End of the Year!

Today completes the end of my 2nd year of Road riding, and my 1st year of racing. As far as racing goes, I only did 5 races, but I still call it a year of racing. But for 2011, it will be a COMPLETE year of racing. I like to think of this year as a beta year, or and introductory year. For 2011, it's time to get into the game, or rather, shift into full gear.

2010 was also my first complete year of riding, with a road bike. I did get my road bike in 2009 (April), but my riding wasn't as serious as the riding this year.

Also, 3 quarters of the year were completed without a training plan or training structure, and the last quarter was done with a training plan that was largely ignored, however the new training plan which started 12/6 has been followed and will be continued to be followed hopefully throughout 2011.

I also met a whole bunch of new riders, including a large batch of Junior riders. It was nice having more people and more new people on rides because it's a great way to see your ability compared to others. It's also a great way to exercise social skills and communication.

While I can say this year went great, there were a lot of things that held me back, which I will try to avoid in 2011. Social Life will have to be replaced with more Academic work in order to make room for training, and a relationship, which is unnecessary, will be impossible to squeeze into the schedule, which won't be too much of a problem until September when college comes.

2011 will be my 2nd but last year as racing Juniors, but I don't mind too much since I'll be racing in the Elites for most of 2011, especially since the current Juniors (17-18) have too much more experience than me. But that still doesn't hold me back.

But anyway, have a happy new year, and have a great 2011!

A New Way of Training

Hello! Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas!

I'd just like to say that I'm now able to further share my training information with the use of Strava and GarminConnect. I'll be posting some meaningful rides using those sites and softwares.

Now that I have my hands on a Garmin Edge 500, I'll be able to monitor Heart Rate which means a little more accurate calorie counting and training zones. I'll also be able to find out Elevation gain.

Thanks to this, it will add more resources to training and better logging of information. Hopefully in the near future I can get the final piece of the training tool; the power meter.

On another note, I have a flat tire and I don't know If I'm going to purchase a new one or try to patch the tire up, but It did give me a 2:30:00 deficit which means my hours that I need to reach are 5:24:00 by tomorrow, but I'm not going to push myself to reach that because of San Bruno's race. I have a 17 Hour annual surplus anyways.

December 13- December 19 Training

(Click the picture to view full size)

This week was a little different because most of my workouts was done on a trainer. With the aid of youtube and unwatched DVDs, I was able to ride for a more prolonged time than I normally do. Usually I call it quits at around an hour because of the boredom, but lately I've been able to survive two hour rides without going crazy from the boredom.

So my trainer days were Tuesday and Friday to Sunday. On Tuesday I did a Max Cadence drill as well as Isolated Leg spinning. On Wednesday I went up San Bruno Mountain and saw Nolan on the way there, so we went up together at a high effort pace, which was a great wake-up call for the race, which is in about two weeks. On Thursday, I went at a relaxed effort to stay in aerobic level. Friday to Sunday consisted of Aerobic Endurance maintenance on the Trainer. I went over my goal of 10:30 by 10:42 which I was happy with.

BTW, my Cyclometer has been malfunctioning, and I've been relying on my SportsTracker GPS app on my phone, which is pretty accurate since it came up with consistent data compared with my cyclometer. I don't know IF I'll get a replacement anytime soon, but I've been using the stopwatch as a timer to time my workouts so I think it's okay.

That explains why my Cadence, Average Speed, and Distance has been missing.

If I had to guess I'm pretty sure that my Distance for the two hour trainer rides would be about 32 miles each, and the one hour ones at about 15.5 miles.

Happy Holidays!

Total Time: 10:42:22

Total Distance: ~155 Miles

Officially a Peninsula Velo Rider!

I'm officially in the Peninsula Velo Cycling club/team for the 2011 cycling season, and hopefully for many years to come. I decided to choose Penvelo, despite the lack of juniors (except now, there's 4 Juniors on the team now) because of all the friendly people I've met, and to represent the San Mateo County in the races to come. I'm planning on joining the Performance Team to further enhance my riding skills and my racing skills.

