And I didn't bugger it up too badly ...

Hilton called me on Tuesday morning, he had some family stuff to do on Wednesday night and as I'd been assisting him for the past month or so, he asked me to run the session.  Hilton has a program not dis-similar to our DISC sessions, but more densely packed, much longer (it works out to about 7 and a half hours now, from 2:30ish 'til 10pm) and with more different groups to take care of.  He'd be there 'til about 5:30pm then had to go.  I got in to DISC at about 2:30pm to get an overview of the night's plan (ours is online, his is on a bit of paper) and we went over the various things everyone had to do.  The U17 sprinters had some specific drills, the CCCC enduros were pretty simple, they had take a lap in pairs efforts and then some handicap 500m efforts for a couple of blocks, the pursuiters had scheduled cadence drills and so on. 

So it was a chocka-block program, as usual for those nights.  I would get help from Daryl Perkins at about 7pm but otherwise it was all parents etc to help out where possible.  I had Emily there doing some specifics at about 4pm while Hilton worked with Madison Hammond, she and he were done by 5:30 when the main group of sprinters arrived.  The enduros all get there to start at 7pm which was when it was going to get interesting.  The sprint stuff I mostly have a handle on, and the bulk of the enduro work is variations on a theme (stop them getting bored while doing E3 and over threshold efforts, essentially).  The pursuiters have particular needs as they prepare for the Aussie titles in a week and a bit.

At the end of the night we managed to slot in some madison practice for some of the sprinters and enduros and no-one crashed and as far as I know at least, everyone left satisfied with the session.  It wasn't perfect, the pursuiter's warmup was botched a little due to a misunderstanding of the written drill for them during the warm up, but it worked out ok.

At 10:20pm, when we walked out, I was knackered but reasonably happy with how it went.  There's things I need to do better, I need to go faster on the motorbike for some of the sprinters who are really quick, and I need to get a better handle on how Hilton works with the pursuit squad, but that will come with time and I'm pleased with the night.  They're a good squad of motivated people and a delight to work with.

MMAS2, sprint day (Saturday).

Hot, gusty northerly.

98.4", disk wheel.

Held starts (!%#$CV#$RT@#$!!!!!) not gate starts.  500m ITT, 42.02s (~0.5s faster than last year) - good enough for 3rd, beaten by the Wizard and Jamie Goddard.

Flying 200's - same gear, 13.4 (hand timing, lots of variance, one had me at 13.2 .... results as such of no value as very inconsistent).  Qualify 4th (!) - Wayne Arazny rode a 12.9ish f200!  Wow..... Very gusty northerly making for fast but inconsistent times.  A lot of luck with the gusts, or bad luck, depending on when you got a blast of wind.

I drop down to 91.8" for the sprints.

Race Jamie Goddard in the semi, he wins after leading me out for 2.5 laps.  I didn't come off his wheel with enough power, maybe a chance lost?  Jamie's bloody quick ... I dunno, if I'd come at him harder?  Maybe?

Race Wayne Arazny for 3rd place, I win, Wayne's cooked, he needs more sprint training, he's fast, but he runs out of efforts very quickly, if his 200m time was right, and we think it was close, he's much faster than he raced against me.

So two third places.  Given that The Wizard would win, and Jamie .. they're both a level above me, I'm pleased with the days efforts.  The F200 was my best for the summer, although the time is not to be trusted.

Dino won the 500 and the sprint in MMAS5.

Em won the 500 and the sprint in JW15.

It'll be a busy night at presentation night for the aboc sprint squad.

Em on fire at state team training, reports of a blisteringly quick standing 125 ... Watch out at the Aussies ...

Yesterday I spent at DISC, I was there at 9am working with Liz Randall as she gets ready for her hour record (1st March), then I hung around and waited for John Beasley, to assist him with the Malaysian squad, but I got it wrong!  They weren't in on Wednesday!  Doh!  So I ducked home for a couple of hours, and went back in to get there at 4pm to work with Hilton.

Welcome to the madhouse.

