The Power of Visualization

Like I said, I haven't slept well this week. Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured myself in today's crit. I thought about every corner, every straight, every climb, and how and when I would attack. Amazingly, today went almost exactly the same as I'd been imagining.

Somehow, I scrummed well enough to get a first-row spot (I am still very upset that the first thought in my mind was "I don't belong up here, let me get one of the other Rutgers guys to switch places". F that noise). Like a good 'crosser, I clipped in immediately and found myself in 4th wheel (AngryMark, being both a good 'crosser and a good sprinter, was already drilling it in 1st wheel).

Everything was like I hoped it would be. Lap after lap, I followed wheels and stayed comfortable. Cornering felt like child's play. Gaps closed before I even realized I was closing them. I got used to the fluidity of the pack; I was in 2nd wheel, then I was in 20th wheel, then I was in 10th wheel, and so on. It was very comforting to have a bunch of RU guys with me in the pack: AngryMark, BigGearWill, BeastMasterChris, and Noah constantly appeared around me. Sadly, HardTailJay didn't have a good day and was not in the pack with us.

Warming Up at Camp Rutgers... I'm 2nd from left, with the bare calves
With 3 to go, it was clear that I would, indeed, finally finish a freaking race. Goal #1: check. Now I needed a new goal, and as I took the 1st corner, I weighed my options: Sitting in would guarantee a pack finish (boring), sprinting could result in a top 10 (unrealistic), and attacking could risk everything but maybe earn me a win (holy crap!).

So we took the 2nd corner, and I immediately scrapped my plan, because I was relatively far back in 10th wheel and the wind was wicked. A gap opened on the sheltered side of the strung-out pack, and I rose out of the saddle to occupy it. Noticing that Chris was on the front, and that I was now suddenly in 4th wheel, and carrying a lot of momentum, I shifted up and sprinted. As I passed Chris, I shouted "Chris, block! Block!"

Holy crap did I just attack?!? Stop thinking! Dig dig dig go go go pedal pedal pedal!

Chris, being awesome, slowed slightly. Not enough to let others come around him, but enough to let me build a gap over the pack. Within 100m I had 5 seconds. At the 1st turn I had 10 seconds.

Oh my god this might actually work...

Then I hit the headwind. 2nd turn. I hit the hill. Oof. 3rd turn. As I got caught with 1 measly little lap to go, Chris counterattacked in a textbook display of team tactics. It seems that our work set up the team's sprinters, as AngryMark and Noah took advantage of our attacks to rest up before the bunch kick, or whatever it is sprinters do when their teammates are up the road. They got 2nd and 6th, respectively. I finished at the tail end of the pack in 30th.

I truly don't mind that I crossed the line in such a poor position (Will says he's never seen someone so happy to finish dead last in the pack). It was just so exhilerating to animate the race, dictating to the others how the drama would unfold, saying "You will suffer and chase me down, or else you will lose". Okay, so I don't quite have the fitness to make that move stick... yet. Still, this race was exactly what I needed, and I'd like to offer my enthusiastic congratulations to AngryMark, who put out massive power while showing true savvy to make the podium.

Training Stress Score

Today we're taking a break from our regularly scheduled blogging (Romeo and Juliet Pt 2 will have to wait) to discuss an article from VeloNews.com by Dirk Friel. His credentials far exceed mine, but that doesn't mean I can't snipe at him from a quasi-anonymous blog.

So he wrote a pretty interesting article entitled Tracking Power at the Tour of California. The long and short of it were that ProTour riders put out a lot of power. Duh. Still, it was cool to read just how powerful these guys are, and it was a well-written article.

I'm not pissed that the article was, at times, a thinly-veiled advertisement with the pretense of exposition. I get it, that's business. What gets me is the Training Stress Score introduced by Friel.

So Power = Force x Velocity... all this really means is that one can push a high gear at a low cadence or a low gear at a high cadence and be producing the same amount of power. Boring. You can use power feedback in real-time, glancing at your cute little monitor to gauge your exertion, or you can look at it post-hoc on your computer (I think only Handloff and Hoffman know the gesture that accompanies that word).

