Bicycle .net :: Diary of a Cat 5er, Part II

Diary of a Cat 5er, Part II — Winter In The Dungeon

By System6 on February 4th, 2009

It’s been a long, cold winter here in middle America, our windy days coming with a particular “bite” that makes cycling outdoors a sport for the bold or the sick-of-mind, but not for you or me. We own the basements and gyms and YMCAs that provide the chance for a good comfortable workout, provided one can stand the monotony of a never-changing landscape.

For those who live meaningfully south of the invisible line that bisects our country from shore to shore roughly along I-70, you simply have no idea what it means to face a winter that keeps your butt from a bicycle seat for literally months at a time. My Garmin reminds me of the geographic short-straw I’ve drawn, when I see not one ride register from mid-November through mid-January. Zip. Zero. Nada. No miles, KMs, loops, whatever.

Out in the garage, my two bikes hang with tires flatted or nearly so from having not been pumped in all those weeks. God, they’re great looking machines. Two Cannondales: an older CAAD 7 I’ve graced with some aero-bars and a set of Cosmic Carbone wheels to make a faux TT bike, and a System6 half-aluminum half-carbon framed roadbike with a full Dura-Ace kit, tipping the scales at maybe fifteen pounds and simply oozing its own sex-appeal.

But I digress.

Going into this winter, which, Al Gore’s prudent admonitions aside, gives little indication of imminent global or any other kind of warming, I faced the question as to whether I would capitulate to the season and let cycling and myself “go”, and I don’t mean to a good place, or whether this would be the year I tried to keep – or, God forbid, improve – my conditioning “the hard way.”

By that, I mean, in the dungeon.

Last season, you should understand, I rode pretty well at times. Notwithstanding a number of mid-pack finishes, I ended up in the top third of my Category state-wide for road and TT, at least within my age group. Part of that was due to the fact that EVERYBODY – okay, almost everybody – I trained with, was, how might one say it: A Better Rider. Yeah, like Cat 3s and Cat 4s, and some Cat 5s who weren’t born yet when I got out of high school. So I had to press. I had to play up all season long just so I wouldn’t have to ride home alone. By late-season, I was feeling alright. I was able to hold wheels longer, take bigger pulls, and confidently stay with the group all the way back to the shop. When we launched off on our annual Century speed-fest in October, the legs felt worthy, and certainly a lot stronger than they had the prior season. When we faced the short, sweet, 15%+ climb that lay between us and home, I conquered it smoothly and without fear of cramping from the ninety plus miles we’d just hammered. The prior year I’d been completely hobbled on that same ascent as multiple massive charley-horses besiege me before I’d even cleared the base. I’d been left to humbly walk my way up as my so-called friends flaunted their good fortune at being able to stay on the bike.

Anyway, while I was more solid this year, there was still a lot of room for improvement. After all, I was still a Cat 5, and for good reason. Also, my weight hadn’t come down all season. I was up near 180 and should have been closer to 170, maybe lower. But it didn’t seem to matter how much I rode — the body had plateaued. And I hadn’t closed the gaps on my training partners. I was still relegated to the back half of the pack. Sure, I was noticeably better at pulling my weight when the paceline was rotating, but the “natural order of things,” as we call it, remained in effect, with me sitting third place in our little group of weekend warriors, and with my pals sitting in first and second position feeling no particular pressure from behind.

So I decided to put myself through a winter training program with a certified USAC cycling coach. Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far for a coach with a lot of time on his hands. At least not since I’d lost my day job earlier in the year. Yeah, the one with the salary. To my great fortune, or, more realistically, as a minor concession to this little “setback,” I had comfort in the knowledge that only a few months after I’d taken and passed the Level 3 coaching exam. I mean, ANYONE can earn a salary, but how many people can become a Coach? Yeah, I lucked out, for sure.

Anyhoo, I decided that with lots of mediocre results in my past, and lots of free time in my future, I’d put myself into a winter cross-training regimen that would incorporate running on the treadmill (just happened to have one) twice weekly, with intervals on the Cyclops spin-cycle, also twice a week. In total, I hoped to sweat four times a week, but of course life would intrude and the actual figure would be more like four-ish.

Roll forward a few weeks and you’d find me on the Gerbil-mill, where my goal was hour-long runs of 6 miles or better. Eventually. Safe to say, it took a few weeks to get there. First it was 3 miles slow-like, with a LOT of soreness afterward. Then it was 4, then 5, and so on. Eventually, I was dropping a 10K run in sub-50 minutes, which was a new personal-best. Keep in mind, this is from a guy closer to 50 than 40 years old, so one man’s slow is another man’s rippin’, you know?