I had been to watch a few Wednesday night sessions over the years as a casual observer, but this time I was in the thick of it.  It starts for the coaching team at about 4, Hilton and Daryl Perkins (from now on, Perko ...) were sorting out stuff in the NTID/VIS/CCCC cage, I helped a bit, carried some stuff, then we had a look at the program for the night.

Many of you reading this have been to our sessions, and will know that we publish the plans ahead of time and have done so for a couple of years now.  So we're no strangers to planned sessions, but this is a whole new scale and intensity ... The session starts at 6:30pm sharp, with warmups for the sprinters and then the enduros (30 mins sprinters, 40 mins enduros), then they had 3 groups - Sprint, NTID/Pursuit and Enduro.  

I did the enduro warmup on the motorbike, Hilton did the sprinters.  The original request was 20 laps at 35, 15 laps at 40, 10 laps at 45, 15 laps ramping up to 58km/h.  When I took it up to around 55km/h with about 7 laps to go, Perko waved me to slow, the bunch was HUGE - there was maybe 35 enduros chasing the motorbike and with the bunch that big it was too fast, so we dropped back to 50km/h for the last 5 laps.

Then the carnival began.  The groups were NTID sprint (mostly, a couple of non-NTID riders were in the squad) doing MACCs, pursuit (NTID) doing pursuit cadence drills, and general enduro training.  For 3 hours it was hectic, a contingent of CCCC guys and Perko helped, with getting the various groups ready to go and misc helping out.  I timed the MACC efforts for the first 2 (of 4) 300m MACCs, and Hilton got me to ride the motorbike for the third set of efforts - I hadn't done it with his guys before and was a bit conservative with the speed I took them to, but that'll be better next time.  Hilton did the last effort for them while I timed again.

I also did the pacing for half of the pursuit training stuff, the first time I walked the line for them I got it wrong and went the wrong way!  Sorry guys!  We fixed it from then on.  Mea Culpa!

Overall, it was a mind-bending experience.  A lot of stress, a lot of people with a jam-packed program of training.  It all mostly worked out and the program was mostly adhered to.  I got home at about 11pm, totally knackered!

It's not 100% confirmed, but tomorrow I'm working with Hilton Clarke from ~5pm, as an assistant with the NTID squad he coaches.  I'm not sure what sort of formal work/pay thing this will involve (I can't do it for free!), but hopefully some of these details will get sorted quickly.

I'm quite looking forward to the new challenges this will bring about, and working with some very talented cyclists.

Over the last month I've spent quite a lot of time in at DISC working with (assisting) Hilton Clarke with the NTID sprinters and also John Beasley with the Malaysian sprinters.  Some of you reading this know both these blokes, and it's fair to say that they have vastly different styles and they both get great results from their riders, one of the Malaysian lads won the keirin at the Beijing world cup two weeks ago and Hiltons' NTID lads are currently ripping it up at the Aussie titles.

All I'm going to write about in this blog entry is their warmups before a track sprint training session.

Without going into any inner philosophy stuff, here's what they both do :

John/Malaysia : 40 laps behind the motorbike, starting at 35km/h, gradually winding up to 45km/h, the guys then have a bit of a sprint for the last half lap or so and then a couple of activations (short slow-start sprints).  They're usually on 84" or 86".  After this they sit down and rest, they do no more activations etc between efforts.  John has them riding at 100% or sitting on their backsides.

Hilton/NTID : 50 laps behind the motorbike, starting at 30 km/h(10 laps), 35 km/h(10), 38km/h(10), 42km/h(10) then accelerate from 42-60km/h over 10 laps, all on 84".  They then do two activations or entries off the bank depending on what drills they have to do during the session.  Hilton also has them do two activations before every effort.

So Hilton's NTID warmup is a lot bigger than the Malaysian squad's warmup.  

Some trivia, one of the Malaysian lads rode a 9.8s flying 200 on Tuesday, it was lead out by the motorbike with John riding the bike and swinging off at the 200m line, I was timing the effort and had to ask John if I'd made a mistake, nope .. He's that fast ..  Wow!

