Training log July 2010

7/1 & 7/2

5 hr low intensity (moderate 40k climb).

Went to 清泉 (Ching-Chuan, clarity springs) in Hsinchu county. It was a route along the pretty valley of a creek. Went down to the river bed to fill my water supply and get natural cold water spa for FREE!

It's a pity I forgot to take a photo with my phone... but the camera sucks anyway.


7/7

Rode about 100 back home along with a guy of the Giant Asia Raing team. Moderate intensity. Real strong head wind... not fun. Even more "not fun", after getting home, I got the e-mail noting that I'd flunked out. No more school, at last?


7/15

1.5-HR morning ride, mid intensity, small (but a little bit steep) climb about 1k. This ain't gonna be a "training" log is it...


7/18

1.5-HR very low intensity, hill climb afterwards (Chung-Tai Rd)


7/21

1.5 hr morning ride (two laps tempo around last year's National Road Race course)


7/22

morning ride 30min+ @ near LT heart rate (can't say for sure really, 'cause originally I wanted to do a 20-min LT test, but my HRM wasn't functioning properly in the first 5 or 10 minutes)

"Criterium" mode around a small park near my home :)


7/24

3hr morning ride, mid-high to high intensity (3 laps around national RR route)


7/25

2hr morning ride, low to mid intensity, with occasional sprints. Neck and torso a bit fatigued to do decent training, but legs are good.


7/26

LT testing in the morning, failed (pushed the chrono button instead of "training time", so no data was recorded... damn)

Heart rate down to around 70~85 after dinner (and a 30-min nap in the afternoon)


7/27

rained all day... used roller to do some easy training, target zone 100~140 (zone 3?): training time 1hr06'26, Tin 55'48, avg 136, max 147. Not bad for some first-attempt HR control?

My right heel seems to drop down a bit. Might be time to check the toe-in setup for my cleat.


7/28

Roller in the morning. Warm up about 15 minutes, and then work at training zone 170~180bpm... ended up average 176, max 185. Total training time: 16'59.

There's a club race coming 8th August; a 27km time trial. I think I'll need to be able to sustain above 170 for 40 minutes in order to get a good race simulation. The national RR course would serve as quite a good option for aerobic interval training: 7 minutes of hill climb per lap.

And finally, I was able to ride no-hands on the rollers! :D

(evening) 1.5 hours after dinner, roller 35 minutes easy. Tried hands off, swinging around and other balancing drills. My quads are loosened up, but glutes still a bit tight.

It's strange since I have not felt the fatigue in the quads for some time. And it happened this morning, while I was pedaling larger gear in the drops. You'd expect one to use more his glutes and hamstrings in this position, don't you?

The weather forecast says it still rains tomorrow.

7/29

PB for a 2km hill climb: 6'21 (elevation 117m, avg. gradient 5~6%)

Previous record was like 7'25 or something set about a week ago, but not exactly under TT condition, just setting a time standard. Originally I just wanted to get inside seven minutes before boot camp (6'30 might be superb).... so to get a 6'21 was outstanding.

7/30

Recovery ride 2Hr in the morning, roller easy 1Hr in the evening.

Squats

Way down this road, in a gym far away
A young man was once heard to say
"I've repped high and I've repped low, 
No matter what I do, my legs won't grow" 


He tried leg extensions, leg curls, and leg presses too 
Trying to cheat, these sissy workouts he'd do. 


From the corner of the gym where the BIG men train, 
Through a cloud of chalk and the midst of pain 
Where the big iron rides high and threatens lives, 
Where the noise is made with big forty-fives, 


A deep voice bellowed as he wrapped his knees, 
A very big man with legs like trees. 
Laughing as he snatched another plate from the stack 
Chalking his hands and monstrous back, 
said, "Boy, stop lying and don't say you've forgotten, 
The trouble with you is you ain't been SQUATTIN'."


 — DALE CLARK, 1983


Yesterday I went help a friend do his strength workout.

Not that gym workouts are of that much importance to a climber type of roadie... but since his goal is to be a professional cyclist, and since he is at this present moment without a contract (and thus, not in the "racing season"), it might not be so bad to use some weights.

It was the first time I went to this training site. For my likings, it isn't what I'd call a perfect training facility. It's a gym alright, but the focuses were on machines, which wasn't abound and covering all aspects either. But the main drawback was the lack of a squat rack, and the free bar to practice dead lifts and cleans with.

