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

September 2010

So this was the final month in which I trained hard, and I only resumed training for one race, the Mt. Tamalpais hill climb. I didn't do the Oakland Grand Prix because honestly, I wasn't too enthusiastic about it, partly because most of my competition would be the powerful Juniors!

So this month is pretty self-explanatory, it was mostly training, and towards the end, I started my transition into the Transition period!

August 2010

August was my deadline for a 2000-mile goal. Well actually, the milestone was to be reached before school started, and I completed that goal. As you may have noticed, the colors of August are mostly greens. I took this month very easy to prevent burnout later on in the month, and I was pretty successful with that. Plus I'm remaining in my base period for a couple of more weeks, then after the Mt. Tamalpais climb in September, I'll transition into a more easier workload.

I improved a lot on the flats, but I felt like I ignored climbing and so September I'll do a little more climbing. I also need to work on an efficient crank rotation, and I need to integrate that to my climbing as well.

On another note, August had some great weather, and I had a lot of fun this August. It was great to have more riding partners, 2 to be exact, so that there's less boredom in riding. I'm not saying riding is boring in general, but It does get kind of boring when there's no one to talk to.

Anyways all I can see in September is regular riding, with a few training workouts next week since Mt. Tam is coming around the corner.

July 2010

July was a great month! Most of the days were spent doing high-intensity workouts on the bike to better prepare me for criteriums and intense situations during road races. I also experienced my first criterium (July 18th) which didn't go to well, but was still pretty fun

I spent 56 and a half hours on the bike and did 859.16 miles. I think this is good enough for just a CAT5 racer, plus most of my workouts were based on time, and I didn't care too much about the distance. When I return to my base period, I'll pay attention to both distance and time.

So this is the first time I'm going to post my log up on blogger, the colors mean the difficulty (green easy, red hard, blue race) and some of those codes are my workout abbreviations but that's not too important unless someone is dying to know, I'll post my personal key up.

For August, I'm going to spend the first week on a easy pace climbing, and next week I'll be doing the last of my intervals on flat roads. After that, school starts and I'll be riding more base miles. My next races are in September, I believe I have two or three depending if one of them gets cancelled.

June 2010

June was the end of my peak period because the races are starting to settle down. I kind of peaked for no reason since I didn't really do any races, but the purpose of this peak was to get muscular, anaerobic, and general endurance at peak, of course.

My endurance is getting great. My 45 mile rides to Woodside and back can now be generalized as an "easy day" if I need one if I've been working too hard. I don't get too tired as much as before either.

The middle of June, I focused on climbing. I visited the San Bruno mountains nearly every day for the 2nd and half of the third week. My climbing should be improving as well.

I didn't know the Oakland Criterium would be cancelled, but the end of June I focused primarily on Sprint power and flat force. This includes power workouts, force workouts, and of course muscular endurance workouts.

And the very end of june, Kenneth and I did a century! June was a good month!

I also now have a new training partner, along with Kenneth. Nolan, an experienced runner, will now be joining Kenneth and I on a lot of our rides now. In the very future, I hope to see all three of us at a race.