The indoor season finally ends . . .

And so the indoor season comes to a close, not with a bang, but with a whimper. In true form, March came in like a lion and is certainly going out like a lamb. With a forecast for temps in the mid to upper 70s for the rest of the week, I will certainly not be found grinding away on my trainer. Coincidentally, today marks the official end of the UMCA Indoor Challenge and to celebrate, I logged in a final two hour session.

Well, it's only March and I've already failed to meet one of my 2010 cycling goals. Back in December,a top ten finish looked not only attainable, but also like a nice motivator to increase my base training miles. As it turns out, it was the latter but not the former. Here's what my results look like over the past two years. I actually placed lower with four times the number of hours on the trainer,  five times the number of sessions and almost three times the number of points. Oh, well.

2010: 17th place, 146 points, 87 hours, 28 sessions
2009: 16th place, 52 points, 22 hours, 5 sessions

Like with most competitions, success has a whole lot to do with who shows up. This was a competitive year as one can see by comparing a 10th place finish over the past five years:

2010 = 335 points
2009 = 189 points
2008 = 112 points
2007 = 224 points
2006 = 277 points

The funny thing is that I feel very much like a winner even though I didn't meet my goal. Could I have ridden more? Sure. Could I have added several long sessions to amass additional points. Of course; but at what cost? As it was, I logged 87 hours of training this winter safe from icy, dark roads. My legs feel great and I enter the spring with my most significant base yet. I look forward to seeing how the local hammer fest feels on Saturday morning. My first brevet is scheduled for April 10. Time for a little speed work.

Why I love indoor riding . . .

Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy indoor riding. When the thermometer dips below freezing, the skies darken at 4:30, the shoulders become clogged with ice and that nasty white film of salt covers the land, I move indoors to turn those cranks. Sure I prefer riding outdoors. Like others, I plan to log thousands of miles through wet, windy, dark and unfamiliar roads this year. It's not that I can't stand pain and suffering. So what is it about winter that sends me indoors?

The top 15 reasons I like to train indoors:

1. No bulky clothes.
2. No traffic.
3. It's safe to ride at all hours.
4. No need for lights.
5. No spare tubes.
6. No frozen fingers.
7. No frozen toes.
8. No frozen water bottles.
9. No flats!
10. Ride for 6 hours without having to stop to warm up.
11. Train without muscles freezing up.
12. Improve form and cadence.
13. Listen to loud music.
14. It's warm!
15. When I'm done with a workout, I feel great.
    

The good news is that with the right preparation, even long indoor rides need not be boring. Distraction is key to working through tough peiods on the bike: both indoors and out. It's one reason why riding with friends can make a dreadful stretch of road or weather more bearable. This year, I've been using two new DVDs from the Spinervals "On the Road" series: the Lake Placid Training Ride and the Madison, Wisconsin Training Ride to structure my work outs. These DVDs last three hours each and don't require any special equipment other than a laptop or TV/DVD. Coach Troy Jacobson provides gear advice, a countdown clock and motivating commentary throughout as we watch him pedal his way through these two Ironman bike courses. It's even possible to turn off the music track to listen to tunes of your own choosing. The Spinervals "Hardcore 100" is my DVD of choice for 6 hour "century" rides. Streaming films through Netflix works pretty well, too, but you need to be mindful of mixing the gears up a bit and not just spinning aimlessly.

In the northeast, it's virtually impossible for a person with a full-time job to get in enough base miles without some serious indoor work. This season, I've been trying to fit in both a long mid-week ride of 3+ hours and a long weekend ride of 4-6+ hours in addition to a few shorter 1-2 hour interval sessions each week. If weather permits, as it did today, I may be able to replace a shorter session with a commute to work.

RoadBikeRider.com sent out a special indoor cycling issue this week. One author compared indoor riding (or the "Tour de Rec Room" as he put it) to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of grief. You know, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ultimately acceptance. You can view that here if you do not already receive these free weekly updates. This is the second year I'm participating in this five month UMCA Indoor Challenge.  The mileage competition is free and open to all UMCA members. I'm shooting for a top 10 finish this year.

In ultra cycling it's important to push through pain, discomfort and boredom. Why should winter training be any different? I'm surprised by how many randonneurs scoff at indoor riding. If you have a hard time imagining being on the trainer for more that an hour, find a good video, crank some great tunes and give it another try.

One season ends as another begins.

This week marks a turning point. We just passed the shortest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere and I look forward to getting a few bonus moments of sunshine each day for the next six months. Soon my commute will not be completely shrouded in darkness, yet it will be quite some time before temperatures rise predictably above the freezing mark around here.