Well, if you're looking at things post-hoc, you might as well quantify the workout further. Work = Power x time, which seems simple enough, and it is. Tada, you have a measure of how much work you did, measured in kJ (kilojoules, which mustn't be confused with JigaWatts). This isn't rocket science; it's been around for quite some time.

Now here comes Friel with another metric of your workout, Training Stress Score (TSS). What's the difference between TSS and Work?

"The benefit of tracking TSS points over kilojoules is that TSS points are relative to one's threshold power. A kilojoule on the other hand is the energy it takes to produce watts over time, but does not take into account individual efficiencies, or lack thereof," says Friel.

Whoa whoa whoa, Dirky-poo. You've introduced a metric that does nothing more than normalize an already existing metric. You've scaled Work. You've divided.

Why does this piss me off so much? Hell, I sorta make a living concocting metrics (I called the last one G. It's the inverse of a previously existing metric). I guess the difference is that TSS takes information out of the users' hands. If you look at kJ and you know your Functional Threshold (FT), you know your TSS... but you also know your kJ and your FT. You can compare today's kJ with that of last year, and then you can compare kJ/FT. This will give you two pieces of information. TSS is only one. I know that not everybody has the training or resources to write the 3 lines of MATLAB code (or 3 hours of evil evil Labview) that would completely automate this process... but who would want to sacrifice the information afforded by already-existing metrics?

What it boils down to, for me, is this:
Knowledge is power (no pun intended), and by reducing the amount of information we analyze, we're reducing our capacity for self-knowledge. It is endemic of a fast-food society, where everything must be presented in neat, processed packages for our consumption. God forbid we get our hands a little dirty, playing with simple, meaningful numbers.

(I really hope Friel doesn't Google himself like Litespeed does.)

It's That Time of the Year

I race bikes, and I have a blog. I am thus compelled by the Blogging Act of 1804 (actually, the Athletic Endeavor Addendum thereto) to write a blog entry about the bike racing as the season approaches.

The first race of the season is this weekend (see RutgersCycling for my official writeup). It is my first road race since Grant's Tomb last March. It is my first anything race since a rather disappointing 'cross nat's. It is in 3 DAYS.

Oh man.

I am going into this with low expectations, at least on paper. I've been pretty sick, I've yet to do any speedwork since November, and I've yet to finish a collegiate road race without getting dropped. The bar should be low.

And yet for some reason, I still have delusions of grandeur. Unreasonable? Probably (as Will is quick to point out). But oh man, I'm the fittest I've ever been... certainly moreso than last year. My legs feel great, even if my chest is full of mucus. My bike finally fits (see the following picture of me and Tsav, my beloved and now retired bicycle of seasons past, for how bad things were last year).


I have new race wheels and tires. I have the desire to tear peoples' legs off. I am excited.

Are you excited?

mini-rant and good quote

I got a haircut today, finally. This is the 2nd haircut in a row in which I was trapped in a seat, sharp objects swirling about my head, by a hairdresser bent on keepingme entertained.

Thanks, but no thanks! This isn't a Harlem barbershop (oh man, did that come across all wrong?), and I'm not here for the social interaction... I'm here for a simple haircut. There is no need to ask me questions, nor is there any need to tell me about yourself.

I cannot stress this enough: I DON'T CARE. Not about you, not about your opinions, not about your hopes and dreams. Please let me sit in peace.

In short, today I spent 20 minutes being lectured about the different options I have with regard to leave-in conditioner, as well as the potential benefits to my hair and scalp. There are very few things about which I care less, almost all of which are actually televised on C-SPAN, MTV, and Lifetime.

On the plus side, now I look gooood.

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In an unrelated story, AngryMark and I have been talking about residual cyclocross fitness... can one be a decent sprinter without having done much sprint-work, based simply on the work done all through 'cross season? Well, I happen to know someone who races 'cross and does well in crits (not Jenks). I shot an email to Mike Cody of Team JellyBelly (formerly of Fiordifrutta). We talked about fitness and workouts, but we also talked about the head game and my apprehension about pack cornering.

