Camp, Newsweek International, and kickin' butt in Cali!

First off, way to kill it out in Cali, boys!!!  Check out the results.  And while you're at it, check out our team's awesome website!

I just got back from a great week in the mountains of North and South Carolina . . . I flew down on Thursday, March 13th and drove with Erik Saunders and my teammate Eric Barlevav (A.K.A. "Barbeque" and "blah-BLAH-blah") to our sick cabin in the woods near Brevard, NC (THANKS JAMIE BENNETTE & PARENTS!).  Now this cabin is at 3300 feet of elevation, and the entrance from the main road, about 17 miles away, is under 2000 feet . . . yeah, LOTS of climbing and suffering to be had out here!

We got in late, crashed on some air mattresses with all 12 racers and Erik and Pat in one house (!!!), and then woke up early to go to the Hincapie Sports headquarters to pick up our sweet new duds and have the team photo shoot.  The clothing is amazing, and I made sure to stick out like an awkward, gigantic, sore thumb in every photo because of my stars-'n-bars jersey for the U23 TT.  I got a lot of crap, but my self-deprecation probably accounted for much of it!  The team gets along great, and we definitely hammed it up during the photos and afterwards.

So this one is almost as close to "serious" as we got . . .

. . . then Jon felt that we just weren't working it enough, so he showed us how it's done.

Adam showed why he is a captain . . .

. . . and I gave some tips on stretching for time trials and just looking like a doofus in general.

Saturday consisted of a crazy circuit race--excellent 6.6 mile course with some good hills, total of 60 miles--that was held during a rain and HAIL storm, and subsequently shortened to a total of 13 miles.  INSANE--BUT WE WON IT!  Mike Stoop continued his string of blazing performances, and Jackie and Tom both came in with the front group of around 8.  Dan Ramsey and Jon Hamblen and I were all in the second split after doing some serious and ill-timed efforts (and being completely closed up after a big block of training and then no riding for over two days!).  It was a crazy experience, and we were happy to come away with a victory after losing another day of training and racing.

Sunday the other half of the team raced in the Food Lion criterium, with Daniel taking a great win and Adam Myerson leading home the chase group for 3rd and Barbeque taking the field sprint for 9th.

  

The race actually didn't go well in the first half, with our team missing the major break of 6 top guys including England and the King brothers.  However, the captains demonstrated why they are captains and Dan soloed up to the break before jumping them in the final laps and taking the W.

Back at the cabin, Guttenplan (A.K.A. "The Gut") and I went for what I am sure was one of my best training rides this season, a 5 hour adventure down to Paris Mountain to scout much of the USPRO RR course.

We did some serious efforts, especially up Paris and Caesar's Head, the monster 35 minute climb back to the cabin.  I shattered many of my old numbers, but the one I was most proud of is my new, 398 watt 10 minute number up Paris!  We went about 95%, but I know that if I had really killed it and known where the top of the climb was, I could have easily broken 400.  I am guessing that an all out 10 minute TT will net me closer to 410 watts.

Monday and Tuesday I did some more big rides, but unfortunately no one wanted to ride with me on the second half of Monday's ride or Tuesday because of imperfect weather :-(  The training is amazing down there, and I really tried to make the most out of it.

We had a little shindig for Saint Patty's Day, including dinner and some nice Guiness on tap at an "Irish" Pub in Brevard, Jamie's treat (THANKS AGAIN!).  Wednesday we cleaned the house early and shoved off for Winston-Salem and crashed at Erik's house after a short spin in a monsoon!

Then things got "interesting" or, more accurately, TERRIBLE . . . 

