Marmotte 2009 - A day of 3 halves....

Lots to catch up on, will get round to it sooner or later. But just quick note on Marmotte 2009.

In a nutshell it was a ride of 3 halves...

- Great start and climb up the Glandon, 15 mins faster than last year.
- Great finish up the Alp, made the top 100 with climb time of 65 mins

Unfortunately middle was bit of disaster due to puncturing on early Glandon hair pins. Tried to turn but bike went straight on, luckily into side of mountain rather than over edge. I was not alone, another guy already being treated by doc as I crashed in. By coincidence a fellow Brit, in a lot worse shape than I was with a broken collar bone.

Eventually ambulance arrived and we got shuttled down mountain to get patched up. However bike not allowed to come with me as not hygenic enough. Once at med station turned out I was not too bad though told I needed stiches in elbow. Given option to go to hospital to get this but decided against, ditto on waiting for broom wagon. More worried about getting bike back so discharged myself. Tried getting a taxi via local bar but would mean long wait so decided to walk back uphill.

Did so, though made bit of boo boo by deciding to save cleats by walking in stocking feet. So after 8 km or so of uphill slog my cleats were fine. Unfortunately my feet blistered...

Anyway reunited with bike, fixed flats and got lucky as rest fine, nothing broken. Only problem was out of inner tubes. By time sorted I was told I was 15 mins ahead of broom wagon so I headed downhill.

Bit nervous post crash so I took descent easy. As result had to TT along valley, effort here was pretty much same as climbing the Telegraph. Come Galiber a bit despondent, especially when caught in thunder storm. However it passed and as it did so my mood lifted. Climbed this OK and was much cheered when saw Guy and Helyn from KOM just before summit, especially as caught up with some others from KOM.

Another cautious descent from Galibier, then I headed up Alp. This went great, it was hot but luckily I seem to suffer less from this than others.

Had a bit of luck, just when I needed a bit of encouragement a rider from Coventry passed me. I locked onto his wheel for a while and got second wind. Felt strong as an ox come the finish.

So final ride time was 10 hours 12 minutes or so. Pretty crap. However in terms of ride time I was around 5 minutes faster than 2008. Whats more I was 20 minutes faster up the climbs, but lost out on descents. Plus the valley floor was hard work, 20W more effort but lost 2 minutes..plus I had climbed the Glandon twice, once on bike, once on foot.

Post crash, coming down the Glandon I was thinking "never again.." However now I've had a bit of time to reflect I think I will have one more go for a low 7 time next year. Preparation will start next week when I go back to the Glandon to kill the ghost and practice the descent.

Regardless of what happens 2010 that will (probably) be my last Marmotte until 2019. Then I will be 60 and already have a target time of 7:28 (which won the category for Dave Lloyd this year).

Dragon 2009 - Power stats

Did the Dragon last weekend. Great day out and good solid ride. Change of bike/gears compared to last year, Tarmac with 53/39 x 12/27

Spent the first half of event in company of the Fred Baker boys, took things easier second half climbing solo but tagging up with fast group on final run to home.

Just for the record here are the key stats.

Overall

6:03:26 194W (242 Normalised) Average HR 139, Peak HR 172 77rpm AVS 31.3kph Drift 14%

Climbs

3 small at start:
3:41@359W
4:09@327W
2:55@344W

Bwlch1 11:27@298NW 81rpm 17.8kph
Rhigos 17:23@310NW 81rpm 21.8kph
Defynnog 7:59@268NW 81rpm 23.3kph
Cray 16:51@261NW 83rpm 26.3kph
Coelbrenn 7:45@273NW 85rpm 21.6kph
Cimla 10:14@275NW 80rpm 18.7kph
Bwlch 2 21:00@251NW 74rpm 17.4kph
Llangeinor 4:26@278W 84rpm 19.8kph

Interesting to see cadence nice and high for all climbs except the second Bwlch where heat started to tell and power dropped. Still recovered well and bit of adrenaline on the descent helped finish feeling pretty fresh.