Weekly Report 12/6 - 12/12

So week 1 of my Base Period is over, and I have 11 long weeks to train for the build period. This week's workload was a lot for Base 1, which means I have to lower the intensity during my rides a little. This might also mean that I might have to omit the PenVelo rides for a while, or at least do them every other week. Other than that, i missed my time goal by 51 Seconds!

Now that vacation is coming up, in the next few weeks I'll be visiting Woodside's two popular climbs, King's Mountain and Old La Honda to prepare for the San Bruno Hill Climb. That means I can start doing rides in the early morning!

Don't forget, I have a key that says what the colors mean!

Note: I don't have a scale I can weigh myself at the moment AND on Sunday's ride, my computer died so I used my Phone's GPS Tracker, and it counts stoplights and stop signs which adds "0" or ridiculously low speeds like 2mph to the average speed.

2011 Racing Schedule

These are the races that I'm planning to compete at, for 2011:

January

January 1 - San Bruno Hill Climb (Brisbane, CA), Road Race ; B Priority

January 23 - Early Bird Criterium (Fremont, CA), Skills Clinic

January 30 - Early Bird Criterium (Fremont, CA), Skills Clinic

February

February 5 - Ronde de Brisbeen (Brisbane CA), Criterium ; C Priority

February 13- Early Bird Criterium (Fremont CA) Criterium ; C Priority

March

March 13 - Menlo Park Grand Prix (Menlo Park, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

March 20 - Salinas Junior Criterium (Salinas, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

April

April 3 - Apple Pie Criterium (Santa Rosa, CA) Criterium ; B Priority

April 14 - Sea Otter Classic (Monterey, CA) Road Race or Criterium ; B Priority

April 17 - Santa Cruz Classic (Santa Cruz, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

May

May 8 - Berkeley Hills Road Race (Orinda, CA) Road Race ; B Priority

May 14 - Mike's Bike's Cat's Hill Classic (Los Gatos, CA) Criterium ; B Priority

May 22 - Panoche Valley Road Race (Panoche, CA) Road Race ; A Priority

May 28 - Hammer Nutrition Criterium (Pleasanton, CA) Criterium ; A Priority

May 29 - Mt. Hamilton Road Race (San Jose, CA) Road Race ; B Priority

May 30 - Memorial Day Criterium (Morgan Hill, CA) Criterium ; B Priority

June

June 5 - Dunlap Memorial Time Trial (Davis, CA) Time Trial ; A Priority

June 11 - Mt. Diablo Hill Climb (Walnut Creek, CA) Road Race ; B Priority

June 18 - Pescadero Coastal Classic (Pescadero, CA) Road Race ; B Priority

June 26 - Burlingame Criterium (Burlingame, CA) Criterium ; B Priority

July

July 14 - Nocturne Grand Prix Series #1 (Fremont, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

July 16 - Berkeley Bike Club Criterium (Albany, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

July 21 - Nocturne Grand Prix Series #2 (Fremont, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

July 29 - Nocturne Grand Prix Series #3 (Fremont, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

August

August 5 - Fast and Furious Criterium (Pleasanton, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

August 20 - University Road Race (Santa Cruz , CA) Road Race ; B Priority

September

September 4 - Giro D San Francisco (San Francisco, CA) Criterium ; B Priority

September 9 - Mt. Tamalpais Hill Climb (Stinson Beach, CA) Road Race ; B Priority

September 24 - Oakland Grand Prix (Oakland, CA) Criterium ; C Priority

Visit Northern California's Cycling Association: ncnca.org for a complete list of races across the NorCal district

Getting Back Into the Training Season!

That's right, starting Monday, December 6, my official training season will start. Of course, the hardcore training workouts don't start until March-April, but this is still the time where I completely overhaul my diet and my schedule. Of course, I'll be starting the Base 1 Period, which is pretty much like what I've been doing for the past month. That is, I'll continue cross-training through running and strength workouts, but I'll have minimum weekly hours.

On another note, I sent my application to join the Peninsula Velo Bicycle Club. I'll also be doing the San Bruno Hill Climb race. I've been very happy with some of the times I've been getting during regular rides, but I need to do at least 3 race effort trials before the actual race. This race is pretty important to me, because San Bruno Mountain is pretty much my training mountain and I think it's necessary for me to do okay! I'm going to post up my schedules and season goals as well.