Blayney to Crashhurst 2012

Well the title pretty much sums it up really, the event was really badly organised from the get go, from letting riders grade themselves to speed, to initially not having a feed for the 162km “Extreme” riders to introducing it once sign on had commenced on Saturday which meant that unless you had someone with you to sort your feed you were screwed.

There were no marshalls on corners on the first 50km, imagine over 100 riders approaching a village at 50kph and having to slam on the brakes with just 50 metres to go to make a 90 degree left turn with no marshals before the corner directing you. Cue large amounts of riders locking up wheels and sliding all over the place.

162km riders were off first at 8.30am with only an hour between the first extreme wave and the first wave of the “Long” course, meaning that unless the elite bunch averaged 50kph for the first hour you would have long course riders in with extreme riders. The grading by speed meant you had riders that didn’t have bike handling skills riding in large bunches which caused multiple crashes, i counted 3 crashes in the first 50km and know of at least 4 more including mine, is this acceptable in a road race? 7 crashes that I know of and I know there were more. Including the accident of the Team GPM Dev Team who had to be airlifted to Westmead Hospital and had surgery to save his sight, he is probably lucky to be alive.

I crashed at the 90km as a rider in front of me slammed on the brakes on a descent and then crossed my front wheel, bringing down myself and 4 others at 50kph. Race over and I had been riding strongly, I am now missing skin of both my hands, knees and my right shoulder, arm, thigh and the skin of the tops of 4 fingers and have a cracked frame so need a new bike.

I witnessed first hand that none of the commissars cars had race radio’s to talk to each other and couldn’t talk to police to find out what was going on, so no one had any idea about what was happening in any of the bunches.

I will have serious question marks about racing the B2B again, with the poor organisation and lack of care of all the cyclists I question if this is a good race to start the season on. It seems rider safety was the lowest priority and bringing in money to Bathurst was the highest priority. Generally NSW Opens are pretty accident free, however the B2B seems to buck the trend with accidents being commonplace.

Surveying the damage following my crash.

Team NSCC

2012 Race Season Begins

Whilst some of my Marathon MTB colleagues such as Mike Blewitt of MarathonMTB.com have already completed the ABSA Cape Epic and one of the UCI Marathon Series in Europe, I on the other hand have been continuing to train pretty hard and focus on getting stronger. With the series of bad weather in March canceling both the Capital Punishment and James Williamson Enduro, meaning the start of my season has been pushed back a month.

In the run up to those races, although I was feeling strong, I was still a little bit worried about my preparation (I guess most people are like this first race, where is the form, how will I go at race pace etc) however the additional month has definitely been beneficial with an increase in power, recent forays into A Grade in Crits which have proved successful and consistent weeks of training.

So my season begins this weekend, with 3 races in 4 weeks both on road and off. 1st up is Bathurst for the Cycling NSW B2B. I am racing the 162km “Extreme” with NSCC, followed up with Capital Punishment, a week off and then I am off to Cootamundra again for more Cycling NSW Open’s. I am considering trying to get a Convict entry, but 4 weekends of racing might prove to much to both my body and my relationships.

I am also off to UK and Switzerland in August to race the GranRaid ChristAlp which is definitely going to be one of my hardest races to date with over 5000m Vertical and 120km in length its going to be a monster, but I am pretty pumped for this race and will also hopefully get the opportunity to ride some sweet local singletrack back at home in Bristol and Afan for some final prep before the race.

So Bathurst this weekend, what can I expect, weather forecast is looking good, with an 80% chance of rain but a top of 20c, no doubt colder in Blaney where the race starts. I am in 40kmh + group so I anticipate some high averages for the first hour before things settle down. My goal is a simple one, stay in the bunch, that doesnt sound to hard but these races are always absolute smashfests so doubt it will be a sufferfest.

Race reports to follow!

A Season Ending Injury

So 4 weeks ago my season was brought to an abrupt halt due to fairly big accident while riding to work one day.

I had been out training in the morning and was on the way to work using the cycle paths etc. Approaching the Corner of Miller and Blue Street in North Sydney, a car pulled across an intersection while I was checking the traffic behind me and before I knew it I had hit the cyclist in front of me who had stopped.

Cue a massive OTB in to the middle of the intersection and I landed badly on my left hand side. I scraped myself off the ground and got off the road. Initial reaction was that my left lower back was sore and I was struggling to walk. Fast forward an hour and a half and I have gone into shock, have an IV line in me, blood being drawn and morphine being injected for the pain.

