January 2011 Summary

(Click the picture to see enlarged)

It wasn't a typical January, that's for sure. The great weather helped me yield 23/31 days of cycling. Base 2 dominated most of the month as well.

I feel like my speed skills have drastically improved, I feel comfortable spinning in the 52 on grades of up to 3 percent, and spinning in the 39 is comfortable if I really feel like pounding it. That being said, the 30t (which will go away pretty soon) is definitely easy to maintain RPMs of 90-100 on even hills greater than 10 percent.

It was also the first full month monitoring heart rate, which help change the way I trained a lot. Some of those readings are inaccurate because the HRM jumps up to the 240s when I go downhill or against a headwind, but most are correct.

I started Tempo rides too, which I felt gave some very minor training to Time Trialing skills. I feel my muscular endurance is pretty well too. I'm ready for Base 3, and pretty soon I'll be going into the main training.

The low point of the month would have to be towards the end of the month when I didn't feel too good on the bike itself. I also went a little too hard sometimes which may have compromised the strict Base I've been training it.

Coincidentally, the High point of the month is towards the beginning, when I met a bunch of other PenVelo riders, went to their meetings, and just in general started the season again. Of course, I can't leave out my biggest accomplishment yet, winning my first race at the San Bruno Hill Climb on New Years' Morning. That will be one experience I will never forget.

Here are the stats:

Total Distance: 681.8 miles

Total Time: 46:53:32 hours

Total Calories Burned: 23874 calories

January 24 - January 30 Training

(Click the image to view it full size)

This was week 8 of the training year. This upcoming week is the last week of Base 2. I have 6 more weeks until the whole Base period ends. I also have races the following next two weeks, both of which are "C" priority races.

This week started off alright. I skipped Tuesday's ride to hang out with friends, I actually don't regret it because towards the end of the week my body was so fatigued. On Wednesday I did a tempo ride for 30mintues at Canada Road since we had school off. Thursday was a regular Aerobic Ride, followed by a recovery ride on Friday. Saturday I opted to do the PenVelo ride. I joined Milaud and Alex, and also Alberto who drove all the way from the East Bay! Towards the middle of the ride, I started to feel very tired. I don't know if it was a physical response, or just my mental response telling me that I shouldn't be going so hard at this time of the year, whatever the cause, I wasn't riding as strong as I usually do. I actually regret going on, and I wish I could've stayed with Milaud and ride back, but I felt that I needed to stay because Alberto drove all the way from the East Bay, and Alex was on his new bike. And in the end, I got dropped on Canada Road after the 280 underpass, arriving ~10 mintues after. But Alex, Alberto and I had a nice chat about cycling in the end. And then on Sunday, I did a super easy ride, but I still had lots of fatigue.

I only ended up missing this week's hours by 1:26:00, which isn't bad since I skipped Tuesday.

Ronde Van Brisbeen is on Saturday, and I don't want to feel too fatigued again, so I'm going to only do 1 Tempo Ride @ 40minutes, and take the rest of the week easy.

Total Time: 11:04:40 hours

Total Distance: 169.32 miles

January 17 - January 23 Training

(CLICK to see it enlarged)

So this was the 2nd week in Base 2, but not much progress has been made. For instance, my Tempo workouts are still at 25 minutes. By the end of Base 2, (2 Weeks) I'm planning for 45-50 minutes in Tempo, and by the end of Base 3, a little more than an hour in Tempo. That being said, I have to make sure my progress is consistent by not overloading but planning well.

This week went well because of the weather. It was dry and clear for the whole week with temperatures reaching up to 76 degrees in some parts during the weekend. Most of my rides during the weekdays were just regular Aerobic Endurance rides because on Sunday I really wasn't sure If I can manage 14:30 hours with Aerobic, Speed Skills, and Tempo workouts so I put Aerobic workouts in the weekdays as well as multiple Speed Skills (mostly Max Cadence) workouts. Then the weekends were just long Aerobic Endurance Rides, ending the week with a 25min Tempo Cruise.

Speaking about Speed Skills, I'm really happy with the way my pedaling economy has been turning out. I've been riding flats and some downslopes with a cadence of about 100-115 RPM or even more. I also find my climbing cadence to be around 90-100 RPM when I'm not going too easy.

Kenneth and I also officially began our Senior Project by being Mentored for about an hour by our mentor, (Mr.) Raymond Gildea. He gave us a whole bunch of information, some I knew, some I didn't, to get us to think about training. Along with that, we also bumped into (Mr.) Clark Natwick who coaches the PenVelo Performance team, where we got additional information.

