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But after Saturday being a big smashfest, with a TSS of almost 300, Leigh decided we could go for a similar effort the following day. The plan was 80km (60 for us, as it"s 10km to his place from here) and 1800 vertical meters - it didn"t entirely work out that way.

You see, with my legs already being smashed from the day before, climbing 450 meter individual climbs really added to the fatigue. The trip looked a little something like this:

Yeah, it turned out to be 2100m over 65km, and boy was it a long day. By the final climb up Mt Dandenong I simply couldn"t turn my legs over to get up the wet tree roots, so was relegated to walking.

So that was our last-minute training for the 2009 MTBA Marathon Championships to be held in Bendigo this weekend. Of course, there"s still crits tonight, for which I"m seriously putting on mud tyres for, but then it"ll be all rest until Sunday morning - 105km and 2375 vertical meters. Aiming for a top 5 in Open Men. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38442 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38442
But that"s all pretty normal of a Dirt Riders Winter Series race, or any at Beaconsfield for that matter. Other common themes of late are club races with small turnouts - 50 of us showing up to race today, with pretty much every A grader either on their way back from Timor, or tapering for the World Championships next week.

The result was only two A graders showing up to race, so they decided to start both B grade and A grade together. Hearing that, I decided to have a little fun - you see, my race starts are, I think I can reasonably say, pretty good. Good enough that on the starts (but starts only), I actually reckon I can hold my own - in the last six XCO races I"ve done, all of them have had me first into the first corner. So rather than letting Peter ride off the front and leave the rest of the bunch a long way behind catching up, I thought I"d have a bit of fun, and keep the bunch together - at least for the first km or so until we got to the fire-trail climb.



And it worked out just as planned - holeshot to the first corner, the pace pretty high. Of course, as I knew would be the case, when we got to the climb that needed the strong legs I simply haven"t had for the past 12 months, I yielded the track to let riders through. Unfortunately in the next section of singletrack a very large stray stick found my rear wheel, so I had to stop for some quick bike surgery - enough time that about seven more riders went through. It was only later after looking at the results I realied that this was the remainder of the field.

Throughout the race I then slowly picked off riders one by one, making up all those places I lost. Lap times were super consistent - in fact, all but my last (which was 20 seconds quicker) were within 8 seconds. Each lap I generally had someone within sight, so I had a pretty good reference as to whether I was making up time and how much time there was to make up.

The final laps saw me catch and pass Craig Cummings, but on the final lap he just kept himself pinned to my rear wheel, however I knew I"d make up some time on certain sections that I"d seen him walk on previous laps and that I had ridden flawlessly. I was a bit thrown though this time when both of them he rode, so rather than me making up a big gap, he was still there, putting on the pressure... but breathing heavily, which gave me a good cue to know I wasn"t making it easy. That left him with nothing left on the final uphill sprint finish, where I just pinned it - and pushed my HR through the roof, which took a while to recover from :D

So while it seemed like I was passing about 2 riders per lap (except towards the end where there were a few more), I lost count, but managed to finish up inside the top 10 - all up though, I"m happy with both the recovery and the consistency in the laps. I might skip the next round though and get in some decent training for the Marathon Champs. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38441 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38441
Leigh baby-sitting his two kids who were still rolling around after the kids race meant I was effectively nominated for the start. Well back in the field though meant quite a slow first lap, mostly caught in traffic - a good 4 minutes off the pace Leigh would go and set on his first time out.

That remained a similar story for most of the race - both of us setting seriously consistent times until I started to fatigue on my fifth lap. It wasn"t until after the race I let on to Leigh that I"d been out on the KAOS store-ride/smashfest the day before :P

Throughout the day we had a few little battles being fought, the main contenders we were keeping our eyes on to beat being Chris/Brad and Andrew/Dan - typically I"d go out, get passed by one of Andrew/Dan, then Leigh would go out and make up the gap and put them behind us again - rinse and repeat a few times short of the mechanicals they had throughout the day.

The highlight lap for me was my forth. Early in the lap, at the end of the first climb, I caught Sarah and passed her thinking she"d fall back. We chatted for a bit, but then throughout the lap she just matched my pace the whole time - and I was pushing pretty hard at that point. Thoughout the lap I"d keep trying to go quicker and quicker, but the gap remained the same 25 meters or so the entire time.

But anyhow. In the end stayed upright, no blood spilt, and was generally getting quicker over technical terrain that doesn"t suit me at all. Now from somewhere I just have to find two minutes a lap to beat some (any) of Leigh"s lap times :)
Sadly this time there"s no great shots of me - mostly because I piked and took the B lines each lap, photographers opting to stay pointed at the A lines. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38440 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38440
Sadly it remained quite blowy for the start, where we went across the dam wall - it was a task in itself just keeping the bike in a straight line, riding all the way across with a fair amount of lean on the bike. While the first two laps were reasonably uneventful, it did start to spit, but come lap three we were in for the real weather.

