Confessions of a Manic Cyclist

November 2007 - Posts

• SS training plan

  This SS thing is darn fun and it's tough to contain my excitement for it.  Not that I'm trying ;)  I promised I'd share my thoughts on actually training to be a better SS rider and that's the meat of this post...but some other interesting & related things are worthy of mention first. It's taken about a month to adapt to the SS.  I have limited gearing options (too lazy to buy more?) which are 32x (18/17/16).  For a long time I futzed around on the 18.  First time on the 16 I thought "holy crap this is hard."  Last weekend I did (among other things) a 25 mile singetrack loop twice on the SS, first lap on the 18, then a lap with the 16 and gave it some gas (not that there was any choice!).  To my huge surprise, I loved it on the 16 - and biggest shock to me - that was the fastest I'd ever done that loop and I've hit it hard on gears before. Must be a fluke.  As part of the new training plan I did 1.5 hour climb yesterday on the 32.16 - a climb I recently got spanked on in the 18.  Pure folly, right?  Well, I didn't think I was drilling it but another PR fell by the wayside. Yet another observation:  I don't seem to get tired on a SS like I'd expect to.  It actually feels like I'm super energized like when in a power lifting program - weird!  Hormones are fired up or somesuch... Yet another:  bike handling is getting better by necessity. Yet another:  my favorite of all, it's so stressful to the lower leg that it has forced my crappy foot to step up it's healing.  I can run on it! Yet another:  SS for a few rides has been much more efficient than a geared bike.  For the same routes - one a rolling singletrack loop, the other a long climb - the SS was faster and average power and hence energy requirements lower (normalized powers spot on identical).  Higher variability index (normalized power/average power), less energy used, and less time pedalling by far.  Hard when you're pedalling with lots of rest.  The gist of this?  Get your gearing right for a given course and maybe - just maybe - it's a better choice for endurance racing than a geared bike (OK I still don't know if I can climb all day on the SS).  Did I just put that in black and white??? SS a disadvantage?  Right...I'm beginning to get a clearer picture of Travis Brown's secret. This whole experience rounds out my thinking on the demands of MTB racing.  You see, I've used quadrant analysis in the past to determine demands of MTB racing and adjust training accordingly.  The problem with this method, tho, is it tells you what you actually *did*, not what would have been best to *do*.  The bottom line is I think the metabolic demands must be balanced with the neuromuscular demands when devising a good plan.  The past few years I've been focusing a lot more on the metabolic demands.  This is great for the long haul - but sure made the first 2 weeks of SS riding painful ;)  In a nutshell, the neuromuscular demands IMO don't get enough "attention" in most MTB training plans - at least the way I've tackled it.  So whether training for 2 hour XC or 15 day races, a certain amount of on the bike strength work is called for in the right proportion at the right time.  I don't think weights make the cut - not specific enough.  Trail running, low cadence/big gear work, standing starts - these all make the cut.  Of course you gotta be good at high cadence too so a little higher cadence work (at power otherwise it's wasted time) just before the racing begins is in the plan. My first early season race goal is Vision Quest in Orange County.  Whether SS or geared I haven't yet decided, but SS will play a large role in my training for the event since it's all uphill anyway.  It falls on March 1...so without further ado here's the plan overview.  If I get a lot of questions I'll do a follow up post explaining what the nutty professor is thinking.  Click for the big pic.   Posted Nov 30 2007, 03:25 PM by Dave

• SS analysis: strength or power?