Next stop Ultrasound for internal bleeding, X-Ray on my Pelvis, Lower Back, Left Wrist and a CT with dye injected to check for more internal bleeding. Results come back negative apart from a fractured L3 transverse process and a suspected L4 transverse process fracture as well. I had to stay in overnight at Hornsby Hospital as I was still in pain and couldn’t walk, being told I would be treated and discharged the next day (Thursday).

Thursday came and went with the specialist team discussing the best way to treat with one team saying I needed a brace the other saying I should be discharged without it. To say it was frustrating would be an understatement, the constant changing of decisions by the medical team meant that every hour or so, I was being told I would be going home that day, to being told a brace would be fitted etc, by the time they made a decision about my treatment it was to late in the day so I had to spend another night in hospital before traveling to Royal North Shore on the Friday morning for the brace to be fitted. The constant changing of decisions was infuriating and I voiced my concerns with the team at the time.

Once the brace was fitted, I was discharged on the Friday afternoon, got home took heaps of drugs for two weeks and basically slept and ate and spent my time on the lounge. My follow up was a Dr’s appointment and a X-Ray in 4 weeks time and then an appointment with the specialist Dr Randlph Gray as well. The initial healing was pretty good, I improved rapidly and was walking again within a week, however was still sore in places.

Fast forward to today, well I am still sore in places and had an X-Ray on Thursday to asses how my bones in my back are healing, well the answer is that infact the hospital missed an additional fracture in my L2 Transverse process as well and the L4 had turned from a possible/probably to a definite fracture as well. I have an appointment on Tuesday with the specialist, so we will see what the outcome is of that, I am hoping to get the all clear to sit on the turbo trainer and maybe the bike again in another 4 weeks or so.

So that basically wraps up the 2011 Season really, it hasnt been a great season this year from a Injury point of view, I have been injured for over 15 weeks of this year so far and the year hasnt ended yet. I have missed the vast majority of Real Insurance XCM Series this year and as I write this the final event The Highland Fling is kicking off, which I had been targetting to do well in.

However on the plus side, I have had some good results this year, in particular for my first full year of racing on the Mountain Bike and Road Bike and I still have a lot to learn and I know I can improve a lot more as well. Highlights from a result point of view would be the James Williamson Enduro (Report Here)  and Capital Punishment (Report Here), lo lights would be NSW Open in Mudgee (Report Here), other highlights would be the Amy Gran Fondo (Report Here) and also the Coota weekend with NSCC, that weekend rocked and I hope to do more of it.

Time to start making plans for next year, James Williamson Enduro and Capital Punishment are on the cards again, then I will need to make a decision on do I switch to road for the winter and concentrate on training for Grafton or do I focus on the MTB and the XCM Series in particular. Next year will be better, I am hoping for a good year of injury free training and I will have a full year of working with my coach Mike Lawson as well. So bring it on!

My Review of the Amy Gillet Gran Fondo

 

Well what can I say about this event…awesome sums up the event very well, it was very well organised and put together. Some people may of thought it wasnt a very Pro ride similar to Sydney to the Gong, however it was so so much more than that.

The route on the face of it looked fairly challenging, with the undulations of the Great Ocean Road, followed by a 9.1km climb and then a uphill finish. I had opted to start in the 3rd wave of 200 riders. All on closed roads!

Sunday Morning arrived, with a little overnight rain, however we were greeted with great sunshine and a sight with over 2000 riders lining up in the centre of Lorne for the start.

The start was delayed due to a injured Koala being on course (I kid you not) and then we off shortly after wards. An initial bunch formed which was mainly dominated by Tour De Cure riders and Total Rush riders, we split off the front of our main group as people did turns on the front and just took in the experience of riding on the Great Ocean Road, with no fear about traffic and enjoying the amazing views, which were basked in early morning sunshine.

The first significant climb started at the 40km mark, it was 9.1km long with an average gradient of 6%, I was expecting it to be a fairly hard climb, however the smooth road and lack of steep rises in the climb meant that I was easily able to settle into a decent rhythm and keep the cadence high, I got to the top in 29mins, which although wasn’t lightening fast, I made sure I didn’t blow myself up as I knew the final part of the route was going to be tough. By this stage the original bunch had been blown apart and I got into a small group with a few of the Tour De Cure riders and some other stronger riders, by this stage we had started to catch a number of bunches from the group in front and were making good time.

The middle part of the event was quick, over rolling roads, with a number of shortish climbs along the way. Plenty of people were on the side of the road, the bunch worked well together and again we were still catching people from the front groups.

