Bicycles

In October I went to Cycle University to have a bike fit and fitness test for me on the bicycle. My knee problem was a bit concerning from the St Helens ride. I thought maybe my seat was too low or my shoes were no good. All things that can cause knee pain when cycling. I wanted to really get a bit more involved in cycling and just wasn't sure if I was physically strong enough to race. The technology they have to test you is pretty amazing. It reminds me of plugging the laptop into the motorcycle and adjusting the fuel and air mixture, throttle response etc. etc. They have similarities but instead you are the motor. They can tell you which leg is stronger, which one spins faster, your average power output, max power, heartrate and pretty much anything else you can think of. It was a difficult test that lasted around a hour but I learned alot and got my bike fitted for $125. My results were pretty good the coach told me. The first test was a 2.2 mile all out sprint. My max power output was 602 with a average of 280. I did that in 5 minutes. Then we did a 6.2 mile TT course. This was hard because trying to put out a certain amount of effort and hold it consistantly for 6.2 miles and finish strong is harder than I thought. I finished that in 18:17 minutes with a average wattage of 211. I wasn't really impressed with this and knew I could do better in the future. The next test was a all out 30 second burst. My max power output on this was 729 watts . Your average light bulb is 60 watts for a basic comparison. The way they get these figures is they hook your bike up to a bicycle trainer that plugs into a laptop that is directly in front of you with a cycler and all your readings. Pretty cool and if I could afford one at home
($1000) it would be alot of fun. I spoke to Toby the coach that worked me through this about there development road race team and he showed me a chart that showed where my averages would put me on the novice to pro list. Some of my tests showed me in the 3 category and my TT put me in the Cat 5. All in all a pretty good idea of where I was and come to find out my seat was like a 1" to low. I spoke to coach Ed a few times (who is in charge of the road team) leading up to my joining the team as well as attending there intro class. I decided I would like to give it a try. So I am now apart of the Cycle U Road Race team.

Cycle U puts on Friday night races where you get 7 guys or gals hooked up to there trainers and they have a projector shooting on the wall as you race against each other. It is beyond cool. This is the same TT 6.2 mile program/course I rode on back in Oct. Its now December and thought I would give one of these things a try and stack myself up against some others. Of course I get put in the front row. The 3 next to me are all racers and the guy next to me was real cool and immediately started talking it up. He said he has been racing for 3 years and asked if this was my first time and we talked about some other stuff but it was relaxing. We warmed up for 10 minutes or so and then we were off. I tried really hard not to blow myself up right in the beginning, however I tried I just couldn't. I was in 7th most of the first few minutes then I moved up to 6th and held that for a while but it was really hard to maintain and when I hit the wall at around 3 miles or so I was done. I was trying to gage how much power (watts) I could put out on average with out killing myself but I could never find a happy medium. There I was in dead last and hating it but I told myself before going in that I was going to get my ass kicked and not to expect anything. I finished with a average wattage of 240 and finished the race in 17:30. I improved pretty big time compared to Oct. So after I got home and realized that I was really happy with my performance. The magic number is 240 next race I do.

The team and I will start training in Jan. for the upcoming season so stay tuned.

Brad