Energy Awareness week is here. Along with Energy Awareness week is the semi-annual Energy Awareness 40km road race aboard Iwakuni. Before I post this race report, here are my previous attempts at this race:

Oct 29, 2005: 1hr 1min 48sec (dropped by the pack on the second lap)
May 20, 2006: 57min 3sec (eight place overall, no contention for any age bracket)

Pre-race warmup: A few laps around the parking lot, about 5-10 minutes on the rollers to get the lungs moving, a couple semi-sprints, and another 5 minutes on the rollers.

The main threats: Hiroshige Cycling Team. They fielded 4 men and 3 women. In the spring race, two of their men broke away from the pack and finished 4 minutes ahead. No one bridged and we never saw them again.

A large portion Ueki's Club Athlete were there, which was surprising with the 84km Shimanami ride tomorrow. But I was definitely glad to see the turn out. Every extra participant we get means that more insurance the races will continue to occur. Okada-san was definitely a threat on this style racing. He's a fantastic sprinter.

Other racers it was good to see were from the base. There were a little over half-dozen Americans in the field of 40ish riders. This is a better turnout than we saw the last time, and the big lawyer guys were fantastic to have in the peloton for their pulls.

The entire race seemed to go significantly slower than previous events. The downloaded powertap information contradicts this, so I'll take this as a plus up to my fitness. Race format, 4 laps of approximately 10km each. They're actually a little less. The powertap says total length was 37.5km. The previous computer measured it from 37-38.

The first lap was a feeler lap. There weren't a lot of breakaway attempts. Pedden took a good bit of time on the front on his own so I jumped the gap and settled in behind. About a minute and a half after settling on him, the pack crept on the right and I hopped in. There were two or three non-Hiroshige riders that were taking pulls at the front. One on a Kestrel and the other the resulting winner from Cycling Plus. As we rounded the corner on the first lap to start the return trip, I took the pace car in my sights. Ok, ok.. I shouldn't have done this. It's okay though, when I got to about 20 feet off his bumper, he sped up. (You'd think I'd learn my lesson but I went on to try this two more times. Not smart)

On every return leg of every lap, the Hiro team would move two riders to the front to attempt to break away. Only one time did they attempt to block the person that would ultimately bridge their gap - and even that attempt failed. There was a lot of good work by those at the front to keep anyone from getting away.

I did everything I could to stay 3, 4, or 5 riders off the front. For a large portion of the second and third laps, the Hiroshige team seemed obliged to hold the front and rotate three of their people through the pulls. This was fine by those of us behind even when speeds fell below 40kph no one really pushed to get through. Cycling Plus guy and Kestrel guy would pull through every now and then and force the pace back up.

On the fourth lap the Hiro guys seemed to be getting tired. I had slowly slid to the second guy off the front and was in danger of taking a pull in a really bad area for headwinds. As the man in front of me slid off, one of our locals slid up on my right and I hopped in behind him. He paid the price for it later on, but I think all of us at the front were pretty stoked to see a new face on the front.

We rounded our four 90 degree corners that told us we were on the way back. The pace from that point to the finish line averaged 46.7kph. Three of us took off on the front. Hiroshige member, Cycling Plus and myself. I thought we'd have it through to the end. The two others didn't see it that way and as I rotated into the pull they fell off while the peloton moved in on us. I pulled off to the right and slid back into the pack - still a little disappointed. I think we could have held the pack off through the end if we'd worked together.

The pack pace certainly was no joke though. A kilometer and a half from the finish line, one of the Hiro guys put the spurs to it and was off. Seemed a little early to me, but I put the spurs to it and joined suit. This ultimately cost me the race. I put entirely too much energy into chasing this guy and when it came time for the sprint, I just didn't have it left. We found ourselves pushing 58kph going into the last two turns.

When the early sprinter fell off his pace I again found myself out in front. I tried to pull off and get folks around but they weren't having it. And I couldn't lose too much momentum without getting dropped on the sprint. I put the legs to it for a 50kph push going into the last turn. After the last turn, there would be 300 meters to the finish.

I turned that corner with legs that were spent. One rider (Cycling Plus guy) and Okada-san pulled through me on the turn. I put the head down and mashed for all it was worth. I didn't get better than 49kph on the final sprint, but that was enough to hold off anyone behind me. I kept pace with Okada in the last 200 meters and we came across within the same second. The Cycling Plus member came across 2 seconds ahead.

All this was good enough for third place overall with a time of 54min 25sec.

Things I learned from the entire event.

A. first thing was again a re-affirmation that I don't need to feel any obligation to keep the pace up by taking pulls. It's a race. If a team wants to pick up the pace, let them have at it. I just need to be aware of breakaway attempts.

B. Watch the stinking pre-sprint sprints. I expended a lot of energy on the return leg of the last lap. I probably could have converted that to sprint power down the final stretch.

C. Along with B, I need to continue to learn racing strategy to identify feints and breakaways that are real attempts. I'm paranoid that someone else is going to get away. Without having a team to support you, you have to work with other individual racers to prevent good teams from dominating the event. In Japan, that's doubly hard because the other individual racers don't speak English.... and I don't speak Japanese. Hard to communicate who is doing what.

D. Not sure if it's just a difference in heart rate monitors, but the stats for today showed me at a max HR of 192. There's no spiking occurring, so I'm going to have to adjust things based on that. My average HR for the day was 177, and that was previously my bar for LTHR. So, time to do some more testing.

