Back on the Saddle Again...

The Losing Lance Project 2.0 is moving right along. Week 7 resulted in my smallest weekly weight loss to date, only 1.5 lb. Total loss however is, even if I do say so myself, an impressive 50 lb. The two week Fall Break was challenging. As I mentioned last week, I attended a wedding in Des Moines and this past week there was a trip to Sacramento for a CTA PAC Committee meeting. Food temptations were everywhere. Moreover, all that traveling made sticking to the water intake requirement (120 oz) difficult. Now that I’m back in school and in a regular routine, I’m hoping things will improve. But enough of that, let’s talk about the bike; this is a cycling blog for goodness sake.

As I’ve lost weight I’ve discovered that I have more energy. The problem is that my daily caloric intake is only 400-500 calories. This means that long endurance rides are out of the question. When I started the weight loss program I thought my riding would be doomed. What I’ve discovered is that I can ride for about an hour without the risk of bonking. The first time I rode after starting the program I  did an 80 minute ride and had to sleep the ride off for a couple of hours. So I’m relegated to doing 1 hour rides.

The key to short workouts on the bike is to make them meaningful. Each ride has a goal or a focus. One day it might be improving the pedal stroke, another ride might be interval training another might be climbing repeats; there can even be easy recovery rides, but even those rides have a purpose. The key is to plan.

The goal for the new training regimen is two-fold: 1) Accelerate the weight loss. 2) Increase aerobic conditioning by the time I reach my goal so that I can quickly build endurance for distance riding. I want to return to El Tour de Tucson in November of 2012 and do the full 109 mile ride. For now, I will be laying down the base for that, one hour at a time.


I've decided to share the training plan I'm using for anybody interested in a doable plan with limited time. Click on the Training Schedule tab at the top of the page for more info.

Ride on!

Starting Weight: 344.5
Current Weight: 294.5
Weight Loss to Date: 50

Salvaging my riding year...

After a few posts on Operation Losing Lance, it's time for a post about cycling. For a cycling fan,  July is a  three week Superbowl. It's Tour de France time. Although Lance Armstrong has spent more time than ever asphalt body surfing, July is about a lot more than Lance.  I'm always impressed by how these pro riders get up day after day and ride around the French countryside. Over 2,200 miles up and over the Alps, the Pyrenees and on to the Champs Elysee in Paris. It's truly inspiring.

This year, July has been simultaneously inspiring and frustrating. Not only have I been watching the Tour de France every day, but in June I was able to watch the start of the Race Across America, (RAAM) in which riders race from Oceanside, CA to Annapolis, MD. Oh, and by the way, no stages, you have 10 days to complete the mission. And as if that weren't enough, Molly's colleague, Rocco,  has used his summer break from Palomar College to ride alone across the country. All of this just makes me want to jump on "The Girl" and ride.

The frustration comes from how little I've ridden this year, especially when compared to the last three years.  By this time in each of the last two years I had ridden close to 1,000 miles. Last year, not only had I ridden that many miles, but I had participated in the Tour de Palm Springs, Spring Ensenada-Rosarito, Solvang Half-Century, San Diego Metric Century and the Los Angeles River Ride Century. This year, I've only ridden in the Tour de Palm Springs.



While being involved in union leadership and logging lots of miles on the saddle don't mix well at all, it's time to do something about it. I'm obviously not going to stop teaching. Given the challenges on public education, this is not the time to sit on the sidelines either. So, training needs to be less about accumulating a large number of miles, and more about making every ride count. I can probably ride three maybe 4 times a week. Every ride needs to be either about improving technique, increasing hill-climbing strength, or developing endurance for long rides. The work I'm doing with the personal trainer has really improved my core strength, which has improved to more comfort and strength on the bike. the next few months will be about fewer miles, but more purposeful miles.

I also want to salvage the last part of the riding calendar. I'm committing to riding the September Rosarito-Ensenada ride, the Solvang Prelude in early November as well as my favorite ride of the year, the Tour de Tucson. Having these rides as goals helps me stay on track with training. I will be away next week, in Asilomar, CA for some CTA work. However I will take my bike. I'm hoping to carve out some time and ride the 17 mile Drive. I'll post pics on facebook.


Ride On!