The final 10-15km were pretty brutal, anyone that thought on the face of it, it would be an easy ride would be wrong, I had been pushing pretty hard all race and although I still felt strong, I was pretty smashed from the effort that I had put in so far. We were still catching bunches and as well approached the first climb, myself a couple of others used the hill to our advantage and made our way through a group to get a slight gap, fortunately there were more people further up the road, so used them as an aide to chase them down and bridge across, once across, again we looked to try and move bridge again to stay away from the main group behind us, this was pretty successful, with about 6 of us going alone and putting our head down to the finish. I sprinted to the line with one of the guys and beat him to finish the event.

Overall a top event, I cannot put a price on how good it was to ride the GOR on closed roads, with no traffic and amazing weather. It was truly amazing and I recommend people give it a go. You can make it as competitive as you want or not and I really enjoyed the event.

Results for me:

Total Time was: 3h19m13s and finished 11th in my Cat and 122nd in the general ranking out of over 2500 riders.

Real life is a bitch

As the title suggest, real life has been consuming a lot of spare time in my life that would usually be reserved for training. Basically in the last 3 weeks I have had the following go on:

1. Moved into a new place with my girlfriend, its been stressful with the move and late nights packing and unpacking have resulted in being very tired.

2. My Mum is over for 2 weeks from the UK. Mum arrived 4 days after we moved, you can imagine the rush to try and get unpacked before she arrived.

3. Work is very busy, with a focus on business development currently which means plenty of meetings and traveling around Sydney. This week I am off to Sydney Olympic Park and Optus, less time in the office means working longer hours to catch-up on work.

However there is light at the end of the tunnel. Last week was non existent for training with simply the Sat Bunch ride, this week has started well with a solid session of doing strengthies yesterday and plans to do the same again tomorrow.

I have finally ordered a powertap, went for a bog standard Mavic Open Pro 32 spoke wheel with the SL+ hub (Cyclepowermeters have a deal on, which is a free upgrade from the Pro hub to SL)
I was originally gonna go for some HED custom wheels but decided that it would make more sense to get the training wheels and order some carbon race wheels in the near future. I figure for the mean time I can roll on the Mavic rims, so what of they are heavy at my level it doesn’t matter a huge amount.

Upcoming races and events, the diary is looking pretty busy, with Coota in a week and a bit, I have been told this is one of the hardest opens of the year and I fully expect to get hooped in the first 20k’s on Saturday and Sunday, following week I am gonna get some training on the MTB in at Wingello, week after is Bottlebutt and week after that is Amy’s Grand Fondo. After that it’s full gas with training for the Fling.

Bottlebutt in 3 weeks, I feel pretty unprepared for the race all in all but we will see how we go.

The Highland Fling and Bottlebutt – New Challenges Approach

So looking forward to later this year, once again The Fling has started to come to the forefront of my mind. Although we are currently in August, November is only a few months away and bearing in mind I have set myself a fairly large challenge the training has begun in earnest.

So on to that challenge, well I have decided I am gonna try and mix it up with the fast boys in the elite class. Looking at last years times and my steady improvement since then I am confident that I can pull a 5h for the 110km and will be looking for a sub 5. My girlfriend has agreed to run bottles for me as it’s going to be an important race for me.

In between time, I am racing the Bottlebutt in elite, manly to see where my pace is at currently. Gonna hold on with the fast guys for as long as possible until I blow like a pornstar.

Training has been going well and is continuing in earnest, lots of strengthies doing hill repeats, they hurt like all hell but are worth it.

Mudgee Winds doth blow

A little bit of a late write up for the Mudgee race last weekend, however better than never I guess. So the Mudgee Open was my return to Cycling NSW Open calendar following my broken wrist. Having never raced Mudgee before I wasn’t too sure what to expect apart from knowing it would be very cold.

Nikos and I drove up on the Saturday morning, it was a fairly easy 3 hour journey up to Mudgee via Bells Line and we got there at around 10am and checked into the hotel. To say it was cold in Mudgee would be an understatement, with the wind coming in it felt less than 5c, even though my car was telling me it was 15c.

Bearing in mind this is my first year with a Cycling NSW licence, I was starting in Group 7 for the Handicap and Div 3 for the Graded Scratch race on Sunday. Nikos and I headed down to AREC and got registered and caught up with the rest of the NSCC boys. Out at the AREC, the wind was blowing pretty hard and the course meant we would be riding into Crosswinds and Headwinds all day long. I rolled out with Group 7 and almost immediately the group was pushing 40kmh and within 5 mins people were not rolling through to do turns on the front and half the group got dropped before the first climb, I tried to stay on and pull turns for as long as possible, however the ridiculous pace, the testing conditions and the lack of people pulling turns meant our group was decimated within 5 mins of the start. I seriously think Cycling NSW had stuffed up the grading, there were some seriously strong guys in our group which should have been in further up the grade imo.

