Ride to Glycogen Depletion

While most of my colleagues top off their glycogen reserves during lunch, I periodically attempt to fully deplete mine. Hard to do on a lunch break, but it can be done. Takes upwards of two hours of mad pace riding chocked full of intervals.

Tuesdays are usually my most intense days even though I'm not usually recovered from weekend activities. Last week I did a 40 miler, hitting a couple 600 footers along the way at all-out VOmax intensity. A few riders may be familiar with Pead and Purgatory Hills. Yesterday I throttled things back just a notch, hitting four shorter hills in a 31 mile loop. These were the double Pine Hills, Tyng Hill and Ponemah Hill. Durations range from 3-4 minutes at above 5.5W/kg intensities. With Newton's Revenge coming up Saturday morning, I don't want to embarrass myself by imploding half way up from major midweek training load.

Looking over my Excel training log for the first six months of the year, I see a trend continues. In my log, I note rides as being either trail or road. My 2009 average speed for all riding is around 15mph. This wouldn't be bad if half my miles were off-road. But this is not the case this year. My road-only average speed is 17.8mph. It is ironic that the slower the speed I train at, the stronger I get. You do not have to average 26mph on your Wednesday night worlds ride to get fast. In fact, many riders will derive junk training value from such rides. To get fast, you need focused bouts of intensity. This is best done alone. Only caveat is you need the mental fortitude to push yourself into extremely unpleasant realms with no one to shame you into going harder.

Several years ago I logged over 10,000 miles of riding. It was one of my worse seasons. Lots of junk miles were involved, very little focused intensity. But my average speed was something like 20mph. These days I ignore average speed of lunch training rides. The commuters and recreational riders at work love talking about these figures of merit. But they are the bane of quality training. Rather, I head out at reasonable pace to warm up, hit a hill interval, then rest until the next interval. This means doing minimal work, just enough to re-process the lactic acid that was built up from the prior interval. Soft pedalling down the back side of a hill is allowed during these workouts. Interestingly, on a couple of the less steep climbs I'm pretty sure I average a faster speed going up than I do for the overall ride. If I were to focus on the ride's average speed, I would go hard to the first interval hill, not be able to hit it as hard as I should, then maintain power down the back side right up to the next interval. This completely diminishes the value of the intervals. For the Training Peaks users out there, a good interval training session should show huge disparity between average and normalized power.

I typically do not allow for full recovery between intervals. Hilly road races rarely afford this luxury. Thus the suffer factor goes way up by the third, fourth or fifth interval. Plan is to do them until power drops dramatically, or in other words, bodily failure. Mission is then complete and it's time to head back in.

Weather looks good for Mt Washington on Saturday - narrow temperature range from upper 40's to low 50's, 30% chance for rain, and not too windy at 30mph. This summer, or lack thereof, will continue to play into my favor by staying cool. I need not worry about overheating. Getting cold will not be an issue either. Looks like more riders are jumping into Newton's Revenge. Maintaining my slim points lead is not going to be easy.

Gearing Up for Newton's

Yep, that's right folks, I decided to take the plunge and claim my leaders jersey. I've never done the Newton's Revenge race up Mt Washington in July before. Sure, it is the same climb, the weather probably isn't much different, but the race atmosphere might be different. The August race is still considered to be the "real" Mt Washington race. It draws the big names from around the planet. To be sure, there will be several fast riders going for the $1500 check in July. Anthony Colby (Colavita) just set a new record on Okemo. He won Newton's last year and probably will again this year. That sets me back a little in points. It's not what place you finish, but how far back from the winner that determines points.

So what is my motivation? After two races in the BUMPS series, I'm the current leader. This is really more by default than being the fastest rider. I'm the fastest rider that's done the first two races. The faster riders (three of them at Whiteface) have not done both races. There are many riders closely queued up behind me in points. If I do not do Newton's, I will no longer be points leader for Ascutney, the next race in the series I planned to do. To claim a points leader jersey, you actually have to show up and race to zip one on. It bums me out that Newton's comes before Ascutney. If I take a chance, don't do Newton's, I may never get enough points in the remaining races I plan to do to recapture the lead. So this is a fleeting opportunity. But there is a little more motivation.

