Wednesday, February 10, 2016

ITI training, week 17

Monday: Road bike, 2:46, 33.8 miles, 3,620 feet climbing. I was back at sea level and beginning to come around from my cold, so I decided to aim for 20 to 25 hours of saddle time as a "peak" week of endurance training, three weeks before the start of the ITI. On Monday I rode Highway 9 to Page Mill, a quick but tough route that helped me clear out what I hoped was the last of the sinus gunk.

Tuesday: Weight lifting at the gym, followed by a trail run, 55:12, 5.4 miles, 887 feet climbing. I did three sets, 12 exercises, 12 reps, managing better with the extra weights I added last week. The trail run was uneventful. I descended into Wildcat Canyon but did not see the mountain lion that has been spotted a couple of times in the past few weeks.

Wednesday: Fat bike, 3:17, 28.2 miles, 4,545 feet climbing. I pedaled up Black Mountain and did two loops of Bella Vista and Indian Creek, one of the steepest segments of dirt nearby. The 1x11 gearing on the Eriksen is perfect for a snow bike, by which I mean it's low. The 900-foot ascent of Indian Creek was a fairly comfortable spin at 3.3 mph. That's a good gauge for churning through soft snow, where ideally I could stay in the saddle and maintain 3 mph, while expending less energy than I would pushing the bike at 2 mph. Snow biking is all about power output. Cyclists with a good amount of wattage move much better in soft conditions — comparable to a speed boat skimming over choppy water. I am more like a bogged-down row boat. What I lack in power, I try to make up in mental fortitude. And when I lack in fortitude, I only hope I can find the fumes to keep moving forward. Energy efficiency helps.

Thursday: Road bike, 4:23, 50.5 miles, 6,219 feet climbing. This was a most wonderful ride from home to the entrance of Big Basin Redwoods State Park and back. Some maintenance neglect on the Specialized Roubaix led to seat post slippage. The result was a sharp pain in my lower back that occasionally radiated out through the top/side of my left leg. It seemed nerve related, and was tear-inducing at times. I could relieve it by raising my saddle, almost eliminating the pain afterward. The second time I did this, after the seat post slipped down again, I raised it so high my feet could barely reach the pedals — toe pedaling. But it did help a lot. This pain only seems to happen on my road bike, and I may just avoid riding it for the rest of the month. I really need to practice with the Eriksen anyway.

Friday: Trail run, 1:12, 6.7 miles, 1,536 feet climbing, then weight lifting at the gym. Daylight limitations meant I had to run first. I dislike lifting when I'm fatigued, but it's probably a better gauge of my endurance. I made it through two sets and decided to go home and rest up for the big weekend I had planned.

 Saturday: Fat bike, 7:08, 58.5 miles, 8,773 feet climbing. Eriksen and I set out to climb all the hard hills we could reach in seven hours — Fremont Older, Bohlmon Road, Sierra Azul, Black Road. I hit a nice stride in Sierra Azul — not breaking any speed records of course, but feeling comfortable while spinning and finishing the ascent feeling strong. Black Road was tougher as I started to believe I was near the top three miles too early. When the hill kept going, it broke my focus and made me feel grumpy. I had to stop and eat one of those Clif Pizza Margherita energy food packets. These are just terrible — a thick paste that tastes like lukewarm Ragu mixed with peanut butter. No. Just no. But I gave it a try. I'm trying to finish up the random energy food items in our cupboard, which is a little silly because we have a truckload of food for our ITI boxes moving in as I write. After I choked down the brown paste, I embarked on the grin-inducing descent of the John Nichols Trail, where a mountain biker asked if I was riding an e-bike.

Sunday: Road bike, 9:06, 106.2 miles, 10,259 feet climbing. I got back on the Roubaix for a grand Sunday tour, hoping that a clean and re-greased seat post would resolve the slipping issue. The sharp pain in my lower back still returned, but I could alleviate it by stopping to stretch every hour or so. This is why I'm not riding the road bike any more this month. (I will miss you, Sworxy.) It was a beautiful day, although almost too warm, and windy. I'd accumulated fatigue over the week, and this ride definitely felt like more of a grind than the others, but didn't necessarily get harder as the hours piled up. I always maintain this delusion that I can float like a little feather on my road bike, but it actually does not pedal itself up the hills. Jerk.

