Armstrong Revisited

Revelations or confirmation of that which we already were 99% sure of Mr Armstrong raised his ugly head again this week to a bandwagon of publicity but with the majority shouting out that he should not be forgiven and that he was not contrite enough.  I spent an hour and forty five minutes watching the interviews (thank God for Sky+ to get rid of the adverts) and was absorbed by it.  Like a great many people I had been taken in by Mr Armstrong and the story of his survival from cancer and miraculous rise to the pinnacle of the Tour de France several times no less.  I have many thoughts going on in my head regarding the subject and will try and share some the best I can with you.

The first thing that struck me about the interviews was the number of times I had a feeling that Mr Armstrong was trying not to break out into a wry smile.  He answered the questions very honestly that were put to him but he didn’t seem genuinely concerned.  Another point which I scoffed at was that he was unaware of what a big deal he was.  How can someone with a massive foundation winning a marquee sporting event each year not have a clue that they are ‘big’? 

I am I have to say a little sympathetic in some respects.  A majority of the competitors at the time were doing a cocktail of drugs and there are a few things that rangle with me still in that Armstrong has been made a scapegoat for the generation and that if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else.  I am not trying to justify it the whole era was a farcical mess which will have a massive impact on cycling for years to come.  I don’t think it helps that certain individuals were welcomed back with open arms to compete again after a few months or years bans.  In my opinion once you are banned you should not be allowed to compete again within elite sport.  This is regardless of peer pressure etc being put on people to take drugs in the first place.  The other issue that I have is that Mr Armstrong did create an organisation to help people with cancer to cope.  This has undoubtedly helped a large number of people over the years and will hopefully continue to.  It would be a huge shame for this organisation to fail on the back of one man’s obvious and gross flaws.  If there is one thing that he has done right though it is Livestrong.

Having read a number of witness accounts, the USADA report and a platitude of column inches over the past few months along with a number of programmes and internet videos I am now long since over my hero worship of Mr Armstrong.  I don’t think Mr Armstrong can be given a second chance.  He ruined too many people’s reputations, lied for too long and was nonchalant about the fact he had doped in the context of the racing believing still he was on a level playing field.  After this I do not want to hear his name for a long time although I fear there is more to come.

I want to move on swiftly from this and concentrate on the sport I now know and love.  Geraint Thomas summed it up perfectly for me in an interview with the BBC

"I don't think he deserves any more air time than what he's (Armstrong) got.
"We can all just finally move on and learn from it, and stop talking about him and actually talk about what's happening today

"Talk about the future, the clean riders that are doing everything that they can. That's what it's all about."

All Heart

Bit of an update on the training for the last month and a bit.  Very very positive to be honest.  I have combined gym and cycling doing two gym sessions a week and six days of cycling.  Some of the six days are commuting miles but every little helps.  It did my spirit good doing a wattbike session with Mark O’Reilly shame he has to go back to the Army!  I completed a 20 minute power test with Mercury Training (http://www.mercuryperformancecoaching.com/ ) on Saturday.  It was the first one I had done so didn’t judge the first part amazingly well I think there was a little left in the tank at the end of the test.  There was certainly a few heart beats left to go to maximum.  This brings me nicely on to the blog title.  There are two reasons for the title.  One is the psychological aspect of my training and the other is the recovery element.

Mercury have asked me to monitor my resting heart rate (HR) in the morning before I get out of bed.  It did take a bit of remembering and getting used to but I am not in the habit of providing the data to them along with a morning weight.  My resting HR did surprise me somewhat the average of the week was 52 beats per minute.  I was very pleased with this as it shows a good level of fitness.  Mercury are monitoring to make sure that I am not overtraining.  I had a rough nights sleep mid week getting four hours due to my little lady not been well and my resting heart rate reflected that in the morning moving to 63 beats per minute.