Theme of the Weekend...Climbing

Usually on weekends Coach Sean gives me a goal consisting of saddle time. For this past weekend the order was simple:

Accumulate 4-5 hours of riding this weekend. Divide up the days however you want, but be sure to get in the time. Make one day hilly, the other day flat.

On my last post I wrote about my leg busting Saturday ride. Sunday was supposed to be an easy 2 hour relatively flat ride. Well, Molly wakes up wanting to go for a ride. There is this 3.5 mile loop close to our house that I do when I want to do some long and short hill reps. We did four laps. By the end of the ride, my legs were like spaghetti. I think next time Molly says "lets go for a ride," I'm using the coach's orders as an excuse to not go. In reality the ride was a lot of fun, tough, but fun. I enjoy when we get a chance to ride together.

Climbing was such a part of the cycling weekend that I even got into a conversation about it with a Twitter friend, Darby Collier. It just so happened that he did some climbing on Saturday as well, and his experience prompted him to post a pretty interesting article on the subject on his blog, Darby's Ride. It's titled 5 ways to Improve Climbing. It's great for those of you who might be starting out in cycling or just want a refresher. Check it out!

Ride on!

A good Saturday ride...

32.10 mi in 02:42:19 hours at 11.87 mi/h

Got off to a late start today. Got out of the house expecting a 3 hour ride, so I eased into it as I maneuvered the short hilly rides that take me to one of my hillier routes.

I got over the first big hill on my ride and all of a sudden I feel a squirrelly rear. (The bike's, not mine.) Damn! Flat tire. After cursing a bit, then I realized my luck. I probably got the flat going down a hill at 35 mph. So, I got into my "Mary Poppins" Camelback backpack, pulled out some tire levers a C02 cartridge and a new tube. I was impatient fixing the flat and didn't make sure the tire was properly set on the rim. After I inflated the tire it had a huge bulge, so I had to re-do it. The lack of patience made my stop longer. Anyway, once fixed I got going and hoped for no more flats. I was out of CO2.

The rest of the ride was great. I feel much stronger on the climbs these days. While there are no HUGE hill here, there are a lot of smallish ones, and one in particular long hill that has some very steep sections and false flats. Got through the climbs fairly well. Even had some juice to attack some rolling hills as I got close to home. By the time I was on the home stretch, my legs were complaining. Overall however, I knocked off 10 minutes off this ride from the last time I did it. And to top it all off, I saw the most beautiful sunset. I'll take a picture next time.

Ride on!

The Great March!

I love Spring! I love seeing the explosion of color all around. And I love Daylight Savings Time (DST), when all of a sudden there’s that extra hour of daylight in the afternoon. The teacher part of me that faces a 50 minute commute and has to get up in the dark again isn’t so crazy about it, but the cyclist part of me gets ecstatic. Because of my schedule I’m relegated to riding after school. However when sunset is at 5:30pm or so, it’s difficult to get out of work, take care of issues after work, and then get a ride in before it gets too dark. This means I spend January and February in the gym working on the spin bike and very few miles on the road.

However once DST rolls around, The Girl gets tuned up, the bike rack goes on the PT Cruiser and it’s time to ride! This past March was the month that I logged more miles on the saddle than in any other month in my life. I managed to log 380 miles on the bike. I had a pretty successful Solvang ride, and am feeling pretty good about climbing “El Tigre” on the Rosarito-Ensenada ride on April 16th. For the uninitated, El Tigre is a 2 mile hill that starts at sea level and climbs over 800 feet in just over 2 miles. It's the only real challenge in what is otherwise a breathtakingly beautiful ride.

At this point my goal is to keep the momentum going. While I’ve set a goal of about 300 miles per month for the year, you can see by the chart I fell short in January and February. A few more months of March and I’ll make up the deficit. It has helped that I’ve been on Spring Break however I also have the motivation of a couple of rides that are coming up these next few months: The aforementioned Rosarito-Ensenada in April, the San Diego Century in May and the Los Angeles River Ride in June. The latter will be my first attempt at a full century! I’m feeling confident right now because DST stands for Days on the Saddle Time.

Ride on!