At the same time, I set up a rigid program of intervals for the spin-bike that would alternate focusing on power and on speed. The power workout had a series of high-wattage, moderate speed climbs targeted to last up to 1, 3 and 7 minutes, with recovery time in-between. In an hour, I’d nail 2 very-brief high-watt intervals, 3x 3-minute sweat-fests, and one 7-minute trip to the darkest corners of the pain-locker. My goal was to replicate, as closely as possible, what it feels like to ride and race locally. We have no mountains here in the midwest, but we’ve got copious, healthy, double-digit-grade climbs that put you deep into the red immediately.

On alternating days, my spin workout would be a high-cadence, mind-busting no-hill session during which I’d glance at the dashboard about 1,800 times while trying to keep average speed at max for one complete hour, while not going stark-raving mad. Mentally, that’s hard labor, but that’s what it feels like to ride a time trial, isn’t it? No breaks, no recovery, just you and the bike and the pedals and the lungs and a soaring heartrate, and miles still to go. The key is good videos. Lots and lots of them.

Keeping the accounting honest was a trusty wattage-meter.

Rule number one: You Can’t Fool The Wattage Meter. It knows if you cave. It doesn’t care why.

My goal was simply to beat my last workout, every time. Every outing on the treadmill had to be a faster one that the last. Every spin had to boost to speed and/or watts, even if just slightly.

As a seasoned coach, ahem, I debated with myself the merits of cross-training. On the one hand, every minute spent jogging on the treadmill was a minute I wasn’t cycling. And as someone who gives not a hoot about running and has no intentions of adding bi’s or tri’s to my athletic endeavors, I bristled against my own advice here. On the other hand, I was pretty certain that plateau-ing thing had stunk me up and kept me from shrinking the gaps to my training partners, so I over-ruled myself.

Once the arctic ice-caps receded just long enough to allow those of us in the frozen midwestern-hinterlands an afternoon of blissful high-50 temps, the boys called and it was time to find out whether a winter full of self-flagallation was for naught, or not. Despite the teasingly appealing weather, I’ll admit I would have been much happier seeing a foot of new snow on the ground. I was truly scared. Scared that it had all been wasted effort. Scared that my riding pals who’d trained less intensely over these long cold months would dish out no less distress to me. The wattage meter said I was ready; everything else in the universe said otherwise.

So anonymous friend number one, whom we’ll discretely call, say, Steve – notwithstanding that this might be his name, or might not be – and I head out of my neighborhood and immediately up the first gentle incline and already I can tell two things: a) he’s pushing it, on purpose, and ii) I don’t want to ride that fast. So I yell ahead, “ease up, I’ve gotta warm up first,” because we have traveled maybe 200 yards and it’s already an uphill sprint finish to the town-sign, if you know what I mean.

In so doing, I send two messages. To riding pal “Steve,” I might as well have screamed “I suck, you win, please don’t kill me!” And to myself, I could have just as easily shouted, “I suck, it’s all been for nothing, God I should have bought a recumbent!”

Eventually those evil recumbent-toughts passed, and as the miles rolled by my mind remained razor-focused on how much room for failure existed, and how I thought I might just be ready to decorate that room nicely. Lots of pastels, you know. The color of puke and weakness and gentler chromosomes and hormones, mixed in a bucket of fear and weakness, more or less.

Soon we met up with nameless fellow rider #3, whom we shall coyly call, “Andy,” and who’s a wiry bastard (but a nice one) who just learned to ride bikes weeks before we met him but now he puts in about a zillion miles a day, impervious to the weather, and probably will cat-up from 4 to 3 this season.

But I digress. Again.

Anyway, the three of us roll out at a pace in the high teens/very low twenties, speed-wise, headed toward the first significant climb which comes about ten miles into the route. The way it works is a ramp that goes from flat to 15%/16% grade in about two bike-lengths, and after a bit it flattens out to a more comfy 11-13% grade, which it more or less holds for a half mile. At the end of which, if you’ve ridden pretty well, your lungs are outside of your body. Complicating this climb is the changing grade which keeps you from settling into a steady rhythm. [Yeah, I hate that. It'd be sooo much nicer if the grade stayed in that sweet-spot of mid-teens, right?]

I hit the base of the hill in first position, though smartly I hadn’t allowed the boys to get me to drain my legs with a long pull leading into it, and I set my mind on spinning the fastest cadence I could, all the way up. There would be nothing left to attack, or to fend off attacks, should that be necessary. It was about setting a pace that discouraged others from attacking. And it was about prayer and hope, and tears if necessary. But for now, it was about spinning the pedals.

There are two turns climbing “Ossenfort,” which is German for Eastern Crossing, or “otters crossing,” or maybe that’s hillbilly for Us’ns fort. Anyway. After the first turn I took a peek back and saw Andy just behind my shadow, maybe a length or two back. For a guy with a very high power-to-weight ratio (his, not mine), it was crystal-clear to me that Andy was capable of closing a miniscule gap any moment he cared to.

