Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Cohutta. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Cohutta. Sort by date Show all posts

Sunday, April 19, 2015

Cohutta Prep


So on February 11th, I get a phone call from my good friend Tom Kruse, Spelled with a "K" not that other guy.  He is taking on the National Ultra Endurance Series this year.  His first one will be Cohutta, which just happens to be only three hours away from Brevard.  Does this sound familiar?  Well the same thing happened for Tatanka.  You guessed it; he asked me to consider doing Cohutta on April 25th, just a scant 11 weeks out.  I had hardly been on a bike since early December and my first MTB ride since November was just February 1st.  It was my first single speed ride since October.

I know, sounds like every racer on the start line right?

Single Speed is my favorite way to ride, but I went down pretty hard on my left shoulder back in early September.  It has taken several months to get it to 95% and I was not willing to risk most of Pisgah on a SS.  Up until early December, I was doing a ton of endurance work exploring the forest service roads and back country single track of Pisgah on my geared bike.  Still pretty harsh on a rigid, but I was learning the area and it was pretty cool.  And then...

With all that, I was pretty sure Cohutta was a non-starter.  I had already planned to refocus on my kettle belling and hikes with Tammy.  But I had until April 1st to decide, if registration did not fill by then.  Following TK's call, I did several endurance rides on the road through our few weeks of winter, but then I decided to try something completely different.  Just two rides a week (one long, one short), only on my single speed and only mountain biking, two kettle bell sessions, some yoga, a hike and /or the occasional walk per week and log it all on my special TSS spreadsheet.  TK noticed all the SSing I was doing and said, "You're not thinking about doing Cohutta on a SS are you?", like I was crazy or something.  I said if I was doing it, it would be on my favorite bike.  He said I could put gears on it.  I said "Uh Uh".

When I started, I was on a 34X22 and North Slope was darn tough,

I added Lower Sycamore for a little fun.  That first ride was 11 miles and it was rough.
Was I nuts even considering doing 10 times that much in 10 weeks?!  I added Upper Sycamore the next week.  In a month, I replaced Upper Sycamore with Thrift Cove and then switched out lower Sycamore for Upper. It was a good month and a half before I changed to the 21t cog.  10 more days I was on the 20.  Finally Thrift for an FTP two fer


I had been adding about half an hour each week to my long ride.  April 1st came along and we were hosting at Cascade Lake.  I had been thinking about riding up the 6.5 mile Cascade Lake Road to Dupont from camp for my long rides.  I was not relishing this on a SS.  Long and gradual and then the reverse coming back down with that steep last nut heading up Little River Road.  Tammy kept asking me geared or SS.  I said "I do not know".  At the last minute I decided to stick with the SS game plan.

Along with the kettle bell strength training, I had been working on standing a lot.  My average speed started just below 9 MPH.  11+ hours for Cohutta then!  My AVG MPH slowly climbed to 9.5 over the last few weeks.  Better but still 10+ hours for Cohutta, if I could hold it.  My rides did seem to have more climbing per mile than Cohutta, but still.  I had hoped to go to a 19t cog, each tooth meant more speed but harder to turn over on the steeps.  It was getting close to go time.  I had to switch wheels because a bearing went out on my older Powertap hub.

It meant a tire switch, so I put on the steeper cog as well and went for my last long ride.  Five hours, tapering down from six the week before.  I felt faster and slower all at the same time, it was weird.  I thought my wheel size setting might be different between hubs, but my AVG speed seemed up.  Later, the down load would confirm the 10 MPH AVG.  Now I have a shot at 10 hours.

Compared to the 20t the 19 gave me a little trouble on the steeps, but not much, and some steeps seemed easier.  I could pedal in more situations.  I could stand more effectively on lesser grades, 4% and up instead of 5% and up.  Seemingly contradictory, I could stay seated and maintain momentum, instead of coasting and then standing on rollers.  That is where I picked up half a mile per hour from the same ride (except in the wet, plus a bonus climb) as 2 weeks ago.  Even with some training effect and I had my Black Sheep titanium fork back in place of my Salsa steel fork, some of it has to be the 34X19.  Don't ask me which elevation is correct.  Just trust me there was more on the 4/17 ride than the 4/4 ride.