Not many riders do both Newton's and the August Washington races. Bottom line is it's expensive. I registered for the August race back in February. Because the Mt Washington events are categorized as Hor, accrued points are 1.5 times the Cat 2 races, which have a 1.0 multiplier. Even a mediocre finish on Washington could net you more points than a spectacular finish on Ascutney. Whiteface and Equinox are Cat 1 climbs, deserving of a 1.25 multiplier. I did very well at Whiteface. To help my points situation out further, the three guys that beat me there did not do Okemo and are unlikely to do Newton's. This all adds up to me having a shot at claiming the overall title at the end of the series. This certainly wasn't a goal or my plan at the beginning of the season, but it is something that would be fun to go after maybe this one time. Things so far have just sort of fallen into place in my favor. Of course, any number of elite riders could participate in five of the remaining seven races and spoil my fun. Only the best five count towards final points tally.

Heavily modified Ultegra Triple crank with eliptic Q-ring

I'll be running a gearing mod I might not have run previously for the 12-percenters. It consists of single 30t Q-ring up front, Dura Ace rear derailleur and 27t cassette. Rear brake, front derailleur and associated cables are removed. You'd think this gets the weight down to silly factor. It doesn't really. I don't own delicate carbon tubular wheels. Bike weighs in right at a UCI legal 15.0 lbs, except it is partially stripped. I know riders with fully equipped bikes lighter than this. My penalty is about 15 seconds per pound. I could spend $2000 on wheels and take about 10-15 seconds off my finishing time. Is this worth it? I could easily stand to loose 5 lbs body fat. This would not only not cost me anything, I would save money by cutting 17,500 calories out of my regular diet. This would make me 75 seconds faster if I lost no power output in the process.

Newton's will be a training climb for me. No PR attempt. The weather doesn't look the most favorable for a PR at this point anyway. I would like to go for a PR in the August race though. Indicators are it is in the realm of possibilities.

Five Town 50

Sunday was a pristine day for riding. Wish the same could be said for trail conditions. FOMBA is still closed for mud season #2. I hit Great Brook and tasty bits on the periphery a week ago. Just to the north lies Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest. I drummed up a couple victims to join me singlespeedin' here, practically in my own back yard. It's always good for the ego to bring riders not familiar with your local trails.

We started from my house, riding to the ride. It's about 3 miles into Mass. I live a stone's throw from the state line in NH. We head into the woods, end up at the huge gravity track by mistake. Seems the kids are still at it, although we didn't see any demonstrations. I've seen kids in blue jeans, no helmets, hurl themselves more than 20ft vertically over doubles that would do any world cup DH course proud.

We turn around to take the correct way up Whortleberry Hill. The turn was within sight of where we stopped, yet somehow Steve and Dave right behind me didn't see me go that way. Since Steve knows the area, he assumed I was going to head up a different way that actually climbs an adjacent hill. Do you think after not seeing me for 20 minutes they'd come back down to the last junction? Nooooo. I'm still scratching deerfly welts. I eventually gave up waiting, resumed our planned route, only to meet up with Steve coming down the hill we planned to climb in the first place.

Once we got that out of our system, the next 80 minutes or so were singlespeeding singletrack nirvana. Or at least I thought so. Steve had a biggish gear and I think the last time he was on a MTB was bombing down Haleakala on Maui in April. Normally on his Yeti he kicks my butt on the tech stuff. But the singlespeed seemed to be a great equalizer. Dave had a smaller gear than I and had much less trouble. But then again, he is a real singlespeeder, having done races like the VT50 and NH100k with one gear. I, on the other hand, had the backyard turf advantage. I was running a 32x18 ratio. Since NEMBA reclaimed this place from the ATVs, trash dumpers and partiers, I've been coming here a lot. I managed to clean several things that often trip me up on the singlespeed.

