Up at 5:30am to get ready for the race. Hopped on the scale and weighed in at 177.5 lbs. Good with that. Total weight with bike clothes and gear was 181 lbs. Bike weight 19.5 lbs.

The forecast... downpour rain from 7 am to noon. Race time: 8:30am.

We took the chance and drove to Zenitsubo to check in. Got to the top of the mountain and was pleasantly surprised to see a good number of cars at the top already. By the time we got to the top it was still pretty dark, but it was apparent we were in the clouds which would bring us the dreaded rain later that day.

Side note: One of the things bad about the rain on these roads to the top of Zenitsubo (pronounced Zen-eat-si-bow) is the metal rain grates that run across the width of the road in all the wrong places. They're placed particularly on corners for drainage. They are treacherous to go over in a turn for a bike with 23mm wide wheels.

Checked in and found out I was guaranteed to be in the top 10 of my group. I was entered in the "Champions" group which only said, I'm a pretty gosh darn good rider in comparison and I don't have to fight up the mountain with the masses. There were seven of us in that group and our start time would be 10:30am (now three hours away).

While waiting for one of my local ride partners, another Japanese man approached me and asked if I was champion class. I gave an affirmative reply. We talked real quick about times and I was humbled when he said last year he finished in just over 27 minutes. My goal for today was 30 minutes and my personal best so far had been 32 minutes.

We got out to the car and prepared to wait, but it wasn't long after that when they told us the race had been canceled because they were concerned of the danger on slick roads and the oncoming rain. We packed the car back up and headed on home.

I waited around the house for about an hour, staring at the weather radar and mulling over doing the hill climb anyway. By 9:30am I was out the door doing a nice easy spin for the 25 minutes it would take me to get to the base of the climb. It had yet to do anything more than spit a few drizzling rain drops at the ground so up I went.

The first 10 minutes went faster than I'd expected. The first 10 minutes includes about 2 minutes of up/down rolling terrain, more down than up. I certainly lost some time here having to be extremely careful around the corners and on the wet grates. I rode the brakes most of the way through this downhill section. But, when I got to the base of the long part of the climb, I was ahead of my pacing time by about a minute.

I had chosen to stick with the 12x23 cassette in the rear. This is an extremely high gear for this climb requiring a lot of time in the low 50's for cadence. If I were to race this again, I'd probably switch the bike over to a 9 speed so I could get the back gears down to around a 29T cog. I could spin a lot faster (up to 15 rpms faster) and sit down for a lot more of it.

On paper, the last three stretches were: 18 minutes @ 340 watts, 50 seconds @ 430, 2 minutes @ 370. I finished this stretch in 20 minutes 46 seconds in actuality. The last 5 minutes was pretty drastically different than the plan though. That 50 seconds at 430w was just not happening.

End time was 29 min 56 sec. I squeezed in under the wire for my goal, but I squeezed in nonetheless. I'll add this to my workout routes once every other week to work on pacing specifically up the mountain. Next fall when this race happens again, I expect to be faster because I expect to have trained more. I also expect to be faster as I learn how to pace Zenitsubo for the best times in the best places.

Full power charts are here (these are big, close to 1mb per file):







The CSV and WKO files are attached to my blog and the CSV will be tossed on my powertap files linked in the navigation pane.

VW

My goal for tomorrow's Zenitsubo hill climb is under 30 minutes. I took a drive out today to get the profile of the course. Here are the general statistics based off GPS elevation profiling.

Total distance - 7.408 km
Elevation difference, bottom to top - 523m
Max gradient - 15.45% for 143 meters, starting 533 meters from the finish
Longest gradient - 12.5% for 1526 meters

Overall average gradient - 7%

Profile image posted here:



Here's my plan to get under 30 minutes:

3 minutes: 400w (600 meters)
3 minutes: 320w (941 meters)
2 minutes: 410w (340 meters)
2 minutes: 250w (downhill stretch plus a short 7% climb for total 722 meters)

Then... the pain
18 minutes: 340w (4.2 km)

Then... the real pain
50 seconds: 430w (15.45% for 130 meters)
2 minutes: 370w (last 270 meters)

I have to do these numbers, and better. These numbers by computer calculations should net me a total time of 29 min 56 seconds. Not much time for forgiveness in there, but the plan is always to better the numbers on paper.