After the Little River Crossing



Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Cohutta the 2nd Half


See the first half here. On the subsequent climb a woman came by.  Most of the girls were gearies, with that and long endurance event being the great equalizer between the sexes, I have humbly accepted the occasional pass by the fairer sex.  Not this girl, she left her gear bike at home because of the muddy conditions.  She ultimately got 6th among the women.  When Bonsby came by a little later he said he has seen her race before and she was a force to be reckoned with.  I dropped her on the next descent only for her to dance away up one of the succeeding climbs.  She seem to climb about twice as fast as me,  a feat I could not match on the DHs.

Now back to the numbers game.  I was still averaging about 10.5 mph at this time.  My metric century was done in 5:44.  Thing were still looking up.  But that damn rest stop #5 would just not materialize.  Mike came up just before the crest of a hill, we both lamented over the 35 miles between rest stops, he was out of H2O.  I told the full suspension riding Bonsby that I would follow him on my rigid bike for the descent.  He said he was not going to go to fast and let me pass.  The fire road turned up again and some time had passed, as well as a few other rider and I started to worry about Mike.  Hoping that he did not crash or flat.  But shortly before the climb out to rest stop #5/4 he passed me.  I had another fast pit and left as Mike was getting his camel back filled, only for him to pass me on, what I call the bonus climb.

My average speed from 62 to 77 miles had started to drop.  There were several riders walking up the bonus climb, I think they were stragglers from the 65 mile Big Frog version of the race.  At least I was going faster than walking pace!

Finally back back at rest stop #3/6.  A volunteer asked how I was liking the single speed now.  I felt a slow grin come across my muddy face and sad the bike hadn't given up yet, but my body may have.

The final climb.  It would end just over the next rise or around the next bend, but it seemed like it never did.  A short false flat or small dip and I was sure it was down hill from there.  After all Mike said the the last Single track was all down hill too, Great I thought.  But first I had to climb the same hill we first came down on the fire road.  Blue sky, That is a good sign we are near the top right?,  Not! The road would turn and keep on climbing.  We had to dodge the occasional car on these narrow gravel road from time to time, as well.

Just when I just about had it,  A bearded single speeder with a full hip pack passes me on what was really the top of the Fire road.  I caught him back on the descent, but confused the entry into the single track, which turn immediately up, not down and he was on my wheel, so I let him pass. I headed into the Quarry loop as Bosnby headed out.  I was dead tired and parts of the quarry did not care.  As for the rest of the single track, I am sure it would have been great fun an hour or two earlier, but now it was anything but the DH single track I was hoping for!  A girl on gears passed me on a particularly SS unfriendly stretch.  I thought she was gone until the hard left hander, that pointed up a moderate to steep climb with rooty technical bits.  She was walking about a couple hundred yard up.  I asked how she liked the DH single track, she replied that she did not have anything left in the tank.  I was walking before I got to her and pulled off as a guy on gears  was coming up.  He saw why I got off and got off as well.  He said "after you", so I remounted after the big root that I was too tired to to attempt and was on my way past the girl, with the guy in tow.  He and I replayed that same scenario a few times, before a definitely pro gearie section came up, where I stepped off to let him do that gearie thing they do.  This Single track may have been loosing elevation, but it was not giving it up with out a fight at every turn, literally.  When it finally did pint down, it was like, "Wait What, that was it?!" and we were out at the power station, not the finish line like TK and I had thought.  Nothing left and nothing left to do but pedal the very slight grade on the pavement back to the start finish area.  Pedal I did, painfully slowly.  I have never really needed a cheering section to motivate me, but here on this plain old, nearly flat stretch of pavement, going about 7.5 miles an hour, through the parking lot, I soaked up every cheer and clap and good job that came my way.

I ended up 15th out of 21 single speeders that signed up, but was the 2nd to last that finished on this day, at ten hours and thirty eight minutes.  I would have been 13th out of 34, with only 21 finishers.