Never mind, the Smith in the corner will do. That friend of mine used to went to a coach for training advices. But from what I've heard, the menu he gave were pretty like that of a body builder (rather than an athlete); the training philosophy was quite weird (he stressed on achieving target numbers, not loading and building the correct muscle groups); and most of all, the lack of emphasis of maintaining the right form. He even instructed the wrong form with which to do squats.

Now with the Smith machine, my gym class teacher used to tell me to stand with my feet way forward, leaning backwards into the bars, and squat down. Which was exactly how the coach told my friend to do. Which also I believe was totally wrong.

(Tina maybe you can get your brother to correct me on this! :D )

Our goals, (as in mine, and that of the aforementioned coach), were quite similar: to develop my friend's glute muscles. As a skinny climber, he lacks the ability to utilize his glutes in a low and aerodynamic position, or jump for a quick acceleration. (I'm not sure if he told the coach he wanted to strengthen this area or the coach asked him to do so. Since we've went on rides together before, I have told him about this problem. Alround performance-wise this guy would almost beat me in every aspect, but when it come down to a sprint, nine out of ten times he'd had to eat my dust.)

Well that was then, and the thing was based on observations only. (Actually the first person to have pointed that one out wasn't me, but rather a dude called Nate Busch, who was a former pro that rode for Trek VW.) But since I began to take on the job as my friend's personal masseur, I was able to verify that with my own hands. Here I can proudly declare, of all those men's buts (!) that I've touched, this fella is definitely on the lean side. But to know the problem was one thing, trying to fix it was quite another.

As to the so-called "squat" positions suggested by the coach. Yes, a man with strong glutes would easily pump up the bars with that sort of form without a hint of a doubt. But for someone lacking the glutes, or one who doesn't know how to activate his glutes, lifting weights using this position could still be achieved by contraction of the quads. Actually, using this method wasn't going to get any benefits of squats at all. You might as well go on a leg-press machine (which, the gym didn't have, oddly enough) if you only want to do this sort of training. I told my friend to use a wide stance, feet pointing slightly outwards, and sitting backwards while squatting down. Maintaining a rigid back, stomach engaged, knees kept vertically behind the toes... basically what Mr. Mark Rippetoe promotes in his book Starting Strength.

After this change, the 10RM weight of my friend immediately dropped from more than 40kg to 20 (my "warmup" loading). In fact, that's when ironically the benefits of the Smith kicks in. With my friend barely lifting those 20kg, lacking the support would have get him literally tipped over if we're not careful. (I think next time I'd have him start from 15 or even 10 maybe.)

While I'm no professional trainer by any means, I can see where the problems might be. The rider in this case didn't have the strength in his glutes to support a "sitting back towards the rear" position. The reason I can make this assumption, is while this guy's hip joints have reasonably good range of motion (I also helped him with passive stretching and stuff after a massage session), he could barely maintain an "air squat" position or do a starting pose of a dead lift, with a tendency of tipping over. (Watching him doing all those panicky stuff was actually quite funny.) AND if I force him to do so, his back tends to hunch up. All traces suggesting his glute muscles couldn't sustain much load in a stretched-out manner. Let alone to contract and putting the power down.

The advice I'd gave him? Do squats. And do the CORRECT squats. With someone watching and constantly helping him to note maintaining the correct form, knees held back etc., he'd be able to really focus on where he lacks. In training, I believe, form comes before performance.

On a final note, next time I'd try to get a box or something to put under his bottom, so as to prevent him from going too deep. This guy really doesn't have much stuff to pump that thing up from an over-extended position.

Posture and form

(Originally written on May 15)

Last Friday I took a late night walk in a park near where we live back home, trying to clear some thoughts in my mind and have a think about what I'd do in the future. Ended up not thinking about those stuff at all. Instead, my attentions turned to the way I walked.

Yup, you have to pay attention to the movements when you walk.

Back when I first started cycling, I didn't pay much attention to my pedaling style. In fact, even long after acquiring a pair of Shimano shoes and PD1056 pedals, I still wasn't fully utilizing the powerful system to it's full benefit. Now I know how to really pedal in circles. But back then, every stroke was forwards and downwards. Stomping as they call it.