I'm a numbers kind of guy. I always have been, and probably always will be. If something works, I want to know why it works so I can replicate it. If something doesn't work, I want to know why it doesn't work so I don't do it again.

The hard thing with athletic training is knowing what is going to work and what is not going to work. The easy answer to this is to pay $1000, $2000, or more for a coach that will know all these things for you and hopefully get you the race results you want for the money you are paying him. If you don't get the race results, you're out a few thousand dollars and you STILL don't know why you didn't get the race results you wanted (unless of course you're just a sloth).

After moving to trainng with a power meter, I've been introduced to a number of acronyms. These acronyms are listed below:

TSS: Training Stress Score
TSB: Training Stress Balance (current form)
CTL: Chronic Training Load (current fitness)
ATL: Acute Training Load (current fatigue level)

Each of these acronyms definitions point to a specific part of your training fitness that makes up where you are at on any given day. Well, to be specific, TSS is a "intensity of workout indicator." Based on your TSS scores of each workout, the ATL, CTL, and most importantly TSB should tell you what to expect from your performance.

The folks over at Cyclingpeaks and Trainingpeaks and the Peaks Coaching Group - name Andrew Coggan and Hunter Allen, are firm believers and developers of these numbers and system. They swear by it, and based on the number of pro teams that are moving toward their software tracking, so do many others.

So, this year, based on the TSS, TSB, CTL, ATL, I will plan all my training numerically. Granted, I'm really just going to be taking some predesigned workouts from the folks at Trainingpeaks under the development of Hunter Allen and making them fit my training plan. I have planned to peak for two events next year in particular. I want to stand on the podium for the 2007 Tour de Kunisaki on May 3rd, and also stand on the podium for the Okayama Intl Circuit enduro on Oct 8th, 2007.

There are a handful of spreadsheets that allow you to work the numbers around to see what a particular workout is going to do TO you or FOR you. I think I've stumbled on the one that works the closes to the Cyclingpeaks planner, and will be using that for my planning. Cyclingpeaks does a good job of analysis of HOW you did, but not WHAT TO DO. If there's a fault in the system, that is it.

So, I've posted my TSB planner chart for the first half of the year here. I'll update it as the year goes, and it is posted in the side bar to the right of my blog under My TSB Planner.



We'll see where we're at come May!

VW

Training workout requirement:
(1) 5 minute blast at max HR
Cruise for 10 minutes
(4) 1 minute efforts at the max you can do, recovering for 1minute between each.
5minutes easy
(5) 30 second efforts at max pace(sprint!) recovering for 1minute between each.
10 minute easy
(3) 2 minute efforts
Cool-down

November 6th Info:
5 minute power: 404 watts
1 minute power: 571, 450, 436, 389
30 second power: 633, 525, 547, 480, 539
2 minute power: 369, 370, (couldn't complete)

Today:
5 minute power: 370 (ick... but)
1 minute power: 574, 468, 436, 423
30 second power: 503, 565, 570, 516, 462
2 minute power: 368, 371, 336

Anyway, I at least got through all the intervals today, which beats the last time. My 5 minute power is down, but I attribute that to tired legs still after a rather grueling century on Sunday. Today was my only hard day this week as I do some light spinning tomorrow and Friday while recovering for the Zenitsubo Hill Climb on Sunday.

Some of the improved intervals I attribute to simple pacing. I'm still learning the best place to be positioned for each type of interval and workout. Interestingly enough, my heart rate is all over the place for these. I haven't been able to get to the upper zones of heart rate since the cold weather settled on us. This workout is again on the schedule in two weeks. I didn't really go out today to try and "beat" the last time I did this workout, but I will next time. Having numbers like these really helps you "compete against yourself" in a way. I might take these intervals out to some of my favorite hills too. There are some hills that would work well for these.