Steve had time commitments and had to cut out after hitting most of the good stuff in LDT. While working our way back toward the periphery of the forest, a teen girl was so absorbed into texting that she nearly walked right into us. Imagine that, texting while hiking in the woods! She not only not saw us while walking right toward us, she didn't hear us. She spaz'd so badly that she nearly dropped her wireless crack device. I laughed so hard I nearly peed myself. Dave and I continued north back into Hudson, NH to hit a small loop around one of my employer's facilities. I do not recommend riding here unless you have a BAE Systems badge. Security has stopped me after popping out of the woods multiple times. Strangely, there are all kinds of scary signs about private, you will be arrested, no ATVs, etc, yet the dirt bikes and ATVs keep the trails up nicely. It is wicked fast with berms in all the right places. It follows the Merrimack River for about a mile too, right across the river from the Pheasant Lane mall. You can smell the Chinese from the food court every time.

Another bit of road took us into the "Hudson Powerlines" riding area behind my house, which crosses into the fifth town of the ride, Pelham. Dave was whining about all the road, being on an undergeared singlespeed and all. To me, it's all riding, and it's all good. Besides, we all can benefit from some insane spinning once in a while, especially if you focus on keeping your pelvis rock steady. I regularly link up many bits of woods to make a ride complete. Local riding areas just aren't big enough to get 3+ hours of riding in without repeating something. So you go parcel hopping.

We cut out the Merryll Hill climbs and went right to Seavey Hill, the one I live on. This has a steep 200ft, ATV churned climb up the back side. It was the most punishing thing we did in three hours. It is really hard to find a singlespeed traction line up this loose rock mine field, but I managed to clean it.

Dave and I finished with 31.2mi (50.2km) in just over three hours riding time. A great workout. Legs came around nicely after a lethargic start from Friday's mountains loop. I thought 10.5hrs riding for the weekend was pretty good until I read Solobreak's report. 464km, 16hrs?

White Mountains East Loop

This ride was planned weeks ago. As Friday, July 3 approached, the weather pattern of general suckiness made prospects for this ride dim. Seeing some forecasts calling for 100% chance of rain in the mountains, I sent out a cancel notice Thursday evening. I've organized rides before where a 30% probability of rain pops up the day before and everybody bails. Cyclists are like that. So rather than wait until 6am the next morning in desperate hope the weather would turn around, I cancelled so I wouldn't leave that one rider that might not bail anyway left hanging.

Track up "easy" side of Hurricane, "only" 15% grade. Switchbacks were well over 20% grade.

We'll, not only has the weather pattern been sucky lately, but the weatherman's ability to predict such suckiness sucks too. Friday morning I get up, radar shows no rain in the area, and probability of rain in the White Mountains is back down to 30%. Sounds perfect to me! I frantically call everybody up, able to reach two, only one was still open to riding. Thought it was still risky, so we both went in fully expected to get deluged upon at some point in the ride. On an all paved road ride, this wouldn't be such a bad thing. But the biggest climb in our planned route was dirt. 23mm tires on a seasonal forest service road in pouring rain often don't work that well.

Glen Fraser and I headed up to Conway. Traffic was very light. Took slightly less than two hours driving time to get there. Temps were pleasant enough to not need long layers. I took only a rain shell, risky given Jefferson Notch is quite high up and much cooler than Conway.

Hurricane Summit socked in, looking east.

My goal was to get good training value out of first two climbs. Ten miles of mostly flat terrain was a nice warmup to bottom of Hurricane Mtn Rd. I hit it hard. A little too hard, as I hit deflection about half way up. It took about 10 minutes to go from gate to summit, 800ft gain, easily at Ascutney race pace effort. I never recovered from this short, uber intense interval for the rest of the ride.

Others were out playing on this climb too, on this dreary morning. Apparently a large group headed the way we were heading. Bombing down the back side of Hurricane Mtn Rd, 17% grade, wet, with low visibility initially was quite a rush. Didn't dare let any real speed build up. I worried about my rims overheating.

We head north to Evans Notch, just inside Maine. This one gains a little less vertical than Hurricane and is not nearly as steep. Doesn't mean it is easier though. It just means you use bigger gears and go faster. I felt like I was going hard, but I'm sure my ability was down a notch after the Hurricane interval. I waited a good while for Glen. Apparently after I put a gap on him, a moose came crashing out of the forest and claimed the road. It refused to budge and Glen was not about to challenge him for a piece of the road. Eventually the moose sauntered off the road so Glen could resume his climb. Glen always sees the big critters. In the Berkshires a couple weeks ago, he saw a sow bear with three cubs.