A few days ago, I officially ended one season and began another with the same ride: an indoor (6 hour) century on my trusty Cycle-Ops trainer.  I submitted this ride as my final effort in the 2009 UMCA Year Rounder competition which pushed my total over 3000 miles and allowed me to achieve my goal of the 3000 mile “Gold Award.” I also consider this indoor session to be the first official base-building training ride of the 2010 season. Having spent the past few months taking it easy with both mileage and intensity, I’ve been picking up the volume recently with indoor rides of 2 hours or more and this was my first full-out distance effort with 2010 goals in mind. I hope to log at least two indoor centuries per month between now and April to deepen my base and add raise my position in the UMCA Indoor Challenge.

With 2010 bearing down on us, it’s also time to look back on the past year and plan for the season ahead. In 2009, I:

1. Completed my first 1200+ event on London-Edinburgh-London.
2. Missed the sub-100 hour goal on LEL by 45 minutes: roughly equal to the amount of time spent at a pub celebrating the (near) end of the epic event.  Glad to have chosen the social over the symbolic. It wasn’t a race after all.
3. Successfully upgraded my equipment to include a Schmidt dynohub and an Edelux headlamp, both of which work beautifully.
4. Reached Gold classification (3000+ miles) in the UMCA Year-Rounder competition.
5. Finished a double century race in less than 12 hours. (11h34m)
6. Placed second in the Rapha Gentlemen’s Race.
7. Did not win the Saratoga 12-hour race, but placed 4^th and finished with a respectable 226 miles.

Under the tree this year:

1. The above photo (framed) taken by my darling daughter.
2. A Garmin eTrex Vista HCx GPS. I’ll report back once I’ve spent a little time figuring it out.
3. A black PACE Sportswear Merino Wool Cap (available from Boure)
4. Spinervals 2.0 Lake Placed Training Ride DVD. Trying it out tomorrow at 6:00 a.m.

Next up: Goals for 2010.

The UMCA Indoor Challenge

What motivates you as a cyclist? It's hard to say, right? In a perfect world, the ride itself would inspire us to pedal forward every time. While I do enjoy most of my rides and would rather be cycling than doing most other things, intrinsic motivation does not work all the time. In order to push ourselves to a higher level of performance, whether that means increasing speed or adding volume, we need to train through the tough times, too. This challenge seems particularly present in the northern latitudes, where snow and ice blanket the ground during the long winter months. These fall during the crucial base building phase where long steady miles are required and yet it’s often too cold, dark and icy to ride any meaningful distance.

This year, I decided to participate in the Ultra-Marathon Cycling Association (UMCA) Indoor Challenge as a way to stay motivated while logging important long miles on my trainer. The Indoor Challenge is open to all UMCA members and is held from November through March. Participating riders log indoor training sessions over two hours in length through a convenient on-line tool. Times are ascribed point values; the longer an individual session, the more points it yields. There are currently 32 riders from around the globe participating including several riders training for RAAM, the current world record holder in the 24-hour time trial and the former world record holder for the longest time spent on a trainer. Since November, participating cyclists have posted sessions of up to 24 hours in duration. Most rides are in the 2-6 hour range.

It's easy to lose perspective on your training needs when you ride longer than most riders in your local club and your wife and kids have long ago written you off as a lunatic. “Why can’t you just go out for an hour-long ride like a normal person?” they ask. It’s easy to lose sight of how much is enough and projects like the indoor challenge connect participants across the spectrum of ultra-marathon cycling. It isn’t the competition per se that gets me on the bike; it’s more the feeling of community with other endurance cylclists and the knowing what other riders are up to that provides me with extra motivation to log long indoor miles even when I don’t feel like it. In what can be an isolated and isolating sport, this feeling of community is important.

One thing I love about being a part of the ultra-cycling world is that as crazy as my wife and friends may think I am, there are plenty of crazier riders out there for me to take inspiration from. Knowing that there are RAAM competitors completing 24-hours indoor training sessions inspires me to get on that trainer and pound out another century myself. Hell, next to 24 hours on a trainer, 6 hours seems like a sprint!

Information about the UMCA Indoor Challenge and be found on their website. While you’re there, look at all of the other great things UMCA has to offer. There are outstanding training articles, other mileage competitions and a full ultra race calendar for the coming year.

So, most of the time it is the pure joy of the ride that gets me on the bike, but sometimes we all need an extra push. The Indoor Challenge is one of the things that helps me get on the bike when I DON’T really want to ride or when the roads are too unsafe to navigate. Hopefully, this will make me a stronger rider when the snows melt. Enough for now, I’m off to grind out another century on the Cycle-ops. Spring is just around the corner.