Every now and then you'll read or hear about some dramatic new (or, more likely, recycled old!) training method that gets huge gains in performances from some group of people.  This happens in most sporting fields.  There'll be some new product making big claims about 20% improvements in some measure of performance and so on .. Glossy adverts, flash websites making big claims, and they've got studies to back them up!

How does this happen and what does it mean, and how can you, as a skeptical cyclist who's seen it all before, make sense of it?

Leaving out sloppy science and badly designed studies paid for by companies trying to sell their product, let's see if we can make some sense out of training and performance.

Firstly, take a look at this graph :

 The X axis is time spent training, the Y axis is performance and hopefully you'll notice that there's a ceiling, that's your genetic potential.  Everyone has one of these, and ultimately that's what decides if you can be an elite athlete or not. The only way to go above your genetic potential is to get involved in doping.

The graph starts at "untrained novice".  In our context, this would be someone who's never ridden a bike in any sort of training sense but can ride without falling over.

As you can see from the graph, initial performance increases are rapid.  A novice, very quickly with good training, progresses and makes rapid gains.  This isn't unique to cycling, it's the same in weight training, running, rowing, you name it .. anything that has a significant physiological fitness component responds in this way to training.

What's interesting, and often misleading, is that even poorly designed training plans can lead to rapid initial advancement, it's call the 'Novice effect' which I've mentioned before.  It approaches the genetic limits slower than an optimally designed program would. 

An extreme example of this would be setting a couch potato up with a program of lap swimming as their cycling training - initially their cycling would improve but it would rapidly plateau, much more rapidly than a program of well designed cycling intervals would.  The novice effect is basically 'something is better than nothing' in this context.  This often leads to much confusion, as we, gullible humans, see what we did initially working (even if it's not optimal, how do you know?) and assume that it's the best way to train.  It might be, or it might not be, the novice effect can be deceiving to the unwary.  This includes a lot of exercise physiologists who use poorly designed studies and very unwise extrapolations to lead coaches and athletes down dead-end paths.  So-called 'evidence-based coaching' is fraught with peril, as so many studies are poorly designed and the subjects badly chosen.

What should, I hope, be obvious from this visual depiction of progress in the graph above, is that it's relatively easy to get significant improvements from untrained athletes, and also, that it's much harder to get improvements from athletes who are close to their genetic potential.  A 20% improvement in a novice is fast and easy, in an elite athlete close to their potential a 2% improvement may take months or years or never.

Marketing people love to use novice improvement to 'prove' that their product is better than everything else and thus, sell you something.  Sometimes, their product is very good, but the data is misleading if it's not viewed in the context of the above graph.

Alex Simmons up in Sydney is starting up a spin session.    $40 a session, which is $160-$200 a month depending on the number of Mondays in the month or something like that.  Wow ... They are supplying computrainers, and they're expensive ergos, but still .. That's a lot of pony up for for an hour or so on an ergo.  I wonder if they provide dinner?  We do.  The Computrainer increases your cycling power by 20-30% and your speed by 2 to 4 MPH (3.2-6.4km/h) or so the Computrainer website claims anyway. I'm not sure I'd ever make that sort of a claim and I'm a little surprised that Alex, who is by all accounts an ethical sort of a guy, would quote that claim on his site, even if he did add in "it has the potential to" which is one of those wishy-washy weasley phrases used by companies that sell placebos that"have the potential to INCREASE MUSCLE BY 1100108.76%!". I know Alex, not all that well, but I did spend some time with him at the level two course last November and he's a good guy, very devoted and certainly a very good prescriber of power-training drills and a very keen coach. If there's a market for it up there in Sydney, good luck to him with the venture.  It's a tough gig to make money being a full time cycling coach and a bit of hyperbole is to be expected, I guess.

Some of you will be aware that I'm working on getting level two coaching accreditation, I started off at the course a month ago in Adelaide, and there's extra requirements apart from the course.

Part of it is logged coaching time, 60 hours in total, 40 unsupervised and 20 supervised or mentored.

Needless to say the 40 unsupervised hours are already done.  That didn't take very long at all.