  Pure single speeders are a passionate bunch.  After doing a bit of  lurking on the mtbr SS forum and observing the SS related comments here it's obvious the top reasons SSers do what they do come from the heart.  As it should be. Perhaps I will find that happy SS nirvana in time, but right now I'm a geared rider having fun on a SS.  It's my analytical nature that has me analyzing the demands of SS right now so that I can make a better plan to train for a SS event or two (or three or...  ;).  Nirvana is directly proportional to speed, 'tis a proven fact - so this quest is worthwhile. There are two obvious paths to go when considering how to train for SS:  target specific aspects of SSing (on the road or MTB), or just go ride your SS.  On the geary, my long-standing paradox has been that to really improve, I have to do specific work - intervals and the like - usually on the road but not always.  So, I'm going to choose the former cause it's worked best for me in the past.  SSing 6 days/week might not be sustainable for me, it's hard stuff! So then, what are the aspects of SSing that need special attention?  Power Tap to the rescue....the first step is to install the PT on the SS, go ride, then take a look at the ride data through the various tools available.  The most valuable of these has been Quadrant Analysis developed by Andrew Coggan.  Chances are that if you train with power you know the good Doc. QA simplified:  every data point in a file represents a power output and cadence.  Knowing this in addition to the crank length the data is further broken down to the constituents of power - pedal speed (CPV) and average effective pedal force (AEPF).  In lay terms, how hard you are pushing on the pedals and how fast your feet are moving.  Crosshairs are then drawn with the intersection at the pedal force and cadence that represent what is  normally done at threshold power.  This divides the plot into 4 quadrants with these relative characteristics. I:  high power, high cadence II:  high power, low cadence III: low power, low cadence IV: low power, high cadence Obviously, SS requires one to push darn hard at low cadences and really fast when spun out.  But where are the limits?  And are they trainable??  Key questions in my quest.  I'll be sharing my random thoughts along the way of this process.  They evolve daily ;)  But first, let's look at that QA plot again and see what it can tell us.  Note:  57 is not my preferred cadence so the QA crosshairs are misaligned in this plot...preferred cadence is about 96 so just about all points are in QII in reality. There is a lot going on here.  Yea, it'd make a nice tattoo M but I'm not sure I have the bicep to pull it off so I'll stick to the geeky stuff ;)  The points here are from two different rides, one on a 32x18, the other on a 32x16.  The route is rolling, some steep short climbs, some fast descents.  Overgeared and undergeard, like every SS ride I've done.  The pace was moderate (not hard), but where it tilt's up I went hard enough so as not to walk.  IOW, L6 power levels.  There is also some test data from 2 types of efforts:  maximal standing starts, one set is done seated, the other done standing.  It turns out the maximal AEPF-CPV relationship is linear, so getting some good points along this line allows one to extrapolate the maximal curve out to max force and max pedal speed.  That's what the 2 straight lines represent.  Those lines are the highest pedal forces I can achieve for any given pedal speed - I wanted to establish these lines to see how close SS low cadence stuff came to maximal.  That's enough background.  Here are some things I see: normal cadence range for SSing is 45-130. typical pedal forces go up 550 N.  In geared riding they rarely go over 275 N (I'll post a comparison geared QA at some point) and for the most part are below 225! pedal forces occasionally bump right up against that maximal force/cadence line  pedal forces routinely go to (and above) 75% of max AEPF in a moderately paced SS ride.  This is in comparison to ~ 25-30% in a geared ride. the ability to put out power at low and high cadences are equally important (but have very different demands!) Finally, note the 3 iso-power curves - red, yellow, and orange.  In particular, note how they tilt rapidly upward on the left side.  Where they are  horizontal on the right, small changes in pedal force have big effects on power output.  But on the left, it takes huge changes in pedal force to alter power output, or from another angle, at very low cadences it takes huge AEPF to put out any sort of power.  In theory, at a cadence of 20ish I can do no better than threshold power no matter how hard I try.  So for anyone, no matter how "strong" you are, being overgeared beyond some point is going to reduce your power on the climbs.  Physics in action. Did I miss anything?  Requirements of the soul perhaps??  They don't show up in QA ;) This weekend I'll be doing some longer rides with the SS.  I'm curious to see what those data sets will say about sustainability of these higher pedal forces over the long haul. Happy Thanksgiving!  Stuff yourself silly as is our custom...gives cyclists a reason to ride more.   Posted Nov 22 2007, 08:30 AM by Dave

• Square Top denial

  North and a bit west of St George is a range of mountains snuggled up against the Nevada border.  They haven't hit my radar at all yet 'cause they don't lie between here and St George, not even by way of my jagged thinking.  I've put the trans utah obsession on temporary hold and saddled up with the crackhead for some "local" explorations this weekend. Looking north from Gunlock Res there are two side-by-side prominent peaks - Square Top and Jackson.  They lie in BLM land...the surface maps show a trail going between them.  That was the destination, to explore the trail in that pass between these peaks.  From this view NE of the peaks they looked huge, gaining that pass would be no easy affair - probably hike a bike - if the trail does indeed exist.  We didn't find out... The early part of the route heads up Veyo Shoal Creek road.  It proved to be a wonderful backcountry route, lots of climbing, sometimes in canyons, sometimes in wide open desert terrain, it climbed roughly 4k' before we left it. Then was the rancher encounter.  This place is back o beyond...we surprised half a dozen cowboys and ranchers, one with his pants literally down ;)  It was initially a barage of questions "where'd you come from" "where ya goin" and when this one grizzled old leather faced guy had processed our responses he proceeded to tell us where we were going, tossing out at least 15 place names that of course didn't even ring a bell.  Good ol boyz for sure. Surprise finds along the way.  Slickrock where I least expected it! These granite pinnacles sparked a fire in the old climber in me...looked just like Joshua Tree rock! Then the hike a bike began.  The really fun part of exploration using GPS, maps, and inquisitiveness is that you just don't know what conditions are going to be like until you get there.  There is a trail on the Dixie National Forest boundary with BLM land called the South Boundary Trail.  Well, it didn't exist at all.  We got a good solid dose of Scott-a-bike.  Following random horse tracks sometimes took the best route through, but those tall critters put the rider above the endless scratchy brush.  It was never ending...turns out the only thing worse than hike a bike is hike a bike where you can't actually hike ;)  And there's more than a little guilt to dragging someone else through it.  I had to keep reminding myself that I was with Lynda, toughest non-complaining mountain biker I know. So that hike-a-bike took the wind out our sails for further exploration...not to mention sunset was getting ever closer but the truck wasn't.  But of course, it isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. All was wonderful in the end. Ahhhhhhh......   Posted Nov 20 2007, 09:59 AM by Dave

