Raceplan Coaching & Racing: March 2006

Ever wonder what it's like in the pro peloton? Ever wonder what it's like to
be a first year pro in the women's pro peloton?

Well, with Brooke's permission, I am posting her short summary of what it was
like to race with the best of the best at McLane during early March 2006
in California.

Brooke endured a cold and wet winter in Chicago where here training was mostly
focused on strength, flexibility and endurance. Very little high intensity
training was done because we wanted to 1. bring her strength up to the
levels we both thought was possible, 2. build a solid foundation of endurance
first before implementing her turbo afterburners, and 3. embrace the
environmental factors (i.e. weather) of her surroundings.

With about two weeks of intensity in her legs, Brooke went on a preplanned
vacation a week before her first big race at McLane. Our original goal
was to just have her experience the first race and take advantage of
race intensity. I don't think she had any plans on actually placing as
high as she did. Either way, Brooke found the actual racing to be not
as hard but found the environmental conditions a bit tough. However,
having trained in the extremes of Chicago all winter long served her
well during the cold and wet conditions of McLane.

Either way, in her own words:

From: Brooke Miller Sent: Monday,
March 13, 2006 3:14 PM Subject: Re: RR and Crit

so, to the points- thanks so much for the support and of course you can put whatever
you wish on raceplan and please do. i have been plugging the shit out of you
as people keep commenting on how strong i am racing and how fit i look. one woman
said, "damn brooke, i noticed your legs in the rr yesterday- holy cow. have you
been lifting?". i have told everyone what a great plan i have been on. i can
also send you my race reports for pabw which are longer and more detailed. i
like writing them becuase it is sort of my journal. as for RPE- all races felt
like 1.5-2 on the three point scale. i did not feel like i got much of a workout
to be honest. i burned on the crit on the last five laps, but i felt damn good
jumping on attacks and my jump is strong and fast right now. longer efforts-
i.e. greater than 2-5 min throttled are harder for me. not surprising given how
little i have done with that. i am not riding today other than dododododedo around
town for transport on the commuter (i.e. my race bike from last year with flat
pedals and fenders!!!). as for taking care of myself- my hands were SO frozen
in the rr, i could barely handle a bottle. i filled one plastic bottle (regular
store bought bottle) with chocolate boost to race with, had a bottle of cytomax
and then a bottle of dilute cytomax in my jersey for the race. i ate well before
the race and hydrated. but, during the race, i could not shift or grab a bottle.
i ended up drinking only half of one bottle of cytomax and half of the boost-
which is about the equivalent of 2 clif bars. i did not get hungry or thirsty
during the race, which i normally get. i get bonk signs and did not have any
of them. i had no twinges in my legs until after the final sprint and it was
a very minor twinge in left quad. what saved me is my underarmour coldgear tights
and mock turtle neck- that shit is unreal. i was warm and toasty the whole race
(minus frozen hands)- so when everyone else was freezing and miserable... i was
psyched. i did not even have a windbreaker! or a vest! they were all in rain
gear and thermal jackets... that underarmour stuff rocks. anyway, so i felt good.
i decided i like shitty weather. anyway, so after the race, i did not eat or
drink nearly enough. i was retarded. i did force myself to eat chicken fajitas
at chevys after the race and i was not hungry... so that was good. i felt really
great for the crit. i did not feel fatigued until the last five laps when the
pace was hot and i had worked to get into two unsuccessful attacks back to back
before getting swarmed and losing position. oh, and i also survived a near crash
in the rr- i was going through a hole at the front of hte pack and it closed
on my handle bars. the women on my left and right crashed and one nearly took
me out and hit my rear wheel as she went down, but i stayed up. i was proud that
i stayed up and felt good about my handling skills. i feel comfortable in that
field and feel like people know who i am now. i definitely need to work on my
post race recovery routine. right now, i have been neglecting that and i know
it is important. i certainly learned how important diet is this year. so, that
is one to work on. and i am, as usual, bad about cooling down and stretching.
need to work on that. i also need to get a warmup routine--- i did not warm up
well, but i am lucky and don't need much of a warmup. i will also label my races
per your request. and will focus on recovering these next couple days. and i
will put away my &*^% when i am with the boys, or will not ride with them. but
i do want to start hitting the hills. these races were pancake flat and i don't
know how i will do when you put a hill in front of me. i have only ridden mt.
charley at the snails pace, and st clare's hill in recovery mode. other than
that... the freeway overpasses in chicago...

On Mar 13, 2006, at 11:02 AM, Kam Zardouzian wrote:

Cookie,

Great
report. If you don't mind, I'm going to publish this on the Raceplan
group/Blog. this will add to the knowledge base. let me know if this
is cool.

I
am so grateful for these files you have no idea. and, I am also very,
truly, amazingly, absolutely impressed by your attitude and performance.

I
am glad you got to meet Mari..she's a super chick and it's always good
for people to hear your name. keep the networking going. it's just a
matter of time before your performance and attitude will land you on
the team. mark my words. but for now, let's get to the coaching.

