Why did I wait so long to go here?

Fruita....Wow, what a mountain bikers paradise!  I've lived in Colorado for almost 5 years now and I had never made it out to Fruita until last weekend.  I can't believe how good the mountain biking is, and it is only 4 hours from Denver.

Team Adrenalin/EPC went out for a mountain bike training camp last weekend to hone our skills before the race season starts in Las Vegas next week.  The riding in Fruita is quite a bit different than the Front range.  I would say that there is less climbing to be done in Fruita, although I'm sure you can find it.  There are areas that are like Moab, with rocky, technical ledges, and then there is lots of fun flowing singletrack all over the place that is super fun to session. 

Friday we went out to the western rim trail.  Much of the trail looks out over the Colorado river and runs along the rim, above it, hence the name.  The scenery out here is beautiful.  I have always enjoyed the southwestern landscape, with the red rock and buttes and dramatic cliffs, all dotted by low bush and scrub.  When you add in the greenish Colorado river below, I'm not sure you can ask for much more.

Jaime riding up the ridge

On Saturday we met up with Lee McCormack who is the guru when it comes to teaching people how to really ride a bike.  We dialed in our new skills at the Fruita bike park, had some lunch, then headed out to the trails at 18 road for some seriously fun single track.  We rode up Prime Cut, then rode down Joe's Ridge, then back up the dirt road and did two laps on Kessel Run.  Here's a video of Joe's Ridge to give you an idea of just how much fun it is.

I could have sessioned these trails for many more hours, but we had to get back to town for a cookout, which was a great time.  It was fun to sit around a fire and talk about what we learned and our upcoming race season. 

The next morning we got up, got a quick ride in and headed back home to Denver.  All in all it was a great trip.  Jaime and I both learned a lot of skills.  Jaime had her first real mountain bike crashes, which is good because you've got to learn that falls don't really hurt that bad.  Although she did taco her front wheel pretty good!

I can't wait to get back here to ride some more.  In the meantime it is one more week of race prep training, then a taper week and then the Xterra West Championships!

Happy trails!

NS

Corrective Actions Taken

Last week was a tough one…  Last week was the second week in a tough 3 week block that is a key block in getting ready for Las Vegas.  The first week of the block was executed perfectly – or so I thought.  Little did I know that during this whole week the train was going off the track little by little.  I nailed all of my key workouts, culminating with the biggest day of the year so far on Saturday March 3.  Cody, Chris and I started the day with masters swim at 6:30, joined by Jaime and Kathy.  Then the three of us rode down to do the hour of power rides at 9 and 10 with some other EPC’ers.  These are fast group rides with quite a lot of race efforts in them.   After about 3.5 hours in the saddle fighting the wind, we ran for an hour through Bear Creek Park with some hard 6 minute efforts.  I made it through the day, but it took its toll.

I felt fine on Sunday, getting a 4km swim in and then on Monday I nailed my hard hill run.  Tuesday is when the wheels sort of came off.  I just had no energy, so I skipped my AM swim and barely made it through the trainer class Tuesday night.   I didn’t sleep will Sunday or Monday night, so that didn’t help.  The bigger problem, I think, was a macronutrient deficiency.  The great thing about the Paleo diet is that you are eating food that your body has evolved to eat.  That naturally means it is higher in protein and healthy fats due to a caveman’s tendency to hunt and kill animals as opposed to grow crops.  It also means that it is naturally lower in carbohydrates than the typical American diet.  This generally is a healthier approach.  However for an endurance athlete it means you have to make a concerted effort to get, natural, minimally processed carbohydrates into your diet.

When I went back and analyzed my diet, I had been getting about 0.6 gram/kg of protein, 1 gram/kg of fat and about 3-3.5 grams/kg of carbohydrate.  At a minimum I should be getting 5-7 grams/kg of carbohydrates every day and 10-12 grams/kg on big days like Saturday. 

