furiousferret

Just coming out of a rest week. When your quads are twitching 3 days in you know the body needed it. I had to abandon my 100k Zwift Ride with 10 to go cus my hip was acting up, pulling my leg into my my groin and twisting my back. That constant effort of Zwift is rough because there is no time to adjust or rest the body; just constant torque.

I adjusted my left hip (which was 3/4 cm lower than it should be) a week ago and for 3 days it felt better than it had in years, but now its acting up again. That adjustment loosened everything so now my hips are unstable and probably will be for a few weeks. I'm not hurt, but just have to be extra careful. Quite frankly I'm getting tired of these hip issues and it would be nice to be able to ride pain free and feel like both legs are actually functioning properly.

@revchuck Man that really sucks about the dnf, especially since you were feeling good and (if the status quo didn't change) were on the way to a solid result!

@Nice pics Heathpack, I'm envious you get to spend some time in Santa Cruz! I lived there are few years and would go back in a heartbeat if I could afford it.

burnthesheep

170 tss gravel ride Saturday, 3 hours pretty much on the dot. Tons of time in the SS range. A solid 14 minute PR effort on a segment, had to rest leaning on the bars after that one. Got the PR. One minute off on a top 10 for a pretty hotly used section.

This ride, absent worrying about cars and able to just ride and loop in the huge park........I was pondering the thoughts: "why do I care what people think", "do I really enjoy the type race I try to do", "what actually brings me joy on the bike".

I even had the brief thought of just tracking on TP for a while without Strava. But, I do enjoy chasing PR's and using them to gauge improving my gravel handling skills (nonexistent).

We'll see where these thoughts go. Paz es de todas las cosas humanas, la mayor felicidad.

Hermes

@aaronmcd @Ttoc6 https://hellyervelodrome.com/pdf/train_paulrogers.pdf

I have posted this before but in case you have not seen it. This is an interesting article about combining strength training with cycling. It is mostly about track sprinting but has some endurance ideas as well. I found the bilateral lifts versus unilateral interesting as well as the speed of repetition. I have found what he says to be true based upon my track sprint training during 2016 to 2017. I spent a lot of time just waiting for my ATP-PC system to recharge.

My observation for ME about single leg strength work in the gym and etc. is beware. One leg box jumps and one leg deads and backlifts offer more risk of injury but potentially bigger gains. This is a big YMMV. For me, one leg box jumps and one leg throw the sled...okay. One leg deads and back.....I am not so sure.

Gym is generally 3-4sets of 3 max lower body strength or power lifts-early in the phase, two strength and one power, later, two power and one strength. I don't use cleans, jerks or snatches with our current riders. They are too technical for maximal efforts unless you have years of experience. We do one bilateral strength lift each session for "core" strength (Squat, Deadlift, Romanian Deadlift) - usually lower back is the limiting factor not legs and this is the only reason I use these lifts – for back strength in standing starts. The rest of the lifts are unilateral. How many feet do you push each pedal with at one time? If you train bilaterally you get stronger bilaterally and unilateral strength lags behind. If you train unilaterally, you get stronger unilaterally. It's a neural thing.
Single-leg Press is our bread and butter. Different foot and hip positions for different phases of pedal stroke, standing, seated, etc. I use high speed video to match joint angles and velocities for each rider. We mainly do it ballistically for power - throw the sled as far as you can – at different percentages of max to match up to different muscle contraction velocities for different phases of the acceleration (different cadences). We do a lot of single-leg plyos on boxes, stairs, bunjee sleds, etc during speed phases. Strength and power gains are extremely specific and do not necessarily transfer well. When Ryan Bayley beat Sean Eadie in the Commonwealth Games sprint final in 2002, Sean was tripling 250kg for a parallel back squat and Ryan was tripling 120kg. On single-leg press, they were much closer (20kg) and so was the racing.

Single-leg squats (front and back) and deadlifts usually make up the third exercise and are as much for pelvic stability as strength. I'm going to try single-leg pulls and cleans this year, but these will not be our primary power exercises - more of a preparation for the work before Beijing. We have done SL squats, deadlifts and pulls for years now and the riders are pretty stable. An example of numbers - our best single-leg squat figures are 3@165kg on each leg (just over 360lbs). The weakest of the girls (who just entered the squad this year) is 3 @ 80kg on each leg, but she only weighs about 50kg. Two riders have done the 165kg so far. We have riders who can do sets of standing hops onto 1m+ boxes. The lowest is for one of the girls and is a 70cm box for sets of 8 each leg.

Hermes

@Heathpack Loved the photos. The wild flowers are amazing this year.
@revchuck Sorry to here about the knee. I am sure it will get better. Next year!!

Saturday was Torrey Pines SST climbing efforts and Sunday was sprint efforts and constant power riding through Camp Pendleton and San Onofre Beach to San Clemente.

caloso

35 miles of gravelly roads on Friday on the FG; 50 miles race simulation with teammates on Sunday; then all day skiing with my kid yesterday. Legs a bit tired so just a mellow ride to work and back today.