As slow as this was, just two weeks prior to the event, I would have happy with 11 hours, and consider it an improvement over the eleven hours and nineteen minutes that the Tatanka 100 took me, with similar elevation gain, but a completely different profile.

I was happy with my start and the first 20 miles of single track and even the early fire road climbing and I was super happy with my fire road descending through out.  I was good until about 10% over my training duration and miles and I finished and got that mug.  Over the last 10 miles I was thinking I got to finish to get that mug!


TK had to take this Picture quickly before I fell over!



Recovery ride with Tom



Lunch the day after....
We Crown thee the Hundred Miler








Sunday, April 26, 2015

2015 Cohutta 100

I am starting to write this more than 24 hours after the finish of the race and parts of my legs are still sore. This race is the probably most suffering I have ever done, the most on a bike for sure!

Tammy handed me off to Tom near Asheville, I drove to give him a break and let him work from his mobile office, he is always being productive, that man is.  The GPS was a little off and we stopped at Ranger station first.  I hollered down to some guys riding crossing the bridge to ask them were registration was.  It was one of those small world moments as it was Michael Bonsby, he showed me around the MOCO Epic a while back.  I would see him many more times, several during the race as we were yo-yoing back and forth for a while, late in the race.

We get to registration, sign up, pick up our SWAG bag and number, some complementary pre-race pasta, confirmed no course changes with impending inclement weather, drove the opening road climb and walked down to the first hairy bottle neck, checked in to the hotel and had a little pizza to supplement our fuel and protein stores and were in bed a quarter past nine.  This is normal for Tom, I on the other hand had to move my bed time up gradually over the last several days, just so I could manage at 5am.  I was getting a head ache, probably a remnant of my 38 degree race tune.  I took some aspirin a and buried my head in the pillow until my hydration caught up to me at 3:30.  I little more fitful sleep, I could not let Tom have all the fun I guess.

The weather man was not wrong and we got up to rain and not quite 50 degrees out.  I foam rollered and stretched, suited up, packed up and headed to the start.  I lined up with TK on the line, just for good measure, at the front.  After a short prayer from the race starter, the race started at 7:02.  The start pace was pretty brisk.  I fell to about mid pack early and re-caught several riders towards the top after they were fading from the 10 plus minute effort.  I felt like I was just warming up.  I only saw 3 single speeders pass me, but it was hard to tell for sure in the sea of gearies.  I caught one and got on the wheel of a gearie behind behind him, just before the single track.  I aimed to mark him as long as I could.  We made several passes in the tight single track, until we came to a long train and rode it out until one punchy climb where someone went and several of us followed.  I had 2 good saves in that first single track; my front tire caught a rock just wrong on this narrow rise and pitched me sideways, towards the abyss, I unclipped and stabbed the ground with my foot, righted myself and was clipped back in, miraculously without losing any moment or stalling the guys on my wheel.  The next was crossing the creek before crossing the suspension bridge.  I tried to follow a guys line but he bobbled.  I was forced on to some big slabs that everyone seemed to be avoiding.  They very slick and under several inches of rushing water.  My wheels slide hither and fro and somehow I managed to right the ship.  I rinsed the mud off my glasses only to have them completely fog up for the a decent climb out of the river,  Then my brakes went out.  I just put new pads in for the race and the grit wore them down some much that I had adjust my mechicals.  The self adjusting nature of hydraulics was looking pretty goo right about then.  I lost some places a couple times until I got it right, stashed my glasses in a pocket and got back to it.  I did not stop for rest stop one, as #2 was so close.  I passed several that did stop, including that SSer that I marked.  "Now on to the fire road portion of today's activities', That SSer cuaght and passed me, commenting on the size of my gear, we were both standing.  I was feeling pretty good, though, with a just a few twinges of cramps around mile 40.  From 50 on they were increasing.  The rain stopped and the sun made its way out.  But the damage was done, my bike and I were covered in mud.  I switched from my cool weather fueling and tried to get more water into the mix.  I was happy with pretty much all my rest stops, as they were quick and the volunteers very helpful.  I dropped my vest and long  gloves at #4, filled my bottles and heard them say it would be 35 miles till i got back there.  It took a while for that to sink in, when about 20 miles into that 35, I see a pop up at a "T" intersection, thinking it was and aid station, I asked for water. They said they were not an aid station, they topped me off anyway and said the real one was still 15 miles away.