We woke up at 3:15 AM to drive to the Greensboro Airport and get the guys on their super-early flight to Cali.  3 hours of sleep is never a good thing, but then I had to kill another 6 hours at the airport since my flight was not until 11:30 AM.  The time finally passed and then I was in Charlotte, NC and rushing to my 1:15 flight to Newark--until it was delayed and then canceled due to high winds in the NYC area.  Oh, and that means you go BACK OUT to the front of the airport and claim your bags only to stand in line with literally HUNDREDS of other NYC-area travelers to get tickets for flights later in the day.  Well, that is if you even HAVE all your bags--turns out one of my bags made it to Newark, while my bike was stuck in Charlotte.  Oh, and then I find out that the best flight I can do is at 10:15 PM TO JFK AIRPORT!  Then a series of trains (AirTrain to Long Island Rail Road to New Jersey Transit to AirTrain (Newark Airport) back to New Jersey Transit and then Princeton).  Oh, but the trains don't actually run at those times--SO I SLEPT IN PENN STATION ON TOP OF MY BAGS WITH BUMS ROAMING THE CORRIDORS.  Then I took the 4:40 AM train to Newark, located my duffel bag, and arrived in Princeton at 7:15 AM.

For those of you counting, that is a total of 28 hours of traveling with a total of around 5 hours of very fitful sleep while carrying 5 bags totaling well over 100 pounds.  WOW.

After sleeping for a few hours, I got out and enjoyed some amazing weather for a wonderful 4 hour ride to Frenchtown that Friday afternoon.  

The legs are definitely coming around, as I am resting a bit more and then when I am riding, I have been putting in some huge sub-1-minute efforts.  Notice there were 24 intervals of over 500 watts, most of them averaging over 600 watts for around 30-45 seconds!  Definitely the kind of stuff I need to work on.  I think the 1-minute-to-5-minute range is going to have some serious work over the next few weeks as well . . . exactly six weeks until my first BIG race with Time Pro Cycling, the U.S. Air Force Cycling Classic around the Pentagon in D.C.!!!

Saturday morning I got up pretty early and took the train BACK UP TO NYC (I was shaking with fear as I passed through the doors) with Will Watts to meet with a reporter for Newsweek International, Lily Huang, about Sol Cycles.  It turns out she is an '06 Harvard grad and raced in the ECCC in '05 and '06!  Pretty cool . . . she is super into our company and our ideas, and we will be appearing in an article on innovators in the blossoming bamboo industry in the coming weeks.  Will and I took advantage of some spectacular weather to fly through the streets of NYC on our bikes, riding through three separate protests (one for the Beijing Olympics due to child labor or something, the other two for Bush, one more war-centric), before heading to the NYC Auto Show!

The Auto Show was SICK.  I would definitely like to take home at least 20 of the cars there, but I have to give the nod (as most of us did, including Will's two homies Carlo and Armoral and his dad) to the new Nissan GTR.  Anything faster than a Porsche Turbo for under $70k is just insane.

After having some fine Red Truck wine ;-) we crashed at Will's girlfriend Mary's sweet NYC apartment on 47th and 2nd Ave (barely East Side, THANKS!).  Her couch is more comfortable than my normal bed.

Finally I took advantage of another great day in Princeton to do some good miles and efforts on our little mole hills.  I guess it is time for the last 6 weeks of classes for Junior Year to start tomorrow!  Lots of work in a condensed period, but then RACING SEASON!!!!!!!!

Great camp, but first thing's first:

Barrack Obama is going to be the best president we have had in a very long time.

5 reasons why I love the Charlotte airport . . .

1) the wireless at the airport is FREE!

2) the people are SUPER nice and happy

3) the airport is lined with quaint, white rocking chairs in an atrium with sunlight pouring in and real trees growing inside

4) the airport has many Jamba Juices and Fresh Stands for great fruit smoothies

5) uh, THE WEATHER!!!

Sol Cycles blog!

We are hard at work getting a cool website up, but until then I will post all of the news and information about Sol Cycles on the new Sol Cycles blog at wp.solcycles.com!

Now I have to go to bed so I can catch a 5:00 AM train to Newark and be in Charlotte, NC by 10 for our trip to Hincapie Sportswear headquarters for team photos!!!  We are racing this Saturday in a nice road race, I will have updates.

Sol Cycles splash, racing/training, and a friendly USADA visit!