Heathpack 

@revchuck no good on the knee, hows it doing now??

caloso

I wouldn't worry about it. Every ride around here seems to have its own flavor but short of intentional or flagrantly negligent unsafe riding, it's kind of a free-for-all. If you're strong enough to make the split but not strong enough to contribute then hang on and stay out of the rotation. But don't sit on and contest the sprint without contributing. As to guttering v. echeloning, I've seen both. The Thursday Night Airport Ride almost always has a healthy crosswind section and you learn to deal as best you can.

revchuck 

It's doing much better, thanks! The consensus is that it's an IT band issue. I spoke with my coach this afternoon and she told me that my mean/max chart for the race showed higher power across all durations than I've shown in the last 90 days. She thinks, and I agree, that I just pushed harder than I've pushed in the past. A big chunk of the reason that I did is that the backlight on my Garmin was off to conserve the charge, so I just raced by RPE, and my RPE was skewed by having had a good taper so pushing, say, 200 watts felt easier than usual. It was about 1:20 into the race before I could read the Garmin, so while I was in the dark I just raced.

I did an exploratory ride this morning, just a half hour at power levels up to ~400 watts and while I could feel where it hurt Saturday, it wasn't painful. Coach revamped my training schedule this week to include longish rides at endurance pace but no intensity and beaucoup stretching and rolling. CTL has fallen from a high of 85 to 78 and we need to reverse that dip.

I was honestly concerned that I had hit my best lifetime power last year for Lotoja and that I'd never approach that again due to age. I'm just about there again and it's only March. I need to stop taking counsel of my fears.

Heathpack 

revchuck 

@Heathpack - I'm envious of the Maui trip!

Ttoc6

We have one powerrack at my gym which I use for squatting ocassionally but I'm usually just squatting in a proper squat rack. Always have the safety bars to catch me. The tweak came from just doing too much late on a box-squat where I couln't get up and had to do weird thing to get out of the lift. If you're talking about bench press. Nah, The fear of death is enough to motivate me.

I learned power clean in High school, then forgot how to do it. I've been reteaching myself recently. I'm probably doing them pretty poorly, but truth is, it turns into a motivated front squat for me.

This is awesome. I don't do much unilateral work. When I was in PT I was doing a bunch of singleleg stuff to re build strength in a damaged part of my body. I focus mainly on the bigger compound lifts cuz they're good for general strength.

Ttoc6

@Hermes.. I just finished reading up that document. Some really fun stuff to think about. Man.. do I miss track racing. I'm gonna have to try to get out to watch one of the evening of races at the San diego velodrome if I can while I'm in town.

topflightpro

Wasn't paying attention while on the leg press today and didn't realize I hadn't engaged the lock bars when finishing up my set. Press came all the way down on me. Couldn't have been a huge mistake, but I was lucky there wasn't much weight on there since I'm on a rest week.

Also, I'm not sure what the deal is, but whenever I do leg press, it always seems to irritate the skin along the back side of my waist. It ends up feeling like very dry skin the rest of the day.

Hermes

When are you coming and where are you staying i.e. location. The reason I ask is I am a member of two gyms and may be able to arrange a pass. One is located in La Jolla and the other is in Carlsbad. Message me if you are interested.

Hermes

TheKillerPenguin

Back at race weight and mftp is still at all time high which pegs me at my best w/kg ever. Trying out ftp work at the mftp number tomorrow to confirm it's reasonably accurate.

TheKillerPenguin

That link is awesome! Thanks for posting it.

Hermes

Glad you liked it. I am trying to visualize a monkey humping a tennis ball. Hopefully, I am more stylish than that.

TMonk

Boss let me come in late, 4 hrs, 1x15' at 100% and 1x10' at 102% before the Tuesday morning Fiesta Island paceline ride, which I smashed. Spent most of the second half trading pulls w Thurlow slightly OTF.\

Tomorrow off,
Thursday openers AM and commuting PM (2 hrs total)
F/S/Su: San Dimas Stage Race!!! I'm excited and I feel like I have enough fitness to be a contender in the road race for once. Looking forward to it.

Hermes

aaronmcd

I meant cuz you said you got worried on bench press, do you not use the safeties when you bench press? I'd be scared of death also if I benched without safeties! Squatting also. I mean, squatting was pretty scary even with safeties until I failed a rep and just set it down like nothing lol.

Maui is awesome, we have been 3 times. First 2 times I rode Haleakala, last time we did a bunch of hiking as we drove and camped around the island in one of those jeeps with the tent on the roof. It was crazy fun. Except the night I had to exorcise a giant 6" long centipede from the tent, bury it, throw a rock on it, stomp it several times and hope the ghost didn't come back for us.

Haleakala - I was fit the first time, moderately fit the second time. The ride isn't really that long (only ~80 miles round trip from Paia), and both times I was sure I could hold tempo for the measly 4 hours. Unfortunately, around the 2.5 hour/7000 feet mark there's suddenly not enough air. Combination of elevation and just steady hard pace for so long. The last couple thousand feet are bad, but the decent can be really fun when it isn't cloudy or rainy.

Hermes

furiousferret

Nice name drop! It does feel pretty good being able to hang with the local elites. I wouldn't know, just a guess.

Although I did once have a 5 second stare down with Ice Cube. This is NWA Ice Cube and not Barbershop Ice Cube, so pretty legit right there.

caloso

Went out to do 2x20' FTP at lunch and was really dreading it but managed to hit the target on both intervals and it feels awesome.

aaronmcd

Went out this morning hoping I didn't screw myself by riding too much on Sunday. I definitely screwed myself. Was planning 6x8 w/ 2' rbi. 6 minutes into the first effort I couldn't keep the power. Thought I could maybe get a few 6' efforts but the next one was 20 watts lower 2 minutes in.

What do you guys who ride with plans do when you are way off? Power through at watts minus 30? Abandon, skip, and go to the next one as planned? Or try and shift forward a day and rework the schedule?