My average speed was bouncing between 11 and 10 MPH,  I was starting to have hopes of a sub 10 hour time, 9:40 even maybe.  Things were looking up as long as I could keep the cramps at bay and now this queasiness in my stomach.

This is really long already and I need to go to bed.  Look for part 2 soon,  I should have my results by then as well.  See Part 2 Here

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Core Work is a Waste of Time!

Endless crunches are worse than a waste of time, they can even create an imbalance and dysfunction!

When I was a barely an adult, I gained a bunch of weight and just tried to suck in my gut all the time, trying to hide it.  This really messed with my breathing and my mind, due to the breath connecting the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems (Fight or Flight and Rest and Digest respectively).  I found yoga and the science behind it and stopped sucking in my gut for a few decades.  I did have nice abs from time to time with a lot of work and strict dieting, usually burning out shortly afterward.  I developed dysfunction in my back and the pain that comes with it. I have friends with killer washboard abs and terrible back problems.  I think that everyone, at one point or another, wanted washboard abs. The road racing greats said to let the belly hang to get a more complete filling of the lower lungs, where there is more O2 and CO2 transfer, due to more capillaries, which seemed to fit in with the teaching from yoga.

Contrary to my title, I do believe that a strong functional core is vital to riding and most other life activities.  The key word is functional!  And I don't mean doing back extensions to balance the abs or even regular planks, the position between many of the named poses in the yoga sun salute.

Yoga teaches you how to breath as you move.  I may have missed it in all my years of study, but that was one key piece of information that eluded me.  Years ago, I got a clue.  When getting certified as a personal trainer, I learned about lordosis or sway back.  It seemed kind of mundane to a young guy wanting to get big and strong; how wrong I was!

Fast forward many years and I was mostly keeping my back in check, mostly.  I tried chiropractic for some time.  I would get put back in place, but without strengthening the weak muscles and loosening the tight muscles, I was doomed to fall out of alignment sooner or later, hence having to go back and get cracked one to three times a week.  That is when I restarted my yoga and it helped.  I stopped getting adjusted after a doctor blamed my neck degeneration on the repetitive adjustments.  Not sure if it is true, but it scared me off of chiropractic, except for an emergency.  I know this is not their business model.  I went along pretty well for years, as long as I got in at least one yoga session a week.  My body would usually let me know, gently, in a timely matter if I missed a session.  Well, there was a time that I seemed fine and I went a few weeks without yoga, everything was going swimmingly and then the worse pain that I have had in a very long time occurred,  if not the very worse ever.  I went in for an emergency chiropractic adjustment and the chiropractor put me on a machine that checked your alignment.  After it lit up like a Christmas tree, he said I was pretty messed up and would need weeks or months of follow ups, and of course he had a plan.  After the adjustment I did a light yoga session and then every day until the next visit the following week. The chiropractor put me on the machine and was astonished that hardly any lights on his machine came on.  I learned my lesson and never went a week without yoga, until I learned and practiced proper form on certain kettle bell drills and stretches.  More on that later.

Again, I thought I had it figured out.  Last year I had a pretty good Single Speed riding, foam roller and Kettle Bell training plan for Cohutta 100.  I was short on time, but I came along really well and did great for a metric century. Unfortunately, I signed up for the hundred miler not a hundred kilometers!  I was geared too high, got cocky from the training, my standing riding was mostly exhausted and my right lower back started screaming at me, pushing the big gear mostly seated.

Some time afterward, I was cleaning out old photos from my phone and had one of me bending over, marking a road race course with paint.  From the angle I could see that there had been a problem for some time. There was a stiff part that forced the spine above it to bend more than it should.  I looked at my program with this lens and removed any suspect movements.  It did not help that I had a crash over a year before that was still affecting the movement pattern of my left shoulder, forcing some compensation in the right lower back, particularly overhead, but that is yet another story.

