Season in Review

For those interested, here’s a pic of my PMC for the season:

Endurance build phase – pretty good
Transition / mid season racing – all good and had some great form

Race prep phase – getting harder to continue CTL build with the lift in intensity. Some training/racing interruptions (mostly unavoidable) in latter stages of phase saw an unintended mini-peak for State Champs.

Final race prep (hard!), taper and competition yielding great results.

Recovery period now for a couple of weeks.

The end of the beginning...

I’m calling the National Masters Track Champs the end of my season. In reality there is no start/end of season any more, just a change of season. Focus now moves to road events and getting ready for the World Masters Track Championships in October.

So how did I go for the season?

Goals (Actual Outcome):

• October 2006: Credible performances in State Masters Road race (7th place) & Criterium (4th place & big power PBs). Very pleased with form.


• March 2007 PB in Individual Pursuit at State/National Masters Track Championships (PB at both Championships by 2.2 seconds and > 6 seconds in competition). Nice work, especially at States!


• March 2007: Improve on 2006 Points Race performances of 4th at States and crash at Nationals (4th at States but took a lap on the field and Bronze medal at Nationals). Sensational!

Other notable performances along the way:

• September 2006: 1st ever win in Div 1 Friday Night Track Racing
• October 2006: Member of Bronze medal winning team in State Team Time Trial Championships
• November 2007: Winner B Grade open Brindabella Crit
• December 2007: 1st B grader at Open Heffron Pudding Crit (only B grader left standing actually)
• January 2007: Member and Captain of winning team at State Masters Team Pursuit Championships – 1st ever State Championship win
• All summer: Multiple placing in track opens

Personal stand outs were the National Points Race result, the Team Pursuit and Mum coming along to watch me win the Brindabella crit and Dad visiting and seeing me race the track for the first time ever.
Me on the podium with Stuart Vaughan (Left) and Graeme Albon (Centre):

Other items to note:

• MAP (+11%) & TT power (+17%) lifted nicely - as measured per tests although pre-comp numbers not tested so quite possibly better than that.
• Mental approach better, more positive than before.
• Training overall significantly more consistent than before.
• Training specifically tailored to event demands and personal power profile.
• CTL peak (100 TSS/day) much higher than previously attained.

So in essence, I attained all goals set and had other success along the way. So it’s pretty hard to pick faults with that lot!
What can I improve? Lots but that’s between coach and I at the moment ;)
Other activity:

• Cranking up the coaching business and becoming an RST Associate Coach.
• Guiding Tanya’s comeback. Seeing this cancer surgery comeback kid win two National championships, a silver & a bronze was pretty special.
• Performance Manager Beta tester and associated learning.
• Starting/maintaining blog.

Looking ahead:

My racing goal(s) for remainder of 2007 remains the same:
Make the Points Race final at World Masters Track Championships
and
continue to improve on my IP performance.

I am convinced (for some reason) that continuing to improve my IP will make me a better all round rider (even though I’m not a naturally gifted IP talent). Around the same time as the Worlds are the State Road and Crit Championships. Also, making the #1 TTT squad for the State Club TTT Champs would be nice. And have a great time racing along the way.

Beyond that, it is likely I will continue to focus on the same events at the State, National and World championships through 2009.

A great season and another step up for me – thanks to everyone out there for their encouragement and support. In particular my coach (Ric Stern), all my training buddies at Tempe who were all willing me along last week, fellow competitors for keeping me honest, my friends, workmates and family who put up with this strange obsession of mine, and Andy Coggan for his influence on many things.

Looking forward to the next phase of my cycling development.

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Bailing Out

So what happened in my crit?

OK - I'm back home, back to work (thud) and still getting back to normal. So, some time to update what happened....

On Saturday afternoon I raced the National Masters Criterium championships, held in the town of Bacchus Marsh, Victoria (about 90 minutes drive North West from Melbourne). But before my race there were plenty of others, including Tanya's race in which she rode exceptionally well in a decent sized and quality field (which was good to see) and she finished up winning the Bronze medal. All that aerobic training paid off! That capped a great week for Tanya after her Gold medals at the track in the Derby and Scratch races and Silver in the 500m TT.

So my race was looming and as always I start right at the front of the field. These races can be all over red rover in the first lap if you are not attentive.

Here's a map of the circuit:

The orange shows the circuit used and arrows indicate direction. The double corner at the right (Grant St end) was the trickiest - not overly technical but with riders taking some interesting lines it made it a challenge. Certainly any race finishing in a bunch sprint would mean position exiting these corners would be critical.

I kind of figured that made the race a bit of a lottery, so I decided the best thing to do was what I normally do in these races and stay at the pointy end as much as possible, keeping in the top 10 riders and make sure I was going to be in any serious break. I pretty well managed to do that for most of the race.

Several riders attempted to force a break but there were enough willing workers to shut down any attempts (including one by yours truly) but no-one would keep an effort going. Lots of other shadow boxing along the way but nothing was sticking so it was going to end up in a bunch gallop, hence positioning was going to be critical.

With a lap and a bit to go, I was 6th wheel, pretty well perfect position to move up to 2nd or 3rd wheel before entering the final turn and to have a great shot at the sprint. I hit that double corner for the 2nd last time and, well, I left just enough space for someone to attempt an inside run (my mistake), got a bump and had to take evasive action, skipping up and over the side of a strategically placed bail of hay covering the street sign and gutter.

It was a pretty funky maneuver which entertained the crowd and would have made any MTBer proud but the end result was I was now about 15th wheel with a lap to go. Sod it!That's no man's land I'm afraid and by the time I got to exit that last corner the sprint was already well and truly on and 50 meters up the road.

Did I have the legs? Who knows? Nevermind.

Race stats are nothing to shout about - to be honest I didn't think it was all that hard a race.

Crit Nationals 31 March 2007:

CTL:_________80.2
TSB:________+23.8
Duration: ____42:38
Work: _______731 kJ
TSS: ________72.3 (intensity factor 1.009)
Norm Power: 313
VI: __________1.09
Distance: ___30.03 km

_________Min__Max__Avg
Power:____0__1190__286__ watts
Cadence:_23___128___95__ rpm (includes zeros)
Speed:___4.5__54.8__42.3_ kph

What now?

Well they say there's no rest for the wicked. Well since I'm not wicked, I get a couple of pretty easy weeks before it all starts to wind up again in prep for the Worlds in October!

A bit of time to do a season review, sort out the forward race calendar and fix all those things that need fixing. Including a PT track hub that's toast I think....

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