• SS upgrades

  The SS learning process continues.  Thanks to Dave Nice's advise (SID isn't squishy enough or rigid - ditch) I put a Reba U-turn on it.  At about 105 MM it handles great, and along with a stiff gate setting it has no out of the saddle bob.  Noice. And then there's the Power Tap.  Oh yea, baby, full on data collection mode. So what would happen if instead of sinking time and energy into drinking and tatoo acquisition a guy was to look into the demands of single speeding and how to improve those aspects of fitness? You'd come up with charts like this...for starters.  Welcome to quadrant analysis.   More details here but you'll have to join the club to see them.  The club is free tho with many benefits.  One of them is you can download a copy of an excel spreadsheet used to make this QA analysis. Posted Nov 14 2007, 04:18 PM by Dave

• Smoky Mountain 'sploratory

  The Smoky Mountain road between Big Water and Escalante covers huge expanse of remote, lonely, beautiful country.  The road surface is actually quite good for the most part.  Water availability is not bad either.  It's been dry for a good long while yet we found plenty.  The area lends itself nicely to an ambitious 2 day or ambling 3 day bike trip - I highly recommend it so I'll post a few more details than normal for this one. A lot of these pics ya gotta click for the big version... Near the start of the route (starting at Big Water) this sign looks so new and official.  Not to worry, the man was nowhere to be seen and every other sign was bullet riddled, old and illegible ;) After a bit the climbing comes on in earnest taking you up to the southern end of the Kaiparowits plateau.  Initially steep, it rolls a lot through drainages and contours in other spots. Lake Powell in the distance, Smoky Mountain road contouring below. Ion working it up the final grunt to the plateau. Other signs of life.  This was the first (but not last) time I would hear yee-haw! this trip.  Cowboys are grumpy. We took a diversion.  At Collet Top we headed over the Left Hand Collet canyon to descend to Hole in the Rock road.  The Grand Staircase site said the road conditions were "unknown."  In the future I'll know unknown means non-existant.  The conditions were unknown cause this rockslide prevented vehicle traffic and the road was later abandoned.  For the most part we traveled a stream/canyon bottom for 11 miles.  Most of it was rideable but very slow.  Sand, water, big rocks and boulders, a bit of slickrock - a real cornucopia of conditions.  Slow going, but it really put a smile on our face anyway.  It's not everyday you get to ride something like that. A cruise on HitR road took us to Escalante.  It'd be easy to get lodging there and not take the overnight gear... But you'd miss out on this. You'd also miss out on the redneck locals.  For future reference don't ever camp in the open near towns on a Sat night.  Holy crap...repeated high powered rifle shots overhead scared me beyond belief.  And here I thought I was afraid of nothing in the woods....drunk johny reb and his 12 half brothers were playing all sorts of antics.  Big spotlights looking for gawd knows what, they spotted us in our sleeping bags.  Shit.  Nothing like being the evening's entertainment for local drunken idiots. Yea, nice sunrise pic but note the atv track in the lower right corner.  This shot was taken from where I was camped.  They came by within inches in the middle of the night spewing rocks and hoots and hollers.  The episode lasted at least 2 hours... Heading south from Escalante on the Smoky Mtn road takes a nice climb to the ride's high point. Beyond this point there is a wonderful section of rolling road.  It skirts several canyons, crosses others, big views abound.  You'll have to ride it to see it, I was too enthralled to stop ;) I took a spur to the SW on Heads of the Canyons road.  It goes in and out of several drainages.  Plenty of up and down and road conditions similar to the Kokopelli trail.  I kept having deja vu...then I realized riding this was remarkably similar to the White Rim - except much less traveled, more tech and more climby. It drops through canyons on it's way to Big Water.  This looked old and abandoned but there was food in the cupboards - oops! Everywhere to the north is wilderness study area - no motorized vehicles allowed.  Nice ATV tracks here, not one of them turning around at the signs.  What is about ATVs that requires disrespect for land and your fellow man plus mass stupidity to ride them?  My disgust is complete. Strange black hearted canyons on the way into Big Water. So there you have it.  This may be the off-season and all...and I think I'm chilling out but I've got quite the string of 25 hour weeks going here.  It's just too much fun to stop! Posted Nov 12 2007, 11:56 AM by Dave