The 20 mentored/supervised hours are about to get underway.  I'm doing time with Hilton Clarke tomorrow at DISC with the NTID squad, and with John Beasley on Thursday and Friday with the Malaysian sprint squad, also at DISC.  I'm quite looking forward to it.

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 ...

I often think about this, as a coach to others.  Why do we ride bikes, and even more interestlingly, why do we compete?

The first one's easy and multi-faceted.  I had lunch recently with a friend, and she told me of the joy she felt riding home with a tailwind, gliding effortlessly along in a small bunch with some friends.   I think most of us who cycle will know that feeling.  The riding's effortless, the speed, the distance, the good company ... Then there's the doing something you didn't know you could do.  Another good friend comes up to Hotham for our camps up there, and I can still remember the emotion he felt when he first topped out on the big monster.  That's such an intense feeling, it's worth working hard for.  There's also the somewhat egotistical 'I can do this' side of it, back when I rode a lot of road miles, I remember riding out to watch the Bendigo Madison, from Brighton (~220km for the day).  I stopped off at some small town for a snack on the way, and the staff asked me where I was going.  Bendigo? That's 100km from here!  Sure .. Where've you ridden from, Brighton?!  heh .. It makes us feel like super people.  Of course we're not, almost anyone can do that sort of stuff, they just don't think they can, so they don't try.

There's lots of other things, but I think they're probably the big three.  There's heath benefits, transport cost savings (until you start buying expensive bikes!), environmental reasons and so on as well, but for the people I work with, I think they're the main ones.

Ok, so why do we compete?

Again, many reasons.  I can think of a few, but they're very dependant on the situation of the individual.

Some, are very promising athletes (I'm lucky to work with one and she's a potential Olympian in 10 years if everything goes well).  They're motivated to compete because they can be the best in the world, or at least, they won't die wondering if they could have.  These are the very talented juniors.  They're very rare and when you find one, and if you're really, really lucky, get to coach one or even just be close to one, it's an amazing experience.  Some of you will know who I'm talking about.   I have been incredibly lucky to have had the chance to work with this junior and am humbled by it and her trust, every day.

Then there's the rest of us.  Some juniors, some masters, some 'elite' but a bit late to get started or without massive talent.  These people are the bulk of the people I coach (99%!).  I've spent some 8 years now coaching mostly masters, and I'm a masters racer myself too.  That said, I don't really understand why 'we' race.  I can only really relate it to my own case, and I'd love to hear your comments on why you do, if you do, or why you don't, if you don't.  Ugly sentence, I'm sorry!

So I'm going to prime the pump with my own story and a guess at my reasons, as best I can, and I hope you feel like commenting too.

I race because I feel bad if I don't.  I'm too old (38 now) to consider any sort of an elite career, although I was a chance as a kid playing Rugby Union my dad was right, I didn't have enough mongrel in me to be a senior elite rugby player.  I played state representative for Victoria in the 1980's from under 12's to under 16's and I was a pretty good player (a natural, in some ways), took a couple of years off (HSC, year 12, Uni ...) and then got back into it living in Perth when I needed some family.  I got one run on in the UWA rugby club 1st grade, and played 2nd grade as captain for a few years until, at the ripe old age of 26, I blew my knee up ski-ing and that was it.  I still miss the sport, its cameraderie and the whole 'being in a team' thing.  I dabbled in ice hockey for the Melbourne Sharks for a couple of seasons, again, got one skate-on in their 1sts (but only because they were short that day and no-one else in the 2's had the balls to go out and get smashed!  It wasn't because I was good enough, that's for sure!).  Found my limits, I'm an unco-ordinated skater.  Big and strong, but a crap skater.  I worked hard at it, did an awful lot of time on the ice, trained twice as much as everyone else on the team, but was only ever going to be a struggling-to-get-a-place-in-the-team B grade player.  I didn't have the skills at a good enough level.  I had the brains for it, tactically, and the work ethic, but not the skating or puck-handling skills.