The net result of all of this is that I had to take Wednesday completely off, only do an easy spin on Thursday, and an easy strength session and stretch cords on Friday.  I was back to my normal energy levels on Saturday and was able to hit the masters swim and hour of power ride again.  On Sunday I had a really good race simulating run of 4.3 miles averaging 6:40/mile. 

Lots of fruits, both fresh and dried (apricots, dates and raisins are best since they usually don’t have sugar added, which would make them definitely not Paleo) are being added back to my diet.  I also started taking First Endurance Optygen which helps with energy among other things.  I have already noticed a difference and I’m going to make sure to monitor things much more closely in terms of my macronutrient balance in addition to the overall caloric intake. 

Paleo diet carbo loading!  Yum!

I’m really looking forward to hard work this week before a recovery week next week.  I always hate missing workouts, but had I pushed through last week there is a good chance I would have ended up in a hole that would have been really difficult to dig out of and may have missed more than 2 key days.  Sometimes you have to listen to your body rather than fight it.

Jaime was also feeling run down, so we are adjusting her program down a bit since she really needs to build her aerobic base more than add intensity.  Broad bases make for higher peaks!  She also needed to be getting more carbs, hence the massive amounts of bananas and other fruits.

Best song this week...well it happened to be on the radio on my way to the first 6:30 masters class.  Jack Johnson's Banana Pancakes came on, which reminded me of Hawaii, which is why I"m working so hard - to make it to the Xterra World Championships in Maui.

The first crack at qualifying is just over 1 month away at the West Championships in Las Vegas.  Jaime is going to race the sprint race for her first tri in 2+ years!  Can't wait to make the trip!  Also on tap is a weekend in Fruita at the end of the month.  I'm very ready to get in some riding on dirt!

Train smart

NS

Phew, we made it through this block

What a solid week!!  Jaime and I just wrapped up our 2nd three week block of training today.  I think we are both very ready for a recovery week to recharge our bodies.  We both had a really solid week, capped off by a nice, relatively speaking, weekend.  In addition to good training sessions, we went to a comedy club in Westminster on Friday night which was a really good time.  Good to get some laughs!

This weekend had a nice long run on Saturday around Bear Creek Lake park, then a long swim at Wheat Ridge Rec Center.  Today we had a nice long ride from Morrison to Golden, 3 trips up lookout mountain, and back to Morrison.  The ride was very well attended by the Adrenalin powered by EPC team with a good combination of various paces.  It was so nice to finally get back outside.  I think I actually got a bit of a sunburn on my face today!  Not positive, but I think I set a PR up lookout on the first trip up.  I'll have to go back through my training logs to find out.

Next week will be a much needed recovery week for Jaime and I.  I'm really looking forward to doing the next round of swim and run fitness tests after some days of light activity and recovery to see where my fitness is at.

It is looking like the plan to qualify for the World Champs at the race in Alabama has had a wrench thrown in.  The Alabama race is now the ITU world championships, so I will now attempt to qualify at the West Championship race in Las Vegas in less than 2 months (yikes!).  Press release here:  http://www.xterraplanet.com/news/press_article.cfm?id=3200 
This is relatively suboptimal, since I'm really just building back the fitness from last year and most of the athletes in the southwestern part of the country are in the middle part of their season.  I will go and do my best and if things work out, great, otherwise, I'm not going to get too worked up over it.

There were 2 great paleo meals that we made this week.  On Saturday night Jaime went out to dinner for a girls night, so I made a grilled flank steak with my favorite rub and sauteed onions, peppers and garlic, with roasted Yam chips.  The key to this steak is the rub.  It is a mixture of cocoa powder, ancho chili powder, garlic powder, cinnamon, salt and pepper.  You can play around with the proportions, but generally speaking I like to go in declining % of the total as ancho, then cocoa, then garlic, cinnamon, salt, pepper.  Rub the steak down, brush with extra virgin olive oil and grill to medium rare.  I prefer to cook the food while listening to my Wilco station on pandora on the TV, but that is your call.  Top the steak with the onions and peppers, serve with the chips on the side.  Delicious!