With rain coming down hard enough to consider stopping for mud guards at the start of the lap, I left it (a mistake), but opted to come in after lap three. Traction wasn"t actually an issue at all - while it was raining, and on lap four coming down pretty heavily, it was visibility more then concern. When I eventually stop, I was struck with surprise - it was like everyone had gone home. All the equipment, bags, bikes which were across the lawn at the start of the race had disappeared - as had all my stuff. Eventually after an extended stop I got back out on the track - back in to the mud.

Brakes were the particular talking point of the day. You see, in general, people don"t realize that resin brakes disintegrate in the wet. But in this case, even those who did know weren"t bothered enough to change their brake pads - those people, of course, soon found themselves running into trees, of which there are plenty at Lysterfield.

The one particular section of track where I was picking up a lot of time due to good tyre choice (Maxxis ADvantage) had to be taken out as it was just getting chopped up, so that was a bit of a downer. But after that things cleared up, the track went from muddy to tacky, and lap times got quicker again.

All up a reasonably uneventful race, where I finished just on or around the top 10 mark, but finished feeling like I could have done another 6 hours due to the low heart rate through the rain. Of course at that point, I was thinking I"d be up for it all over again in a weeks time... ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38439 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38439






]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38438 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38438
The plan this time out wasn"t anything over the top - just to ride it out for the six hours, and maybe finish top 20. It would also be used to try to pace myself - not go out too hard, don"t blow up, and look after nutrition. That didn"t go too bad, though I did find myself digging a bit too deep in the first lap or two.



By the third lap I founds myself finding a pretty decent pace, pinning it through the berms and physically holding up fine, but the forth lap was a big problem with knee problems creeping in. That lasted a lap or two, but after adjusting my pedalling style slightly I got on with it, albeit a little slower.

Around that time was when a bit of competition kicked in - I found myself basically trading laps and riding the whole time with one other rider, occasionally passing each other through various sections. With two laps to go I had the suspicion it was going to be a race to the finish, so arranged a quick bottle change for the last lap.

That"s about where it all went south. On the final lap I passed him through transition, and picked up the pace a bit through Blair Witch, but he simply just matched everything I put in and kept himself pinned to my rear wheel. I knew he would end up dropping me on the Trig Point climb as he did in the previous lap, so let him through having conceded defeat already, but as soon as I did that my body basically just went "okay, that"s it - you"re done"... and it was a very slow ride from there.

By the time I got to the M2006 course my lap was as at a point where on other laps I"d already be climbing Trig Point - and I was so empty I couldn"t walk the M2006 rock garden or any of Trig Point - in fact, I could barely walk the bike up Trig Point. Basically, I"d completely hunger flat, and put myself further into the ground than I"d ever done before.

Oops.

So yeah. Next enduro is the next round of Chase The Sun, followed by Castlemaine - which happens to be one of only two 6 hours I"ve ever not completed, so the aim is to actually finish this time. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38435 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38435
Unfortunately I didn"t pay perhaps as much attention as I should have to the steam coming off my front disc rotor on Tuesday on the same bike that was to be used today at Beaconsfield, where my 5 lap race came to a very quick conclusion on lap 1 with the absense of brakes. Turns out that horribly loud nouse wasn"t without meaning, and I was riding metal-on-metal around a wet and muddy track involving 125 meters of descending every 4km lap.

So with so many rides cancelled (including yesterday), 7 hours has been all that was managed this week, down on 11 last week and 15 the week before. Next week is the start of "proper" training though, which will be something of a requirement with Chase The Sun now only three weeks away.

Plans for this week:
Westgate XC crit on Thursday;
Casey Fields road crit on Saturday
Harkaway XCO race on Sunday. This time I"m hoping it"s either much drier than the same event last year, or I"m taking a much smaller gear. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38434 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38434
Since March I"ve taken time off the bike and now started working back in to things, but the time out of the saddle certainly has killed my fitness off - and though I"m now putting in plenty of hours at nice easy intensities, nothing is really being done at the high end currently. Helpful if I decide to ride from Melbourne to Canberra, not so useful if I want to do anything longer than a flying 200m.

Last months total riding amounted to 35 hours in the saddle, only 810km; this month, with still 9 days to go, I"m at 37 hours and 910km, and it"s all marked "Prep". July 6th marks the start of my Base 1 block, with only really base training before the first major race - somewhat necessary as I have goals in September, October and January - a bit too spread out to be ideal. For those wondering, the three big events for me will be the 2009 Australian Marathon Championships, the SurfCoast 6 hour, and the Australian Mountain Bike Championships, with everything else being just icing on the cake.