If you really want to know, our Senior Project is about Cycling For Awareness and for me, my report will be about how Cyclist's spread Awareness for Various Issues, mostly Health Issues. My argument will be that it is an effective way of spreading awareness and I'm also going to talk about Lance Armstrong and his incident with Team Radioshack and the Tour de France last July. For volunteering, I plan to help out at the "Beat the Clock to Beat Cancer" low-Key time trial series.

That's about all. I didn't really have a low point of the week, except having to take Friday off, but I'm actually glad I got to spend time with friends and I don't regret it at all. My high-point was Thursday when I was doing my Speed Skills workout and I was impressed at how my pedaling technique improved.

Total Distance: 198.86 Miles

Total Time: 13:43:34

January 10 - January 16 Training

(Click the image to see it full-size)

At this time of year, "training" is a bit of an overstatement. Joe Friel calls it "training to train" which other cyclists call it as well. But this is the first week of the Base 2 period. Some cyclists break their Base Periods and others don't. I'm trying to maximize my Base period up to 12 weeks, since my A-Races are in May, which will give me 8 weeks of painful training.

So yeah, my first Base 2 period. I started doing Tempo workouts for 20-25 minutes, and I was really proud of how I could hold on to Zone 3 and feel the workout it did on my muscles. In fact I was so proud of myself, that I had to double check if I did it right. So, I went ahead and did an LTHR test to find my LTHR. I went ahead and did on the training, and I got a really low number of 174 BPM. It might have been because I'm not well rested, it was on the trainer, who knows what, but I was expecting about 15BPM higher, because on the road, 174 BPM doesn't "feel" like the feeling that lactate acid gives you. So I'll have to double check that, but for now, the Garmin does a good job of dividing my zones based on my max heart rate.

So that was pretty much my weekdays. Saturday had the best weather of the year with a max of 69.8 degrees! I was feeling pretty tired so I did a lazy ride around South San Francisco, with hopes of finding one of San Mateo County's unincorporated lands because my Government teacher had told our class about it, and how it had farm animals. Then Sunday I was at a low point because I was bored of all my routes, so I quickly searched up a new one and went down to Mill Valley via Sausalito-Mill Valley Bike trail. I liked it a lot and I have plans going back there.

I also signed up for the Ronde de Van Brisbeen, and I'm going to try to make it to the next few Early Birds. I'm actually hesitating to do them because I really don't want to go anaerobic for more than half an hour, but then again I can get my CAT4 upgrade sooner.

This coming week will be similar, I have 14 and a half hours planned because we have Monday off for Martin Luther King day.

Anyways I had planned 11:30 this week but I was off 1:26. Wednesday was supposed to be a 1:30 ride, but I was concerned if I was training wrong. It's OK though.

Total Distance: 147.29 miles

Total Ride Time: 10:04:18

2011 Training Log KEY/LEGEND

(CLICK to see enlarged)

This is the key for my workouts in my 2011 Training Log. Please note that the ones on the bottom I did not come up with personally. They were taken from Joe Friel's "The Cyclist's Training Bible" workout menu.

January 3 - January 9 : Recovery Week

(Click the picture to view full size)

In order to try to avoid burnout in the Fall, I've reserved every fourth (consecutive) week of the year as a recovery week, where all I do that week is recovery rides and one or two Aerobic rides.

Honestly, I'm not so into recovery rides when I know I don't need them, but I'm playing it safe. They're really boring and slow and it also affect how I ride in traffic. But anyways, this week was the first recovery week of the (training) year. It went well, I did two Aerobic Rides and two extremely boring recovery rides.

The two Aerobic rides were group/partner rides. Monday I rode with Alex and Nolan, while Saturday I rode with Kenneth. On Saturday, both Kenneth and I were rushing to catch up to the PenVelo ride, which resulted in a lack of breakfast aka energy. We were a bit sluggish and we didn't feel to great on the bike because of that, but that happens to everyone!

The recovery rides I don't need to go into too much, I just rode around South San Francisco for an hour or so, and rode the network of flat roads between the cemeteries, Orange Park and San Bruno.

