cycling – Page 3 – I Spit Hot Fire

Disappointment at the Mt Diablo Valley Challenge – Failure to Break 1 Hour

I didn’t do it. My 2024 time from last weekend was 1 minute faster than my time from 2023. Excuses first, it came down to not sleeping enough. I slept with my toddler son to help him sleep but when he woke up before 12AM, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got between 1 and 3 hours of sleep and was awake at least from 2AM for an 8:25AM race start.

I was pretty dejected during the ride as I started to fade knowing that this was the second straight year that I should have beat 1 hour for the race. In 2023, I had two straight low-sleep nights leading into the Challenge; I had done a 100 mile Gran Fondo the day prior at my highest ever 5 hr+ power.

As I now write this over 24 hours after the race, I am feeling OK about things. I am not sure I want to do the event again, but I do want to prove myself on the climb and I could do that any time I feel ready, for free.

The starting temperature over the weekend was about 10F higher than last year’s, close to 70F. Northern California is in the middle of a heat wave, with temperatures hitting 100F during the afternoons where I live. I didn’t feel overheated during the climb but…
My strategy to not have water bottles didn’t go well. I had practiced high intensity rides without water for over an hour in warmer-than-race-day temperatures at home, and did just fine. However, within 10 minutes of the ride, my throat was feeling super dry. It might have been particles in the air or related to the heat wave – someone said we had forest fire conditions of heat and dry air. Next time, I’ll just bring a water bottle.
I hit my max heart rate thresholds quite quickly – I was basically there immediately starting the ride instead of 20-30 minutes into it as I had hoped. I assume my lack of sleep was the big factor there.
I took beet root in the days leading to the ride to help with time to exertion but I don’t know what impact it had. Beet root is quite expensive in juice form, but I found gummies that are relatively affordable – just $20 for a month’s supply at Costco.
I lost 5 pounds or so during the final month and I may have lost some power in the process. I didn’t record my full ride correctly so I am unable to compare the last two year’s rides correctly but overall it’s clear I did less power than the previous year but went faster due to less weight on the bike and body.

Moving Forward

Whether I compete next year or not, I want to focus on losing weight while maintaining current power levels. This means getting down to 140 pounds from my current 146. My power goal would be 255 watts at 4w/kg. I lost a pound a week in the month before the event, and will try to get to 140 by Christmas. My process is sustainable, it is about having self-discipline and tracking myself so I stay on track.
This type of power/weight ratio would get me up Alpe Du Zwift in 50 minutes. This would give me unwavering confidence that I could beat the 1 hr mark for Mt. Diablo.
I’ve been having issues with my left foot on my bike setup. I plan to have a bike fit and/or custom insoles fitted to see if that can help with the pressure and pain around the foot.
I don’t have wishes for the bike. I am now using Dura Ace 9150/9170 parts for the derailleurs and brakes and my original Ultegra 8170 shifters on DI2 11 speed electronic shifting. I have a low weight ZTTO 11-34 cassette and I use Dura Ace 50/34 chainrings with Shimano 105 160mm crankarms. I am on a Fizik Adaptive 3D printed R1 saddle which is about 190G.

This is the Way -> Mt Diablo Under One Hour

It’s time. Another Mt. Diablo Hill Climb Challenge comes in 4 weeks. A year ago I was optimistic I could finish the hill climb under 1 hour and earn myself a prized shirt. Instead, I made an error by riding 100 miles at my highest all-time intensity for that duration and couldn’t sustain enough power the next morning for the hill climb.

I had a good experience overall but wondered what could have been. In the year since, I’ve trained fairly steadily despite welcoming a new daughter into the world. I didn’t quite make the progress that I wanted, however, and I came into last weekend thinking I would take a FPT test to see where I stood and whether I could really match up with my fitness from last year.

I rode Zwift’s The Grade, and ended up with an estimated FTP of 261 watts per Intervals.icu after doing 280 watts for 13+ minutes. Last year, I did 270 watts for 27+ minutes for an estimated FTP of 263, so it feels like I’m on par with last year’s fitness.

Based on this ride profile from BestBikeSplit, the challenge is whether I can actually sustain my FTP for one hour. This rider plan is asking me for 258w average power to finish in 58 minutes, basically the same as my eFTP.

What I need to train for over the coming weeks:

Do I have the longevity/focus to sustain power for an hour?
Can I generate higher power at a lower cadence (65-80 RPM) for that time period?
Can I lose a few pounds without losing power to improve my odds at reaching my goal?