Evans Notch

We caught up to a large number of riders at the summit. There were two, maybe three different groups represented, some going our way, some going opposite way. The ones going our way were doing a loop half the size of ours, heading back to Conway via Pinkham Notch.

As we approached Gorham, the skies grew dark. We felt random rain drops. Over Pinkham Notch you could see wall of rain coming down. It was moving towards Evans Notch where we were just 30 minutes earlier. I wondered if our Jefferson Notch climb was doomed, as the sky seemed to be filling in. We quickly replenished at 54 miles into the ride and carried on.

The sky seemed to be clearer on the other side of the Presidential Range. As we approached the base of Jefferson Notch, it was more sunny than cloudy. How lucky could we be? We just might pull this thing off without even getting soaked.

Bottom of Jefferson Notch

With all the recent rain, the gravel was perfect on Jefferson Notch Rd, just as I expected. Almost like riding on pavement in places. The first three miles is pretty mellow. Then you hit the last two miles where the average grade doubles, and the peak grade quadruples. I saw sustained grades of 15% on my GPS. The switchbacks near the summit were over 20%. No wonder some guys end up walking this when conditions are dry and loose. I was amazed there were only a couple cars up here, as it is a popular hiking trail head for Mt Washington. The Washington summit was actually clear!

The Jefferson descent was a hoot. Could really let the speed run out here. I think this is the best I've seen this road. It dumps out right at Crawford Notch, where the descent continues on Rt 302. We stopped again at the General Store a few miles down, as the store in Bartlett disappeared. I was running on fumes by this point. Glen was past running on fumes. We still had Bear Notch to go.

View from near top of Bear Notch

Bear Notch is included in all sorts of White Mountains loops. It's the only connector between the Kanc and Rt 302. From Bartlett it gains about 1100ft at around 6% grade. Very easy to get a good climbing rhythm going. I maintained around 11mph. A few weeks ago when I rode with Keith, Rich and Dave, I was able to hold 14mph on this climb. But that was a shorter ride and this climb came earlier in that ride. We now had 100 miles and most of the climbing in our legs.

Glen cresting summit of Jefferson Notch.

We finished with a bit of the Kanc and Passaconaway Rd back to Conway. I logged 115.6mi with 6hrs, 25min riding time. A little slower than last couple times, but there were only two of us this time. Topo says this ride entails nearly 10,000ft of climbing. My GPS says 7900ft. Big discrepancy. Ride feels like a lot more, but that is because I tend to hit the first couple short climbs as hard as I can.

Turned out to be perfect day weather wise. I even got sunburned, not thinking sunscreen would be needed on such a dreary day starting out. Two more rides are planned in the Dubious Training Value Ride Series, Jay/Smugglers and Catskills. The Jay/Smugglers loop shown for July 10 will have to get pushed back I think, as Newton's Revenge might get in the way.

Carlisle by Singlespeed

After reading Putney race reports, I feel I made the right call by getting some quality training hours in the rest of the weekend. It was pretty greasy in my neck of the woods too. Probability of killing myself at non-race pace would be lower I figured.

Legs didn't feel half bad from Saturday's uber intense 32 minute race with another 2.5hrs of moderate to hard riding before and after the race. I didn't feel like trashing an expensive XTR drivetrain, so I tossed the singlespeed in the car and headed to Great Brook Farm State Park on Sunday.

On arrival, I freaked when I saw the parking lot. It was completely filled with horse trailers, I bet over 30 of them. Many were the extra big ones that maybe carry four horses. Now I like horses. My wife and her dad owned a Belgian draft team in Michigan for many years. But a whole calvery on soft singletrack trails?

Russell Mill upper right, Canberry Bogs upper left, Towne Forest lower left.