This leads me into the psychology of the HR monitoring.  The days where I awoke with the lower more average HR readings I felt great on the bike and the commute was very easy and uneventful.  I could push and wasn’t tired when I arrived at work and home.  The day the HR was elevated I am not sure if it was physical or psychological but the commute was a massive effort and I felt tired at the end of the last commute home.  The speed dropped and the avg HR was higher for the commute home.  I think it will be a little bit of both.  Moving on from that the power test on Saturday morning allowed me an opportunity to zone in and push myself.  I could see the HR on the monitor and even though I felt tired I knew that there was more to give.  Trying to hit a sweet spot was good of between 169 – 177 bpm and I knew if I went over this small zone I would be ‘in the red’.  This allowed me to make sure the effort was pretty consistent and provided good readings.

The gym sessions have been providing a real sense of moving forward with the training.  I am doing two per week and the are consisting of upper body toning, core work and a long period of flexibility work.  The session is lasting about 50 minutes which I am happy with at the moment.  I am going to try and fit another session in before or after work.  I am also looking to start getting some more miles in on the bike.  The last two Sundays have seen a longer ride due to the nice, but cold, weather.

Thanks very much for reading!

2012 - 2013

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and I wish you a very Happy New Year.  May all that you wish for be achieved.

This is a bit of a 2012 review and a 2013 goal set.  In 2012 I set the following as goals;

  

• 2-3 stones weight needs to be shifted

• Manchester to Blackpool in better than the 4hr 30mins I took this year.  

• I also want to attempt the Manchester 100miler again this year and come in under 6 hours hopefully more towards the 5 hours 30minutes mark.

• The Big Red Bike Ride in June, it will be 600miles in 6 days which will be my biggest challenge yet. 

• June will also see me try and complete my first half marathon.  I am looking to sign up for the Humber Bridge half marathon.

I managed to shift a stone and a half, which I am pleased with.  2013 will see a further loss at approximately 1kg a week.  This has been set by the coaches at Mercury Training (http://www.mercuryperformancecoaching.com)  Stuart and David.  This will motivate me more to achieve the target.  On the Manchester to Blackpool goal we did it in 3hrs 36 minutes nearly an hour’s improvement on the 2011 effort this was achieved shortly after returning from Ireland and I believe I was probably at my peak for the season at this point.  The Manchester 100 was not quite as successful.  The first half of the sportive was in poor weather and I struggled a little with it.  Considering this I was pleased with the 6hrs 21minutes I did.  This was a ten minute improvement on my attempt in 2011.  The Big Red Bike Ride was amazing.  You can read a number of exerts about the trip in this very blog if you take a look at June 2012.  On the running front I don’t think it will happen yet until I am significantly lighter and have had something done with the knee.  I am hoping one day to run again as my good friend Steve Wingfield has shown this year it is entirely achievable.

2012 Ride Stats:

Total Miles:                 4250 (11 months total as injured for November)

Avg Speed:                 14.5mph

Time:                           299:17:44 h:m:s

Elevation Gain:           97,648 ft

Avg HR:                     145 bpm

Avg Bike Cadence:     76 rpm

Calories:                      241,594 C

2013 will see some changes for the better I am positive this will occur.  My goals are as follows;

• Drop to 90kg (ish)

• Complete a 10mile and 25mile TT competitively

• Continue to ride a number of sportives and include one abroad.

• Knock time off Manchester 100 mile time.  Hopefully a substantial amount

• Increase my average miles per hour substantially.  (2^nd half of 2012 avg was nearly 1.5mph faster then the average for the 1^st half of the year)

I would just like to thank everyone who has helped me.  All the people who I have ridden with this year.  Special thanks to Mark O’Reilly again for his companionship during the year.  I am sad (but proud) that he has joined the Army and we will only be occasional riding buddies in 2013.   A big thanks to Rich Salisbury from Pedal Precision (http://pedalprecision.com/)  who again has advised and tinkered with my setup to help me.  A big thanks to Evans Cycles and especially Ted Gordon/Chris Hardisty for the help and support and to the various other people I mither through the year for advice. 

I am looking forward in 2013 to linking up with Mercury Performance coaches and hopefully seeing a massive improvement.  Also to continue my love affair with cycling after an amazing 2012.

Happy New Year!!