On the first question, I have been in polarized training, with 8+ hrs of zone 2 indoor riding each week, for the past 6 weeks. I bookend those sessions with two high intensity Zwift racing sessions of 30-45 minutes. This ends up looking like 400 TSS and 5000 calories burned each week. Since school season has started for my kids, I’ll add a 30 minute commuter ride each morning in which I bike them to school with a trailer. I won’t measure this physical impact, it will just be a bonus. What I need now is to practice one extended climb at high intensity each week, Alpe Du Zwift. In the past, this climb would take me between 53-56 minutes depending on my fitness, a perfect simulation for race day.

On the second question, I have noticed that it’s difficult for me to go 260+ watts seated now. I used to do extended climbs from 70-75 cadence easily, but that’s gone. I can’t deliver that power at above 80 cadence either. When I did my FTP test, I had numerous bursts of climbing out of the saddle. Typically, I can’t stay out of the saddle for very long without feeling overly exerted, and yet this time I just wanted to stay out of the saddle. This seems to signal that my fitness is pretty good but that I also need to practice lower cadence riding. Over the last year, I have focused most of my time on aerobic higher cadence (90+) workouts. Over the coming weeks, I want to spend at least a few hours at lower cadence (70-75) each week, not including my climb practices.

On the final question, nutrition has always been tricky for me. Do I take in nutrition during the ride? Or just pre-ride? How much protein do I take? Should I listen to my body and eat when hungry? Over the past years, clear patterns have emerged. If I train, I gain weight. I don’t get leaner, however. My percentage of body fat stays the same or increases. Gaining weight means I eat too much, period. Over the next month, I’m going to execute the following:

Nothing outside of water after dinner (this usually ends by 6PM).
Be a little hungry each night.
Have a good carb loaded breakfast of sugary cereal and a banana each morning when I have a workout planned. Couple that with a 30G protein shake.
Use Gatorade Zero tablets instead of optimized sports drinks with high sugar. This along with my long bouts of Zone 2 will emphasize fat burning.
Stay low-carb (or couple high carbs with high fiber) for my other meals and focus on eating normal portions. Eat 1 pound of broccoli at least 5 times per week. Don’t overly focus on getting “enough” protein.
If I start to feel too hungry at night, make the breakfast sizes larger so they go directly into fueling the workout.
Don’t weigh myself until race day.
On race day morning, and the dinner before race day, I’ll load myself up with good carbs – fruits, high fiber pastas.
Focus on the process – eating leaner, good workouts, more endurance during extended climbing.

Wish me luck!

I Finally Won – “Cheating” My Way to a Zwift Victory

This morning, I won my first Zwift race! And to be honest, it wasn’t really close.

After more than 5 years of fluctuating between 3.5 w/kg and 4 w/kg, and never getting close to a B class win on Zwift, I’ll take it. Normally, winning a lower class would be called sandbagging. This is slightly different, I think. I’ve been off Zwift for close to 4 months and have been recently recovering from painful cycling injury.

Since my layoff, Zwift released its new Zwift Racing Score and reset its recommendations for riders. Or at least reset them for me. When I got back on Zwift last week, I got recommended E class. So I took it. I didn’t even podium that one. If you compare my performance in the first race to today, I worked harder (higher heart rate) in the first race, but did 13% more power (this is a lot in cycling) this morning – I was still a bit weak and a bit sick then. I didn’t even win the second race I did, in which I got recommended class D. I finished fourth – my indoor trainer went crazy and I had no power data for 15-30 seconds in the last few minutes of the race. I had expected to podium, but not win – I made the wrong call not to follow someone and my group wouldn’t work to catch up to that breakaway rider.

So again, it’s not like I’ve been destroying the competition taking easy wins.

Today though, I was feeling reasonably decent and when a gap opened up even though I wasn’t working at my limits, I decided to keep pushing and try to stay away from everyone else. It worked and the result was a 45 second victory in the field of 18, pushing about 3.6w/kg in Normalized Power (NP) for half an hour.

Zwift isn’t going to let me compete in C again, so at least I got one victory to show I don’t belong in C.

Why do we fall? To learn to pick ourselves up (2024 MCBC Dirt Fondo)

“All Dirt Fondo routes are planned with mountain and gravel bikes in mind. Upright bars and suspension will have advantages on the trails and rutted fire road segments, but a gravel bike is great for the smoother fire road bits and road segments. Either way, be prepared for some challenges along the way and walk tough sections if it looks too difficult – no one will judge you!” 2024 Dirt Fondo in Marin, CA.