So pretty-much from the age of 10 I competed in something - while I was at Uni I player water polo, and again, got to a reasonable standard (state-league 3, and two intervarsity championships) but I wasn't a natural at it, it was all from hard work.  As a really young kid (10-14 or so years old) I won all the school swimming stuff, and I think my old under 11 25m backstroke record may still be standing, from 1977!  I raced rallies (won the Rally of Melbourne PRC1 in 1999) and so on. So I've always been a competitor.  That's the gist of the above self-indulgent paragraphs.

I raced road for a few years, won my way up to B grade (thankyou Lorraine, I'll never forget you, and the day you told me to go up to B grade after Dunlop Road, RIP).  But, I was always a sprinter trying to be an enduro, wrong body type for hills.  So now I race track sprint and I feel like I'm racing the right thing for me.  The training feels good, the racing, I love.  I don't win much but I love the one-on-one match sprinting, can't get enough of it.  I'll never be any good at it though, if I'm lucky and train hard enough I'll achieve a few personal targets, but world masters?  I don't think I have the talent for it at any age group and I would feel bad if I pretended otherwise.  I'm just not fast enough and going 'just because I can' devalues the achievements of those who are genuinely good enough to go.  Maybe, if I'd raced bikes as a kid and burned in the motor patterns for high cadence power .. but I was playing rugby at the time and swimming and I'd do it the same again if I had my time over (but I'd train smarter and do better strength work!).

That still doesn't really answer the question of why do I race?  Maybe it's a distraction from work/eat/sleep?  Maybe it's some deeply seated psychological thing that needs competition as an outlet?  I know if I don't compete in something I can be a real grouch and I feel bad about myself.  But why?  Why get on a bike and do efforts that end in nausea and vomiting, why get into a gym and lift very heavy things, why spend a fortune on go-faster bits?  I don't know.  What's the reward at the end?  Why do relatively old men like me and many of my friends and aquaintances train so hard, modify our lives, risk our relationships and devote so much time to what is only a recreation?  We take it so very, very seriously (some to an amazing, and probably an unhealthy degree!).  But we can't do it as a career, we're only doing it for ourselves and our own vanity, or is it something more?

I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this ... Why do you race and train?

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.

In a word .. Wet!

It rained.  Lots.

After a week in Melbourne of high 30's (in November?!) the forecast for the brave souls heading to Hotham for the aboc Climbing Camp was cooler and some rain.  The BoM, masters of understatement, got that right.

It started raining on Friday afternoon and didn't stop much all weekend. That didn't deter the crew.  Some elected to ride the safer drop to Omeo and back, Don Noble doing the full trip with Rich and Alex Vaughan going part-way with him, and the rest decided to go to Bright, some descending the Harrierville drop in cars, others riding down.  A very cautious descent even by Neil meant no crashes.

Jim Crumpler elected to ride straight back up from Harrietville and kindly lent his car to me to use as a safety/sag/shopping truck.

Some of the lads hooked up with some other cyclists and we had two bunches into Bright from Harrietville, Neil and Andy with the strangers, Hari, Jason Kennedy, Ash Milne and Jason Ellis in the main group.  Sprints were contested in both, although Neil's first win was unopposed.

From there a number of sprints were had at the traditional town signs of Smoko, Freeburgh and Bright.

Carmen met up with us at Bright for lunch as she and Jon and Susan had been late up on Friday and had stayed at Benalla on the way up.  She rode a solid ride, managing the climb on a 23 tooth sprocket with no dramas at all, even nursing a mild hangover.

As the only female to ride this time, she was the unopposed Queen of the Mountain.

The weather for the ride down had been mild, no rain after around 10am made the descent less tricky than we'd feared at first, but that all changed after lunch.  Light intermittent drizzle changed to rain.  Solid, steady rain.  Just what we need in drought-stricken Victoria of course, but sub-optimal for riding the big hill.  No-one piked out,  Hotham from Harrietville isn't a dangerous climb in the wet, even with poor visibility and everyone took off from Harrietville in good spirits despite the report from Alex Vaughan at the top that it was 'cold, wet, blowing a gale and horrible' at the top.  Alex wasn't wrong, but these riders are made of sterner stuff than that which would be deterred by such a warning.  Onwards and upwards!