VW

First, a picture. The picture says everything I could possibly say. Blue is the route we were supposed to take. Red would be the route me and my compadre took.



If you would really like the full effect, you can check out the full size picture which I shall keep for posterity (and for next years event when I need a map). The full size image runs a little over 8 megabytes and can be found HERE.

This story begins on Saturday morning, November 18th. My local event coordinator calls me and says "Hey, I have your race packet from Shimonoseki. Can I drop it off?" Sure, so he does. In it, lo and behold, is the route map for the event. I took a quick look at it and thought to myself, "No problemo. It's a fun ride, I'll hop in behind someone and who cares how it comes out." So I stick all of the race packet in my rental van and head off to Shimonoseki.

I arrive in Shimonoseki in good time, scope out the race start point and head off to the onsen. The onsen was fantastic. "Marine Onsen" overlooks the water and you can watch the boats cruise on by in the shipping lane between Kyushu and Honshu. The weather was already overcast and rainy, so I just kinda relaxed in the onsen for a couple hours. I finished up there and drove back to the start point parking lot and settled in for a night's sleep.

I pulled out the race map again and looked it over. I looked at my small GPS and debated plugging the route in. I had the maps for that area on the laptop and it was just a matter of clicking through all the turns. Then I realized that I didn't have the cord to upload the coordinates to the GPS and I decided not to worry about it. I'd just hop in behind someone else and follow them around. I packed it in and hit the sleeping bag.

I woke up in plenty of time to get ready the next morning. It was drizzling pretty steady so I bundled up in all the wet weather/keep me warm gear I had. I biked over to the start point about 3 km away. They gave us a small bag of goodies which I then had to bike BACK to the car. I made two trips back to the car actually, because I forgot to put fresh batteries in the camera. I again debated the GPS just for dropping in the pocket. Nah, it's a fun ride. As long as I follow someone else, there's no need to worry.

I stood around waiting for the start when one of the local club riders approached me and checked to see if I was doing the "Long Course." I nodded yes and he directed me to the OTHER start point. This should have been a clue. But I followed him over to the right start point and got ready to go. I stood around waiting for all the ceremony stuff to end. (Japanese sure do love to talk when getting ready to do ANYTHING)

We set off at a pretty brisk pace. They staggered the start by 30 second or so intervals, so I put it in gear to grab on to the lead pack. We collected as a group of about 15 and started up the coast line.

The first food point came rather suddenly. At only around 20 km into the ride, none of us were ready to eat so I grabbed a banana "on the bike" and pocketed it and kept pedaling. The pace was high tempo enough to prevent me from sitting up to eat, but I squeezed in a Powergel on a downhill section. It was raining steadily still which kept us a little spread out. I pocketed the clear lenses pretty quick when my gloves stopped acting like windshield wipers and were putting more water on the lenses than they were taking off.

There were four or five of us pretty much doing all the work at the front, which I really didn't mind. My "4 hour training day" was supposed to be pretty stiff training as it was and I was substituting this ride for training. I took advantage of the pulls to set a solid pace and paced up the hills along the coast sometimes in the pack and sometimes ahead. On one particular hilly stretch I peeled off the front to hammer up and down some rollers. I got some good working out in but the pack quickly caught me again on the flats when we settled into the wind.

The second food point was a little more welcome for everyone. It came in around the 40km point and everyone refilled water bottles and grabbed some food. I took a chance to sit up and eat the banana while riding slowly out of the check point while the pack filed in behind me and one other rider who was soon to become my companion for the rest of the day's adventure.

Almost immediately after leaving the second food point, we came upon two route markers. One pointed clearly to the right, and the other pointed clearly straight ahead. After some mumbling among the Japanese we concurred (they concurred, I just smiled and nodded and figured as long as I was following someone else, I was safe). The right hand turn was the "bail out" route and the straight arrow was for the full route. So our pack of 10-12 now pushed on straight ahead.