I started my usual way into GB but worked towards the north end to hit the new stuff in Russell Mill first. NEMBA has been very active in both GB and the Russell Mill parsel. I found more segments I missed the first and only other time I was in there. All purpose built stuff. There are several log stunts, many with no transitions at the end. You have to wheelie drop off 'em. Glad I inspected them before committing. There are some Vietnam sized rock stunts in there too, stuff way over my ability. All told, I bet there is 6 miles of new singletrack in there, chocked full of goodies.

I actually ran into Norm Blanchett and crew from Merrimack Valley NEMBA doing trail work in Russell Mill. Got to personally let the crew know how great their work rides in Great Brook, Russell Mill, and Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest closer to my house.

Russell Mill log stunt.

After I hit pretty much all there was to ride in Russell Mill, it was back to Great Brook. I was dismayed by the conditions of trails. Anything that wasn't solid rock was churned into soft compost ready for planting. It looked as though somebody took a garden rototiller right down the singletrack. What a pain to ride on. 1000 bikes could ride through there in pouring rain and not do the damage of 50 horses on marginally firm trails. I struggle with that one. They gotta have places to ride too. But on loamy singletrack after a week of rain? What really irks me is when mountain bikes are banned from trails under the premise they cause damage, yet horses are allowed to continue riding the trails.

That wasn't the only downside of riding after horses. It's one thing if they leave an intermittent "care package" here and there. Easily avoidable. In fact, growing up in Michigan I had the pleasure of stepping into steaming cow pies with bare feet. Do you have any idea what that feels like oozing up between your toes? No? You had a deprived childhood! Back to horses. When a bunch of them pass through a soft singletrack, the later horses mince up the care packages left by earlier horses. The trail became a well fertilized juicy solution. Later I spent an hour flossing spent equine fuel out of my teeth. Yeah, that is a lot more gross than stepping in a cow pie when you were a kid.

The hop up was just as abrupt as the drop shown here in Russell Mill.

Some GB trails were posted no horses. Those rode fine. Mostly just tacky, but a few muddy spots were encountered. When I encountered equestrians, I tried my best to be polite and do the right thing to minimize spooking a horse. I did encounter one horse that refused to go past my bike. Horses can be like that. A bike is not a natural thing, so they can't process its information.

I rode pretty much all there was to ride in GB. I next hit the cranberry bogs where I parked. This is all flat doubletrack stuff. Very fast, high cadence on singlespeed. My goal was to ride a minimum of three hours. I was riding so fast that I ran out of trails to ride before three hours was up. I remembered a little place off Rt 225 in Carlisle I found a while back. Think it was called Towne Forest. It's a couple miles by road, then a 2-3 mile loop in the woods with a little bit of climbing. Mostly just fast stuff. So I hit that, long out of water, and legs just about cooked when I finished.

Ride came out to be 35.3 miles in 3.3 hours. That's one of my longer singlespeed rides. Not too much climbing though, just over 2000ft per the Garmin. Despite the greasy conditions, I managed to stay on my bike the whole time while maintaining a good pace. Felt like I got superb training value out of the ride. Lots of very low cadence, high force stuff punching over the short hills combined with wide-open double track spinning. Normal geared riding keeps you in the comfort zone. The end points need to be worked once in a while to develop/maintain neuro-muscular strength (by mashing) and to keep the pedaling cycle efficient through smooth, high cadence spinning.

Next up is a White Mountains East loop on July 3. At least three, maybe five will be riding. This loop is not a deathmarch ride. I'm looking to get some solid threshold training value out of it, starting with 15% grade Hurricane Mtn Rd in Conway. Evans Notch in Maine is next. The high point of the ride, both in elevation and enjoyment, is Jefferson Notch road. Dirt all the way up and most of the way down. We finish with the 1200ft, 6% grade Bear Notch climb. Caravan leaves Nashua, NH around 7:15am for a 9:30am start in Conway. Drop me a note if you'd like to join.