I didn’t immediately see Steve behind me, which meant that maybe I’d gotten a gap or, more likely, he’d dropped a chain — in which case he’d probably still catch me by the top of the climb. Nevertheless, he wasn’t there. All I could do was continue poring on 100% and hope for the best.

As we rounded the second and final turn I knew I’d held the lead up the hill, but honestly I didn’t know if anyone else was actually trying to stay with me. I mean, I’m the Cat 5, they’re the 4s, and usually I don’t threaten in the hills unless they get a phone call and decide to chat while hugging my back wheel. And then they win anyway. But this time, I got away and held it to the top, and I didn’t feel so bad afterward. My lungs remained conveniently tucked within my chest cavity, and my legs felt thoroughly heated up, but not drained.

Atop Ossenfort we gathered together and lit off on a stunningly nice set of rollers on some fresh new asphalt. Andy set the pace and Steve sat in number two position, and I carried the red lantern — but not out of necessity. As we perked back up into the low to mid 20s, Andy dished out the pain and Steve suffered from a cycling-schizophrenia that left him standing-sitting-standing over and over again, trying to remember what one had to do to comfortably keep the pace. Cozy in the draft, I didn’t find it overly hard to hold the wheel in front of me. The thought occurred to me that yeah, I felt strong today. Yeah, I’d taken a hill. One little hill, but a hill no less. Now I was feeling my oats, for sure.

We left the country rollers for a short-cut back to civilization via a state highway that runs straight as an arrow with a leg-enflaming mile-long climb up a low-single-digit grade. It wasn’t an angry or menacing climb, but sufficient to pop one off the back when you’re keeping a 20+ MPH pace from bottom to top.

I took the first pull, rolling us up from 20 to 22 mph and finding, gratifyingly, I still had more fuel left in the tank. So I upped the pace to 24 and stayed at the front. Still, the legs had more to offer. I considered rotating off the front, but we were getting awfully close tot the crest of the hill and I still didn’t feel like I’d gotten too deep into the red, so I picked it up and after a mile we topped the rise. My Garmin 705 showed we were rolling along at 26MPH as we did.

I pulled off the front and genuinely looked forward to a fast draft down the backside, only to find my riding partners were a bit winded to pull. I was profoundly disappointed to roll down the hill slower than we’d rolled up it, but God knows I wasn’t up for another stint at the front. As we soft-pedaled along, the thought going through my mind was that I had only won only one hill. One hill, early in the ride, before everybody was thoroughly warmed up. Possibly before anyone knew that there was a contest taking place. Therefore, it didn’t matter. Not really. Not unless I could do it again. Do it again when everybody knew damn well what I was doing. Then, if they couldn’t do nothing about it, it would count.

On the way home we rode highway BA, which was also recently repaved with the tire- and bike-killing cattle grates so kindly removed. Where it had once been the Beirut of potholes, now it was smoother than whipped custard. And it sloped ever so gently downward at 1-2% grade, and there wasn’t there a tailwind that day, and my legs still felt fine, didn’t they?

Soon we were puffing along at 32MPH and that’s when Andy decided to come in front of me and lift the pace, and now it was 34MPH on flattish ground — what a thrill! And yet there could be more, I thought. So sitting in the number 2 position I slid left and pushed the pedals hard, and started to creep past Andy, clawing my way to the front. The pace climbed to 36MPH!

Gawwwwd that was a sweeeeet ride! If only Steve had come unglued from the back, it would have been a perfect ride — but he’d managed to hold our wheels.

A mile further on, we came to the final climb of the day — another half-mile creature at steady 10-12% grades with really no surprises and, at the same time, no chance for relief. My strategy was the same as before: pour it out evenly from bottom to top, as close to 100% effort as I could give out.

At the top it was Andy and I in close succession, with Steve delivering newspapers further below.

Checking my Garmin records, I’d been off the bike for exactly two months.

After that substantial hiatus I’d gotten back on and ridden a pace that matched my best from the peak of last season. That was worthwhile in and of itself. More encouragingly, last summer I’d gotten similar results by spending the vast majority of the ride “sitting in,” rather than sharing the work or setting pace. And when I’d gotten done with those rides, I’d been completely shot. Now, in the middle of winter, an hour and a half into a vigorous romp, only my family commitments kept me from significantly extending the ride.

Which is a long way of saying that…

- you can get better, even as you get older.

- cross-training can make a difference. For me, it trimmed off several pounds of baggage and boosted my aerobic capacity and ability to recover after hard efforts.

- winter training makes a huge difference, and has an enormous payoff.

- it’s really all about finding a great coach, isn’t it?

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