TRAINING UPDATE - 26 Jan to 7 Feb2011
As mentioned in my previous training post, the training camp with Randwick Botany Cycling Club was schedule for the Australia Day long-long week/end at the Snowy Mountains. Early on the 26th January 2011, Gavin Storey and myself headed off to towards Jindi, with the first stop being Mount Stromlo to rail some sweet single track with Brendan Cranney.
It was rather warm when we arrived and the lack of shade at Stromlo made it feel extremely hot. Neither the less, we were there to ride and made the most of the awesome tracks on offer. Brendan showed us the World Solo course and i was surprised to see that pork barrel was included, as it was extremely rough and erode. With temperatures warming up quickly, we managed to sneak another lap in before 12:30.
We arrived at jindi around 4:30, unpacked the van and prepped the road bikes. As it was Gavin’s first time on a road bike, we went for a light spin up to the Perisher national park entrance, so he could get use to the bike. With day one all but over, we had dinner and got to bed early, as the difficulty of the first day had been talked up.
Day one of the training camp was a climb up to Thredbo and over the overside of Dead Horse Gap. The climb up to Thredbo and on to dead horse gap was a moderate tempo. At the top we grab some food, water, took some photos and then descended the other side of dead horse gap. I was pinging it down and loved the twisty steep descent. After an extended descent the rode platitude out and i stop at a creek crossing. As I waited for the remainder of the A bunch, I was thinking the length of the climb seemed reasonable and thought to myself what was everybody worried about. As my mate Tim, came in sight, i asked is this the bottom and he relied ‘this is only midway, the next part is steeper!’. Arrrrr now where talking. Another 8-9km later of steep twisting descending, we finally reach the bottom.
With the temperature hovering around 30 plus and smallest gear being a 23, i was concerned that the 18km climb was going to be a massive punishment and wished I had put my 28 cassette on. Due to my tough gearing ratio i had no other option than to ride a majority of the climb out of the saddle and struggled to maintain consistent speed up the steeper sections. We reached the top of dead horse gap in 1 hour and 4 minutes. Gavin and i stopped off in Thredbo for a coffee, before making the mad dash back to jindi. The total ride include 3000 meters of climbing over 120km.
Day two was the Charlottes Pass ride, with my legs fatigued from the previous day, i knew this was going to be hard ride for me. The pace was steady and the ‘A’ bunch managed to reel in the ‘B’ Bunch prior to Perisher.
From Perisher the pace increased and the words ‘every man for himself were heard’ the bunch soon frayed and 4 riders were together for the final push to the submit. My legs were fatiguing quickly and as the end came in sight some 3 km away the bunch was blown apart as attaches were launched for the submit. I lost contact with 1.5km to go and remained about 100 meters of the front two guys until the top.
After a quick photo session, we commence the longest and most boring descent i think i have ever done. This ride was only 85km long with 1500 metres of climbing. So Gav and i went for an afternoon MTB session at Thredbo, which was awesome fun except for going up the Funnel-web ski run by mistake.
Day Three was a nice ride called the Dalgety Loop, this ride was fun as the A bunch had a couple additional local riders join the ride, which enabled a pace line to be formed on the flatter sections. Starting rather late we managed to catch the B bunch at Dalgety and on the first hill out of town we took the opportunity to eliminate the biggest sprinting threat and formed a pace line towards Berridale. The next 20km lead to some in fighting, over sitting behind cars, drafting and usual road riders politics.
The 90km ride was fun and we were finished early enough that Gavin and i seized our final opportunity to ride the XC course at Thredbo, which was included technical climbing, switchbacks, plenty of climbing and some cool descents.
Day four, Gavin and I seized the opportunity to leave early and arrived at Canberra around 10:30am to sneak in some more MTB riding at black mountain. I was excited by how awesome the trails were and we found ourselves railing tight switch backs, ascending steep pinch climbs and flowing through lots of single track. That is until flatted twice and had to run out to the car. It was annoying that we only had limited time to ride black mountain and I can’t wait for the next opportunity to get back there.
With the training camp over and another three weeks of base in the bag, i will be making a concerted effort to stick to my training program and rest this week. With that thought in mind, i decide that racing the 6 by 6 at the JetBlack 24 is probably not a good idea.
Looking forward, I have another block of base training prior to starting the build phase of my training, which will get me ready for capital punishment. I am thinking that my biggest weakness at the moment is not my strength, but a combination of intensity training and flexibility. I am planning to incorporate more criterium racing into my training program to help improve my threshold and resilience to high intensity efforts.
TRAINING UPDATE - DEC 2010 to 25 JAN 2011
On this page, I will be capturing the progress of my training throughout 2011 season and point out some do’s and don’ts to be mindful of when planning a MTB training program.
I will start by brining you up to date with my training to date. In mid December 2010, I commenced base training for the 2011 MTB Enduro race season. The first couple of weeks of training were mentally and physically difficult for me, as I had been off the bike for over three months and my muscles had seized up.
By the end of December 2010, I had regain enough base fitness to make the most of the Christmas break and put some series km’s in the bag. I focused on stretching regularly to release the stiffness in my muscles and lower risk of injury.
I drafted a training program over the Christmas break, which was structure around a draft race schedule for the 2011 season. The draft program was based on a four week block of three weeks training, followed by one week compulsory recovery, with low intensity and low volume of training. I say compulsory recovery as I have a tendency to over train and struggle to turn down any opportunity to go riding. From experience I have found that 12-14 is about the max number of hours I can train each week, while working full time.
With a month of base training in the bag, I made the most of my recovery week prior to moving into the second block of base training. This block include my first endurance race WSMTB 4hr, which provided a good indication of base fitness and the areas where I need improvement (refer to home page).
My first training error for the season was made on 23/01/2011 when I decide to race a club XC comp the day after a 160km training ride including big gear hill repeats. My legs were tired prior to the race and when I found that a number of elite XC riders had turned up to the club comp, I knew that my legs were about to be ripped off. On completion of the first lap my legs were cooked and I was in serious trouble, it was decision time, do I attempt to finish the race and destroy myself in the process or do make the difficult call to DNF, if you have read my race reports, you would appreciate that I don’t take DNF lightly. As I was merely using the race for training, I made the difficult but wise move to pull out on the second lap.
So that brings you update with my training to date. This week I am making the most of the Australia Day holiday and have taken a couple of days off work and will be traveling down to Jindabyne for a four day training camp with the Randwick Botany cycling club. I am looking forward to getting some more kilometers in the bag and gaining further leg strength, prior to the build session starting in three to four weeks.
I will report back on how the week goes towards the end off week and hopefully provide some photos from the camp and the sneaky trail rides that Gavin Storey and I sneak in on the side.