Another PR... sort of

Hit number two in the BUMPS hillclimb series today, Okemo Mountain. While Whiteface tends to draw interdisciplinary athletes, the obscure Okemo hillclimb seems to draw as much cycling talent as Mt Washington. A bunch of elite riders showed up, most signing up day-of so I didn't know they were coming. Anthony Coby, Charlie McCarthy, Andy Gardner and David Glick are a few. Local climbing phenom Gerry Clapper (Williams Cycling) was there too. Gerry was the last guy to hang with Roger Aspholm at Housatonic last weekend. Sub-hour on Mt Washington, I expected Gerry to beat me by at least two minutes here. He was the only one in my age group I thought I had to contend with.

Hillclimb race reports score pretty low for edge-of-the-seat excitement potential, ranking right up there with individual TT reports. Today's report is no exception.

We line up for 9am start. There were over 90 of us, in one wave. I queued up in first row, about 10 across. Without warning, the cannon (a real miniature cannon) about 8ft away from me goes off. No count-down. We knew race would start any minute, but this thing scared the crap out of us. The cannon was so loud you could feel the percussion.

Flying down the switchbacks to Rt 103, non-neutral, with riders that perhaps never road race, was a bit hairy. Idea was to stay at the front. Once on Rt 103, it is two miles to the climb. About 8 of us got a nice paceline going at 28-30mph. This fast start makes Okemo unique from the other climbs. It starts more like the middle of a road race where people are jockeying for front position when a big hill is coming up.

The first couple tenths of a mile are wicked steep, maybe 15%. All the young Pro/1/2's and Gerry go ballistic. I think I did a pretty good job keeping check on power. A number of riders went way harder than they should've and I soon passed them. Jeff Johnson (Battenkill-United) was ahead of me. We traded places for a while. I finished comfortably ahead of him at Whiteface last weekend but he was putting me into a world of hurt this morning. Maybe I shouldn't have gone for the mountain bike ride yesterday. I figured I was not having a good day or he was working on borrowed kilojoules. Eventually he snapped and was gone.

I was now gaining on Andy Gardner (Metlife). Andy did 6-gaps with us this year, and I thought to gain on him on something like this probably meant he was not having a good day. Later I learned this was the case. Then a no-team rider passed me and Andy. Who was this guy? He looked younger than me, but put me down another spot overall. Things settled down after that with about 1.5 miles of 12% to go. I figured my finishing position was sealed, as there were no other waves with potentially faster riders in them like at other hillclimbs. Anybody that was going to beat me was already up the road. I got a little bit lazy. I never lost sight of Andy, but there was nobody behind me.

Perhaps I backed off more than I expected. I here something, look back, and Bob Meikle is right there. Crap! Where did he come from? I still had better part of a mile to go, which takes a long time at 8mph. I started killing myself and could not grow the gap. I could not let up for even a second. I managed to hold him off to the line though, with only 9 seconds margin. That is only 100ft at 8mph. Bob is another one of those runner turned cyclist types. Seems all these converts climb like mountain goats on 'roids. I believe Gerry Clapper took up cycling after running not that long ago too.

I finished with a 32:08.2 time. This is about 21 seconds faster than last year. A new PR, right? Not so fast. We averaged around 29mph over the two mile lead-in to the climb today. Last year we strolled along at conversation pace, more likely 25mph average. I got pulled along about 40 seconds faster than last year. Thus on the actual climb, I was 19 seconds slower! To be fair, I did pull through a few times leading into the climb, so I earned my share of the fast stuff. But it wasn't an individual effort. Oh well, that is the way these mass start hillclimbs can be sometimes. I was happy with my result.

I placed 7th overall, 2nd to Clapper in my age group who was 4th overall. Colby won it, crushing the course record by nearly 2 minutes with 27:27. Glick, who established the record last year, was a few seconds slower this year. Ann Howard also broke the women's record by nearly a minute.

Since nobody that beat me at Whiteface made it to Okemo, I should be overall points leader for BUMPS now. This means I'll get to wear the KOM jersey at Ascutney next month. I really wanted one of these. I think the BUMPS team did a nice job with the design.

The rain held off for the race. Results were up by the time we got back down. What a novelty! Awards went on schedule, but most of us were passing out during the awards because food was not served until after the awards were done. That's one way to increase participation during awards! Seriously, Glenn Deruchie (Okemo Resort) and Jack Dortch (Ludlow Rotary Club) and team did a fantastic job putting this event on. Some top talent showed up today, and about 50% more riders participated than last year. That is notable in current economic climate.

