carpediemracing 

Very good. I'm not on the computer as much anymore so not really on forums and such. No longer work with computers so my "alt-tab" posting (blog, forums) is no longer a thing. I realize I used to work with a slew of tabs open to various bike/etc things, typing things in here and there, steadily. No more of that. No more laptop in the main living areas (no laptops at all, actually), so, again, no regular computer access. I'm in the basement office right now.

Riding only a bit, contemplating even shorter events (1 hour crit max). I've long ago filtered out any hilly stuff, and even a recent flat rails to trails ride was challenging for me.

I'll drop in when I can. I have some track questions for the track riders, and poke around to see if I can offer any thoughts.

mattm

To that end, I actually wondered if Cav coming in 2nd to Viviani in the points race(?) was set up somehow. Then he beat Viviani in the Madison later that night - the crowd went WILD, as you can imagine.

I know Cav has a background as a track rider, but still. He's been so off his game on the road, hard to believe he's all of a sudden at Viviani's level, even in a 20 minute race.

Anyway highly suggested! I was wondering why they don't do those in LA or something. I wonder if US crowds would really show up the way they do in Europe.

burnthesheep

Well, competitive eaters have been accused of having stomach expansion surgery. No joke.

One thing I really really wish would be a "thing" locally is organized hill climb stuff. We've got a few 2 to 3 minute hills that'd be good for it. I say this as they just announced the British winners yesterday I believe. Absolutely stunning efforts.

I've done close to 450 for 2-min before (well, 1:45). These folks are pushing (at their weights) around that much for 11 to 12 minutes!!! Geeesh. Well down in the 60's probably on kg's of weight. I just can't imagine.

Cypress

In 2017, Dan Evans won the BHC averaging 506W for 3:54...He weighed 64kg at the time for 7.91 W/kg for almost 4 minutes

burnthesheep

I mean, I find the toughest workouts I do to be those 3x3's. I'm always over ambitious also on them. It's just long enough past 2 min and just short enough of the "big dip" in power from this range to threshold that man........it freaking hurts.

I didn't post it in the workout section, cause run..........but I bought the Zwift run sensor. Worked flawless. I just hit the slope on the treadmill to match the Zwift % grade. Did a 10k and it was alright. Play some music, get some scenery. Perhaps come across somebody cool in there, never know.

gsteinb

there's a short hill climb prologue in the wilmington grand prix, and one up mount penn that was part of Gaimon's series.

I wildly enjoy the HCs. The northeast hill climb series s tremendous.

burnthesheep

I've always been into optimizing my time, but today wondered about the other side.

I wonder what some of ftp or min/mile figures are for the WORST riders or runners. Like, the worst power or run pace on the most hours of training.

I'd have to imagine it would be somebody who reads the "epic base training" stuff, but never ever does any intensity and gets the whole idea wrong.

Just a curious thought.

A guy posted up in the ST forum recently that they were about to do a 1/2 IM and had been doing 5 to 6 hours a week and only ever managed 180w on 75kg's. Even on a really bad 90% conversion of a 20min test that only gest you to 198w for 20min. I'm pretty sure I tested out un-trained at more watts and w/kg totally off the couch. Like, from slob.

Interesting world.

big john

We had a break from the wind and the fires today so I went riding with a friend and we saw some houses that were leveled last week. My landlord sent a worker over to install fine mesh screen on vents around the house and he also picked up some brush and pine needles.
Dude on the radio today said this isn't a bad year for fires but that doesn't make me feel any better about it.
High winds are supposed to come back tonight with gusts of 60mph.

carpediemracing 

FTP is partially genetic, as is jump/sprint. Training helps but all the training in the world won't make a genetically low FTP rider into a Tour contender. Ditto the sprint. I have a teammate that asked me why I don't just work on FTP so I can contest hilly races and such. I countered by asking him why he doesn't work on his sprint (he has a hard time breaking 1000w) so he could contest sprints instead of relying on attrition to get rid of sprinters. He's a former body builder, was obviously very powerful, but lacks whatever it is that makes a person have a jump.

I never trained for the sprint but that's my strength. Even without training I can do a jump, as can pretty much any rider with a jump. I relearned that fact in 2009, coming out of a wheelchair, literally a few rides after months of inactivity, I was trying to clear traffic in a one lane, barriered zone, and went hard to go the same speed as the cars. I did 1100w for almost 10s.

Now, to be fair, I couldn't breathe right for a while after, but it vividly illustrated that even with a still-painful healing fractured pelvis, after a month of wheelchair and 2 months of walking with a cane (another month ahead as well), when it came down to survival, I could put down a few watts. In fact right now, even with some training, that number I put down straight out of recovery is about as good as I am.

At the same time my FTP, no matter what I do, always seems on the low side. I thought I was bad, and I suppose I am, for a "racer". Right now probably sitting at 205w FTP, 80kg. At my recent best in 2010, 220w/70kg, which is when I earned points to upgrade to 2. In 2015 I was 218w/73kg for a bit. I'm sure I was stronger 20-30 years ago but I don't have numbers, but my 7 mile TT PR was 16:28 on a disk wheel TT bike with skinsuit / TT helmet / aerobars, and my leadout man did a 15:55 on 32 spoke wheels and drop bars. The competitive riders were doing into the 14s, with the PR (aero wheels, TT bars, regular frame) 14:08.

On Palomar, on my good year, it took me about 1:55 to do the whole climb. The pros do it in something like 35 minutes I think.

I know that no matter what I'm not going to be a 350w FTP rider, so I work with what I have.

On Zwift and related groups, I see riders asking how to improve their 170w/95kg test, albeit untrained. Then I realize that there are others out there.