First of all, check out the new Sol Cycles splash page--Mr. Thomas Cocuzza with Wells Ideas, Inc. is hard at work getting a sweet website up and running, but in the mean time you can salivate over a few pictures on my blog :-)

So this weekend went very well, with the Princeton A team time trial masters taking first in a joint Atlantic and Eastern Collegiate Cycling Conference weekend at Upenn (that means twice as much competition, folks!).  Not to make anyone feel bad, but Austin was wearing a *WINDBREAKER*, none of us had discs or aero wheels, and I was breathing through my nose and shouting "Let's ramp it up!" most of the time.  Great things are soon to come . . .

As for the rest of the races, our team had a short leash, to make the understatement of the century.  I felt great and got in plenty of good training (Saturday race was changed to a crit after a monsoon flooded what would have been a sweet road course with serious climbing, so I rode the rollers for 3 hours watching the other races) and racing (TTT Sunday morning, then a cool circuit race [unfortunately only 31 miles] in the afternoon with a couple good hills each lap).  I set some new record power numbers that I am very pleased with, and I can feel that my legs are reacting very well to the intensity of some race efforts.  I am planning on really coming into form over the next couple of months, in time for mid-May to late June, my first big peak.

My mom came in for a long weekend because it was my 21st birthday on Sunday (no craziness, just great champagne and filet mignon with one of my favorite people in the world!) and also Amanda Scott (Vanerbilt varsity XC runner and chemical engineer who interned this summer in Boulder where we met through Nicole) came up to visit us and she and Nicole came to the race weekend!  Great times, including a not-very-fancy-but-huge-portions Italian dinner near Tom Yersak's house outside Philly.  Speaking of Tom, he is reputedly a "monster" on the bike and was shelling the Princeton B TTT team as well as the whole field in the criterium where he *initiated* and then *attacked* the break to come in a stellar 4th, as well as staying away from a charging field for over a whole lap of the circuit race only to be caught with less than a kilometer to the finish.

Now I have been training a ton Monday and today, and now am studying for midterms tomorrow before heading out to team camp Thursday morning.  I got in just over 10 hours, 200 miles, and 9700kj in the span of 26 hours on Monday and Tuesday!  Pretty good after a full weekend of racing.  Then I was greeted by the USADA OOC (Out Of Competition) testers at 5:00PM today and thankfully had some left in me to give a sample.  It is very encouraging that they actually go after ALL the OOC people, not just the big fish like Levi or George.

Well, that is all for now . . . I will have a ton of great posts during and after team camp when I have more free time!!!

P.S. here are some pro-quality pics from the Rutgers Criterium and Circuit Race, thanks to our great alumnus and former prez Chris Wynnyk!

VeloNews!

Thanks, Steve Frothingham!  Check out our nice blurb in The Bible.

Sol Cycles comes through with flying colors!

This past weekend was the first collegiate race of the season, aptly named the Rutgers Season Opener, with a short prologue and criterium Saturday and a short circuit race Sunday.  I raced on the first Sol Cycles road model, and it attracted such incredible crowds of people that I could barely warm up for my races!  We are working on a professional company logo, website, and color brochures, so that should help a lot!

The races went very well, with Princeton placing in the top 10 in every single race.  I personally had great sensations and am clearly the strongest in the field, but I have nothing past about 80% of race pace!  This is perfect because my first big TIME Pro Cycling team objective is the Tour of Virginia starting 9 weeks from today.  In the next 9 weeks I will really build up my intensity and I should be flying through May and June, when all of my first big races are (Philly week, Nature Valley, Tour of PA, Fitchburg).

As far as the bike goes, it is AMAZING!  I am so proud of it!  It is incredibly stiff and lively, almost like a steel bike ride with the snap of an aluminum bike, but it is very comfortable over rough pavement like carbon.  Bamboo is just an amazing material because nature has found a way to optimize stiffness, strength, durability, and pliability over millions of years of evolution.  The bike fits like a gem and I am very happy to ride it over the next 8 weeks of collegiate racing.

Here are some great photos from Rutgers.

Time Pro Cycling testing camp in May

First, our new uniforms!!!

Now the press release for our sweet camp!

