Last night, our friend Dirk Friel came to RM and personally gave the team the tutorial on how to use the TraningPeaks and CyclingPeaks software. This is stunning as a bunch of chumps liek us were getting the same touch that ProTour teams like Astana Predictor-Lotto and T-Mobile get from Dirk directly. Training peaks was a sponsor in 04/05 and now back as a prime sponsor for 07 and will be emblazoned on our sides like you see here in our old 04 uni's.

The tutorials went great and his walk through of how ProTour teams are really engaged these days with TrainingPeaks was awesome to listen to. Interestingly, as most teams are pushing towards a complete no-doping policy, the side benefits of having all that data (aside from super fit athletes) is data to fall back on to 'prove' rider workloads...essentially to validate teh cleanliness of the squad and that their performances are very real and not medicinal. So, TrainingPeaks is sort of like the Sarbanes Oxley of the athletic world! Maybe keeping ProTour teams out of Enron-like equivilents of doping versus dismal financial ethics.

There are TONS of resources on the TrainingPeaks site in addition to distractions like fairly intimate pictures of Dirk's experience with the big teams. This one of Dirk offering Lance a bag of Doritos from the Predictor-Lotto car is hilarious.
More impressive is visibility into real data from guys like Mario Aerts. Bringing up Mario's *.WKO data file in CyclingPeaks is...well...humbling. It's not often that you see a human push 300+ watts for 25 minutes right there in technicolor.

So, we're psyched to be working with Dirk and training peaks again and try to be more competitive with all this 'data'.

I can't believe it. I've built software for Windo$ platforms for nearly 15 years and we got our first iMac here at home recently. Nice OS but it ain't all that plus tax. Having beta'd Vista, that is equally as sick (yeah it probably ripped off a zillion things from Mac OS...blah blah blah). The iMac's sweet and integrates lots of shite well and has fancy cameras built in (e.g. like shooting stupid pictures like this while sitting in front of the Mac. I can envision those poor psychos on Dateline NBC: To catch a Predator using this while rubbinng their....you know...uh thighs).

Anyhoo, is this post bike or 'cross related? No. But'll help me get blogilicious in the Summer when I tap in my video from the CX clinics and whatnot.

Make the sun come. Warm muscles, open jerseys, heat.

Oy fricken Vay, man. It continues. This is out my front door. Yesterday, blissful sun and the beginnings of sun tan lines from my helmet straps on my head, to another round of the shite. Rally Sport bikes are getting abused by me.

This AM and this week I went extremely hard. Got to get the bad out. Stazio this weekend but still up in the air for me. I feel great but do not want to deal with knuckleheads and their twitchiness this early on in the season. I do not need to end up sliding into a curb at 30 MPH. That course is fast, somewhat fun, but always has sand and tight corners by the ball fields. These hour efforts in March do not matter. Mol matters. Short track and and having fun matters. My single speed matters. Putting smiles back on my face early in the morning matters so I can come home human and light up my wife and boys faces and not be a surly bitch. Combat the imbalance with balance.

Per my post below, sort of cool timing. From Cycling News:

Single speed advantages

Does training on a single speed bring any particular advantages? Obviously riding a single speed leads to pushing harder at times and spinning faster at other times, but does this bring any benefits to the rider when he transfers back to his geared bike?

Terry

Scott Saifer replies:

The single speed does force you to push hard on the pedals, developing power which you can use on your geared bike, and force you to spin higher cadences, which can help you develop your spin for sprinting or routine riding depending how bad you spin is to start with. If you went out and deliberately trained the same variety of cadences on a geared bike, you'd get the same benefit.

The major benefit of the single-speed is that it is different and so can keep training fresh and interesting for a few more hours now and then. I would not suggest using the single speed exclusively. If it is a fixed gear as well as a single speed, avoid spinning out on down hills. The single speed does not help make you smoother when the pedals are driving your feet, but only when you feet are driving the pedals.

Post Japan, things are going fairly good again. I am in love with my SS and am finding it hard to go on longer road rides when that bike just feels so good.

In the gym I have been going deep on the weights and core. Can't say that I am going to have a six-pack and all that (i think I'm skinny enough) but I can feel the difference in the depth of my breathing just by having given other parts of my body some attention. I have been going fairly deep on the leg presses as well to develop a deeper strength which I haven't done since...well a long time let's say.

So to see where rubber meets road on all of this, I have been doing this route which is great on the SS. Climb Lee Hill, bomb Left Hand Canyon to Heil Ranch, loop that puppy and re-climb up Old Stage back home. Perfect. Mainly as it is all so close to my house. Climbing LH on the single is tough with the 32 x 16 but perfect to sort of continue that core leg strength work I have been doing. Sometimes it feels like I am going to blow the chain right off that puppy but she's hanging in there.

I can not wait for heat. Open jerseys, blaring sun, warm muscles.