 The other good paleo meal was sauteed salmon with roasted butternut squash, crispy kale chips, all dressed with a maple sherry vinaigrette.  Kale chips may be my new favorite food.

My favorite workout this week was probably today's ride.  We had a solid group out there today and pushed each other.  Best workout song was Moth by Audioslave, which came on during Wednesday's AeT run (which happened to be one of my best runs of the year).

Keep training hard and don't forget to rest when you body says to.

NS

New stuff is fun!

Last week was a big week for me.  I took the plunge and bought my first new bike since Jaime and I got married 3+ years ago.  It certainly doesn't seem like I've been riding my Specialized S-Works Epic for that long, but it's true.  I went with the Cannondale Flash Carbon 29er 1.  That was definitely the highlight of the week for me, even though the time spent at the shop cost me a run.


The week started off pretty bad training wise, with some stomach problems from some evil non-paleo superbowl food, then we had some visitors, then the night at the shop.  Things got on track Thursday and I pushed it pretty hard through the weekend.  I netted 2 swims, 3 runs and 2 rides, plus one day of weights/core.  Not bad considering I missed 3 days.  Extra recovery isn't necessarily a bad thing though.  Better to be 10% undertrained than 1% overtrained, or so some very smart people have said.

It was another pretty rough weather weekend.  A small, hardy group of 5 joined in on the Saturday run.  We cut it to about 1:15:00 since it was about 7 degrees out when we started.  Snow and cold temps kept the riding inside again, so I had another 3 hour cruise in the living room.  Here's how that went:
 
Description, Time, Watts


Warm up, 10
Spin up 90-120 rpm, 3
easy, 1
Spin up 90-150, rpm 3
easy, 1
Big gear ILT, 7
easy, 1
Easy gear ILT, 6
easy, 2
Standing Climb 50-60 RPM, 15, 210-220
easy, 2
Seated Climb 50-60 RPM, 15, 210-220
easy, 2
Standing Climb 50-60 RPM, 15, 210-220
easy, 2
Seated Climb 50-60 RPM, 15, 210-220
easy, 5
Endurance, 5, 170
Tempo, 10, 200
Sweet Spot, 5, 215
easy, 5
Endurance, 5, 170
Tempo, 10, 200
Sweet Spot, 5, 215
easy, 5
Endurance, 5, 170
Tempo, 10, 200
Sweet Spot, 5, 215
Spin out at 110-120 rpm, 3
Easy, 2

Hopefully I won't have to do that again, but the odds are not in my favor.

Song of the week:  Running up that hill by Placebo.

Goals are Powerful Motivators

Another week is in the books.  Last week was a solid week despite the huge snowstorm last Friday.  I managed to get in 3 swims, 3 runs and 3 rides, along with 2 strength sessions.  The weekend training was where the goals as powerful motivators came into play.  Jaime and I did our long run on the track and treadmill on Saturday for 1.5-1.75 hours, then swam for about an hour.  The next day, we followed it up by riding our trainers for 2-3 hours.  Talk about boring.  If it wasn't for the goal of getting faster and qualifying for worlds, those workouts would have been pretty much impossible for me to mentally get through. 



We finished up the week by going to a friends house for the Superbowl.  Great game, tasty food, but when you don't eat outside of the paleo diet, it really hurts the stomach when you do. 

Best workout song of the week was definitely Renegade by The Styx.  Heard it during Tuesday's trainer class, and it came back on during the long run on Saturday.  Oldie but a goodie!

That's all for now.  Remember, spring will be here soon. 