I was developing a program for an athlete of mine.  As I would hardly ever see her, I looked for videos of the drills I wanted her to do on line.  She was going to be doing mostly body weight or low weight drills, due to time and access to equipment.  I wanted to make sure she was getting the form correct.  Some of the best I have found that are mountain bike specific are from James Wilson.  But during my Youtube search, videos from Strength Side kept popping up.  Strength Side is mainly about the core power lifting moves, at least from the videos I have seen, squats and dead lifts, etc.  He talked about Lordosis and what struck me was the concept of bracing to keep your hips aligned deep in a squat.  I had gotten good, maybe too good at the hip hinge that is associated with the dead lift and swing and seated riding and all the sitting that life throws at you makes your hip flexors tight. I knew about the hip flexors, but keeping them loose was only part of the puzzle.

Tight hip flexors tip your pelvis forward, by slightly flexing the femur/pelvis joint and slack lower abs let this happen.  So it comes back to that mundane Lordosis, Strength Side says it best, that it just comes down to basics that people would rather skip.

But what about the breathing? Luckily, I recently came across James Wilson explaining Crocodile Breathing.  Crocodile breathing is still diaphragmatic breathing, but you remain braced and let the sides and the back expand more than the front, no more hanging belly.

So ironically, it seems that I come full circle to sucking in my gut.  To quote the band Cake's song Comanche;  "You need to straighten your posture and suck in your gut. You need to pull back your shoulders and tighten your butt.", but with proper breathing.

I should have listened to my mother and straightened my posture, but no one ever explained how to me or I was not ready to hear it.

Great, you may say, but what the hell does this have to do with mountain biking?

Many mountain bikers just want to ride their bikes and have fun and fitness seems to be a four letter word, read an article that puts it in perspective here.

But really it comes down to bracing to keep the hips and spine aligned.  One of the coaching cues on the Heel Tap drill is not to suck in the gut, but to press the small of the back into the ground using your abs to tilt your hips back, or down in this case.  I was very weak in this movement pattern.  My back would actually click if I did not practically cramp my abs to hold my spine down!  Now I was on to something!  Along with Strength Sides; Staying Tight in the bottom of a Squat, I came to understand, train and change my bad habits and "You need to straighten your posture and suck in your gut. You need to pull back your shoulders and tighten your butt."  When you pull the front of your pelvis up with your abs, your glutes reflexively contract, and both stabilize your spine

I started applying this on the bike and found to my amazement that it really helped.  Particularly toward the end of a climb when I normally would be gassed, I felt an extra kick.  Or when my back was acting up, bracing would keep it in check.  Bracing also helps you keep from bobbing on the saddle at a high cadence seated spin.  I started to explain this to a friend, who among other things, is a bike fitter and he immediately thought I was going to say "rock your hips forward", which is the common wisdom of bike fit.  I said no, even though, I have described it the same way before also, leaving out the bracing to let the belly hang for breathing of course.  There are times that you rock your hips forward, the key is to keep the abs braced to stabilize your platform.

It is easier to understand it from a squat perspective.  James Wilson advocates standing up as the primary power position and not the pseudo standing/quasi hovering seated position.  He suggests literally a squat, one leg at a time (you push away the pedals instead of the ground).  You need to brace your abs while you apply force to the pedals.

Bracing your abs also helps, in the seated position and even more important in the quasi standing hovering over the saddle position.  Unlike Bike James, I will not argue the value of each, because I think each is an important weapon to have in your arsenal.  It is easy to let the let the abs slack off and be over powered by the rectus femoris (part of the quadriceps) and a tight psoas. Both flex the pelvis, leaving the pelvis unstable, wasting energy and causing a problem in the lower back.

I have a friend that told me to squeeze my abs when I lift heavy objects. Now I know how!  When I lift a heavy object, I visualize scooping it up, with my pelvis as the scoop.
Just apply these principles to pedaling a bike.