Analysis
of your TT:

I
can see that you held back. this is okay, lesson learned. I've been
TTing for years and still struggle to pace my efforts. this is an
ongoing learning process. the effective rule I use is to start out
conservative for the first 5min of anything that'll take me over
50min to complete and for the first 3min for anything that'll take
me about 30min to complete. in other words, the first 10% of your
anticipated finish time should be below your LT (see next point).
My guess is that you could have shaved 30-45sec off your time had
you had more experience....learn from it for next year. as a matter
of fact, journal this so you can refer to it for next year.

along
with looking at your power, HR and cadence numbers, I also look at
your training stress score and intensity factors, which you've read
in your book. The TSS in particular is a very useful tool because
it can give you insight to how you're going to feel the next day...this
will help with strategy for racing and training. your TSS for the
TT was 121, which is low and is a sign that the stress of the TT
by itself wasn't that high on you. However, the TSS for the entire
ride, including warm up, etc., is above 200 which meant that a little
bit of residual fatigue existed in your legs the next day (BTW, another
benefit of strength training and riding is that you will get accustomed
to the feeling of riding with fatigue in your legs). knowing this
in the future will help you adjust how you warm up, recover, strategize
for the road race, etc. for example you can sit in more at first
to let your body warm up to the required effort later on in the race,
etc.

As
a side note, your average cadence was 98, which is neither good nor
bad, just something to remember for the future. this is the point
where you are most naturally efficient for the type of terrain the
TT was held on. If in the future, you find yourself in trouble, take
a look at your cadence and make sure it's within this range...if
not, try to bring it up/down to this range. this will also help us
figure out if you are over/under geared for future races.

your
AV & MX HRs were 177 and 194. again, just good to know.

I'm
going to base your functional threshold power based on this TT for
the next 2-3 weeks. In Ken's lab, your LT was guestimated at 205W,
which we both knew was low due to all the logistics & environmental
variables at play. Nonetheless, your AVW for the TT was 255 and we'll
take 85% of that to come up with the below. I've included HR zones
but want you to start getting used to not paying attention to this,
unless you're on a recovery ride. if you want, write your power zones
down on a small piece of paper and tape them to your handlebar:

Andrew
Coggan`s Power Training Levels

TT
wattage 220

TT
heart rate 177

Threshold
heart rate 177

Maximum
hart rate 194

Resting
Hart rate

Zone

Heart
rate Range

Wattage
Range

RPE

Active
recovery 1 less
than 120 less
than 121 1

Endurance 2 122 147 123 165 1

Tempo 3 149 166 167 198 2

Threshold 4 168 186 200 231 2

Aerobic
Power 5 186 + 233 264 3

Anaerobic
capacity 6 188 na 266 330 3

Let's
move onto the RR

You
spent just about 18% of your time not pedaling. this is GOOD! depending
on the course an ideal rest time should be about 25% of the race time.
the more you don't pedal, the more rest you get, the fresher your legs
will be. this is totally counterintuitive compared to what you do in
training. but it is important.

it
looks at though most of the effort didn't last more than 30sec. these
are times you had to ride above your LT to cover attacks and/or follow
wheels. something to consider for future training.

you
burned 2300KJs, how was your hydration and fueling?

AVW
was 188, which is a moderate ride. max was 808, your peak is above
1400 so this wasn't a big deal. cadence was about 90, which is within
tolerance and HR was 153 with a max of 183 so you're all within your
comfort range.

your
TSS: a whopping 415. this is big. 300-450 range is considered a high
stress day and "certain residual fatigue will persist even after two
days" which means you're probably feeling it today, especially since
you raced the next day. this also tells me that you went into the crit
with tired legs. this is important to know because it impacts how you
force yourself to recover from the RR...I.e. did you start the recovery
drink immediately after the end of your race (coke, clif recovery,
endurox, hot chocolate...these are all good), did you eat within the
first 30min and again within 2hrs? did you massage your legs? did you
eat during the race? all of these matter. AND, this isn't factoring
in environmental factors either...the cold and wet add tremendously
to this.

And,
the crit:

42min
pain fest with loads of sharp attacks. AVW 263 with a max of 905. HR
of 180 with a mx of 207...this is probably a malfunction reading. cadence
of 99 with a high of 131. You were definitely racing!!!

TSS
of 139 for the crit but a 230 for the entire day. this was relatively
medium intensity day had it been standalone, meaning not at the end
of 3 days of racing.