Good Times, Bad Times...Queue the Zeppelin

Fitness testing....Always an interesting time.  It is a race against yourself.  The results can be motivating whether good or bad, or they can be disappointing.  I ran through both on Saturday.  Jaime and I joined some of our teammates for our first AeT run test of the year. The test basically measures how aerobically fit you are.  Your times/mile should come down as you gain fitness. 

So, the test goes like this:  Warm up for a couple of miles, then run 2-4 miles (25-30 mins depending on your speed) right at your AeT heart rate.  Take your average for the test miles and that is your AeT pace that you can use to establish how fast you should be running depending on the goals of a particular workout.  Last year I tested at around 7:40/mile at roughly this time last year.  This year...8:15.  There is the "bad time" of the weekend.  Clearly it was quite a disappointment, as I feel like I have been running much better in regular training sessions.  I do think my HR monitor was off, but no excuses, there is work to be done.

Next test, later that afternoon was a swim test.  After some warming up and some sets to build up to faster paces, you do a 100M time trial, a 200M time trial, and a 400M time trial, with some easy recovery swimming between the tests.  Thankfully this one went much better with PR's at all distances (1:20, 2:52, 6:03).  Good Times.

While one result was disappointing, and another was the highlight of the week, they both serve as great motivators.  On the one hand it is clear that I have work to do to get my run back to where it should be.  On the other hand, what I am doing swimming is showing some big improvements, which makes me want to keep going to the pool and working hard.

Good time # 2.  Jaime and I went to a paleo dinner party hosted by our teammate Chris and his wife Amy, and also joined by our friends Cody and Kathy.  The food was amazing; butternut squash latkes, curried shrimp and scallops, prosciutto wrapped asparagus and paleo ice cream!  Not a thing made from cows or grains anywhere, and it was delicious.  Definitely the best paleo meal of the week for both of us.

He was there, I saw him...

We finished off the week with what was looking like a great group ride over at Lookout Mountain.  We had about 12-15 people show up, which always makes things more fun.  The weather was warm, but there were some pretty strong winds.  By the time we got to the top of lookout the clouds had rolled in dropping the temperature by what felt like 20 degrees and the wind was just honkin'.  After a really sketchy descent, we all decided to hightail it back to the cars and call it a good day with just one climb.  More good times; Jaime set new power records for every duration between 1 minute and 90 minutes today.  The power agent software tracks all of the data you upload from your powertap and keeps track of your best power for given time periods.  During today's ride she beat every one of those records.  Someone is getting faster...fast!  Good times indeed.

I will start closing my posts with my favorite training song of the week, and if I can find anything motivating, funny, or otherwise interesting I be sure to share it.

Favorite song this week was:  Good Times Bad Times - Led Zeppelin (didn't see that coming?)


Motivating....I don't know, but I want to go ride here in August.  Author Credit: Tom Mozer


CDT behind Alberta Peak near Wolf Creek Pass, Co; http://www.mountainflyermagazine.com/

Where the hell did January go?

Lactate threshold test with coach Cody Waite from EPC Multisport

It is pretty hard to believe that January is already over. Maybe because this January really felt like March or April. Trust me, I'm not complaining. It has been a fun first month of the year. Training kicked back up just after the new year. There were some initial tests to establish how much fitness was lost during the off season, then it was time to build it back up.

Jaime and I have both been having a great time with our team's Tuesday/Thursday trainer workouts. The weekends have been really nice, so we have been outside getting our trail runs in at Bear Creek Park on Saturdays and our long road rides in on Sundays. Even swimming is more fun this year now that we have switched gyms to Wheat Ridge Rec Center. So far we have both had a decent start to the year, so I hope we can keep the momentum going.


 
Right now we are in a recovery week, which worked out well because I had a 2.5 day offsite for work in Vail. Good times were had by all. I got in a half day of skiing with some friends from work, and we all charged pretty hard for about 4 hours. I had some nice spills as I was embarrassingly rusty. I have the slight whiplash to take home as a souvenir. All in all, it was a good time.