrassed by this, but Will, you're a shining example of a decent young man and I'm very privileged to be able to work with you and am proud to be your friend.

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 ...