Book Review

Well I have been off now for four weeks with the knee.  This has given me ample time to catch up on some reading.  There were a few books I wanted to tackle around cycling and there are still many more I wish to read also.  I think it’s both important and nice to learn about the history of a sport so that it is easier to fully understand the rich history, which cycling is famed for.  I do however feel like I am writing a school book report so bare with my hotpotch style!

The four books I read are.  Tyler Hamilton:  The Secret Race,  Brad Wiggins: My Time, David Millar: Racing Through the Dark and Merckx Half Man Half Bike by William Fotheringham.

Tyler Hamilton:  The Secret Race

I was interested to take a look at this book for a number of reasons.  The first and most obvious one is that I have held Lance Armstrong up as a hero for most of my life due to his battling with cancer and his exploits in the Tour De France.  Hamilton interested me as he was a long standing team mate of Armstrongs and also rode when I first became interested in cycling when I was a teenager.  The book is well written and is a very smooth read by that I mean it is easy to get lost in it and like myself find that I had ran out of pages without really putting much effort in to reading it.  It is not a bitter book and in my opinion holds a very introspective narrative.  The interesting parts for me where the chapters focusing on Armstrong his character and the doping.  Being a naïve kind of guy I hadn’t really thought about Armstrong being a strong personality nore had I read anything of the kind.  This book really opened my eyes to Armstrongs character and left me researching other stories online about it as I wanted to verify the claims made by Hamilton.  Unfortunately what he says seems to be true.  The other aspects of the book that obviously interested me where the descriptions of various races and Hamiltons fight to not just be an average rider but a great rider.  This then developed into the story of how he was enticed into the world of doping and is very similar I think to that of David Millar (more later).  Overall I would say if you like cycling or have an interest in Armstrong then you will really enjoy this book.

Bradley Wiggins:  My Time

I sit here in 2012 knowing that I have witnessed an amazing sporting achievement back in July.  Bradley Wiggins winning the Tour De France.  This has propelled him into being one of the most famous sportsmen of a generation and catapulted him into the public eye.  This was then backed up by his Olympic time trial gold medal at the London Olympics.  A good time for a book then!  I had read excerpts of the book in The Times and already having had my interest peeked I ordered the book.  With excitement I lapped up the pages and thoroughly enjoyed the read.  Again another book that flew by without thought of leaving it to sit on the bedside cabinet for a while.  The book interested me as there where some snippets of data, which Wiggins gave about his rides in the Tour and in other races.  Mainly about wattage but also about VAM.  Being a bit of a geek I liked this as I am interested in this side of the sport.  The narrative itself was very good it felt intimate and heartfelt and really gave a good view of how Mr Wiggins felt over the course of the last 12 months particularly.  It would have been nice to have a little more on his early career but understandably the book is aimed at 2012 mostly.  In summary again a very easy read and a good buy for someone who is interested in cycling or sports people in general.

David Millar:  Racing Through the Dark

I have been interested in cycling for a long time but the last two and a half years have got involved with riding a bike and also being more interested in the various other raced then the Tour De France.  I had seen David Millar pop up in some of the races and on various bits of media coverage advocating clean drug free cycling.  The main article which drew me to Millar was one pre-Olympics whereby a ruling was overturned regarding convicted drug cheats competing for GB.  Millar fell in to this category.  I decided to get hold of a copy of his book and give it a read.  The book itself is told from Millar’s perspective from his childhood and encompasses his life to date.  This is something I enjoyed as it gives a fuller picture of the guy.  It is a fascinating read and draws you into not wanting to put it down.  In a similar way to Tyler Hamilton it shows how Millar fell into taking the drugs, although not in such a comprehensive way as Hamilton more of a dabble.  Millar goes deep into his feelings on taking the drugs and the effects that the life had on him.  A very interesting read and again more cycling stories regarding the racing so another winner for me.

