January 2 - January 8 Week Report

     I always start my training season the first week of December so that the San Bruno Hill Climb lands on the end of the 4th week, meaning that the first week of January becomes an entire week devoted to Recovery rides. I honestly hate these weeks because they're boring and they give me so much non-cycling free time, but I only do it because I do a little training for the Hill Climb which is not really recommended for December, so I like to think it balances out (even though, in reality, it doesn't really.)

     I don't really have anything to say about the recovery rides themselves. I took a plain, boring route on a bike trail for Monday & Tuesday (The San Andreas/Millbrae Trail) and on Wednesday and Thursday I just rode around South San Francisco and parts of old Daly City. On Friday, I did my loop from Hickey-Westborough, and I had a lot of fun actually. It's a faster route which results in easier spinning and higher RPM's and speed. Oh, and did I mention I'm 1st on the Strava Leaderboards for the red bike lane stretch on Westborough? I had no clue! http://app.strava.com/segments/813210

     Saturday was my most significant day because I did my (Field) Lactate Threshold Heart Rate test. I don't have a power meter (yet?) so I have to rely on this value to set my training zones. I did it at Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park, and did the traditional 20/30min Time Trial. My value was 10 BPM higher than last year's! Last Year's (at this time) was 174, while this time it was 184! And it's pretty accurate as well because an LTHR of 184 typically means a Max HR of 201, and the estimated 220-(age)18=202 gets pretty close (although i'm turning 19 next month). I changed my zones yesterday night and today I cruised comfortably under Zone 2, meaning that my RPE is way more accurate now, considering today was supposed to be a Zone 1 ride.

Total Time: 8:41:40 (hours)
Total Distance: 130.58 (miles)

     Tomorrow I start Base 2, which means a whole lot of new Speed Skills workouts. Can't wait!!

-D

January 24 - January 30 Training

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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

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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

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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

January 3 - January 9 : Recovery Week

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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

December 13- December 19 Training

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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

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.

September 6 - September 12 Training

With Mt. Tamalpais being (now) less than a week away, I have two more days where I need to go very intense in order to prepare myself for the racing intensity again, especially because this is a climbing race. I'll be racing with other Juniors, and because this isn't a criterium, I'm expecting a median place, or the top 50%. If it was a criterium, I would probably be dead last.

So I did a typical 6 week, easy hard pattern day. Monday and Saturday I did Over Unders on San Bruno Mountian's Radio Road. Monday was wet, but Saturday was pretty nice. I noticed that my Lactate Tolerance is very low, meaning when I go hard, my leg fatigues pretty fast. I don't remember being like this before, so I'm assuming I'm out of shape, but tomorrow when I continue the intervals I'm hoping to see a little change, because there's a possibility I could've just been tired or something. On Thursday I did an anaerobic workout in which I did my typical South San Francisco-Brisbane-SSF-Daly City loop, but 3 minutes all-out 5 minutes recovery. I really don't want to overtrain for a race that's not too important (but important enough for me since it's a climbing event). All recovery days were just normal rides in which I looked around. I also want to express my sorrow for those victims of the San Bruno Gas Line fire. I rode around the area a bit, and just thinking about it was very emotional.

On Sunday, i rode to my LBS to get my headset adjusted, and to buy a spare inner tube. Unfortunately, Chance got a flat tire so we rode to Sports Basement, and then Mario, Nolan, and I got picked up by Mario's parents since it was too late to ride home. (6:30pm) This week should be similar, with Mt. Tam at the end of the week. I'm also going to skip Friday to wash my bike or hang out with my friends.

Total Distance: 163.57 miles

Total Ride Time: 11:37:55

Total Elapsed: 13:00:00

August 30 - September 5 Riding

Alright so I finished the last week of August, and the first week of September. This week was alright since I got to do a trip to Woodside on Wednesday, a really random day to go there. After Wednesday, I was getting a little exhausted, I think I was getting a little physical burnout, then it eventually turned into mental burnout. This was evident on Friday, when I was just so bored that I wanted to go home. On Saturday, I took a break because Saturdays are my long rides, and that would have made it even worst. But after learning that the Mt. Tamalpais Hill Climb and the Oakland Grand Prix are to be held the last two weeks of September, I snapped out of it and got back to business.

So I rode with Chance for about 50% of my ride (Sunday), and then just rode around South San Francisco. I got a flat tire when I got home so I guess I'm taking a day off tomorrow and I'll see if I can get that replacement tube soon!

But now that I've decreased workload and volume, I can extend actual "training" for the rest of September, meaning that I'll be doing intervals again, more hard rides, and less group rides, until October!

Total Distance: 125.67 miles

Total Ride Time: 8:41:26

Total Elapsed: 9:20:00

August 23 - 29 Riding

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This week was an example of how school is going to limit my cycling time. It's not only the academics, but the social life too because Friday I was set to do a 40 mile ride, but we had a school rally, and I was just so pumped that I didn't really feel like biking so I went to Wingstop (Chicken Wings restaurant) with 3 other friends, but at least I had fuel for Saturday's ride. But anyways, I do have a weekly minimum of 9 hours so I'm good, but by 5 minutes...