I managed to ride with Group 5 for a while and with what had become Scratch/Block and Groups 3 and 4. I got to just shy of Gulgong, around about the 60km mark and threw in the towel and hoped Sam’s car, as he came round to check on the NSCC riders.

Saturday night was good fun, we grabbed some wine, cheese and then went out for the dinner which was great. Had a few beers and a decent feed from one of the pubs in town.

Sunday weather wise was even worse than Saturday, the winds had got stronger and it was definitely colder, on Saturday I hadn’t worn a jacket. On Sunday I had 4 layers on, including a jacket, 2 pairs of socks and was still freezing cold. I rolled out in Div 3, the first few K’s were fairly cruisy, however soon the pace lifted and people started dropping wheels. I got dropped, however got back on at the top of the first climb, however I couldn’t hold on in the decent as I was isolated in the wind.

Eventually I got into a small 3 man group including Nikos and we rode turns to complete one lap of the 40km loop, again with the race gone, we rolled around to Petersons Winery and did some wine tasting before heading back to the hotel to head home to Sydney.

To sum up the weekend, it was great to get to an away race with the boys, although it was a tough weekend on the bike I was pleased I hung in as long as I did on the Saturday as a lot of guys in other grades were riding home within the 10km mark on both Saturday and Sunday. It was a tough re-introduction to racing for me, however it will make me stronger for sure. Coota is coming up in about 6 weeks, so pending me moving house I am hoping to get down there.

 

My Power Profile and Beauie Worlds

My Power profile and a good performance at Beauie.

So as mentioned in last week’s post, I was doing testing with my coach on Saturday to get an idea of where I am currently from a training point of view and what my power profile is like. I wasn’t expecting an miracles from the testing and to I didn’t provide any. I feel like I have been making decent progress with my training and although I don’t think my fitness is quite where it is pre injury I am getting back to it. My times from my repeat hill sessions on Bobbo are coming down with each week and I have been pleased with my new training program, so although I am not very close to being a A Grade/Cat 1 Rider yet,  I am working towards it and it gives me a good bench mark.

Mike tells me that a 4w/kg is a what can be considered a strong club rider and these figures are based off the Power Profile Charts developed my Coggan and Allen.

So here are my figures:

Andrew Logan (@ 79kg)

Power Profile Summary 2^nd July 2011-07-04

5 second…….1229watts…..15.55w/kg

5 minute…….343watts (366watts Normalised Power)…..4.63w/kg

20 minute……284watts (318watts Normalised Power)…..4.02w/kg

FTP (estimated, based on usual relationship between 20min and 60min power) …..302watts….3.82w/kg

FTP (Functional Threshold Power)….the highest power that a rider can maintain in a quasi-steady state….without fatiguing….for approximately one hour

Normalised Power is an estimate of the power that you could have maintained for the same physiological “cost” if your power had been perfectly constant , such as on an ergo, instead of variable.

Based on Power Profile Charts developed by Coggan and Allen, this is where you fit at the moment. Note that these levels are set around US Categories, where Cat 2 would be close to our B grade for Open racing, and Cat 3 similar to our “middle of the pack” C grade Open, or perhaps D grade Open front-runner.

5 second power…bottom of Cat 3 range

5 minute power…middle of Cat 3 range

FTP…middle of Cat 3 range

There is a good correlation between your 5min power and 20min/FTP power….a flat line in fact. That indicates a “well rounded” aerobic conditioning, albeit at the low end of the range we’re looking for at the moment, so we don’t need to do anything out of the ordinary in training in the medium term.

So as you can see, given the racing that I have been doing recently, no great surprises. I think in an ideal world I would have liked to been closer to that 4w/kg mark, however after only 4 weeks back I am happy with the figures, if not ecstatic about them. However I have to start somewhere and it will give me a good bench mark to work from. So ongoing training around my FTP to get to that 4w/kg mark. As Mike has put it, lots of hard yakka coming up.

This brings me on to Sunday. Beauie was on and it was a great day for it in Sydney. Once again I put myself in B Grade and was in a decent frame of mind. 45 Mins + 2 laps was the call for the day. Start wasn’t overly frantic and a couple of riders got away early, however I didn’t panic, because I figured they would be closed down. I got through to about half way, pulling my turns on the front, my legs were feeling pretty decent and although the boys were punching it out of the corners I was coping with the surges pretty well and thought I might be in for a chance, if I could get near the front on the last lap.