Merckx Half Man Half Bike by William Fotheringham

This book is not written by Merckx himself but is very well written none the less.  I enjoyed this book the best out of the four.  I had not really focused much attention on the great historical figures of cycling more of a modern day student of cycling.  This book however is incredible and riveting.  It is a full biography of Merckx from his childhood all the way through to his retirement from cycling.  It tells the legendary tales of Merckx riding the Grand Tours and also smaller races in Belgium to earn a living.  What Fotheringham has done particularly well is pull a number of sources together.  There is opinion from family, friends, team mates and arch rivals inter woven into the narrative, which make for a compelling read.  The race exploits of his most famous stage and classic victories are here and described expertly.  In summary if you where to buy one book from the four it would have to be this one.  An absolutely barn storming read!

Thanks for putting up with the ranting of a cycling fanatic!

New Direction

It has taken me a while and a lot of thinking to decide where I want to go next and what I want to achieve.  One of the aims is still the same and that is to shift this remaining weight but after a fair period of stagnation I have decided to enlist the help of a coaching team.  I went to David and Stuart Percival at Mercury Performance Coaching a few weeks ago for an initial assessment and to start to look at where I will be heading this next twelve months.  After a battery of tests including a VO2 Max test on the bike the guys took the results away.  They have analysed the results and come back with a fully holistic training programme ranging from the cycling to the nutrition.  It is something that they will support me on fully sending daily workouts for the commute to work and some indoor sessions involving the Wattbikes.  They have also sent me some gym workouts and flexibility programmes.  Alongside this will run a nutrition programme.  They have worked out how many calories I need to sustain living and how many I will use over the course of an ‘average’ day.  Targets have been set and so have food groups.  I guess a diet.  Most of you will know food is my arch nemesis in that I love to eat and eat lots.  Having kept food diaries for a few weeks for the guys to look at it it was obvious even to me that what I was eating was a load of rubbish in terms of sustaining weight loss and getting the correct amount of all sorts of vitamins and minerals.  I am now in the process of looking at the diet and making some wide ranging changes.  I am sure that I will be able to keep to it but I guess there will be the odd slip knowing me.

This has all been going well I had managed to get a week of following the cycle sessions correctly for the most part and have been making subtle changes to my diet.  Then disaster last Friday.  Whilst commuting to work a car pulled up alongside me after some lights and made a left turn no indication.  This resulted in me ending up hitting the side of the car at around 20mph and ending up sprawled down the side road bike still attached.  The car stopped up the road and I got up to go and get the drivers details as the bike, my clothes and I had sustained some damage.  The car then drove off.  I was gobsmacked.  Fortunately a few bystanders had got her licence plate and car type as I was in a bit of shock.  I thought that I had definitely broken my arm and had pain in my knee along with road rash.  Mr James Jackson came to pick me up (hero) and took me home.  After about 30minutes of being at home the adrenaline and shock wore off and I was in a lot of pain.  Five and a half hours later in A&E I was to find out that my arm wasn’t broken just cut up and badly bruised.  The main concern was the knee which I had to return on Tuesday for another X-Ray due to the swelling.  Not broken but still needing crutches and painkillers as I could hardly walk I left and have been camped on the sofa ever since.  The Police came around and are looking into the ‘Failure to Stop’ which is an arrestable offence.  I am still waiting to see what happens with this.  In the midst of all this Bradley Wiggins and Shane Sutton (Head Coach at BC) get knocked off also by vehicles.  I am active on Twitter and soon there was a raging debate about whether or not cyclists should be on roads and about the infrastructure of the countries cycle paths etc.  There was also a lot of vitriol being spouted by people both drivers and cyclists.  Some of the comments where quite disturbing from people one saying something along the lines of lets have a day where we accidentally knock cyclists of their bikes.  Gobsmacking.  I have started following @cyclehatred who retweets driver’s views/opinions.  I may have to unfollow them soon as some of the things I am seeing are making me very angry and are astonishing.  Mutual respect is needed as an effort on both parts to obey the rules of the road and try to be a bit more observant of each other.  

Ned Flanders: “You were bicycling two abreast?”

Homer Simpson: “I wish. We were bicycling to a lake.”

-- The Simpsons, ‘Dangerous Curves’ (Episode 2005)

Lance Armstrong

Hey all.  A bit off topic to the usual blurb but I wanted to air my viewpoint on the Armstrong vs USADA topic.