Alright so on Monday it was close to 85 degrees...in South San Francisco! So Kenneth and I biked around South San Francisco, Westborough and Hickey--> El Camino Real, to be exact. It was a fast paced ride and we had some shade for 1/3 of the loop we did. On Tuesday it was even hotter, so I did homework and then rode at around 5:45 and it was great, nice and breezy. I stayed around South San Francisco, around Mission Rd and Chestnut and Commercial and Orange Park. Saturday I did an easy Solo Ride to Woodside, and did a sort of time trial effort, but it was pretty easy and fun. Then Sunday, I did the same route but turned around on the first mile of Canada road to meet up with Mario, Kenneth, Nolan, and Chance, and we rode together back to South San Francisco. Going to Canada, I maintained 19mph for my average speed, the fastest ever, which is the reason I considered it an Intense ride. Plus it was hot!

Total Distance: 142.24 Miles

Total Ride Time: 9:05:23

Total Elapsed Time: 10:00:00

August 16 - August 22 Riding

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Okay so this week went by so slow. I did have time for some rides, but I'm getting scared that I won't be able to do more than two hours each day. I don't know why but some days it takes me over more than an hour and half to do 15 miles, which is why my distance count is so low. I also took a two days off the bike, one was because of the first day of school and second was to bond with some friends.

On Monday I did an easy ride but I forget where I went. I believe I went to San Bruno because I was getting tired of Summer homework. On Wednesday and Thursday Kenneth and I met up to do some sprints with a slow-pace recovery for a very easy effort those days. Saturday I rolled down to Woodside at a pretty fast pace, for over 40 of the miles I maintained a 17mph pace until the hills came. And Sunday I rode with Nolan and Mario to the end of Sawyer camp, going back we "raced" our way back, which was a lot of fun, but drained me out. When I got back to South San Francisco, I did some more miles around Centennial Trail, the school and Chestnut.

Total Distance: 166.85

Total Ride Time: 11:26:01

Total Elapsed: 13:15:00

August 9 - August 15 Riding

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Alright! Another week of cycling finished. This was actually one of my easiest weeks this summer because I was just building up for base miles. I mean, look at all that green! It was a good week also because I took two days off of the bike. Had I not, I would've probably gone about over 200 miles and 15 hours. However, I did complete my 2000-mile summer goal which was good for me!

Alright so Monday I took an easy ride just to get out of the house, Tuesday I decided to visit Old La Honda Road to set a new personal record, which was a success. I got 20:30 which was around 3 minutes faster than my old record. Wednesday and Thursday I went on a vacation with my family to Reno, which was a great refresh. Then Friday I planned to climb up San Bruno Mountain but the gate was closed so I continued into Brisbane and back to South San Francisco. Saturday, the big day, was when me and a few friends climbed Mt. Diablo for the first time! It was a great climb, not too steep, but pretty long! And Sunday I had a reunion ride with Kenneth, who had some off time too for about a week.

Total Distance: 193.39

Total Ride Time: 13:38:29

Total Elapsed: 14:45:00

August 2 - August 8 Riding

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I'm pretty much finished with hard workouts, this upcoming week I'm going to finish off the last of my sprinting and Anaerobic intervals. After that, I'll just be riding easy to moderate base miles and I'm looking forward to the centuries I'll be doing.

This week was relatively easy and was almost like a full recovery week. Most of my rides were done at the San Bruno Mountains with another riding partner, Nolan, except for Thursday when I re-visited polo fields and golden gate park as well as Lake Merced, and Friday where Nolan and I rode to Woodside and back at an easy pace.

Saturday I rode with the big boys of our school's cross country team. They did a fairly good job keeping up at a pretty brisk pace, which I expected, since they do have a long history of aerobic workloads. Then we visited a little of the Brisbane hills and rode back into South San Francisco via Centennial Trail.

Sunday was a lot like Saturday except instead of finishing Radio Road we went into the winding and steep hills of Brisbane. It reminded me of European mountains because the roads were so tight and there were houses on the side. Only thing was, it was a bit steeper but very short.

Overall, I had a good easy week and I needed it after all the harder workouts done the month before.

Total Distance: 196.76 Miles

Total Ride Time: 14:16:48

Total Elapsed: 16:00:00

Until Next time, DB

Training Report 6/7-6/13

So my Training weeks will always start on a Monday, just to accomodate with school schedule, and it will end on Sundays of course.

So Monday and Tuesday, 6/7 and 6/8, were off days. Monday was intended to be a rest day, while Tuesday I had poll work.

Wednesday was the official start of the week (for this week) and I kicked it off by riding with Kenneth. When I met with him he had already started riding, but he and I continued to do Sprint Intervals on Callan, Southbound Sprint and Northbound recovery. Then we moved over to Gellert Boulevard for a more challenging sprint as the road there has some uphill resistance, Southbound. Kenneth finished early then I continued to South San Francisco's bart trails to close my ride up at around 30 Miles.

Thursday I took a Moderate-Hard pace to King's Mountain to do some climbing. I did the climb at about 32 minutes. My goal for this year is to get a 25 mintue climb on King's Mountain. During the climb, I realized my legs were out of shape for climbing, so I have to focus on climbing for the weeks to come.

Friday I was tired so I took an easy recovery ride via San mateo, on the Crystal Springs trails. The weather was great and it felt better with the loads of scenery.

Saturday I went back to Canada Road at a Moderate Pace, doing about 45 miles.

Sunday I had the opportunity to go back to Canada Road, but unlike Saturday I was able to go all the way to the town of Woodside.

This week was productive on the bike I'm too lazy to post the actual data, but I did about 195miles, 13hours.