Some time after this, a turning point occurred. Looking back on this turning point, I should have looked behind me. But we were moving along at a good enough pace that I was too busy looking at the saddle of the guy in front of me. A rider slid up next to the guy, said something in Japanese. They talked real quick and the rider that had pulled up slid back behind me again. I was the second guy in the paceline, just following along.

After my next pull at the front, I looked back to wave the next guy in line up ahead of me. When I looked back, there were only three of us left from our group. I looked at the guy behind me and pointed with a confused look on my face. He smiled and pointed straight ahead and hopped in front. The third guy looked like he was struggling to keep pace with us so the first rider and I took some turns.

I knew something was wrong when I looked down at the cyclocomputer and realized we were rolling through 80km already on a "120km route" and we weren't headed back toward the start. We were still along the coast line. Hanger-on guy must have realized it before I did because it was long until it was just one guy and me.

We finally stopped and checked with someone. The guy I was with asked a few questions from one of the locals and seemed pretty satisfied. I pointed behind us, thinking we'd definitely missed our turn. He shook his head and made gestures to say "Nope, we're still good."

We finally ran into a turn that said "To Shimonoseki -->" I looked down at my cyclocomputer. It showed 91km. The sign read "65km." Oye. To make it worse, it was REALLY raining now. To make it a lot worse, our "leisurely ride along the relatively flat coastline" was at an end. It was time to go up over the center of the island. In Japan, that means uphill.

From here, I'd like to say there was a lot of other cool events that occurred. But honestly, it was all about the feet, the pedals, and the butt in the saddle. We did two major climbs to get back over the island (both of which my compadre was nice enough to let me set the pace for in the front). He would be sure to get to the top and sprint down the other side while I was digging powerbars out of my pocket.

Of interest in this point - only after having gotten home and looked at the maps of where we DID bike and where we were SUPPOSED to bike, we overlapped the course three or four times. When we would approach an intersection, I would pull up along side my partner or slide back and let him pull up next to me. He looked like he knew where he was going now, so I felt naively comforted.

The next thing I know (after figuring out I'd get a century in instead of a leisurely 120km fun ride), we come upon a sign for Rte 2. Now I know for sure that the guy I'm with has absolutely NOOOO idea where we are. Time to take charge now that I do know where we are. I stopped at a 7-11, grabbed myself a hot can of coffee and some liquids with him in tow. I chug the coffee. Knowing we're only a mere 20 km away from the finish, I set off for the end with renewed vigor. It's not long before I look back only to find out that my partner is no where to be seen.

In hind sight, I feel a little bad that I left the guy behind me on Rte 9. Only a little bad though, knowing that this guy I was following dragged me some 45 km out of my way, in the pouring rain, over the center of the island.

I pulled into the finish area five hours and thirteen minutes after I started on the metaphorical "3 hour cruise." The folks at the start line cheered for me like they were for the folks that were coming in behind me. It did make me feel good that I wasn't the last guy through. There were still people coming through from the 120km course, and quite a few of them at that.

I hopped back on the bike, took my 3 km trip back to the car and sat down to call Amy to tell her I was done, and share with her the gist of my adventure. We got a good laugh about it. I peeled off the wet clothes, got dry, hopped in the van and slid over to the onsen for some cleaning up and muscle therapy.

So, lessons learned.

A. Take the GPS with you on ANY new route. Even without the route map plugged in I could have at least found a shorter way back.

B. Take the cord for the GPS/computer. (added to my running bike race/ride packing checklist)

C. Follow someone else. Not sure how this will work out for me next time, but hopefully with lessons A and B fixed in my brain, lesson C won't quite be so vital.

To top it all off? I got the extra batteries for the camera and took... oh.... Zero pictures. I was too busy hoping to get back without hypothermia. I swear one day I'll get better about taking pictures.