Shortly you"ll see a little report of what we came across yesterday later on, but todays hit out was the first of any real intensity for a while, not helped by the 270km I"d already done throughout the week and not recovered from. Rather than riding the Rock Hop, I decided to ride 45km to Casey Fields, race the crit, then ride to the Rock Hop to finish the day taking photos. Nothing worth really reporting other than that I"m now rather tired ;D

Anyhow - I"ll be trying to get back into a more normal rythym, however more frequent smaller updates will come via twitter.com/tjsr

More soon. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38433 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38433
With a still-sprained wrist from Thursday night expected to make every impact painful, I rocked up thinking I could enter B grade, but getting bumped into A. I wasn"t really bothered since really everyone rides the same grade anyway, and was fully expecting to get re-graded into A by the time I"m back in form around August. But that meant me starting off with the fast guys, so I started off by ensuring I was at the back of the A-graders.

A nice pace was set early on, but 7 weeks of no strengh or intensity made it pretty clear I wasn"t going to be catching anyone through the flats of Kurrajong. It wasn"t helped by my cassette skipping every time I put power down out of the corners. Slowly I went backwards through the field, just trying my best to not hold too many riders up, and using it to work on my new riding style and general technique - not trying to pin every corner certainly paid off.

By about the 20-30 minute mark it was pretty clear the guys I was riding with had already been pushing themselves pretty hard, so there was a lot of me just standing fully upright and coasting - I was in no hurry to pass them back either. Unfortunately it was about then that my first problem hit - a broken chain just before a section where everyone was dismounting to ride up. Out with the chain breaker, snap off the dodgy link, in with a powerlink and off I was again in about 6 minutes.



Once I got going I decided I"d ride up what everyone else was walking - the plan came undone a bit though when I put a wheel wrong, and where I tried to put a foot simply wasn"t there, getting tangled in the bike. After getting going again, at the top I stopped to help a rider who"s brakes were rubbing - turned out his rear caliper was loose. Off again riding slowly as a pair, entering the next boardwalk I"d produce a hatrick of offs - I was right on the edge from the start, and eventually my rear wheel dropped itself off the edge.

It was all pretty uneventful from there though - rode together, picked up another roadie at the top of Cressey so gave a tow to those two riders, and then dropped them down the horribly rutted Lactic. After that it was around the quarry and up Cressey (where we kinda took a wrong turn) - I thought I"d TT it up the climb. About a minute in I realised I didn"t have it in me, sitting at 184bpm and not having even passed the boulder at the 1 minute mark. Clearly fitness still has some way to go.

At top top I sat waiting for the half dozen riders I"d passed at various points, intending to give them a tow back. Unfortunately once we did get onto the fire trail with me in TT mode, the last rider was so stuffed he couldn"t even hold 35km with a tow, so we didn"t pick up any kind of bunch. I"d take off a bit through the singletrack each time just to work on technique, and then stop at the exit for him to join up again.



For a bit of fun I thought it might be neat to stage a photo-finish - the two of us riding as close to side-by-side as possible across the line. Will the finish times reflect it? :) For anyone interested, I"ve uploaded a copy of my GPS data to Garmin Connect at http://connect.garmin.com/activity/4562762

Anyway, I think that straight away about blows my GMBC winter series, but it was certainly fun to get out. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38422 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38422 Ascend (for Mac).

Thursday was a quick hit out at Westgate, though that ended up being a little bit quicker than it probably should have been - with the hardtail not having been ridden since the You Yangs sludgefest, it turns out that despite the fact I"d replaced the chain, cassette and bottom bracket, the brakes had completely had it, making trying to wipe off speed before corners next to impossible, and controling speed through corners unpredictable. Add to that a slow leak which had deflated the front tyre sufficiently by the start of the second race, I opted to pull the pin very early. But at least I got a copy of the course layout :D


Saturday was time to wake up early, though only another dozen people had the same idea. With a very small crowd the track was run in reverse direction - something I"ve been very vocal about taking issue to due to the safety (or lack of) of having a barbed wire fence running 50cm from a bumpy descent where speeds of 50km/h are reached.
Due to the low density though we didn"t have to fly downhill as fast as possible, and the furrows on the climb became excruciatingly painful after about lap four. Adam was opening up about 100-150m per lap on me, and about half that gap was also being opened up behind me to the next rider, so for 40 minute plus a lap I spent time-trialling at 180+/-3bpm.




Unfortunately I didn"t realise that doing a hard effort the day after a crit, having done a crit the day before, would wear me out a bit quicker than the 4 hours I"d intended to be out for. 8am was too early given it was only around 11 degrees, so by 9 I was on the road sans arm warmers.
The last few times out at Lysterfield I"ve been trying to work on the M2006 course - last week it was done on the Anthem, this week on the hardtail, which proved much harder to ride on the final descent. But overall the laps were quicker by about a minute (probably mostly the bike) - the aim over the next few weeks will be to keep chopping seconds.


