Tuesday 27 May 2014

WCMCC Wandi Road Race - A Grade :: 25th May, 2014

After AP's win last week at the season opener at Herne Hill, the banter between combatants during the days to follow mounted the pressure on the team to try and back up the win with another which meant keeping the pressure on other teams preventing them from making an upset. We figured that anyone with a Unicorn-Specialized jersey would be marked. It would be up to us to wear down our opponents until one of us could get away from the field with relatively fresh legs. It would certainly be game on!

Sunday 18 May 2014

WCMCC Herne Hill Road Race - A Grade :: 18th May, 2014

Having had my fill of summer criteriums, I was more than ready to switch back to road racing and get the winter season under way. The hope was that the training I had put in over summer had been enough to better deal with the demands of the longer version of the sport and to be more competitive within the peloton and maybe, just maybe, obtain some results for the team. With the Wandi event scheduled for two weeks ago cancelled due to course complications, this morning's Herne Hill event would be the season opener and with Collie being the only race I'd participated in since the UWCT Qualifier at Perry Lakes, I was more than ready to get stuck into things.

Tuesday 6 May 2014

SWCC Tom Lowry Memorial Road Race - Collie :: May 4th, 2014

I would be riding the 2014 Tom Lowry Memorial road race as a first timer, but not the first time in Collie. I still have vivid memories of the nasty little hills just to the south of town that inflicted so much pain on riders, especially myself, in last year's Collie-Donnybrook Return. Thankfully this visit to Collie would see the course avoiding those longer hills in favour of shorter ones and would also find me a little stronger than I was back then. I was out of race practice but I have been spending good hours on the bike both solo and with team mates (and competitors), so I went into this race with a fair amount of confidence but goal #1 was to ensure I actually stayed with the race group for the duration and to make a solid effort for the team at the end if it came down to a bunch sprint finish.

Monday 7 April 2014

BWA Scody 5 Dams Challenge :: 6th April, 2014

This year's Dams Challenge has produced some amazing results and stories of suffering, sacrifice, team work and even gallantry and sportsmanship. And at the end, the elation of crossing the line makes all the hard work worth while. Many of us had spent weeks training and preparing for the challenge of riding a long distance in the hills while some of us were dropped in it at the last minute to fill in for a rider who was unable to make it. Either way, the mental toughness to ride through these courses was demonstrated by each and every rider who fronted up to the starting line. Congratulations to everyone who took part in either the 3 or 5 Dams rides this year.

Monday 31 March 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Final Training Week

Welcome to the final training week!

Months have become weeks and weeks have now become just days! The hard training is now done and our final task is to taper down from the hard training to some basic workouts to help maintain the level we have reached as the remaining days turn into just hours. This is not about suddenly toning down our efforts to just recovery rides with the intent to be fully recovered and expecting to go in "fresh" for the event. This is about maintaining a level and allowing the work we have done to come through and be completely ready to take on the challenge in a peak physical (and mental) condition. I'll also cover some "do and do nots" in this final edition of the program as part of our final approach.

Sunday 23 March 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #12

Welcome to Training Week #12.

This is it, the final week of hard training before we taper into the event on the 6th of April. This week we will lift our intensity and climbing efforts for the last time and test ourselves in an effort to see how our training has worked for us to date. We will re-introduce strength training on Thursday to help put some final conditioning into the legs. This could be our hardest day given the previous day's endurance training so expect it to hurt just a little bit due to the fatigue already in the legs. On Sunday, we will lift our hills climbing efforts for each level (3 or 5 dams) to see how we are going with the hills climbing.

Sunday 16 March 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #11

Welcome to Training Week #11.