Joey B and I went out for a loop ride after nourishment. Plan was to head north on Rt 100, hit the 10% dirt CCC/Shrewsbury climb, then Joey would had back via Rt 103 while I explored a couple more climbs. We no more than got to Shrewsbury Rd and it started pouring out. Neither of us wanted to trash our climbing bikes in mud. Joey headed back, I opted for a Rt 100/4/100A loop with a small amount of climbing. At least it wasn't cold or electrifying out. I got in a solid 100 minutes or so of upper tempo to threshold effort. Guess that means I'm bailing on the Putney MTB race on Sunday. I'm a wuss like that. With all the rain they've gotten the last few days, I doubt I could go more than five minutes at a time without falling off.

Bucking the Age Trend

Many readers have approached me at races recently to ask about my training secrets. I don't have any really. My friend Brett once commented to his coach that my training is comprised of fartlek rides. Because my training lacks formal structure that most coach-based programs entail, Brett surmises that I may just be one of those genetic naturals in the sport. I may have inherited some good mitochondrial DNA from my mother. Surely there is more to this puzzle.

So how does one going on 47 years of age continue to hit new PR's on climbs each year? I can only speculate in my case. Here's a go at it, in no particular order.

Cross training. This winter I spent less time on the bike and more time on skis than any prior winter since I took up cycling. Readers may recall I fretted over my cycling fitness early in the season due to so few hours spent turning pedals. I never once hit an indoor trainer. The first six weeks of the year averaged 4-5 hours of riding, but at least that much again on skis.

I am still a hack on skate skis, but that does not diminish the enjoyment factor or the aerobic quality factor. XC skiing is likely the most intense thing you can do to your heart and lungs. My ski workouts were all about intensity, all the time. Waterville Valley workouts usually involved a few thousand feet of climbing at anaerobic intensity. Do this for three hours, you're cooked, mission accomplished. Mid week I hit the Weston Tuesday night sprint races. These ran 15-25 minutes right on the verge of puking the whole time. It is much harder to put that much stress on your cardio system on the bike. An epic snowfall winter was actually a blessing in disguise. I believe my cardio fitness improved over winter.

Cadence. Over the last few years, I've noted a steady decline in my average cadence on both the flats and the hills. Don't know why. It is just happening. I always used to be a big proponent of spinning. But the last couple years I've posted the fastest times yet on hillclimbs while pushing bigger gears. Could periodic singlespeeding be building strength up a bit, so a lower cadence is more optimal? Fast spinning is metabolically expensive. Everybody has a magic balance between muscular fatigue and aerobic stress. Mine seems to be shifting more towards using strength despite an apparent improvement in aerobic capacity. This is a best case scenario, as sustained power improvement is coming from both directions.

Training While Fatigued. This may be a big factor. I used to always recover well before my hard workout days. The last couple years, and this year in particular, I more often than not feel sore and/or tire going into my hardest workouts. Occasionally, I pull the plug on a planned hard workout and wait another day. But most often, I go with it. Interestingly, things loosen up, and the power output is there despite sensations that I'm suffering more than I should be. I have not put the Power Tap on my bike this year. No HRM either. 100% perceived effort is used. Liberating actually. I tend to do 2-day training blocks during the week. A set of VOmax intervals (hills at 3-9 minute duration) might be on Tuesday, while a 60-90 minute threshold effort on or off road might be Wednesday's workout. No rote repeats. Nearly all rides are loops, often solo, sometimes with one or two others. I've learned that the only way to tell I should not do a hard training session is to start one, see how it goes, and if it isn't happening, pull the plug. You cannot simply make the decision by how sore your legs are or how tired you feel. Nine times out of ten, the body comes through and I get a quality workout in. This effectively increases the number of hard workouts per week I get in.