In recent races I struggle if I have to average 180w (200w if I'm on super form, like 2010), and I'm more likely to have a sprint left if I'm averaging 160w or so. The last few races where I placed I had managed a low average power, 160 or maybe 170w.

topflightpro

I found this story about the one house to survive the Malibu fires earlier this year incredibly interesting: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mal...es-11553783662

big john

Yes, I've seen stuff about fireproofing before and it's surprising it's not done more, especially on the higher priced houses. A friend had a house right on the edge of the hills and he put in an attic sprinkler system, concrete eves, etc. Two fires in that area and no problems yet his neighbor lost the roof in one of those fires.
The houses in the "Getty fire" are all at least $2 million and they just went up like paper. No reason to not use the latest features there.
The high winds are back today and there's another new fire west of here. Sucks.

gsteinb

[QUOTE=carpediemracing;21184684]

Riding only a bit, contemplating even shorter events (1 hour crit max). /QUOTE]


were you doing longer stuff? I mean I long ago started focusing on stuff an hour or less. For me that means any discipline an hour or less, but I still had the snot to jump into a RR when things lined up that way. But it's not like there are a lot of 60+ minute crits for masters or most categories.

carpediemracing 

To me "longer" meant 25 miles or more. A lot of my races are 17 miles or something like that, so 45 minutes or even less.

I'm finding that even an hour race is a bit tough for me (55min + 5 laps at Tues Night), when I can even stay with the group.

When I say "short", I'm talking half a minute or so. Heh.

gsteinb

I think I took the hour thing a bit too literally.

Thing with track stuff is from a time perspective it's probably less time to train for longer stuff than to drive to a track to train.

topflightpro

I've mostly switched to track racing, and I don't actually train at the track that much.

I'm mostly in the gym or on the trainer. I've also found a few roads locally where I can do track bike workouts on the weekends - office parks have very, very little traffic on the weekends.

gsteinb

or racing. not a lot of nearby velodromes in the N.E.

carpediemracing 

This.

The year I "raced" track was 2009. Made a weekly trip to NH. I'd typically get back at 1 or 2 am, after leaving at about 4 pm (if I was running a bit late). That would be unsustainable right now.

Kisenna is about 2.5 hours each way. T-Town 4.x hours.

It's also a shallow track, 318m I think with 14 deg banking, former kart track. T-Town is 333m with 28 deg banking so twice as steep. At NH it's hard to stay down low, at full bore I had to back off in the corners so as not to launch myself into the surrounding swamp stuff.

As to training on the road, this area is semi quiet, and I may be able to find a loop where I can ride a track bike. The other thing is that I could probably put a road fork on a track bike and install one brake, and then do some tests/etc with less restrictions on traffic/busy-ness.

topflightpro

Rock Hill isn't close, but I'm fortunate to have family in the area, so I often am able to drive down after work, stay the night, and work remotely if needed. I know several others who have to get hotel rooms when they race.

Of course, races there are not weekly, so it's not a huge time/money commitment.

hubcyclist

I just got a SSD yesterday for my decade old core2duo PC and it has totally helped. The system has been chugging along, but web browsing and opening different stuff was getting really sluggish, so now a new drive with a fresh windows install seems to do the trick. I could totally update the PC to a pretty good AMD ryzen setup for under $300 (just need the MB, processor and RAM, all my other stuff would still work) but my setup still works for most stuff I do.

topflightpro

I wonder who will be posting their trick or treating walks to Strava tonight?

himespau 

I recently started using a Garmin fitness tracker. After a lower leg surgery to remove a tumor that removed the top half of my right fibula, my walks have been limited (and rides non-existent as I can only bend my knee to 70 degrees currently). I occasionally find myself embarrassed when as short walk with the kids gets tagged as an activity by Garmin and autouploaded to Strava and I get a kudos notification e-mail. It's not like I'm intentionally trying to claim short walks as anything.

Just logged into strava for the first time in a while, and all my activities for the last several months are like 1/8 - 1/2 mile walks that took 10-30 minutes. I guess I need to change my settings. I did start laughing at the physical therapist the other day when I was in the middle of doing leg presses nearing the end of our session and my activity tracker started buzzing on my wrist telling me that I needed to start moving.

Enthalpic

I did that for a while coming back from an ankle injury. Just wanted to see if my slow walking was improving at all.

Screw what other people think.

Cypress

I went through two knee surgeries back in the day before Strava was a thing. The first few weeks of post-op riding I did were 3-7 mile rides at 10 mph or less, just to get my flexion back (and only after the PT cleared me to be on the bike). I'd get home and brag to my girlfriend how far I went and be the proudest mofo on the planet for even being outside. As long as you're advancing, screw it. Be proud to be ambulatory.

Flatballer

Some of my favorite websites are dying, killed by incompetent private equity.

I might actually have to work at work, I'm not sure. Still figuring that part out.

The internet gets worse every year.

Doge

Today I'm catching and 81 year old local cyclist, I slow down and say hello and am kinda surprised. John never rides below 20mph @ age 81. If you've been around SoCal, Como, last century you know how John rides. John never has been a racer that I know of, just a leg breaker (Pilot, air taxi company owner list of super successful stuff) been riding Como from late 60s.

11 weeks ago John was riding with the fast group through Camp Pendleton a coyote runs into the pack. John goes down hard doing high 20mph and shatters femur. He gets anew 24" Ti one put in, and without really asking the doctors is out on the road this week again. He says he has to walk with a cane, but the cycling feels good. Hegg had that done (in his 30s) and went on to win some pro races. As I age, that guy is more inspiring than ever.