SPAM 2008 - what a difference a year or two makes

(Me above sporting fancy new headgear, a Xmas pressie from Ms Miff, that serves a useful purposed of ensuring I can find my piccies in admist all the others (PS bought the piccies above so will scan in once they arrive))

Well another year has passed. And it ended on a real high when I did the SPAM winter challenge yesterday. This is my bellwether event, despite it being ridden in the UK winter in the wet/cold on a mountain bike, while my preferred choice of ride is on a racing bike in the French summer when it is warm and hot.

The reason for this event's significance lies in history. As mentioned in my previous blog entry I took a new year resolution at the start of 2005 simply to lose weight. I nearly bought a Concept 2 to help with this, realising only just in time that it would be too big to fit into the room intended for it. So I got a Lifecycle instead and never looked back. I lost 2 stone in 2005, getting a whole lot fitter in the process. So as 2005 progressed I started cycling for real, and, as mentioned previously in this blog, came up with the idea of doing the TDF 2006. Come the winter of 2005, I had a goal but that was all.

Starting SPAM - 2006

It was around then I made my first (very naive) visits to Banjo Cycles where a leaflet caught my eye. It was promoting the "SPAM Winter Solstice Challenge" (always just called the SPAM by me). This was to be held in January 2006, with course options of 30 or 50km. As it happened I had been doing some training on (an ancient Decatholon from France) MTB so I thought I would enter as a spur to training and compare myself with other cyclists. I chose the 50km option as it did not seem very far compared to the 150-200km I would have to do in France.

The day of the event came around. I still recall feeling nervous at the start. There were 500 entrants for the 50k and some looked quite fit. However I was quietly confident, after all I had been training all year and was getting quite good on my Lifecycle. I had dreams of coming in ahead of the more experienced riders as I had seen previous year's results with many in the 3-4 hour range. I could do 16kph on a mountain bike easily. So a sub 3 hour time was a possibility. In my more giddy moments I even had visions of coming in first...(well it was just after Xmas when the spirit (well wine and beer at least) had been flowing).

Well they say pride comes before a fall. In my case this was literal. In fact pride came before a number of falls, each leaving me more muddy and dispirited than the last. The weather for the 2006 SPAM was not bad but it was cold with a light drizzle that bound mud to my bike in an icy slushball. I was cold/wet and not going very fast at all. Far from being at the front I was very much near the back, I can recall long periods of riding alone being ever so slightly worried that everyone else may have finished. My old bike did not stand up to the conditions, it became clogged with mud and after a while the shifters stuck so I was effectively in a single gear. Much of the time it took so much effort to pedal it was quicker to get off and walk. I can honestly say it was the hardest event I have ever ridden in.

Still there was a moment of epiphany that I still look back to when I need some cycling strength. At some point in the ride, after what already felt like an age, I reached some marshals who was separating the sheep (following those on the "short" 30km ride) from the 50km mountain biking goats. By this time I was already pretty much at the back of the field. I was asked which route I was following and I said (very wearily I think) 50km. The marshals pointed left, up (another) muddy hill but their faces softened and I was asked very solicitously if I was sure I wanted to go that way. I could instead turn right and downhill to the finish, warmth, hot soup and bananas.

I have to admit I faltered. I thought I was already near the finish. Instead I was only just over half way. I was freezing, my bike was knackered and I was in an even worse state. I could give it all up and head for the finish. No-one would know. I wasnt a member of a club or anything and didn't have anything to prove. That was a crucial test. If I had given up and headed downhill for the finish I dont know if I would ever had started let alone finish my TDF. But I didn't give up, I headed uphill into another 2 1/2 hours of muddy hell.

So I finished SPAM 2006 but only just. I was not in fact last. I finished 466 out of 476 taking 5 1/2 hours. So 10 poor souls were even worse than me! I think they must have finished in the dark. It was all a chastening experience, I realised I had much to do in terms of training. But it also showed me I had the will to persevere if needed and that helped a lot, both in training and events since.

I also had another goal. Finishing the TDF was one thing but the SPAM was unfinished business. It had humilated and almost cracked me. I was not going to let it rest, in Arnie's immortal words "I will be back". (But with a new bike I ditched the Decatholon for a cheap Giant XTC, subsequently upgraded with SRAM gears as the one thing I did not EVER want to happen again was lose the ability to gear change in some muddy field far from home.)

SPAM 2007 - Return and some revenge

So I entered SPAM 2007, which took place almost a year ago. My goals for this event were a bit more modest. To finish better than 2006 (and fall off less). I managed both despite a muddy bath in the first km. I pushed hard all the way round and finished just above halfway down the field in 172nd place out of the 383 who finished. My time of 3:26 was a bit academic as the course was shortened due to bad weather and was more like 40km than 50km. The result left me pretty satisfied and I felt I could hold my head up.