• So that's how this works...

  So many of my posts come across I'm sure as some desert whacko's ruminations.  Not too many folks can identify with that. But...if I want some feedback all I have to do is look for common ground, right?  Like single speeding? Yesterday's ride was pure bliss.  There's this climb I really like, takes well over an hour on the geary.  Plenty of steep spots on it and 2 months ago I'd have said it was an impossible SS route.  Yesterday I rode it in a 32x18 and it was purfect.  It all came together.  There are massive views off to Zion NP from this climb and I was seeing it all through rose colored glasses.  Tomatoe you are right, I'm hooked now.  I've been looking at all manner of squiggly lines and scatter plots of old data thinking on how best to improve this game.  But I'll try the beer drinking too.  This weekend it's off to check out a great big chunk of wilderness between Big Water (N end of Lake Powell) and Escalante.  Ion & I will have pics and stories next week.  Ya know those blog writeups that sound  like the desert version of "Into the Wild." So many pursuits, so little time. Posted Nov 09 2007, 09:33 AM by Dave

• KISS principal

  Mon-Fri the past month this is the only bike I've touched. Darn ghetto, eh?  I've had this 9.8 frame for maybe 5 years now and it's seen all sorts of use, but has never been set up for long at any one time.  It's current lifeform is w/ the Surly singleator + SS conversion kit.  About 3 days after Moab I knew I had to get this thing singled out...had the parts since '05 just hadn't done it yet.  The surly instructions start out with "1.  Take off all that gear crap and toss it in the trash..."  SS riding is so...different.  Maybe it's the crappy old SID noodle I'm running, but it really seems to make me pay attention to lines more.  Momentum is your friend, and losing it is costly.  Then there's the matter of torque.  Cadences range from near zero to as high as you can go.  When cadences are super low, it takes a lot of torque to get over that next obstacle.  This is unlike geared bikes where you can spin on up and keep torque fairly low.  In other words, it just might be possible that strength can be a real limiter for SS climbing - and some strength training could be in order if I was to get serious about SS riding. Which, BTW, I am.  I'll do a Kokopelli trail ride on the SS in '08 - underground race style.  I'm considering some other big events too on the SS but we'll see how a few small ones go first ;) So that means the powertap is going on the SS.  Some quadrant analysis will give good ideas about the amount of strength required ... once I see some of that data I'll thinker on whether or not time in the gym is going to get the nod.  It's hard to imagine as when I stopped lifting in the winter I started to get a lot faster. What's the consensus in the SS crowd?  Y'all do any strength training?  Looking at Dicky I'd guess not, but hey looking at Kenny Jones maybe so.  2 fast SS guys with opposite builds. What started as a whim is sparking new interest - and that is a ton of fun.  Something new to deconstruct/reconstruct.  Just hope the knees and elbows hold out.   Posted Nov 07 2007, 08:30 PM by Dave

• The Journey

  The older I get the more I like to take my time with things, it leaves more time for savoring.    Destinations often have a finality attached to them; everything that happens before then is the purpose.  I don't seek the payout, I seek the experience.  You can draw a ton of analogies to this...racing is certainly among them.  How often have you done a big event, full of excitement for it only to hit the post-race blues? So this past weekend I continued on with my journey, explorations of new surroundings.  It's cloaked in the guise of course research, but it's fullfilling other needs beautifully.  The previous week's outing gave glimpses of this huge plateau.  I simply had to find a way to it's summit. There are easier ways up than I chose. But the easy ways don't have these views - and the summit would come and go too quickly.  More savoring. It was one of those all day climbs, filled with wonder around every turn.  With 4k' elevation over the surrounding region most of southern Utah is in view.  It's a powerful chunk of turf up there.  And, wouldn't ya know it - from the top more new terrain comes into view, picquing my curiosity for another adventure. The journey continues. Posted Nov 06 2007, 10:17 AM by Dave