TIME Pro Cycling Offers Huge Opportunity

TIME Pro Cycling has put together a great opportunity for U23 and last year 17-18 men of all ability levels to come together and receive expert-level input into their future cycling careers. Riders will receive valuable physiological testing, the opportunity to establish networks with athletes pursuing similar goals, and the chance to meet informally with the directors of several UCI teams. You will leave this Camp with the knowledge about what it takes to become a career professional and a clear understanding about how to market and present yourself to potential sponsors and teams - and most importantly, the chance to be a stagiaire with TIME Pro Cycling.

The Performance Camp will focus on three areas: Mentorship, Peer Networking, Professional Networking. The TIME Pro Cycling Team will be selecting stagiaires for the 2008 season from this camp - a huge opportunity for any rider looking to get his foot in the door and into the world of professional cycling.

Our three day camp will include: physiological testing at PER4MANCE TRAINING in Charlotte, NC, on the bike physical assessment through two full days of training, and numerous topical discussions from a wide array of knowledge bases: U23 TT Champ and TIME Pro Cycling team member Nick Frey, Nutrition Expert and EP-NO founder John Gamble, Per4Mance Training founder Chad Andrews, as well as Pro Team directors from Toshiba, Jittery Joe's, Rite Aid, HealthNet, Kelly Benefits Strategies/Medifast, and of course TIME Pro Cycling.

The fee for the camp will be $260 per person and include a gift bag, camp activities, testing at PER4MANCE Training, and lodging for Friday and Saturday evenings.

Registration for the camp will open Friday, February 29th 2008 and close on Thursday, April 16th 2008. Attendees will be notified of their acceptance on April 17th 2008.

For much more information and registration check out www.timeprocycling.com.

Sol Cycles first road model!

Hours and hours of work for a bamboo, titanium, and unidirectional carbon masterpiece that is stiffer and more durable than any carbon bike I have ridden yet weighs a mere 16.2 pounds built up in a 62cm size!

Did y'all think I had quit riding . . .

and was just making bamboo bikes?!  Well, that is definitely a big chunk of my time, but the riding has been going very well.  I sold my SRM because TPC (Time Pro Cycling) is riding SRAM so we are getting some sick SRAM SRMs, but I had been riding "without power" for the whole month of January.  It is nice to get on the bike and know that no one is "constantly watching me" but I also really miss having the hard data on how I am doing and what each ride actually accomplished.

Then we bought a "team Powertap" for the Princeton Cycling Team!  We had a lot of donations this year and realized that we could get a wireless Powertap with an Open Pro rim built up for under $1300 brand new on eBay, so we bought it.  I have been using it for the last couple of weeks and it is great!  I understand that you would want another rim for racing, but still--it is cheap and works perfectly and is SO easy to setup: just pop the wheel onto your bike and ride, that easy.

Well it is mid-February now, and I am starting to do some actual intervals!  I still like going on 4-6 hour tempo rides and really hurting a bit on the hills, but I know that I need some specific timed intervals at 100% effort to get me up to speed for racing.  I attended an excellent seminar by Hunter Allen (he wrote Training and Racing with a Power Meter for all of those cyclists who have been living under a rock for the past couple years!) and he analyzed my 3rd Boulder TT (flyer) my Sunshine Hillclimb (results), and my Espoir National TT rides up on the big projector--VERY COOL!  He is an excellent guy.  He also gave us his two-day testing protocol for determining power levels at various time intervals (think test day 1, rest day, test day 2), and I went onto the trainer Tuesday night to get the first laundry list done . . . OUCH OUCH OUCH OUCH!

The first day consists of tons of intervals 5 minutes or less, and they are INCREDIBLY painful after a huge winter of endurance and tempo riding with heart rates never exceeding about 85% of my TT heart rate.  However, I chalked them up as "baselines" and realized that they hurt a lot but they are very short and not nearly as demanding as a 5+ hour ride in freezing weather with massive hills and headwinds!