SPAM 2008 - SPAM Surprise

With honour being upheld at the 2007 SPAM I didn't give any thought to the 2008 event. In fact my MTB bike and shoes remained unused and unwashed throughout 2007 as I concentrated on the road, club runs and sportives replacing my MTB rides. I sort of assumed I may do the event but only started to think about it this month, which turned out to be nearly to late as when I checked the SPAM site:

http://www.spambiking.co.uk/index.asp

I found that SPAM 2008 was to be held on 30 December 2007. This was good and bad news. Good news is plenty of time to recover afterwards. Bad is that it meant almost no pretraining and coming right at the end of Xmas week when pud = pounds gained...

I did think if it would be worth entering but then I remembered 2006. If I didn't enter did it mean I was scared? Didn't want to entertain that thought so washed off MTB and shoes and had one run down the canal tow path, pre Xmas. I must say this reminded me of why I liked MTBing so much. Its hard work but fun buzzing around the countryside and maps take on a whole new dimension when you can look for off road shortcuts.

Not being too concerned about doing well I did not let the upcoming SPAM spoil Xmas excess and I ate drank and was merry. Bike and stuff were stuck into the car Saturday night ready for a prompt start and I headed along the now familiar road to Erlestoke. I parked nearby and opened my boot only to find my front tyre was flat and Zen Stone (MP3 player) battery dead. I did an emergency tyre change then headed off to register. I found that the start was not for another 30 mins so whizzed back to the car to charge up my Stone a bit. Made it back to start where I met a couple of guys from Banjo. (One of them was Adam who had taken me out on my first training run back in this mist of time.)

We started off, thankfully not into a muddy field (as happened in January). So no early falls, but there was a steep old hill that I remembered from 2006. Happily I made it up a lot easier and set off. I had no real targets, I had thought about treating the event as an endurance training ride but found my HR following the first climb was much higher so I thought I would just push on. Unbeknown'st to me the course turned out to my liking. After some country sections there was a long road section where I just hunkered down and pedalled. I found that I got overtaken on the country but then overtook back on the road. Anyway I had a great time always just staying on the right side of the red line. I got off and pushed on a couple of hills (simply because it was as fast as riding) but otherwise had a great ride. I didn't fall once, despite some slightly hairy moments. In fact the worse thing that happened was my Stone finally running flat which affected my rhythm a bit. But I made it to the end which came a lot quicker than I expected.

I finished in 2:47, an incredible time and not one I would have thought I was capable of. This left me 102nd out of 336, so now in the top third. Better still its pretty much half the time I did the 2006 event in, put another way I was reaching the real finish of the SPAM 2008 in round about the same time as I met the marshals separating sheep from goats in 2006.

I was pretty elated by this. Especially because though I had pushed quite hard I had never felt on the edge and though a bit tired at the end I felt a lot better (and today feel fine).

PS: My time was good. For me. But the winner did the course in under 2 hours. Respect.

12 months on - 2007 v 2008

It was interesting for me to compare my performances in Jan (SPAM 2007) and Dec (SPAM 2008). Subjectively January was tougher, I trained for the event and gave it my all. However the stats told a different story, as the graphics below show.

In both the yellow section shows HR from 150-170, which is top of my aerobic to sub threshold zone.

2007:

This shows a pretty even split. Overall average is 149bpm, 45% is below 150bpm, 55% above with just a couple of minutes above 170bpm.

2008:

Everything has moved up by 10 bpm. Average is 159 bpm: just 11% is under 150, 79% is in the 150-170 range and 10% (17:15 mins) over 170. The hills at the start kicked my heart into life I kept that going through the road sections. The decline at the end is expected but its only relative to the early portion. Partly its accounted for by me having to slow to fish out food and drink. I also definitely miss my trance music when it stops.

Overall the most surprising thing about the ride, even more than the time, was that with no preparation I set a PB in terms of HR. 163bpm from 1.10 to 157 bpm at 2:56 beat my previous effort on my eyes out Lambourn triangle ride end August. Its some regret that I do not have a Powertap on my mountain bike as I am pretty sure I would have set some power PBs. Maybe next year.....

Weight of my body (and mind)

It being this time of year it seems appropriate to reflect on the progress of my diet. Weight, the mission to shed some, was the route that got me into cycling, kicked off by a New Year 2005 resolution. Back then I was a portly 14 stone plus, I bought myself a top notch exercise bike and some digital scales in Jan 2005 and started pedalling. Progress since then has been pretty good:

(Graph weight in lbs since May 2005 to end Dec 2007, blue line = weight at start of day, red = rolling 3 week average)

Graph above shows how my weight came down steadily through 2005/first half 2006, then stabilising after my TDF.

The graph below shows weight during 2007 remained pretty consistent though with a few ups and downs. The ups came naturally enough around holidays and a business trip to the US. Bizarrely I also came back from my two cycling trips weighing more than when I left. This was not too much of a surprise actually, since the same happened on my TDF, after a hard days riding the temptation to tuck into a good meal is just too much.
My scales also give the option to record a fat%. This can be a bit inconsistent as varies according to the time of day you measure and also if you have just exercise/eaten. I take at the end of each day. Notwithstanding the variances there is quite a clear trend down mirroring my weight loss. The recent trend upwards is puzzling. Not planning to do anything it but will keep an eye on it and see how start of harder training affects it.