Unfortunately, I took a hard fall last Saturday at the Dirt Fondo. I flipped on the bike riding a heavy rock garden-esque descent, landing primarily on my right leg around the knee. If you look at the images in the link, my descent was comparatively much rockier and chopped up – imagine pieces of large rock. I later realized I took some impact on my hands (I assumed I tried to brace myself), right forearm and left leg as well. The shock was immediate. I couldn’t move for a while and my right leg just shook uncontrollably. I had a small 1inch diameter cut below the knee which didn’t look bad but I immediately thought, what if I broke my leg?

I was fortunate that a pair of riders was right behind me and saw the crash. They helped make sure I was ok and went back to the previous rest stop to ask for help before moving on. I waited a bit, but when it didn’t seem like help was coming, I decided to continue downhill to make the next rest stop and get help there. Unfortunately, I never saw another rest stop but I did hear from another rider that I was being searched for and I was able to send an update via a volunteer. I rode through more gravel/dirt/rock sections before taking a detour and finding pavement as I rode through beautiful Sausalito back to the start – another 2 hrs of riding after the fall.

Should I have picked a different path? This is probably the critical issue. Going down, the edge of the mountain was on the left. I am guessing a 10 foot wide path total split into two. On the left edge is a loose (smaller) rock path, on the right is a rock garden-ish path. I don’t remember exactly why I took the right, but here are a few notes I’ve reflected uplon. There was someone going up hill on my left. Did I see that person before picking the right side? I’m not sure but that would have been a reason to go right, there wasn’t room. Loose rock is very slippery, and because that was the mountain edge side, I may not have wanted to be struggling with slowing down on slippery rock. As I started descending perhaps I wanted to move to the loose rock, but that would have been very scary to attempt. I kind of knew the rock descent was difficult but the decision would have been to focus on surviving, not attempting a tricky transition.
Should I have run different (wider) tires? I ran pretty wide tires for gravel, 42mm S-Works Pathfinders that expanded to 47.2mm on my wheels. MTB tires can be 10-20 mm wider but after I fell, I saw other gravel bike riders (who took the other smaller rock line) on thinner tires.
Should I have run lower tire pressure? Anything can be second guessed. I was running 22/23 PSI on my tires, which I feel is pretty low. The pair behind me were running wider MTB tires and suspension bikes. Less air would have meant a softer ride but I don’t think that was the culprit.
Should I have gone slower or faster? On unpaved terrain, I have learned that going faster is often better than going slower because speed helps you roll over obstacles better. I don’t think I was going fast at all, most likely less than 8 mph. It’s hard for me to remember because it was a descent, I was for sure braking or in a brake position in the drops and I was in a rocky path in which I was just trying to go over big rocks non-stop. I didn’t want to go too fast because I didn’t have good traction but going too slow would stop the bike because of the rocks.
What was my position on the bike? Earlier, I mentioned I flipped over the bike. I don’t think that’s accurate. I didn’t land on my head. I think the bike got stopped on a rock and I had to fall over in the process. I don’t think I was front leaning on the bike, but I’m not sure if I was sitting or in a more crouched/standing position on the saddle.

Sitting down, writing this a couple of days later, I of course want to blame the event a bit. If I’m the only one who fell (I do not know if this is the case), then I have to assume it’s my fault, whether that be due to lack of skill, bad luck, or something else.

As for my injury, I learned I haven’t broken anything, or at least nothing that can be seen on X-Ray. That’s good news so far. The bad news is that I couldn’t walk the day after the event because of the swelling in my leg. Thankfully, my body let me ride and drive home on the event day – I was 1.5 hrs driving away from home.

I feel a lot better two days after the accident (if not a bit tired) and remain hopeful I just need time to heal. I can’t walk unsupported yet.

How I Scored Top Tier Cycling Gear at Unbeatable Prices

Cycling is an expensive hobby. (If this were a podcast, I’d just stop talking for a minute. FULL STOP.)

However, I am generally able to buy my gear at vast discounts (50% and above), including helmets, shoes, jerseys, bibs. Even groupsets! These are typically new or open box and high-end. Yes, some (clothes specifically) of it may be off-season but that’s totally fine unless you think things change rapidly in 1 to 3 years.