The bell sounded and you could feel every tense up a little, coming into the bottom corner I was sitting 8^th wheel and the boys gave it a big wack out of the corner, that dropped about half the group and I was still sitting in a decent spot, I started to make my way through to the bunch and approaching the final corner was sat on 5^th wheel, sprint started and managed to get onto the guy in 3^rds wheel, however didn’t have enough power to overhaul him and settled for 4^th place in B Grade.

I was pretty pleased with the result, I got some good training in and got a decent result that I am happy with, so yeah all in all not a bad weekend.

This weekend is Mudgee, so I will be posting a race report next week about how that went, I am in Group 7 for the Handicap race on Saturday, so a good opportunity to do some FTP work at race pace and we will see what happens come the day, no expectation to get a good result.

Training for this week has been good, with a good session doing repeats up the South Side Climb at Bobbin Head this morning.

Garmin Link: Beauie Worlds B Grade

Cheers

Andy

Breaking My Legs

Training is Progressing Well

Been pretty busy the last few weeks with work and training, so this post is a little delayed however have finally got round to writing it today.

Following on from my last post I got out to race at Calga on the Saturday afternoon, first half of the race went well and I did heaps of work on the front, unfortunately I blew up pretty hard in the 2^nd half of the race and was left to cruise home to the finish. I wasn’t overly pleased with how it went, but it didn’t surprise me due to my lack conditioning on the racing front currently.

Last Saturday was a great weekend weather wise in Sydney and a good weekend for training, I went out for my bunch ride on Saturday morning and spent heaps of time on the front including a fairly decent stint from Terrey Hills to the top of the Mona Vale Road, after coffee at Pierre’s, I then headed out to complete a 40km loop via Galston and Berowra Waters as well. Again a lot of work on the front and really made sure I paced myself well up the climbs, unfortunately I ran out of food and the final part of the ride back to Hornsby almost killed me, legs were close to cramping and I was in the box. Unfortunatly the lack of food killed my recovery and although I went out on Sunday, it was very hard and my intention to do multiple repeats up Bobbo was canned after only 2 runs and 30km’s on the clock.

Final Stats for the weekend would of been 130km for 1800 meters’ of climbing, the majority on Saturday.

Plan for this weekend is looking like VO2 Max Testing and FTP Testing with Mike on Saturday and then hitting up Beauie the next day for some crit racing. Considering getting back out on the MTB in the next few weeks as the wrist has been feeling pretty decent for a number of weeks now and I think its probably up to the task now.

I have been seeing improvement every following my injury and the new training program is working well which is great.

Entries open for the Highland Fling in a little over a week, I am still undecided to about whether to go in Elite or not and Mudgee is on the weekend of 9^th/10^th July as well, NSCC have a big bunch going up, which is gonna be great.

I will report back with my training figures next week!

PS. Cant wait for the TdF to start!

Queens’ Long Weekend

So it is now 2 weeks since I have had the cast removed from my right wrist due to a broken scaphoid and I have been back on the bike since then. I am in the very early stages of a new training program with my coach Mike Lawson which is radically different to what I have done previously.

Last weekend was the Queens Birthday long weekend here in Australia and I had grand plans of training and racing all 3 days, however we have been receiving some crazy weather over the last week in Sydney which has result in most of the training being conducted indoors on the kinetic trainer. So last week I trained on Saturday morning riding 4 repeats up the Turramurra side climb and then hit the turbo on Monday and did another interval session on the turbo trainer and did the same last night before State of Origin.

I still don’t have a powertap as of yet, however this is all good stuff to get my fitness back from my injury as I did just sit around for 6 weeks doing nothing on the bike. My climbs up Bobbo were decent, all around the 11minute mark and held an average speed of 20kph up the hill, just maintaining a good solid tempo.

Plan for this weekend is train again this evening doing 3 intervals and then I am going to race Calga on Saturday to get some racing in. I have not been able to race for a bit and want to do some hard turns on the front. I don’t have any intention of winning and maybe will look to get into a break and see what happens.

I think this new training plan is a lot better than what I was doing previously and I am returning to fitness a lot quicker than anticipated which is great.

Looking to race at Mudgee in early July as well, perhaps I will finally make my long awaited debut in Cycling NSW race after having to pull out from Coota due to the wrist injury.