His response was awesome:
"you can race cross, so you can corner, end of story."
sweet.

Romeo and Juliet, part 1

Now, I don't want to write about the womenfolk, and I'm sure you don't want to read my misguided opinions. Sometimes, though, I stumble across a cute math problem, and it begs a quick writeup.

The simple version of the Romeo and Juliet finds the former hopelessly smitten by the latter, hanging on her every word. However, Juliet is the stereotypical flirt, such that the more Romeo wants her, the less she wants him... and vice versa.

the math works out like this:
which works out to a nicely oscillatory solution. Depending on the initial conditions (how passionately they love(+) or hate(-) each other to begin with), Romeo and Juliet's behavior will circle endlessly along the lines of one of these circles... if a and b don't agree, it'll be a little elliptical, but you get the point.

So, when J and R are both positive, they both love each other; however, because Romeo loves Juliet, her love for him quickly wanes. Once Juliet stops loving Romeo, he wants her less and less, until he eventually hates her... it is at this point that Juliet begins to want Romeo, perhaps because Juliet craves attention or simply likes messing with Romeo's head... but I digress.

This is just a simple mathematical model, but damned if you don't see it all the time, especially with those damn wiener kids and their damn emo relationships.

on Lobsters

Who decided that it would be a good idea to eat lobsters?

Don't get me wrong, lobsters are delicious. It just seems weird that someone accustomed to eating succulent cows and chickens would choose to consume a sea monster.

Look at them! They are creepy! Why would you equate red and pinchy with delicious?

It's likely that some poor schmoe was really really really hungry, and perhaps had been living on a diet of bugs and fish, making lobsters a logical progression. Word spread among the villagers, and thusly the first Red Lobster franchise was opened. I, however, would like to think it happened because of immature peer-pressure, something like this:

(two spear-wielding cavemen standing on a beach)
Ug: Oh, man, Gar, do you see that red monster-looking thing in the water?
(Gar stabs the lobster with his spear)
Gar: Dude! I killed it!
Ug: Gross, it's oozing! I dare you to eat it.
Gar: You're crazy, Ug, crazy.
Ug: Unless you're too scared.
Gar: There's no way I'm putting that thing in my mouth
Ug: That's not what your mom said
(fade to black as cavemen continue arguing)


Oooh, or maybe it was like a prehistoric Fear Factor, where a caveman bearing a striking resemblance to Joe Rogan (not much of a stretch, is it?) made people eat things for some reason. It probably didn't make any more sense then than it does now.

aaaaand, we're back.

I'm not sure how to explain this one. It seems silly in retrospect. I had a cold. The common cold. A rhinovirus. I'm young, I'm fit, I didn't walk around licking water fountains and doorknobs, and yet here I am, coughing up my lungs.

This common cold hit me like a ton of bricks. Monday did not exist for me. I pretty much slept from Sunday night to Tuesday morning. After a (rather gruff) doctor prescribed some expectorant Tuesday afternoon, I though I'd be better. And then I wound up on the floor, semi-conscious after a coughing-fit Wednesday morning.

So, I've been in a bed or on a couch until today. Somehow, I am also to blame for the illness of Will, Mark, and Jay. The latter two blame my blog for the contagion... I blame karaoke night. Which is why I'm not going this week.

I really really really don't like this feeling. I didn't mind all the coughing or the sore throat last week... since when am I susceptible to discomfort, anyway? But this sucks. It's just odd, going from riding just below Threshold forever to getting dizzy spells from coughing.

The much-anticipated weekend trip to Cleveland for Founder's Day is cancelled. The bicycle has been untouched since Sunday. I am weak as a kitten. I have a mountain of errands and looming deadlines.

But on the bright side, while convalescing, I came up with a couple of good blog posts, which will be appearing over the coming days.