Last years ride was also good but of the two this was the better. In particular finished much stronger with 2008 Bwlch 2 being a real slog and only managing 240W .

TDF 2009 - Roubaix rides again

On return from 2006 tour I joined cycleplus (now bikeradar) forum to get some advice on training + be able to offer some in case anybody fancied doing same as I did.

Since then been a couple of people looking for advice and I've done best to help them. Never actually heard of any of them actually doing the ride though..

Couple of months a post came on from Chris Pountney, looking for advice on bike to take if he was to ride tour. Planning to do it slightly differently from me:
- riding full stage per day
- doing supported with some others
- its only 1 part of the "ultimate triathlon" along with swimming the channel and doing the marathon des sables. More stuff here

ultimatetriathlon


I offered Chris advice and encouragement. Then it occurred to me that my Roubaix is just sitting in the garage now as I will be using Tarmac and Serotta (hopefully!!) over summer. So suggested he use this bike. He took me up on offer and last Monday came to pick it up (slightly jetlagged + beard as just arrived back from New Zealand).

Hopefully I'll be meeting up with Chris later this month as I travel down for the GF Pantani.

I hope he succeeds and its nice to think of the Roubaix doing not one but 2 TDFs. Must make it a pretty rare bike.

PS. Seeing Chris we talked about the route. He told me about this site:
http://www.steephill.tv/2009/tour-de-france/
which tries to scoop details of where the route will go. Useful if I ever do it again....

PPS Also prompted to remind myself where I was this time 3 years ago..I thought I had already got to the mountains but in fact was doing the long transition ride down from Brittany. 3rd June 2006 I was doing my once a week easy ride (La Tranche to Rochefort, memories include mad French bikers - on pedal and motor variety + great hotel find)..

First 100/ Numb Nuts

Did first 100 yesterday, Hounslow race on A31 just over the border in Hampshire. Lovely sunny day though a bit breezy. Early start (getting up 4.00!), arrived in plenty of time and had a good ride.

Overtook lots of riders and only overtaken by a couple. Was targetting pace of around 240W but difficult as course rolling and breeze. So aimed for around 40kph and came very close to target finishing on 4.06.20. Frustratingly just over a minute over the club record. Still new club age record and great for BAR. If I do 2 hours for a 50 then just need 250miles in 12 hour to hit target 22mph.

Despite not really looking at average power during ride ended up pretty much dead on target with 231W/237NW.



Main limiter turned out to be something not experienced before...undercarriage problems. After 60-70 miles nose of saddle was digging in something rotten and last 30 miles very painful. Problem is on a TT bike its difficult to get relief by standing up every now and then..

Ended up with numb nuts..something needs to be done. I will experiment with saddle postion, moving it down a little and also lower the nose a tad. Will also check out one of these..


http://www.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2008/04/adamo-saddle.html

In meantime Pilates cushion coming in very useful. Sitting on one as I type..

Catching up

Its been a long time since last post. Quite a lot has happened since then.

March
- last few days at work
- new carpet

April
- celebrating 125 years with Mrs M in Venice (50 + 50 + 25 years of marriage)
- 3 day road race over easter weekend. Great until crash in last 100 yards
- Mallorca training camp
- Mrs M becomes a professional

May
- Helping out at Reading beer festival
- Tour of Ireland (5 days into a headwind, good fun except for getting knocked off last day)
- Etape Caledonia - tacks and first distillery trip
- Tour of Wessex - 3 lovely days of sun and much more fun with Mrs M
- New bike arrives - not quite what I thought it would be...

Marmotte power pacing - guide

Based on last years experience here is a rough and ready guide on how to prepare for and pace the Marmottte using a power meter.

Put simply the Marmotte consists of 4 big climbs and 2 big descents and a nasty link ride after descent 1. To do well you need to be a good climber and good (at least safe) descender. A powermeter is useful for training for and pacing the climbs, which will account for around 70% of ride time. Its no use for descents which need separate training. (Good advice here: Flamme Rouge Descend Like a Pro). It might be useful for the nasty link section but best thing for this is find a group and work with it.