Soon enough I started to develop regular cramping in my calf and thighs, particularly quads. Also, from those repeatedly sustained injuries, my calf muscles and Achilles tendons became tight, restricting the range of motions in my heels.

Walking bare-footed on hard grounds gives you a chance to get a good extension/stretch in the calf muscles. As shown below, in the typical designs of modern athletic shoes, the front of the sole has an slight arc. This design promotes quick forward shifting of one's body mass, and also helps the weight transition in running. But in daily exercises, especially in walking, this feature kind of lower the extent of your calf muscles (gastrocnemius and soleus) being stretched.

As noted in the above picture, walking in the common athletic shoes would probably result in your ankle look a bit like this. (The original drawing however has nothing to do with this topic. These are just convenient images found by Google... I've linked them back to the source pages and hopefully they won't sue me for the usage.)

On the contrary, walking bare-footed would get your hind-foot develop an heel angle like the above Egyptian. 

So then after walking for like half an hour, I felt a bit more range in my ankles' movement. Now that's a good sign.

And surprisingly, in the massage afterwards, I found... this.

 

It was the first time in a long period that I was able to get my calf muscles totally relaxed and softened up. That was probably due to my walking bare-footed, which effectively acted like a series of PNF stretching (with the eccentric contraction of the calf muscles in the hind leg every time when you've stepped out your front foot). Doing massage only wouldn't be of this much use.

And another isteresting fact is, with the complete relaxation of the calf muscles, I was able to locate an old wound caused by cramping. Apart from the different touch, you can even visually point out the whereabouts (as shown in the above enhanced photo) of the problematic tissue. A place with particullarly tought miscles and had cramped in neumerous occations in the past two or three years.

New start

New site of choice. Previously I've had blogs from several providers, but now I think it might be a good idea to start a new one under Blogger. It would also be my first one written totally (? we'll see...) in English, as many of my foreign friends can't really read those strange rectangular characters of 中文. It'll also serve as my training log (although at present there isn't any) and thoughts about sport massage therapy, something I've learned and chose to be my future profession.

More about those later!

Why the title?

I'm a cyclist who lives in Taiwan. I was born in Taichung City. When I picked up the sport during my 3rd year in highschool, I used to ride my $120 bicycle up a hill know as the Big Belly (大肚山, Da-Du Shan) in the nearby Taichung County. That name Big Belly, in turn, came from the name of a misterious aborigionee tribe (papora). It's been said they were one of the major dominating forces of flat-land aborigonate clans in the central part of this island before we Chinese people (the Han nationality to be precise) immigrated during the 18th centry. Not much is known about them, and probably nobody nowadays knows what the word "Dwa Do" in their language really means, but the name survived.

Taiwan is a mountainous island. We don't have many flat lands to begine with. My hometown Taichung City, for example, is not really a plane but more a kind of basin, central of the western part of Taiwan. At the west of this basin lie the Da-Du Hills, although from the habit of the Mandarin language you might hear it mentioned as Da-Du "Mountains" or something like that. At the eastern part we got Da-Keng, and the south-western we got Ba-Gua "Mountains." People who cycle in central Taiwan must be familiar with these areas.

Right. What about me? Well, I first learned to climb on one of the roads in the Da-Du hills. Not that I was an excellent climber... but to get a taste of it, nothing beats a 10% gradient, 500-meter-long, unforgiving, two-lane, you-can-only-see-sky-at-the-end deserted paved road in the middle of nowhere. Between the heavy breathing and hard pedaling action you find yourself a sort of rhythm, with the burning sensations in your legs, sweat forming on your forehead, and heart rate rocketing sky hight at a rate far greater than you are physically going upwards. And of course, the satisfactions that came after conquering it.

(Below are links to three photos of this very climb:

Chung-Tai Road overview;

Mid Sections of the climb;

and School of Theology at the roadside;

courtesy of Edinman)

Funny thing is I gave a name of that small nasty road all those years back, and it was adopted by the people riding around ever since. Although they might not know the origin (and would probably never bother anyway). If you understand the Chinese language, the nickname came from the School of Theology at the roadside, third link above. 神召天梯 means a ladder towards heaven, for those who have received God's call.

Of course from a competitive cyclist point of view it's nothing to brag about, but considering that it was my very first climb, an accent which I managed to finish without stopping on only the second attempt (stopped three times the previous day), it was still quite an achievement. And the stories pretty much started from here.