Cabin Fever Update

I rode with the Hermes kids this morning. Outdoors. The first thing that struck me is that mag-trainers and rollers feel nothing like the road. The next rude awakening is that Todd continues to be very, very fast.

But I am still sick. The wet coughing wasn't just an aftershock from some minor bug; it is a symptom of the phlegm party in my bronchi. It's like I'm breathing through a straw. For an hour I was sitting in, trying to ride easy, and my heart rate was 170. I was a mucus Vesuvius.

Thankfully, tomorrow is the beginning of an easy week. All of which will be indoors. Ugh.

Cabin Fever

I have not ridden my bike outdoors in weeks. Three weeks, to be exact. I've only missed 3 training days, but I just can't seem to get outdoors. I have excuses, of course... too many deadlines and obligations to ride in the morning, too much aversion to riding in gale-force winds, too sick.

So I set up the trainer, or the rollers, and I ride. Every day. TV blaring, fan turned way up. I ride and ride and ride and stare through a TV, for hours and hours and hours. Sometimes Will rides with me, sometimes he comes back from a Hermes ride to Millstone, sees me setting up the trainer, and makes fun of me.

A realization: I have not made any forward progress in 3 weeks.

At least I have the occasional distraction. For example, this week Will and I got to ride with Chris and Sparky in their dorm, across the parking lot. It is an undergrad dorm. We trained in the common area next to the front door. It felt like we were on display. Worse, all of the little freshmens came over to talk to Chris and Sparky, both of whom were behind me, and I was on rollers! I had to fight the instinctive compulsion to turn around, over and over and over. It was fun, but ugh.

The next night, Will and I were doing 90 seconds of Light... 18 times. That was fun. Luckily, we were able to occupy our time with studying for his Physiology quiz and discussing the stupidity that is VH1. And then Will sprinted.

Will has sprinted on trainers hundreds of times that I've seen, probably thousands lifetime. This time, though, the lock-ring on his trainer could not handle the Power (in this case, capitalization is appropriate). His rear wheel shifted left and right with each pedal stroke, with greater and greater amplitude, until CLANK! The quickrelease slid out of the trainer, the bike started falling sideways, Will's left foot unclipped, the rear wheel hopped up off the metal roller, and everything stopped.

The ensuing silence, which followed what had been the jet-engine sounds of Will's windup, was eerie. He caught his breath, then inspected the damage: The tire had heated the plastic housing around the trainer's roller, and the plastic had melted. If he'd take a damn picture, I'd show you photographic evidence. I swear, though, Will's sprint MELTED PLASTIC.

Will 1, trainer 0.

On a completely different topic, I blew my nose yesterday and my quad cramped up. Explain that one.

L'Dopage

My dear audience, I haven't been completely honest with you. It's not that I've lied, per se. It's just that I may have, er, obfuscated the truth. What I have to tell you is pretty damning, but better that you hear it from me than read it in some magazine or an interview with Dick Pound.

My performance in the past has been pretty good. I'm not exactly the best of the best, but I'm happy with the way I've progressed, and I know the best is yet to come. Unfortunately, I can no longer hide the fact that this performance has not been the result of hard work or talent alone.

Yes. I have been using a Performance Enhancing Substance. It started a few years back, when I realized that I was drifting behind others when I knew it was in me to be ahead. It was just so frustrating... I was tired, I was having trouble getting results... and I wasn't happy.

Ever since then, I've been dependent on my Performance Enhancer. It's at the point where I just can't imagine not using. What would it feel like? I'd probably be a different person, irritable and slow. I could kiss my awesome results goodbye. The snap, the pep, the refreshed feeling I've come to expect, even after the longest, toughest days, would be lost. I shudder at the thought.

They say that nothing's illegal until you get caught. I doubt I'll ever be tested, and even then, I probably don't use enough to trigger a positive, but why risk it? Now you know. Judge me as you will, world. I'll never give up my Performance Enhancer, just like I'll never give up my dreams.

My Performance Enhancer