I have only really participated in cycling for a couple of years but have always watched the Tour De France as I love sport.  The more I have being involved in cycling the deeper I have looked into the history of the sport and come to learn about the individuals who race in the sport.  There are a couple of stand out individuals to me and one of these is Lance Armstrong.  I have the fortune of remembering Armstrong’s famous battles with Ullrich in the Tour De France and remember being excited by the mountain attacks and ‘the look’.  A feeling that has been recently being reignited by Contadors attacks in the Vuelta d Espagna.  I have read Armstrong’s books on his fight with cancer, his tour victories and life in general.  I still follow his progress post-retirement from professional cycling during his Ironman career and his work through Livestrong.

I am writing this on the day that Armstrong has come out and said he will not be fighting the USADA investigation into his alleged drug taking.  You can find an article here http://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/lance-armstrong-wont-fight-usada-charges-35040/   This is not on the grounds that he is guilty but on the grounds that he feels that USADA doesn’t have jurisdiction over his case and that the UCI does.  This means that a lot of people have come out and said he is obviously guilty.  Recently I have been probably 70/30 in favour of feeling he is guilty but I keep having swings from one side to the other.  I have a lot of thoughts and questions, which I would like to be answered but I am not sure if they ever will be.

My first point is that Armstrong post cycling has continued to be engaged in top level sport through his participation in triathlons and ironmen.  His performance has been at a constantly excellent level which indicates to me that either he is still doping, which is unlikely or that he has always been an exceptional athlete.  My second point is that if we look to his build before his brush with cancer you can see it was totally different to his post cancer build.  Armstrong even says that the cancer treatment meant he could reconstruct his body to be a better all round cyclist.  Call me naïve but being from a Sports Science background I can understand this and so will most cyclists be able to.  Climbing a hill is mostly about body composition and engine then anything else.  Also the way that Armstrong’s teams rode was similar to the way Sky’s team ride all out for GC at a pace that other teams cannot live with to deliver their man to the best possible position.

If we assume that Armstrong is guilty does that not mean that pre 2005 most cyclists where doping?  I say this as Armstrong never failed a drug test so this implies a cover up by whomever his team, the UCI, who knows or that Armstrong was clean and won his titles legitimately.  The repercussions for the first implication don’t bare thinking about.  I would have to say that anyone who won a Grand Tour pre 2005 must have doping and therefore the heritage of cycling is blatantly flawed.  There must have been exceptions to this rule as I refuse to believe that everyone doped but that’s what they must have been exceptions rather then the rule.  This means up until a few years ago cycling was a sport dominated by dopers.  Not a great history to have.

Saying this I firmly believe that cycling nowadays is mostly clean.  There are still people being caught for indiscretions but most cyclists must know that they cannot dope and get away with it.  If you look at the amount of scientific knowledge and hard training teams are putting in then the level of performance is going to be very high like other elite sports.

My final musing is that whatever the outcome of this ongoing battle Armstrong’s work with Livestrong to help families coping with cancer and the research element of the foundation cannot be touched and that Armstrong must be commended for his efforts whatever with regards to this aspect of his life.

Manchester to Hull

Having had a bit of a Summer break from the blog and a bit of a think about a change in the prolificacy with which I churn out material I have decided to go away from writing each and every Sunday regardless of what I have done and focus more on particular events or overviews of training segments I have been doing.  The weightloss is still going well and I anticipate that it will only be another three to four months to get to where I am going.  My goals are starting to change slightly in that I want to have a go at road racing next year and also some track crits.  This winter will be key to those aspirations and I will be changing the training to develop into a faster, fitter cyclist.