On the way up a tree had come down over the road and I stopped at it and directed traffic around it until the Vicroads crew came and tidied it up so I missed a lot of photo opportunities, but did tail Jason Kennedy up the hill.  It was his first Hotham ascent and he rode with wisdom and a solid tempo.  All of us who've ridden up this monster hill will know the feeling that's best described in a photo.

Jase Ellis was the lantern Rouge for the climb from Harrietville, Andy Dorman took KoM with style.

Dinner was the usual spag boll and fruitcake with custard desert.  The garlic bread was wolfed down pretty quickly, but we must warn you, the chilli bolla is HOT.  We're not joking.  As usual we'd made four mixes of bolla sauce, and the hot one was challenging.  We did warn you!

On Sunday the weather was even worse and everyone packed up and left before 12, even our traditional Dinner Plain breakfast wasn't attempted.  Despite the weather everyone reports to me that they had a good time and will be back for the next trip.  What will it be like in February or March?

For the photo gallery for this trip, click here.

Yesterday morning Dino and I trained standing starts at Blackburn.  We did a warmup, then 6 x ~80m starts.  A good session, Dino improved his starts quite a lot.

I've still got this damn cold, which is filling my head with fluff and my ears with cotton, not to mention reduced breathing ability, so it's strictly short, high intensity stuff at the very anerobic end of the scale.  I simply can't breathe enough for anything longer than around 20 seconds or so.

In the evening, we trooped along to Brad's Blackburn session.  I did a very truncated and weak warmup (breathing ... not good!) but did 3 accelerations as part of it, and hit a new PB on the power meter in the process.  1567 watts.  That's a new PB by about 60 watts.  Surprising, but I'm not complaining!

We then did some motorpaced jumps, my first one went ok, the second and I just couldn't breathe enough to hold the wheel of the motorbike, so it was pretty feeble.

After that, we did a couple more standing starts, 1/2 laps (around 150m at Blackburn).  My first one was good, on the second, I pulled back hard with 1 to go and Viv wasn't holding the brake hard enough, which allowed my bike to come out of the gate, and over I go!  I got a bit cranky about it (not to anyone there, just inside) and did one more, and hit 203 nm of torque.  Motivation ...

If I can throw this cold off, I'll be in good stead for round 3.

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 ...

It's been a pretty busy week at aboc HQ.  I haven't had time to write much, but it's been hectic.  We've had many people over helping to clear the shed in preparation for the launch of the aboc PowerHaus, I've trained with Brad Robins at Blackburn, and Pat and Dino, and Dino again on Thursday on ergos.  We raced on Saturday, trained again on Sunday at DISC, very busy indeed.

I haven't lifted at all for almost two weeks.  I feel bad about it, but every time I've tried to squat heavy I've felt weak and unable to get any sets done.  So, a bit of time off to recover, and I'll hit it again next week.  A big increase in volume of track training has probably contributed to my gym training's flatness. I'm not too worried, the gym work is to go faster on the bike, not to be good in the gym all the time.

Last night was our first Summer DISC session, a healthy turnout of riders, mostly sprinters, made for a busy night - we did standing half laps out of the gate, and then revouts chasing the motorbike, the enduros did a couple of E3 efforts then some motorpaced sprint efforts and revouts.  Suffice to say that come time for chicken and chips, everyone was well toasted.  Chris Ray's overtaking of the motorbike was a sight during a revout.  He's going pretty quick ... And Em and Jamie chasing the bike on J15 gearing at close to 60km/h .. Those kids have some legspeed ..

Speaking of going quick, round 2 of the aSSS is now oversubscribed, we've got 32 pre-entries and a rider on the standby list.  Fantastic.  Ride is due out this week, so we'll get a flurry of interest from that too I expect.

I've had signups and payments for the Hotham camp trickling in, the lodge is now paid for and we're all looking forward to it in four weeks.

I got the chance to congratulate the V-Train for his regaining of his world masters pursuit world title, he's riding at the sprint series this Sunday (round 2) so we'll see how he goes at that too, there's a bunch of new faces racing with us, it should make for some pretty exciting racing. I can't wait!