Hello and welcome to my new blog.  No more emails being sent out, so you can check for new posts whenever you feel like it.  I don't have any specific schedule for posting but I will try for roughly 1 post a week.

So now to catch you up on the last two weeks.  I will start with the previous week first.

1 race, no crash, finished in the pack.

Last weekend was the last of the training crit races.  I ended up getting to the course late so I missed the clinic that precedes each race but since they were only practicing group riding skills, I didn't mind.  Besides this gave me the time to have an actual warmup before the race, something that I have been making a bad habit of skipping.  After my warmup I had decided that for this training race I would try to spend as much time as possible on the front of the pack.  I achieved this with only moderate success.

The race started and I promptly shot to the front of the race and set a fast pace.  After spending the whole first lap on the front of the pack I finally pulled off the front and let someone else take a turn on the front.  I was quickly dropped back towards the back of the pack and took a break for the next couple of laps.  I made a couple half-hearted attempts to get back to the front but they were destined to the fail from the start.  On the second to last lap I finally decided that I would have to move up and spent a half lap pushing the pace at the front yet again.  During the last lap I was once again shuffled to the middle of the pack and I didn't contest the sprint finish.  There were no official results for this race but I was happy with my performance and I now know how hard it is to ride at race pace without the aid of drafting.  As a side note I had read once that a rider who is drafting ends up using approximately 25%-30% less energy than someone without the aid of the draft, this I can now confirm is true.

I didn't have much of a chance to train during this past week as I was traveling in Colorado from Monday to Wednesday but I did go for a ride on Friday, and on Saturday I went for a ride up Mt. Diablo.  Saturdays ride was the second of my monthly "fitness tests".  I am glad to report that I am getting stronger.  How much stronger you may ask, well roughly 6% stronger.  Now the next question should be, how do you know you are 6% stronger.  Ok, let me explain.

In December of last year I purchased a wonderful little device called a power meter.  There are many different versions of power meters but the one I purchased is integrated into the cranks/chainrings (the ring that the chain sits on).  Inside this device are 10 tiny strain gauges that measure flex.  When you apply force to the pedals, the metal chainrings actually flex a very minute and consistent amount and the strain gauges measure this, multiply it be how fast you are pedaling, and then convert this into a universal unit of measurement (in the case of cycling, wattage).  To be honest, I am not really sure why they use wattage and as far as I can tell it really has nothing to do with me being a able to run a toaster, light bulb, or microwave for a certain amount of time.  All you need to know is that I measure my fitness in watts and the higher the number I can sustain for a longer period of time, the better I am doing.

In order to get a consistent test of my fitness level I have chosen the ride up Mt Diablo as my testing grounds.  I get a 20 minute warmup ride to the base of mountain and then I start the test.  The test basically boils down to riding as hard as I can for 20 minutes.  With some experience I have figured out when I can push myself and when I need to back off a little.  During this particular test I knew I was doing well when I set a personal record for my time to the kiosk (from 14:40sec to 14:05).  From there I knew I only had a few more minutes of pain and I would be done.  After the ride I downloaded my data(from my nifty bike computer) and sure enough I had increased my functional threshold power from 258 watts to 274 watts (roughly 6% increase).  I will explain functional threshold power in a later post but it is basically the same as average wattage.

That is all for now.  I will try to post a race summary of the Cherry Pie Criterium (that really is the name) in the upcoming days.  A quick teaser.  I didn't crash but I did barely miss a crash where someone's bike broke in half (I believe all parties involved were okay, no major injuries).