Rest of this post is about pacing the climbs.

Step 1. Find your "FTP" - this is important for most aspects of training. Its especially so for rides like the Marmotte. For a good guide to measuring FTP see here:

FTP Measurement - Alex's 7 deadly sins


Step 2: Set your goals. Once you know your FTP then the next step is to decide how you want to ride the event, balancing best finish time with chance of blowup. I'd suggest choosing between one of 3 options:

"Death or Glory": Only advised if you are a top quality rider. Basically this means trying to do the climbs at 90%-100% of your FTP. High risk but possible (see the stats for the elite rider below for an example)

"Go Fast" If you want to push yourself without too much risk of blow up aim to climb at around 75% to 90% of FTP. This is the option I took.

"Slow But Sure": If you want to be sure to finish then aim to climb at around 60%-75% of FTP.


Step 3: Guesstimate your climb time for each of the climbs.

From the above you should have a rough idea of the power you will be aiming for. You can use this to plug into a calculator like this: Bike Calculator which will give you an guesstimate for how long each climb will take. e.g. for me FTP 305W weighing 70kg with a 9kg bike the 13km@8% climb of Alpe D'Huez is guessed to take around 67 minutes if I manage 229W (75% of FTP). This is pretty damn close (I actually took 70 minutes)

The output from this will be four sets of power figures and estimated climb times. e.g.

1 Glandon 245W 23km@5% guess 80 minutes
2 Telegraphe 240W 12km@7% 55 minutes
3 Galibier 235W 18km@7% 85 minutes
4 Alpe 230W 13km@8% 70minutes

(Its best to assume that you will lose a bit of power each climb.)

(If you want to guess total ride time add these up and add an extra 2.5 -3 hours for other bits.)

Step 4a: Train to with the climb goals in mind. So try to do rides with average power/time the same as the climbs. So using above example, try riding for 80 minutes at 245W average power. If you can do this, do it again, rest for an hour or so then try a ride of 240W for 55 minutes.

Or to simulate the Telegraph/Galibier climb ride 240W for 55 minutes, have a 10 minute rest then try 235W for 85minutes.

This may sound a bit tough, that's the point. If you cant do the power/time then try reducing one or other and build from there (so 245W for 60 minutes if cant manage 80).

During all these rides eat as you would plan to eat during the event. As a rough guide aim to eat 1-1.5g of carbohydrate per minute.

Step 4b: Supplement this training with training at FTP level. Classic is 2x20mins at FTP with a 5 minute rest.

From this training you will get a feel as to whether or not the guesstimates from Step 3 are right or not. If needs be go back and adjust them.

Step 5. (Optional) do trial run, by doing all 4 "climbs" in a day, with a gap of an hour or so between 1 and 2, 10 mins between 2 and 3, and an hour between 3 and 4.

Step 6: Check your gearing: find hills of 5-12% and just check gearing is comfortable to allow you to put out power needed.

Step 7: Ride. From all the above you should have a good idea of how to tackle each of the major climbs on the Marmotte itself. Get to the start early, tag onto a group on the run up to the first climb, then climb to your target power. Prepare to be flexible though. Events may mean you need to change your targets for each climb. Beauty of having a powermeter is that you can do this in a controlled way. So if feeling good try upping power by 5-10W. If feeling bad lower it a bit.

Step 8. Hopefully finish well. If planning to ride event or similar again then the actuals you managed form the basis for next training plan.

Some real numbers

Marmotte stats: Me vs fellow amateur

Marmotte stats: Me vs top Brit Elite rider

For more general info see the guide here: Marmotte Guide

Presents from France

Had a very nice trip to Strasbourg week before last, my last while working for Mars. I got wined and dined and received lots of very touching presents, mostly involving cheese or booze, which i guess says something about me (and the French).

This presented a minor logistical problem to get it all back but fortunately going Eurostar which made it a lot easier.

Presents included some Jorq camembert (quite the best I have ever tasted), huge bottles of Maggi (blast from my Swiss past) and both cremant and Pol remy (for Katy's wedding :))...