Total: 28:49, 277.2 miles ride, 12.1 miles run, 35,839 feet climbing. I'm pleased with the numbers this week. I managed nearly 30 hours on the move even though it was a fairly busy week of non-bike-related tasks. The 35,000 feet of climbing is my highest yet in this training block — even more than I got that week I rode the 100 miles of Montebello. When it comes to pedaling or running up hills, I'm pretty strong — although I remember I'm near sea level and it's warm and this is still nothing like Alaska. I had no breathing problems all week. After doing a lot of gasping last week while I had a cold in Colorado, this was a relief, although I'm still concerned that any compromises in my respiratory system can drag me down quickly. I'd still place my fitness confidence on the lower end, but at least my legs are working well. 
Monday, February 08, 2016

Heat maps

February rolled around and it occurred to me that I only had two more weeks — just two weeks! — to finish up gear and food prep and cram in a big training block before the taper/constant low-level panic period commences ahead of the ITI. My main goal after Feb. 15 is to avoid even a whisper of respiratory illness, so I'm hoping a sharp taper, less time exposed to air pollution and rising pollen counts, and maybe all the Vitamin C will be enough to keep me healthy. Time will tell. I'm convinced if I head into Anchorage with even an allergy sniffle, I'm hosed.

That opened the first two weeks of February to spend some quality time with bikes, fortifying my endurance and testing my breathing capacity at hard efforts — at least, as hard as efforts can be in the friendly conditions of this climate in which I currently live. I really hoped to get out and find some cold temperatures during this time, but a trip wasn't feasible within driving range (even Yosemite and Donner Pass had forecasts for temperatures in the 50s and 60s this past weekend.) Also, shortly after I recovered from my Colorado cold, Beat caught a full-blown flu. He had a fever of 102 and was sick for most of the week, so traveling anywhere was out.

As I mulled a schedule, I realized that this two weeks is just about it for my adventures in the Bay Area. Sure, I'll get out for short rides until the end of the month, and I'll likely be back to visit a few times after we move to Colorado in April. But I'll be in Alaska for all of March and wrapped up with the move and work catch-up in April, so for long outings in California — this might be it. It's always bittersweet to generate all this excitement for something new, only to be reminded of everything you need to leave behind.

On Saturday I chose a route that was all about climbing as many steep hills as I could on the Eriksen, but for Sunday's ride, I just wanted to cover ground. A century is good for that, and Sunday seemed like an ideal day for a road outing — sunny, 65 to 70 degrees, and a Super Bowl vortex pulling a lot of the weekend traffic toward Santa Clara. It was one of those idyllic Sunday mornings that I remember imagining for my future when I was a child — dozens of people cycling and walking along the neighborhood streets, green grass and blooming flowers, a bright blue sky and sunshine cutting through frosty air. The scene left me beaming as I pedaled along roads I normally avoid because they're part of the crowded suburbs, and continued as I made my escape into the redwood-forested mountains and down to the sparkling coast. I've lived within pedaling distance of the Pacific for five years, and I don't visit nearly often enough. When I gaze out over that yawning blue horizon, my jaw still drops, every time. It's just so big.

I turned away from the coast on Bonny Doon Road, with the sun beating down in the late afternoon. I was nearly out of drinking water and licking salt off my lips as I crawled up the steep pavement. I thought my reward for this climb would be a chance to ride through a landscape I'd never before visited, but as I neared the crest of the road, I recognized these sandstone cliffs. I'd been here before. I took a short rest beneath a cedar grove and scoured my memory for when that might have been. Another road century? Maybe in the spring of 2014, when I was training for the Freedom Challenge? More happy memories flooded my thoughts, along with a tinge of sadness for the farewells. Would I ever return here, to the sand hills above Santa Cruz?

I'd told Beat the ride would take about eight hours, but I tend to overestimate my abilities, well, most of the time. With 10,000 feet of climbing and occasionally fierce coastal cross-winds — and fatigue from a 7-hour Saturday ride to follow up a big week — the route beat me down and I fought the climb up Zeyante Creek as the sun went down. Just as I reached Skyline Road, I encountered a long line of stopped cars. A sedan had careened off the narrow road and slid 100 feet down an embankment, and crews were blocking both sides of the road to pull it out. A cop gave me the okay to slip past, and after that, the road was utterly empty. For the next twelve miles I encountered only two cars, heard only the fierce wind howling through the redwoods, and saw only an ocean of city lights sparkling in the Santa Clara Valley below, where the Super Bowl was happening. It was a rare hour of utter solitude, eerie and invigorating. There's nowhere I would rather be, even after Beat called me to inform me I was missing a wonderful dinner with friends (I was nearly two hours late.)

There's so much in the Bay Area that I'm going to miss.