Ride Plan for the week of March 16

Coach Sean’s plan for the week:

Mon: Off Day (I actually did a recovery ride Monday)

Tues: Turned out to be a day off

Wed: A 20-30 minute TT in zones 4 or 5 with a slightly bigger gear than normal.

Thur: Ride in 1-2 zone, mostly 1 zone. Flat course. Low effort--light on pedals.

Fri: Hilly ride long and short hills. Attack short hills. Strong on long hills but no popping.

Normally, Saturday and Sunday are long rides, however my duties as a California Teachers Association State Delegate will prevent me from riding this weekend. On weekends when I have CTA State Council or other conferences, I try to do at least a short ride on a hotel lifecycle.

Moment by moment.

The time I spend riding my bike often serves a similar purpose as meditation. It's a parenthesis of time where the focus is the present moment. Whether I'm going up a hill or working on spinning more smoothly, If I'm doing it right, my thoughts are completely on the pedal stroke at hand, or more precisely, foot. Yet, that constant concentration on the now has a cumulative effect.

There is a ride that I like to do. It starts at my doorstep, it goes to Escondido, just a couple of blocks from where the Tour of California ended and then back home. It's got some rolling hills and some flats. A good all-round 28 mile ride. When I started doing this ride, I used to worry about making sure I saved enough energy to get back home; about getting over the hills that I would reach much later, about the headwind I would undoubtedly encounter on the return leg. All that worry took away from paying attention and ultimately just added time to my ride.

Where in the past I would be concerned about my ultimate average speed and the overall ride, in the last few weeks I've been concentrating on immediate things, things in the moment: cadence and heart rate. All I worry about is that at the present moment I'm producing the highest possible cadence while staying in my Tempo and Sub-threshold workout zones. I don't mind going above those zones during hills or deliberate hard effort sections, but for the most part, I try to keep it tempo. The results? I've been shaving a minute or two from that ride over the last 3 or 4 weeks.

I've heard Mari Holden, former National Time Trial Champion, Olympic silver medalist in the time trial, World Champion and all around cycling babe, talk about staying in the moment. For her, every pedal stroke, every turn, every small rise of the rode was an opportunity to put time on her rivals. But to take advantage of that she had to be present for each of those opportunities. In cycling, as in life, there is no better way to get a favorable result than to focus on the moment at hand.

For now, it was a good week of training, even though I was in San Jose for the weekend. On March 14, I will be doing the Solvang Century, half-century for me. I look forward to reporting back next weekend, hopefully I'll beat my time from last year. Nevertheless I can guarantee that my focus will be heart rate and cadence, because a good ride is built moment by moment.

A good week of training

I had a good training week. After weeks of wishy-washy, more days off the bike than on, and the fact that I struggled a bit with Tour de Palm Springs, this week was hunker down week. Palm Springs was the first ride of my "season" so I don't feel so bad about struggling a bit. With the Solvang Half-Century in March, the Tour of the Tucson Mountains in April, and possibly the San Diego Century in May, I'll be spending a lot of time on the saddle and more time than ever before on climbing. Its time to put serious ass time on the saddle.

This week was all about getting back into a training routine. During the week I did 3 rides, all focused on time trialing and doing cruise reps. My ride today, Saturday, was completely focused on hills. Coach Sean, had me go out and find some 6 minute climbs. My task was to go up but not go above my Zone 5a heart rate. I accomplished that for the most part, but not entirely. Although only about 30 minutes of my almost 3 hour ride was spent abouve that zone. With roughly 1520 feet of climbing, and thankfully about the same in descents, it was a challenge, but it was fun. Training my weaknesses.

This is what my ride looked like today:

The weight loss program also went on hiatus for a few weeks, but I am now back on track. Tracking all of my food through the Livestrong website and their "Daily Plate." Good tools and a very impressive amount of foods listed in their database. I'll report more on that as I become more familiar with it. In any case, I've been keeping track of my food intake all week.

Another bit of fun news, is that the rest of the year I'll be wearing the 53x11Coffee kit on the organized rides I'm participating in. I mentioned this to my students the other day and they thought it was completely appropriate for me to be sponsored by a coffee company that caters to cyclists. I want to extend a big thank you to Evan Laurence at 53x11Coffee.com for agreeing to be a sponsor even though I'm not a racer. My students are also thankful that I will be well caffeinated.