You can find all the GPS data/GarminConnect data of the current month right here

http://connect.garmin.com/explore?owner=dominicbati#owner=dominicbati&sortField=relevance&currentPage=1

Total Distance: 141.82miles

Total Time: 10:08:01

Results

2011 -

4th Wente Vineyards Road Race, Juniors 17-18 4/30/2011

17th Menlo Park Grand Prix, Elite 5 4/23/11

17th Sea Otter Classic Road Race, Elite 5 4/15/11

36th Early Bird Criterium, Elite 5 U30 2/13/11

13th Ronde Van Brisbeen Criterium, Elite 5 2/5/11

1st San Bruno Hill Climb, Juniors 17-18 1/1/11

2010 -

9th 49th Mt. Tamalpais Hill Climb, Juniors 17-18 9/18/10

41st Timpani Criterium, CAT5 8/1/10

DNF Berkeley Bicycle Club Criterium, CAT5 7/18/10

9th Berkeley Bicycle Club Criterium, Juniors 17-18 7/18/10

6th San Bruno Hill Climb, Juniors 10-18 1/1/10

2011 San Bruno Hill Climb Race Report

Ahh the race that started it all. The mountain that started it all. San Bruno Mountain was the reason I got into cycling so much. I had an ambition to be the fastest out of my friends to climb it, because the first time I ascended it I was last with a heavy Ironhorse mountain bike. Last year, I had hopes of winning the race, but the strong field and my lack of experience took that victory away, causing me to place 6th. This year was different.

I woke up at 5:30 AM yet my alarm was set for 6:30AM. I was really excited because this is the first race of the year and I haven't raced since September. So I ate 3 Dinner rolls for breakfast (lol) and drank a cup of my favorite mix of coffee and hazelnut and vanilla creamer. Then I drank a cup of water. As I waited for my mom to get prepared, I loaded my bike and everything I needed into the trunk of our car ('06 Corolla). Since I had my driver's permit I told my mom I would drive to the race, mainly so I can find a good parking space near the race.

When I got there and stepped out of the car, I was already freezing. I was wearing a base layer, my favorite "Philippines" themed jersey, my shorts, and arm and leg warmers. I was afraid that I would need to keep them on the whole race, but when I warmed up I was able to take the arm and leg warmers off, just like last year. My warm up was about 25 minutes, something like 5 minutes in Zone 3, 5 Minutes in Zone 4, 1 Minute in Zone 5, 5 Minutes Zone 3, 5Minutes Zone 4, and 5 minutes zone 2. Then I got off the trainer and rode the loop nearby. I was also able to drink two full bottles of water because last year I was really thirsty and I didn't want to carry too much water (actually Gatorade) this year. I did bring a half-full bottle of gatorade with me.

At 9:50 it was time to line up in our respective categories. Last year, the Juniors started 3rd or 4th, so I went close to the start line but I couldn't find the Juniors sign. When I finally found it, it was the last group in the back. We were about 7 riders strong. We were the last group to start, and we waited about 20-25 mintues after 10:00 to actually start the race. I was getting really cold and started to miss my arm and leg warmers, but I knew that I would heat up during the climb.

According to my Garmin, we started at 10:24. Our field wasn't as threatening as last year, but we were still pretty okay. The first person to blast out of the start line was Alexander Freund from the Davis Bicycle Club. He was the guy I tailed last year, so I considered him a threat. About halfway up the first stretch of Guadelupe, about 4 of us were in the front, I was hoping that someone would take the front so I can get a draft, but even after the first stoplight, no one made a move...so I did. I sped up deliberately just in case someone countered, but I was alone, so i sped up even more and was able to carry it throughout the almost-flat section of Guadelupe and the 2nd Stoplight. For the rest of the race, I was alone at the front and had a huge gap between the other juniors. I was keeping an eye out for Sean Clark who followed a little close, but I lost sight of him halfway up Radio Road.

I slowed down at the steepest point of Radio Road, where I knew I would slow down anyway, but I was still able to keep the lead. At this point I kept looking forward and didn't mind anyone following me. The finish line was a little further away than last year, and i don't know my official time yet. My Garmin timed 18:40, which is 7 seconds slower than last year (which is sort of disappointing) but I'll look at the official results sooner or later. However I managed to take 1st place for the Juniors, which was all I ever wanted anyway, since last year.

I was also glad that I met up with a few friends such as Henry and Richard from bikeforums.net, and also CJ who raced in the CAT5's. It was great to see you guys!

As far as prizes go I got my favorite mint-chocolate Girl scouts cookies, a box of Chocolate brownie-flavored Clif Bars, a seat bag, NHL '10 for the XBOX (the other juniors and I expected this) even though I don't have an XBOX, and a nice medal that says "Peninsula Velo Cycling Club" and "San Bruno Hill Climb" which I love so much because I love San Bruno Mountain so much. I really wanted to win this Hill Climb especially as a Junior, and I was glad I was able to win it as my last year.

By the way, I wish I had raced in the Peninsula Velo kit, but unfortunately, I don't have the money to pay for it yet, but I still represent the PenVelo club!

Happy New Years! Until next time!

(Getting Ready to warm-up)

(Finally going to start!)

(The long-awaited results!)

(The "Podium")

(My jersey, bib #, medal, and prize bag)