I want the best possible stuff at the best possible prices and I will wait for deals. I am not someone with a special size either – if you’re really small or really big, your sizes tend to sell out last so you have access to more deals. I wear small in jerseys and bibs, have a large size head, and wear 9.5 and medium / large sized gloves. I basically compete with most people on gear.

Here are some purchases from 2024 and how I got them.

In general, I like to research what’s good. Sites like In the Know Cycling help me whitelist certain brands or items to remember. Price, along with brand can be a signal too. Is this the most or second most expensive shoe this well known brand makes? It’s probably pretty good.

Giro Imperial Road Cycling Shoes. Purchased for 199.97, currently retailing for 424.95 (61% off).

As of this writing, you can still get this on Amazon from a third part seller in new condition. In general, Amazon doesn’t have many high end cycling brands. When they do, products are almost always sold by third parties. If you see certain products you like listed, you can use CamelCamelCamel to bookmark and track the price history of an item. You can see if it’s ever been cheap and to notify you at certain price thresholds. I didn’t do that for these shoes. I just searched for them and noticed a good price when I went into the “other sellers on Amazon” box in the product page. I was in searching for pricing on various shoes and noticed this.

I also found these Muc-Off Tubeless Valves V2 for $15.01 that way – they retail for 34.99, 57% off. They were sold as previous returns in like-new condition by Amazon Resale, formerly Warehouse Deals. Mine weren’t even opened.

I did use CamelCamelCamel to find these Continental GP5000 S TR 28mm tires however.

This is the most popular version of these super fast tires – probably the best all around tire in the world right now. These typically sell for over $95 online and are rarely discounted, but I got alerted when a seller was selling them open box for just $45.88.

In recap for Amazon, as you learn about things you might like, random searches on the site from time to time and using CamelCamelCamel for automated price notifications are really useful. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I have ever found high end bibs and jerseys sold on Amazon.

I’ll give a few more examples, but here are some resources that are worth looking at:

The TrainerRoad thread is a great place for sharing and discussing deals.

BikeCloset is the best single store for deals. It’s the only store I’ll actually subscribe to for notifications. I have bought high end jerseys and bibs there from Castelli, Assos, Louis Garneau and other brands at 50% or more off for things retailing at $150 or more. For the discounts, you have to deal with them not having images for so many things and showing so many out of stock items. There are rarely any descriptions. They’re kind of saying here it is, go do the work online to see if this is the thing you want and the price you want to pay. But that actually appeals to me.

I have never purchased bibs or jerseys for over $100, which is the entry-level clothing price for most of these high end brands. Typically I am getting the first or second tier (Assos is really expensive) product tier at less than their entry level price.

BikeTiresDirect is solid, but its deal volume is nowhere close to BikeCloset – BikeTiresDirect is like a regular store that offers great pricing from time to time, while BikeCloset is a full on clearance outlet, like a Nordstrom Rack for high end bike gear. While there are plenty of sites that offer sales, I prefer to check them out on my own from time to time or see if someone mentions something on TrainerRoad rather than getting email blasts.

I bought these Giro Latch shoes, a flat pedal gravel shoe, for $63.38. (Retail: $149.98, 58% off)

GearLab loved this shoe as a super sticky but lightweight alternative to the Five Ten Freerider Pro, so I looked for deals. I found one through Google Shopping and it’s an example of finding deals by being flexible on style and colors. That’s not to say I’ll just dismiss style completely, but it’s not common for me to find the right product in my preferred color.

The exact same thing happened with getting this S-Works Recon Lace for $112.99 (Retail: $324.99, 65% off). Anything S-Works is the creme de la creme in Specialized’s product line.

Same story with the Giro Aries Spherical Helmet. Purchased for $148.51 as an open box item. (Retail: $299.95, 50% off)

This is the #1 helmet rated for safety by Virginia Tech and Giro’s highest end helmet. White isn’t my favorite color, but it’s also the coolest temperature color and make sense for a helmet focused on cooling.

To sum up, it’s really not that complicated. Research, tools, flexibility on brand and color/style can get you a long way with using the very best products at entry level pricing. If you’re curious about eBay, I think eBay is really good for niche items (that are rarely listed) in excellent to like new condition that are then auctioned. You can find special deals then because most people aren’t looking for those items. Things can slip through the cracks so to speak. I will save notifications on keywords for items that I am interested and simply wait.

If you have any tips, I’d love to hear them. Good luck!