Intensity Over Quantity. The past couple winters I did not get much time on the bike. When I did get on the bike, I was often sore from skiing. But I could not afford to waste these precious hours on recovery rides. I rode them like I meant it. Most rides included low cadence, high force efforts on small hills. If roads were dangerous, I sometimes hit a cell tower access road that gets plowed and do a few repeats (ok, I do repeats sometimes). I'd push the biggest gear that I could barely do without dabbing. The efforts lasted maybe only 2 minutes, but do a bunch of these at off the chart muscular force, your legs are mush in no time. The focus was on cycling specific muscular stress. My thinking was I'm not getting 12 hours of riding in per week, so I needed strength training to maintain cycling specific muscle mass. I got all the cardio I needed on skis.

Aerobic Activity Volume. I got a surprisingly large amount of aerobic work in at this point in the season, over 300hrs in fact. This comes from XC skiing and two cycling trips with huge volume. My body seems to respond well to liberal doses of threshold and VOmax work. The dubiousness of the epic mountain rides we do may in fact not be so dubious for me. What is interesting is that the Type-I muscle fiber guys usually bury me towards the end of these rides, but I come out ahead in a 30-60 minute hillclimb race. I in fact may be more of a Type-IIa muscle fiber guy. If true, it explains many things. I'm a loser of a sprinter and I struggle with ultra endurance efforts lasting many hours. Somewhere in the middle I have a sweet spot. It is perfect for TT-ish efforts like short MTB races, hillclimbs, and individual time-trials.

Diet. Virtually nothing has changed in my diet for several years now. My weight has varied very little too, maybe hitting upper 160's in winter and lower 160's in summer. I have made one small change though that I believe has made a profound impact on my performance. Are you ready for this? You will be disappointed, as very few athletes will benefit from what I discovered.

Since starting this blog, I've commented about my struggles with asthma. I've kept an inhaler nearby for most of my adult life. Over the last 10 years, I rarely used it as a rescue inhaler. I used it primarily to ward off exercised induced bronchial restriction (EIB).

My family doctor recommended a few years ago to take fish oil supplements to improve my LDL/HDL cholesterol ratio. They've always been out of whack. A couple years later I go in for physical, and no change. I read up on fish oil and learned that I needed to take many capsules per day to effect a change. So I did. During this research, I came across recent studies that show Omega-3's (DHA/EPA) can have anti-inflammatory properties. Asthma is an inflammation response. The studies showed that in a certain class of athletes, DHA/EPA reduced some athlete's EIB to point of becoming completely weened off albuterol. They took very large doses, on the order of 3000g of DHA/EPA per day. I upped my intake to about 1000g.

There were times even when I used my inhaler, I still got a tight chest. Nothing kills a ski or bike race faster than when it feels like you have an 800 lb gorrilla sitting on your chest. I more or less forgot about the asthma studies for a while until one day last summer I noticed I hadn't had any asthma in a long time. I was still using my inhaler before hard workouts and races. I decided to stop using it for a while to see what would happen. No asthma. Not even a hint. I went through a whole ski season this past winter with no asthma. We hit some nasty cold days, and those always used to give me trouble. Not anymore. I have since let my inhaler prescription expire. I now take one high potency capsule with 900mg of DHA/EPA per day. I feel like on average I have about 10-20% more lung capacity. Sure, I had good days when I wasn't taking any Omega-3's, but most days had some degree of limitation. Now every day is good day. This not only has an impact on instantaneous performance during a race, but also lets me train harder on a regular basis. The last year or so has let me train untapped space so to speak.

There's really no way I can prove 900mg of DHA/EPA per day is behind this. I can point to studies. I have no control. I can't think of anything else I changed in my life at the same time. Some people just outgrow asthma. Does that happen after 46 years?

So there you have it, the Hill Junkie secrets to hill climbing success. At some point though, I will hit the back side of the age curve. Each of the last few years I thought would be the year. My mother thinks when this day arrives, I won't deal very well with it. It's inevitable. I'm not going to stress over it now, nor will I when that slower day arrives. In the mean time, I look to local guys like Gerry Clapper or John Funk, my age, that are much stronger climbers than I. Ned Overend, whom I've had two occasions to meet at Mt Washington, is at a whole different level altogether in his early 50's. There's always hope and inspiration around us.

Thanks for reading.