The second day was today: the 20 minute TT.  This is the be-all-end-all for cycling performance: what is your lactic threshold?  If this number rises even a few watts, it means that a much smaller percentage of time in a race will be spent "above threshold" and you will be able to last much longer and have plenty left in the tank for a "race winning interval" (as Hunter likes to call them).  You will also be able to time trial much faster, and y'all know that is what I am all about!  So I set out in a full jacket, long-sleeve, tights, skull cap, and lobster gloves to do a race-pace, bleeding-from-your-eyes 20 minute time trial--YIPEEEEE!

Results?  I KILLED THAT SHIT!  To put the following in perspective, my national TT ride averaged 351 watts for 30 minutes (and sustainable power for 20 minutes is only 1 or 2 percentage points higher than it is for 30 minutes) . . . I averaged 380 watts in freezing weather in the middle of February on a road bike!  The weather definitely doesn't help, but the TT bike actually produces more power because of your seat position (far forward) and your hip rotation causing more of your muscles to be used (that is why your rear end is so sore after time trials, and why Cancelara's ass is so huge!).

One thing I like to do for a test like this (besides look at how my cadence changed or where my power was too high and spiked my heart rate) is to break it up into four 5-minute TTs and analyze how I did at four "checkpoints" in the effort.  Here are the four parts:

What you'll notice is that Part I is quite high, which you would expect since I am freshly warmed up and haven't done anything too taxing.  Then Part II is the lowest (lower than Part I by almost 20 watts!) because I overextended myself in Part I and am starting to pay for it a little bit.  Also notice that my cadence in Part II is MUCH higher than in Part I because my legs are starting to feel the burn and I am trying to flush them a bit.  Then Part III is in-between Part I and Part II as I am getting into a rhythm and finding my gear and getting my breathing right (the power and the cadence are EXACTLY between that of P1 and P2!).  Finally, Part IV is where I see the light at the end of the tunnel and start to kick it up a notch, basically staying in the same gears but spinning an extra few rpm for more power.  Here is the last minute of the effort:

Not too shabby, eh??  Notice my speed: I was on a nice consistent climb and that made it easy to really give it everything in a steady manor and squeeze the last juices from my legs.  Funny thing is, after a few minutes of soft pedaling and catching my breath, I was fine and continued to do another couple hours at 250 watt tempo with some 350 watt efforts.

I also did a quadrant analysis.  This attempts to determine how much time was spent pedaling at high- or low-torque and high- or low-cadence.  You can read all about it here.  I made my iso-power lines correspond to 100% of the average power for my effort (just a little higher than my FTP) in red, then 95% and 90% in orange and yellow, respectively.  Then the y-axis is a cadence of 98 rpms, my average for the effort.  The plot looks similar to any other TT, where the points are highly concentrated at the center because cadence and torque are optimized to produce maximum power.  However, it is interesting to note the outliers in Quadrant II, where my torque was quite high and my cadence was low, probably corresponding to being in the big ring on a climb just before dropping to the small ring.  However, the power is always significantly higher than my 380 watt average . . . looking at the data reminds me of something I realized last season: slightly lower cadences help me focus more on the pedal stroke and prevent power spikes, and I recorded consistently higher averages with a lower cadence (i.e. 94 instead of 98).  The only issue with this line of reasoning is average power is not the be-all-end-all: there are times when power spikes are necessary (i.e. maintaining momentum on a hill less than 1 minute long).  The winner is the one who most effectively uses his/her power (and of course has a lot of it!) which means adapting to different courses and different conditions, something a higher-cadence style encourages because the legs never get "bogged-down" or full of lactic acid without constantly being flushed.  I think I will go with my gut and just pedal my bike!

I am really feeling good and know that when I start doing some serious TT work the form will come quickly.  I have improved a lot this winter, and have been doing much more specific, consistent training (think 24 hours per week average instead of 16 like the last two winters!) and sleeping at 9000 feet of altitude and eating right and . . . ENJOYING MYSELF!

The last thing I have to say: my bamboo road bike is going to be wrapped in some nice unidirectional carbon this weekend and then all the finishing touches (understated paint scheme, cable stops, water bottle bosses) will be put on early next week and we should have a sick road bike in 7 days, just in time for the Rutgers Season Opener!