Finally, I have to really work on my short distance power. That's my limiter. I need to be able to get up on the pedals and go. Power tells me one thing right now. I'm not as good as I think I am.

Pictures to follow.

VW

Completely inconsequential numbers, but stuff to look at for the sake of looking:

Here's numbers from my 4x6min tempo interval training session for today

Entire workout (average 230 watts):
Duration: 1:14:51
Work: 1032 kJ
Norm Power: 255
Distance: 34.914 km
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 1116 230 watts
Heart rate: 73 173 151 bpm
Cadence: 31 128 84 rpm
Speed: 5 51.6 28.0 kph
Pace 1:10 12:00 2:09 min/km
Hub Torque: 0 34 9.9 lb-in
Crank Torque: 0 135.8 26.3 N-m

Peak 5s (1054 watts):
Peak 10s (888 watts):
Peak 20s (554 watts):
Peak 30s (468 watts):
Peak 1min (370 watts):
Peak 2min (309 watts):
Peak 5min (299 watts):

There's another whole mess load of numbers that go along with all of this. In fact, I'm pretty much in statistical overload at this point. The powertap provides everything I expected it to, but now it's making use of it all. I definitely see already places I will need to improve. Over the next two weeks I'll get a much better feel for things. I'll race with it on Saturday, ride a century with it on Sunday. I'll get a test day in next Thursday and Friday for doing the Critical Power zones.

From there, we'll just have to see where I can take it. Saturday's race should be telling in many ways. My legs are super tired all the time right now in the base periods. Next weeks testing should be telling too after a little bit of rest/relaxation.

The off season training has begun, and here's the super long post to explain.

After the Okayama race, I took a week and a half off. Of course, it was one of the most gorgeous weeks and a half of weather we've had this year so far. It took a lot to not get on the bike, but it helped a lot that the bike was in the shop for an overhaul.

I've made a lot of changes for the coming year. First and foremost, I'm thinking about the coming year. Last year at this time I was just beginning to get the feeling that I might maybe want to road bike a lot more. It wasn't until December or so that I thought I should start setting goals.

This year on the other hand, I've got goals piling up faster than I can think about them. After my week and a half off, I've begun to work on my "off season." My off season this year will basically run from now until April. I've lined myself up with www.trainingpeaks.com with a self-coached training plan that will gear me toward competing with strength at the Tour de Kunisaki in May and the Okayama Circuit again in October. Those are my only "A" priority races for next year.

I've set a handful of other goals for the year, some starting as early as next month, and others for the coming months at the beginning of 2007 and forward. Some of my goals are as follows:

Zenitsubo Hill Climb in under 30 minutes. My personal best right now is 32 minutes 48 seconds. I expect to break the 30 minute barrier on November 26th this year during the Tour de Yuu. I'll need to drop some weight off the bike (and my body) to help me accomplish this one. I'll take the back brakes off, the big chain ring, water bottle cages, pumps, air, saddle bag, and anything else I can unscrew and remove and make the bike climb a hill.

Next goal for the year is a little more unofficial. I want to complete a personal solo century in under 5 hours. That's really a build up to my main goal.

The main goal is to complete the Tour de Kunisaki in under 4 hours 45 minutes. That would be good enough to put me in the top 5 based on last year's results. This last year I did it in 5hrs 13min. That was on a lot of inexperience for riding that distance and nutrition. This year will be much more focused training with this goal in mind.

After Kunisaki and a break, part 2 of the season will build to Okayama. My goal for Okayama is to podium for that event. This year's 11th place finish was more due to strategic error than anything else, but I certainly need to work on sprinting and pace. Part 2 of the season will focus on the shorter races. Along the way to Okayama my goal is to break the 1 hour mark for a 40km individual time trial. That event will be the bike portion of the Sprint Triathlon on base.

A lot of goals, but they're very specific and very doable. I'm taking the training this year to a new level of commitment. Here's the specific things I've changed:

1. No more distance based goals. I completed the 10,000 km for 2006 and then some. Next year is about time on the bike, and focused time. Annual hours should be at or above 500 hours on the bike.

2. Strength training. This started last month really, but this month through the end of January will involve time in the gym to training cycling specific muscle groups that can translate to that force to the pedals.

3. Power training. This is the monetary investment. A Powertap SL will provide me with the ability to quantitatively measure my power. I spent this year working with heart rate based training. Finding that heart rate is becoming very dependant on a lot of factors, power is the way to train.

4. Specific training workouts. This last year I pretty much just got on the bike and rode. You could say I just did a 9 month "base miles" training session. Now it's time to put what I know and the expertise of available coaches to focus effort with each time I get on the bike, whether it's training my ability to corner in a sprint or to simply get on and spend time recovering.

It looks like a great year to come. Here's to an injury free year, a dozen or more races, and goals met for the 2007 training year.

VW

Final results are in and online - 11th place, +8 seconds. Including team relays, I was 13th overall. Total field between team relays - 30 teams - and individual racers - 94 individual racers.

Results are like this:

1: 2:00:04.43
2: 2:00:04.47 +00.03
3: 2:00:04.96 +00.53
4: 2:00:05.44 +01.01
5: 2:00:07.09 +02.66
6: 2:00:09.43 +04.99
7: 2:00:11.55 +07.12
8: 2:00:11.69 +07.25
9: 2:00:11.86 +07.43
10: 2:00:12.65 +08.22
11 (me): 2:00:13.20 +08.76
Average speed of the top 11 riders was 40.7kph.

12: 2:03:27.32 +03:22.88