Cardiac Drift Test

I decided to try carrying out a cardiac drift test yesterday, to complement the MAPs I have been doing.

Logic is that these should provide an indication of how my aerobic capacity is faring. Given that's the most important for the events I ride makes sense to see if I can check it.

So did a relatively simple test. Set my Lifecycle to Watts, 200W for 40 mins, put on an episode of the Sopranos and pedalled until the credits came up (50mins or so later so got a warm down in as well.). Reason I chose 200W is that it is towards the higher end of my endurance zone of 157W-212W calculated a la Coggan from an FTP of 280W.

Then looked at the HR curve, treating the first 10 mins as a warm up then looking at the next half hour breaking it down into 2 chunks of 15 mins.

Result below (Y axis 110-140bpm):

Shows that in fact took me about 25 mins to get me warmed up then flattened out around 137 bpm (about 75% of my MHR c. 182) So will take out from this:

• My 157W-212W estimate of my endurance zone is in the right area but maybe a little low.
• I should plan to redo the test watching a couple of episodes and see how much my HR changes once I have fully warmed up
• I will try again but in my tempo (213W-254W) zone.

LEL 2009: I am in...

Received an acknowledgement for my LEL 2009 entry. So I'm in, now, as the web site tells me, just another 585 days, 14 hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds to prepare

HAC4 vs Powertap

Finally sorting out a fixed bike is good news but gives rise to the question of how I log rides in WKO, since natch it has not got any power meter.

However I do have a HAC4 computer, which gives a measure of estimated power based on riders speed, weight and ascent. The manual that comes with the HAC says that this is accurate to +- 20W on climbs and +-40W on the flat.

I thought I would carry out a test to check this out. So yesterday I made two rides along the same 18km course, one with my fixed bike+HAC4 and the other with my Giant winter bike+Powertap.

Both bikes had the same tyres (newly fitted Schwalbe Marathon pluses) and both+me weighed pretty much the same 85kg (which was the weight I entered into the HAC)

The weather was cold but very still, with no wind to speak of.

I chose a course that took me out and back to Kingsclere, the next village. It consists of a short climb just after the start and again just before the finish. (see below). There are no junctions or other reasons to stop on the road so I could make the rides pretty similar. I did the first on the fixed then repeated on the Giant. For the second ride I used a constant gear with the same ration as the 42x18 on my fixed. I used HR to pace, trying to keep second ride same as second, taking both rides easy. The only issue I encountered was that I accidently switched my light on during the first couple of minutes on the fixed, which messed about with the HR until I switched it off.

(Course profile above showing 2 climbs and the rolling middle section.

Once done I downloaded the Powertap file into WKO and exported into a csv file so I could use Excel to compare. The HAC file was loaded into Hactronic, then I used Snagit to save the raw data into a txt file, again to be used in Excel (pain having to do this but don't know of way to save raw data with power).

Results were quite instructive. I managed pretty well in terms of HR as the graph below shows.
(HR comparison, Powertap is red HAC is green) The funny HAC data at the start of the ride can be seen but afterwards the two graphs pretty much track each other, being slightly offset due to differences in ride speeds)

The power readings make interesting viewing:

Here the green HAC line seems to track the red Powertap one quite well through the two climbs but in the middle, rolling, section is much smoother and consistently less than the Powertap. (The smoothing is probably due to the HAC sampling every 20secs rather than 1sec, but this does not account for the difference in outputs.)

In terms of numbers a comparison of the WKO evaluation of the two rides is below:

This confirms I did pretty well in keeping HR constant and also shows how the power measures (Work, TSS, NP and Power) are all 11>25% up when measured by Powertap.

Breaking the ride into sectors explains the difference a bit more:

The climbs show much better correalation between HAC and Powertap in terms of average. (Maxes will always be a problem for the HAC given its sample rate). However the rolling mid section shows the average power is significantly different, in fact pretty much by the 40W HAC say will happen.

I used this to play around with the HAC file. After a bit of trial and error I found that adding an arbitrary 20W on each HAC4 record with a gradient of between 1 and -4% yielded a TSS and average power prettty much the same as the Powertap and the graphs between the two were more alike. Most of my rides will be similar in terms of terrain so will use this as a frig factor for purposes of upload to WKO in future.

Riding Fixed

I finally got around to converting my Langster to a fixed wheel yesterday. This was a bit more complicated than expected, due to me also fitting Schwalbe Marathon Plus 28s so as to do all I could to guarantee that I would not get any punctures. These tyres were just a bit too big for the brakes and so I ditched the latter, since they are (I am told) redundant if you are riding fixed.

I did a cautious first run down the road to Kingsclere and back. After a while I got used to the fixed sensation and found everything bar going down hill good fun. I did a follow up ride on my winter Giant next and noticed I was a lot more aware of the pedalling action. So will continue with a few fixed excursions