One thing"s becoming clear is that we"ll need to go back and do some more work on the re-constructed berms, as they"re getting some holes dug into them already.

This coming week is supposed to be a rest week, so I"ll have to see how I organise that, in order to be in the best fitness I can manage before Mt Buller in a fortnight. No National Championships at Stromlo for me, unfortunately. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38415 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38415
Below is where I planned to go.


View Larger Map

Unfortunately my brilliant powers of winging it meant I actually ended up on a route looking more like this:

View Larger Map
To top it off, I discovered that Belgrave-Kallista road is unsealed road, which left a rather long section to be ridden, on a roadie, on loose gravel roads - drifting it sideways any time an oncoming car wanted to pass :P

I"m using this as evidence that I need to hurry up and get myself that Garmin Edge 705. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38366 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38366
The results were certainly positive in contrast to that crit - though it"s clear my fitness has plummetted.

See if you can tell where I completely died in the ass. The graph below shows 10 second hill sprints every 150 seconds.

The main difference in how I did this and how I probably should have was that I was doing 85%MHR as a recovery effort - which should have been down around 70. Oops? :)

Once I got to the top I had to decide whether to tack on to the back of the HCC group that had waited up the top before heading for The Wall - I chose instead to head home, rather than beating myself into the ground again.

Beach Road tomorrow. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38328 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38328
But while in the store I spotted something I"ve been unable to find for 18 months - anyone who"s ridden with me knows I"ve always been extremely happy with Fox Dirtpaw gloves, but have always used either plain black ones, or the "07 Navy/Black ones.

Well, I finally found a pair in my size of the hard-to-get White/green ones, which will be saved for dry races due to them being white:



Sweeeeet :) ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38327 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38327
In general my heart rate is starting to come down to normal levels, though it"s still going off the charts when I so much as lift an arm or stand up, so clearly I"ve still got a while to go before I can get back on the bike. The aim is to ensure my HR comes back down under 60 at all times before I consider getting back into any training - generally it"s been in the mid 70s when sitting down to high 90s when standing up.

I may do a few short rides spinning slowly in about a week, to see how I feel, but most likely it"ll involve no serious intensity at all. As a result of all this I"m completely looking again at how I train, and there"ll be a new plan - if things improve on target, I"ll et a single base cycle and a single build cycle in before Buller, each being around 3 weeks, then giving me another build cycle before Glenorchy.

Fingers crossed I start getting better though. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38326 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38326
Total km covered: 10500km
Total hours riding: 517h
Total hours of competition XC: 120
Total hours of non-competition XC: 46
Total hours of road racing: 11
Number of solo 6 hour enduros: 9
Number of races (not crits): 30
Total number of XC crits: 59
Number of punctures: 8
Number of race wins: 3
Number of podiums: 9 (hopefully these two will stop anyone ever calling me a sandbagger :)
Number of DNFs: 8
Destroyed rear derailleurs: 1
Broken bones: 0 (yay!)
]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38324 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38324
So on Friday I"d had a trip to the doctor and tests done, but the gist of what"s come out of that means "eat more red meat". And dried apricots. Lots of dried apricots. After sitting back and trying to rest over the weekend, thismorning would be used just to gauge how I was feeling. Leaving in 9.5 degree weather meant I had to dig into my already packed luggage for this weekend to find arm warmers, but all up the result? Actually not bad.

I felt a little down on high end power (though I was only spinning in at a low heart rate, so didn"t do much of that), but otherwise I felt pretty good. I figure where I"m lacking is just due to not having put in many ks or much intensity in the last 3 weeks, so that"ll come back - if I look after myself, maybe even in time for the You Yangs round.

By the way, it should be pointed out that while I say "low heart rate", that"s just my estimation. A few weeks ago I lost my chest strap and transmitter while out at a Lysterfield working bee, so I"ve had to fork out $130 for a new one which is in the mail. Doh. ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38315 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38315
Through the technical stuff it wasn"t too bad - in fact I was getting well and truly held up by others through anything windy. But as soon as we got to anything flat or open, especially up the hills, I was just completely dead - being passed like I was sitting still. On the second last lap I managed to drop my chain while avoiding a rider much slower over the new log rollover, and and on the last lap came off in such a way my leg cramped up, and by that point was completely out of energy - my lap time being one that would have put be down the back of C grade.

The result of Thursday was me finishing second last, and getting me just enough points to only drop me from 7th to 10th place in the series - with Paul only a point behind.

I"d already decided I was heading to the doctor the next morning, but this just confirmed it to be necessary - fortunately I walked out of there with some details which had us pretty confident on what the problem is. Sat around in waiting rooms for an eternity before they could take some blood, and I"ll know for certain on Monday what the story is (though we"re already 90% certain). ]]> http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38314 2010-09-08 Sep:09 http://zero.racetime.com.au/?act=show&id=38314