This week, I wanted to cover some of the dangers of training at the level we have reached. Although it is unlikely that any of you will encounter any of these issues during this twelve week training program, you should certainly be aware of some of the risks that we as athletes may face when training at consistently high intensity and how to identify the signs that you may be doing too much. Two conditions that we may encounter are overreaching and overtraining. Both of these conditions can quickly ruin the hard work that we put in to conditioning ourselves for a specific event such as the Dams Challenge.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Emma Molloy : My Cycling Adventures - 3 Peaks Challenge

Emma Molloy is a team mate of Dams Challenge Ride Ambassadors Tiff Dorrington and Katie Joyce. Emma has recently completed the gruelling 3 Peaks Challenge in Victoria and has written an incredible report recounting her experience, including a quick insight into how she prepared for the event and what was required in order to ensure she completed the event. If you have been following my blog and my training guides, then I encourage you to click over and have a read of Emma's report. I'd also encourage you to read a bit about her background and how she got into cycling.

I've had the privilege of attending events that Emma has participated in and know first hand how much work she puts into everything she does, whether it be racing, participating in long rides such as 3 Peaks or her training with Hall Women's Cycle Training. Her commitment to completing such a daunting event is highly commendable.

Congratulations on the ride, Emma. You are an inspiration.

Read Emma's report here.
Read about Emma here.

Emma is one of a few people I train who completed this challenge. Kudos to you all.

Monday 10 March 2014

WCMCC Age Division Criterium Championships :: 9th March, 2014

Last weekend was one weekend where the Unicorns came out to play. With the team having to choose between riding the State Criterium Championships at Technology Park and the WCMCC Age Division Criterium Championships at Rockingham, we were spread not only between age divisions, but also events. In the end, four of us opted for the WCMCC event while Andrew Patterson decided that he was a good chance for the Masters classification at the State Champs. Either way, we were all hopeful for good results and the start lists at each event certainly suggested we could all be amongst it. A good ocean of blue HCT jerseys adorning the backs of the ladies was also great to see and some very solid chances amongst them too.

Sunday 9 March 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #10

Welcome to Training Week #10.

If there is one thing that helps motivate us to tackle the next week in training, it's a positive result from something we have worked hard to achieve. In my case, it was the weekend's racing while for others, it may have been a milestone ride or stealing a long-held Strava KOM from a peer (you know I mean you, Scotty). Whatever your achievement, it can truly lift your spirits and inspire you to work harder to get yourself to the next level. It can help rid your head of negative thoughts and get you in the right frame of mind when it comes to the 3 and 5 Dams Challenge. This week, I challenge anyone following this blog and training guide to achieve a milestone or breakthrough ride and your best opportunity is likely to come during the weekend rides. Go for a sprint win during your group ride or climb a personal best number of vertical metres. The feeling of satisfaction is the best fuel that I know of to keep going when things get hard.

Sunday 2 March 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #9

Welcome to Training Week #9.

The countdown is now on. 4 weeks to go until the main event and to help count them down, we'll throw in some of the hardest training to date over the next three weeks followed by a nice taper before we tackle the Dams. No RE between now and then so I hope you enjoyed your rest and recovery rides over the last week. Intervals will be hard, strength efforts will require you to dig deep and the climbing will be taken up another notch and include repeats of a nice little climb that some may not know about. The focus will be to have you in tip-top shape in time for the challenge so that you might be able to complete the respective ride better than you expected. But .... you don't get results like that without putting in solid training.

Sunday 23 February 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #8

Welcome to Training Week #8.

Congratulations getting through your second three week block of training. Like Week #4, this week, we enter recovery where we step down the volume and intensity to ensure that we give the body a chance to recover before entering another three week block where we raise the intensity and continue our hill climbing work. It's vital that we keep to short easy rides this week as our final block of three weeks training is going to be hard so our bodies need to recover as best they can before we start next week. Remember, fitness is built during resting times. Adaptation occurs during our efforts.

Tuesday 18 February 2014

Renae's Race, Technolody Park - A Grade :: 16th February, 2014

Renae's Race is a memorial race held in honour of Renae Baker and I think a sense of honour and privilege is felt by anyone competing in this event. This blog entry is not so much about the specifics of Sunday morning's race but more on the experiences I had from that race and a previous race held on the Australia Day long weekend. Both races were ventures into the Elite men's (open A grade) racing scene in Perth with the Australia Day event being my first.

Sunday 16 February 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #7

Welcome to Training Week #7.

