I've ridden my last ride of 2007. It's been a fantastic year. It has surely marked my longest stretch of training for a sport in my life. It concludes 2 1/2 years of road biking and sets me looking forward to racing a strong 2008 in the U.S.

With my season over a few months ago, most of what I learned this year was already in my head by that point. But even these last couple months of the 2007 calendar year, I've learned more and more about training, cycling, and my body, motivation and physical abilities. I thought it would be a waste of a blog to not at least post a quick note - though I think this won't be so quick - about what I learned over the last year of riding.

- Training requires motivation. Too much training will takes away motivation. In my job, most of my peers (and I) live under the notion that you "just do it" if you have to. There's no excuses, no room for lack of motivation. If you lack motivation, tough. Well, that might work if you're heading to a combat zone at the direction of the Commander-in-Chief. But in a world that is completely optional (like training for a sport that you aren't making a living doing), motivation is critical. Every time I get on the bike, there has to be something that makes me want to complete the workout. If one trains too much, it's entirely possible to train yourself right out of your motivation. Once you stop wanting to get on the bike, it's nearing the point of diminishing returns. You have to know this point (which means you have to get pretty darn close to it to find it)

- Listen to your body. It wasn't until the end of the year that I really breached the injury line. Some time during the Okayama Circuit race I pulled a muscle in my left leg. I ignored it and pushed through the next month keeping the training volume high. Then one day I strained my left knee climbing a steep mountain while compensating for the other hurt muscle. It took two weeks to recovery from that injury. Coming back from that injury I attempted to push right back onto my high training load and blew up within a week. It took another two weeks to go through a transition recovery period before I could start ramping training load again. So, October, November and half December were recovery from an injury that I should have recovered from by the end of October.

- Transition periods are necessary. I hate these periods in the training cycle. Transition periods typically come right at the end of a peak. It's a time after you've trained/raced yourself into the best shape you can be in hopefully before you blow through into crud riding. There's nothing to them really except for taking a week or two of easy riding to let your body recover from the beating it took getting into race shape. Inevitably, you exit the transition "off form" from what you were two weeks prior. You get on the first workout after a transition thinking you're in such great condition, but it takes 2-3 weeks of workouts to get yourself going again, all the while you're staring at the numbers begging to be as good as you were before the break. The good news is, once you've come off the slump, you're quickly back in the shape from before the break and climbing to new heights. That's where I find myself today as we enter the new year.

- Some days, no matter what everything else says... some days are just "off days." Over the course of the year of training I've had a lot of great workouts. I've also had a select handful of workouts that just stunk. A lot of times those happened on days that I thought I was going to have a fantastic day. I thought I was eating right, sleeping right, resting, the works. Then I got on the bike, started an interval and thought, "This is just not right." I've had to bail out of interval workouts because I can't keep the numbers in zone, perplexed for the next week only to find out the following workout go great. So, I've learned that it's okay for a workout to go like crud. The world doesn't come to an end. The next week you attack the workout again and go from there. Every day is not going to be the perfect workout, and you're not going to improve every week on the bike. Patience.

- Finally, biking is fun. If you're reading this, and you ride bikes, remember it. If you don't ride bikes, I'm sorry for it. It's a great sport, easy on your health and joints. You don't have to race to enjoy it, there are many that don't race.

2007 was a good year for riding for me. Here's the stats, parentheticals for 2006 values.
Rides: 322 (241)
Total Distance: 26,248 km (15,073)
Total Hours: 842 hrs 24 min (520 hrs 14 min)
Calories Burned: 669,587 (469,072)

Raced: 12 (3)
Won: 4 (1)
Podium: 6 (2)

In closing, Jan 1st will be my final ride in Japan for the foreseeable future. I'll get a blustery, windy day riding around 90-100 km up the Nishiki River. I was going to do Zenitsuboyama for one final time, but I've opted to change it to get some extra distance. My schedule, my riding, races available and everything else will change pretty dramatically with the move to Washington D.C. area. I look forward to riding and racing with a whole new group of people, a whole different style of racing and learning a whole new set of lessons in 2008. Here's hoping we all have at least as good a year in 2008 as we did in 2007 - and hoping it's even better.

Ride safe and ride often,
VW

It's been a long couple weeks. Imagine me sitting in my house every day with arms crossed thinking, "This just isn't right." That's the picture of me every time I download power data from a ride, whether good or bad. I've tried to put weight on this month and am eating like crazy to do it. The holidays are giving me plenty of opportunity to do this, but of course not in any sort of nutritional sort of way. All that and I'm still not putting on weight.