This Sunday past, however, saw another adventure on the bike.  I decided at the latter end of 2011 that I wanted to tick some trip boxes so to speak.  On the list was cycling from Manchester over to Hull.  You may ask why, I am originally from Hull and still have family over there and also there is the ‘fun’ element of the ride.  I had been glued to my weather app on the phone during the week hoping that the weather would be ok to do the trip and I reckoned the 100 miles or so would take me 7 -8 hours.  As it turns out the weather was exceptional and really added to what was going to turn out to be a really enjoyable ride.  I was up early for a 07:00 start and after some porridge and a pint of water I made my last checks to the bike and kitted up.  I had been researching the route for a few weeks and had a list of the roads I was going to use on my iPhone.  In conjunction to the maps on there the list would prove invaluable.  I headed out of Manchester on the Oldham Road and as it was a Sunday it was blissfully quiet and allowed me to tick along at a reasonable pace.  As I was unfamiliar with the way over the moors I was checking the maps app regularly.  I did manage however to get lost twice but rectified the navigational issues and carried on.  As I headed towards Uppermill there where some sharp climbs and some nice decents.  The local council had decided to close one of the roads over night so I had to detour round that up a particularly sharp climb.  Many of you will know I am not a great climber but my spirits where high and I was enjoying the peaks and troughs.  Another wrong turn saw me end up going down a really nice decent into Uppermill only to have to turn round and climb back up it to take the turn off.  Still I had a chuckle to myself and got on with it.  I turned onto Holmfirth Road which would take me over the moors and back into Gods own country Yorkshire.  Little did I realise that there would be a bit of a monster climb up to the top.  The climb itself was 1200 feet and took me nearly 25 minutes to do.  It just seemed to keep going and going.  There where two false peaks to.  Half way up the climb I heard a hissing noise from the front tyre and I had my first flint puncture.  I pulled over and changed the inner tube in rapid time for me of 15 minutes then carried on up the climb.  It was hard.  I was averaging about 7 mph and my heart rate was 170 – 178bpm all the way up.  Saying that I really enjoyed it and had a great sense of achievement at the top.  It is probably the biggest climb I have ever done. 

As I went over the top a fellow cyclist going the other way shouted “I bet you didn’t break any land speed records” I just thought you are most definitely right sir but I am at the top!  The decent into Holmsfirth was unbelievable it went on for four miles with a top speed of nearly 50mph.  I was holding back a little as I was unsure of the twists and turns but it went on for ever and was a highlight of the trip.  After reaching Holmsfirth I took a small wrong turn and headed to Barnsley.  This section was lovely country roads in nice weather and hardly any wind.  It was also nice to see a kids road cycling club out with their adult chaperones.  They must have been between 8 and 12 years old and I was very encouraged by their enthusiasm.  I cycled with them for a bit then pushed on through Barnsley up towards Pontefract.  As I headed up the country roads I could hear a distant roar of engines.  A few minutes later and I was overtaken by around thirty cars heading to a car rally up the road.  The noise was deafening and the fumes these old machines where kicking out where choking.  I headed on to a section of dual carriageway next and this gave me chance to think and to enjoy the weather.  After reaching Pontefract I stopped bought a sandwich and had fifteen minutes making a couple of calls and texts before setting off again.  The roads rolled a bit but nothing like Ireland so I was steady and happy heading towards Knottingly then onwards through to Selby.  In Selby again the council had decided to close the road I wanted to use so after a few wrong turns and curses then made my way up the A19 towards the road I needed to head to Market Weighton.  At this point I roughly knew where I was and set off down the A163 with some gusto and a feeling of home legs.  Little did I realise that the A163 was one of the longest roads ever… whether it was a mental feeling or an actual physical feature it felt like I was cycling along there for hours.  I reached Holme on Spalding Moor and stopped for an icecream and some water refills.  By now it was midday and the temperature was rising.  I had averaged around 20mps from Selby and felt good but I was hot and the suncream I had put on was having little effect.  I pushed on and reached Market Weighton which was essentially 7 miles to go.  I felt strong and went around Market Weighton and up on to the South Cave road.  That is when the wind picked up.  From nowhere the head wind became exceptionally strong.  I was struggling to maintain 11mph into it and the sun was still beating down.  After a last big push I decended into Brough and Lindsey’s house where there was a welcome bottle of water and some icepops!!

Ride stats

Distance:                     103.48 miles

Moving Time:              6hours 25minutes

Avg Speed:                 16.1mph

Top Speed:                  46.8mph

Elevation Gain:           5072 feet

Calories burned:          5007