If you've been following this training guide or have been putting together your own 12 week training program, congratulations! We are over the half way mark. I say that because I'm not really including the week leading into the event itself as this will be a special week known as a taper week where we back off our training gradually to ensure we are fresh and ready to tackle the challenging event on the Sunday. The bad news is, our training gets much harder between this point and the beginning of our taper.

Monday 10 February 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #6

Welcome to Training Week #6.

With just 8 weeks to go before the 3 and 5 Dams Challenge we are nearing the half way point of our training program. By now we have built up a reasonable fitness base on which we can work on to ensure we are ready to take on the challenges that the two courses will throw at us on the day. From here on, we will begin to build our hill climbing fitness to ensure that we don't fatigue to quickly and struggle to complete the course.

Sunday 2 February 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #5

Welcome to Training Week #5.

I hope you enjoyed your rest week as much as I did. It can be one of the toughest weeks to go through because you feel you should be getting out there and going harder than you are but without recovery, you hard training weeks are basically going to waste because you are not allowing your body to recovery from the harder efforts. Remember, our fitness builds during times of rest, not at times of hard work. Fear not, this week we will be stepping it up and some more and will begin to look at some hills work.

Monday 27 January 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #4

Welcome to Training Week #4.

Congratulations getting through your first three week block of training. This week, we enter recovery where we step down the volume and intensity to ensure that we give the body a chance to recover before entering another three week block where we raise the intensity and begin some hill climbing work. We'll also throw in some longer rides in order to prepare ourselves for the distance required to complete each of the challenges.

Sunday 19 January 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #3

Welcome to Training Week #3.

Two weeks down and one more to go until we back it off for a week. So far, we've used the past two weeks to build our training from the initial week of efforts with a small step up in volume and intensity in the second week. This week we will build a little more on what we have done before we head into a rest week where we back things off a little to allow our bodies to recover from the training we've done to date. If, by the end of this week, you have found the going a little too easy for your level, you can consider stepping up the intensity and/or volume slightly or jump up to the next level of program I am outlining here. It would be better to only step up one level rather than two levels so that you can consider if the next level is right for you.

Tuesday 14 January 2014

WCMCC Kewdale Criterium - A Grade :: 12th January, 2014

Back to racing with my first Criterium for the new year and the weather Gods have welcomed me back with 43 degree heat on course at Kewdale. How pleasant! I'd just completed a huge week of training finishing with some support in Kings Park for our winged comrade, Craig Pennell, who is coming along great guns with a very impressive session on Saturday morning. Surprisingly, I was feeling pretty good on the way to Kewdale and during my warm up with AP. Pat was also on hand for the morning's race and we covered a basic plan in the little time we had to talk before we got started.

Sunday 12 January 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #2

Welcome to Training Week #2.

Whew, what a week! Some incredibly solid training days finished off with some scorching temperatures. This weekend, whether you liked it or not, was a lesson in hydration given the 40+ degree temperatures. Getting out early before it got too hot was probably the best thing to do because we still need to keep our training up. Of course, if you couldn't get out before the high temperatures set in, then best not to push yourself through the heat and wait for the cooler conditions of the later afternoon, even if the wind has picked up quite a bit - wind equals good training!

Sunday 5 January 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge - Training Week #1

Welcome to Training Week #1.

As this is our first week of training, we do not have a previous week to debrief and provide a summary for so we will focus on the week ahead. Unlike the training programs provided on the BWA Dams Challenge website, I work on beginning the week with an activity focused on recovery from the weekend's rides with a build up to maintaining a level of intensity through the middle of the week, resting on Friday before working on some longer and/or higher intensity rides on the weekend.

Friday 3 January 2014

3 and 5 Dams Challenge Training Begins ... Now!

OK, the festivities are over and the New Year has been heralded in. April 6th will arrive sooner than you think and you pretty much have 13 (and a bit) weeks to get yourself right before you point your bike's front wheel away from the start line and toward those hills. This post will explain a little bit about the training that I will be going through and how you might best follow it over the next few months leading up to the event. I'll not be going into any actual training specifics in this post but I will cover what tools you can use to help get you into peak physical and mental condition so that you are completely prepared for the challenge on the day.