I can hear folks that read this thinking, "Oh poor you." Well, to be honest - I'm not particularly heartbroken, but any time you try to get something done and it doesn't happen it gets frustrating. So weight is just one of those things.

Add to that my workouts have been up down and all around and you get a picture of a rider in frustration. I took some sort of "transition" break in my training to get the dead feeling out of my legs. Unfortunately, one of the things I've come to expect from any transition break in training is dead legs for a week or so coming out of that period. So, I back off on the volume and intensity a little. I come back and my first set of APIs are great. My first sweet spot training for 90 minutes blew. My next API set stunk and the following sweet spot day for 90 minutes was great. Finish off the week at just below 75 kg after thinking I'd finally gained weight up to 76ish. We'll see what it looks like tomorrow after the day off today. I'm just miserable because it's around 16 days till we move and there are a thousand things to do and few things we can actually get done. So, I ride.

But, enough about me.

About two weeks ago, we received a package in the mail from family. Knowing our Christmas tree and decorations were in a box on their way to the US, they sent us a "Flat Tree" and some "Flat Friends" to carry around with us and have fun with (More about the "Flats" Here: http://www.flatstanley.com/). It's really great to have them with us. There are so many things I would have loved to share with the real people while we were here and we just never got the opportunity so it is the next best t hing to having them here with us. It's just not nearly as close as I would like.

I think about Denny a lot when I ride. I'll see a mountain I've been on top of, or a really special place I like to ride to, or sometimes I stop and stare off the edge of a high mountain road down on to the river valley or ocean and think about sharing that spot with him. On this one day I got to do it just a little.

Today's adventure is to head up to Seven Falls, down the river valley to Nishiki and back to Iwakuni. It's a 125 km round trip (~77 miles). It's one of my standard 4 hr training rides up into the mountains, 2 hours of climbing and then a steady ride back home.

We started at the Kintai Bridge. I don't take this road very often anymore but Denny hadn't seen the Kintai yet, so we stopped by there to get a snapshot of him with the Kintai and the Iwakuni Castle on the mountains behind him.



We hopped back on our bikes onto Route 2 and started our climbing to Yasaka Lake. It's some good climbing here but we weren't out to punish ourselves today. We kept a good steady tempo up the climb and after clearing the tunnel before the Yasaka Dam, we pulled over to pull off some of our morning layers. We tried to get some pictures of Denny with the giant Yasaka Dam behind him, but with a gusty breeze blowing I was a tad nervous about him taking a 100 foot plunge into the lake, so we played it safe and you'll have to take our word for it.



The trip along Yasaka Lake and the river that flows into it is scenic, but on this day it was frigid. In and out of the shade and it wasn't long before hands were numb and it was time to take a break for a coffee. When I move back to the states, I'll miss having these hot coffees in cans. I hope I can find something similar somewhere. We chugged a hot coffee (my favorite is Cafe Espresso) before we started the long steady climb to the top of the mountain range.



The trip up the mountains was still pretty cold. On the way we got a flat - first one on a training ride in months. After manipulating the CO2 inflater and getting the new tube in, we kept the climbing going. We were going to get some shots of Denny fixing the flat tire, but we got consumed with the actual fixing and forgot the pictures and the tire was changed before we remembered. Neither of us really wanted to get another flat just for photo ops, so we waited to get more pictures until we got to the top of the mountain. The top of the mountain has a neat little sweets shop but also a hot drinks machine outside where we grabbed some hot cocoa in a can while chewing down the rock hard Harvest Bar.



On the way down the mountain we ran into one of the Club Athlete members going the opposite direction on the same loop we were on. I rarely go the opposite direction because of the 15% climb and the lack of desire to change out my gearing to do that climbing. The other club member and I stopped and shared greetings. We commiserated on the cold weather and compared warming layers. I gave him my respect for climbing the loop on the steep direction and with a handshake, a dozen bows and smiles we separated. Denny and I finished the decent to the Nishiki River stop to grap some candy at the store and some more hot liquids.

We met a friend at the river stop that wanted to get in my pictures. Actually, I think he (I'm most certain it was a he!) was more interested in food and Denny than pictures. I tried to get him to pose, but you can see getting a local cat to pose for pictures with a Flat Denny is no easy feat.





Once separated from our friendly cat, we hopped back on and finished the trip into Iwakuni. Neither of us were in the mood for more pictures at the end - but just in renourishing after the trip. It was a much longer ride than it should have been - with gusty winds, a flat tire and a few more stops to share some of the scenery. I was glad to have Denny along.

Denny didn't come with me in person, but he was with me for the ride this last weekend. Another cold day, but it was a nice ride and good to get some long saddle time in.

Thinking of Denny,
VW