On Sunday night, I went on Strava to see all the places I've visited in the region, and which ones I managed to miss in five years of residency. Strava has these great heat maps that mark every ride I've ever uploaded. The heavily frequented routes are burned in red, the less frequented ones in shades of blue. Although I've been on Strava since 2010, I didn't use it regularly until 2013, so my heat maps miss a few spots, but it's fun representative of ground covered:


This is what my "running" heat map looks like in Southcentral Alaska:


The Alps:


And Boulder:


It's fun to look at adventures as squiggles on a map and consider all the places to fill them in. So many possibilities. 
Wednesday, February 03, 2016

ITI training, week 16

 Monday: Afternoon: Road bike, 1:35, 17.4 miles, 2,298 feet climbing. Late evening: Weight lifting at the gym. Easy pace up Montebello Road. Would have liked to get in a longer ride, but I picked up a last-minute freelance assignment, and you don't turn down those! It was pretty late by the time I shuffled over to the gym — 3 sets, 12 exercises, 10-12 reps (I'm increasing weights and I don't always make it to 12 reps, especially on the third set.) I enjoy how I feel after a good gym session — buzzed and relaxed at the same time.

Tuesday: Rest. Flew out to Boulder in the morning, worked during day.

Wednesday: Hike, 1:31, 4.3 miles, 2,325 feet climbing. Beat and I hiked up Green Mountain during his lunch hour. It was a warm day (58 degrees), and much of the trail was coated in wet, hard ice. Trail conditions improved as we climbed, but even our microspikes skidded out from time to time. My sinuses were stuffed up, which I thought might be a reaction to the altitude, but as it turned out I had caught a cold.

Thursday: Run(ish), 1:53, 7.8 miles, 1,740 feet climbing. I jogged from the hotel to the top of Mount Sanitas and back. While running, the sun felt downright hot even though it was supposedly 28 degrees when I walked outside at 8 a.m. (It would hit 62 later in the day.) I suppose that's altitude for you. This was probably the worst day for my cold, but I felt disproportionally terrible. Selfie to confirm being roughed up after a mere hour. I got a bloody nose shortly after taking this photo, and became dizzy and had to sit down for a minute after that. Not sure what gives — Mount Sanitas is under 7,000 feet. But it's apparent I suck quite badly at altitude right now. I only hope I can turn this around when I move to Boulder in a couple of months.

Friday: Trail run(ish), 1:20, 5.5 miles, 1,370 feet climbing. I only had 90 minutes to spare on this day, so I returned to Mount Sanitas, then descended the Lion's Lair trail and horrible muddy icy mess down Sunshine Canyon. I felt quite a bit better than I did on Thursday.

Saturday: Hike, 1:57, 5.3 miles, 2,036 feet climbing. Beat and I bushwhacked up to South Boulder Peak, and then I followed the trail over Bear Peak to Bison Road (Beat found another shwhack route after Bear Peak.) We were now sleeping at 7,100 feet, and my sinuses were still clogged. So more wind-sucking.

Sunday: Hike, 1:56, 6.3 miles, 1,145 feet climbing. We did a slow walk around the perimeter of our property, and then 4 miles of slow running at Walker Ranch. By this point I'd again become mildly distressed about my fitness, and the razor-thin margin for conditions where I can actually feel good and perform well. Clearly altitude knocks me down. I haven't yet managed another cold-weather breathing test since mid-January. My window to do this rapidly closing. It was warm in Colorado, and now a high pressure ridge is settling over California. I suppose I can assume that if cold temperatures are one of my asthma triggers, I will figure this out quickly in Alaska.

Total: 10:15, 17.4 miles ride, 29.2 miles run, 10,914 feet climbing. My struggle seems to be an issue of oxygen uptake, and rapidly decreasing performance in the presence of any obstructions — such as sinus congestion — or altitude. I've been reading a few more studies that deal in overtraining and adrenal fatigue. I do continue to consider potential residual effects from the Tour Divide and improper recovery. Still, decreases in VO2 max are not usually recorded in overtrained athletes, and reports of shortness of breath tend to fall under all activities — even walking around the house — which is not my condition. There's also the consideration that I'm not experiencing a single other symptom of overtraining. When I'm breathing well, I feel healthy and energetic. My resting heart rate, appetite, and sleep are normal. Still, of course I can't rule anything out. I've been using an Arnuity inhaler for two weeks now, and if my symptoms are a result of asthma, this should start working soon. Anyway, I'm just doing some thinking out loud over a rather pathetic week of training. Just four weeks until the ITI and I'm kind of a mess, but at least I'm approaching acceptance.