So,
what did we learn?

what
were your RPEs on a scale of 1-3 for each (1 easy, 2 medium, 3 hard)?

you
definitely have the fitness and strength. your numbers and results
are impressive given you have done very little cardiovascular intensity
to date. you basically went from your winter slumber to vacation to
national caliber racing. this tells me your peak fitness is still looming
in the future. but we have to play it very smart...which means, rest
and recover after these high intensity races. you will respond very
quickly to all this intensity and the natural thing would be to want
to keep going at that level, BUT YOU HAVE TO RECOVER FROM THESE EFFORTS
for 2-3 days after racing to make sure you don't over train, get sick,
get injured, etc.

follow
your program to the T

knowing
the course and competition are just as important as having the fitness
to stay with the competition. you're building confidence that you can
hang, if not attack, the top caliber women. now comes the process of
learning how to race more intelligently. this comes from none other
than...racing! I'd recommend keeping a journal (verbal or audio) of
what you learned after each race. this will help, trust me.

Favors:

name
the race somewhere in the notes section of your power file

Include
RPE of 1-3 (1 being totally easy, 2 being hard, 3 being very hard)
for each ride and race in notes section

secure
brookemiller.com if you haven't already

follow
your plan!

From: Brooke
Miller Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 8:17 AM To: Kam Zardouzian Subject: RR
and Crit

hey kammer- here are my last four files. first one is my modified (VERY) openers.
i did not have internet in the am and did not know what i was supposed to do,
so i just did a couple efforts, some cadence work and did two all out 2 min
efforts up a hill in prep for the hill climb. the next one is tt- i already
told you about that. did not go hard enough. had way too much left at the end
and did not keep ramping up. next is the rr- was supposed to be 90 miles, but
because of nasty weather (I.E. freezing rain and hail) they shortened it to
75 mi. i had a great race physically. i had some really good baselayers on
my legs and body and so i was warm when others were suffering. my hands froze
and i could not shift or break during parts of hte race. but, i was up front
the whole time and hearing girls next to me breathing hard when i felt the
race was super easy. really, it did not even feel like all that hard of a workout.
i went with every thing off the front that the top 4 webcor riders in the points
went with. i bridged once by myself and stayed rubberside down after getting
hit hard on both sides where the other two riders went down. i LOVED the shitty
weather and got giddy when we were pelted with ice. i knew everyone else was
miserable and fed off it. i was hungry and racing to win. the shoot was like
a crit- slick and had many curves, so i knew that the sprint was into the corner
leading into the shoot... about 700m outside the finish. the pace wound up
at about 2km, my leadout got broken up. i started to gas it and was feeling
100% and workign near the front. but, i did not realize how quickly the turn
came up and went into the shoot about 15th place. i managed to work my way
up in the shoot and took 8th in front of christine thornburn and right behind
kristin armstrong. but i KNOW that had i made my move sooner... i could have
finished higher. last one is the crit- it had a 180* turn in it, so we came
to a near dead stop every lap. i got in on one forming break behind kim andersen,
but then it was caught and another went off (this was about halfway into the
race)... i jumped on that one too, thinking that the 180 would let the break
stick since hte field was completely bottlenecked through it. nope. we got
caught again and pretty quickly- both breaks were only up from the field for
about one lap or so. then i got swarmed and moved back to about 30th and could
not really move up. when the pace got hot for the last 4-5 laps, i was in bad
position and was struggling to keep the intensity. i finished mid pack at 27th. b

Thanks for sharing this Kimmie. It's takes major guts to not only race in
the elements, but to sacrifice yourself for a teammate. I hope Ann realizes
she owes you one!

Either way, great job with this race. It's great to hear that your fitness
is coming along well along with your confidence. Keep building on both and
let's pick out a major race for you this season...it doesn't have to be
collegiate. Take a look at the calendar and let me know.

As for the technical...who really knows. I know the folks at Sprocket's do
a bang-up job but perhaps the lower limit adjustment on the front chain ring
slipped their watchful eye...or perhaps the change in temperature messed
with your adjustments...or both. It's an unfortunate variable in our lovely
sport.

Next time your chain slips, try shifting into the big chain ring...this
usually puts the chain back on track and you won't need to stop. But, this
is easier said than done if you're doing up hill.

-----Original Message-----
From: Kim White [mailto:white@chemistry.ucsc.edu]
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2006 12:41 PM
To: Kam Zardouzian
Subject: Livin' La Vida Domestica

Kim's Monterey Circuit Race Report:

Weather: shitty. Started clear-ish but didn't last long. Sprinkles turned
into insane downpour and even hail for a bit. I gained 5 lbs in 1 minute.
My toes were sloshing around and I was having trouble even holding onto my
hoods on the hills. The pavement pooled water- lovely.

I had one teammate out there, Ann, who needed 1 pt to upgrade. She attacked
early. I could have but didn't follow.

So, for the whole race I :
1. sat in
2. slowed the pace when I got to the front 3. wouldn't pull I wasn't very
popular as you can imagine. I could have bridged several times but would
likely have pulled a few girls with me. I'd say I was riding at 85-90 % and
could have ridden at 90-95%.

I was surprised that 130 ft of rise over 2.6 miles actually was a bit hilly.
3 sharp rises that I was tackling a bit more easily that most so that was
good.

The only thing that really sucked was that my chain dropped and I had to
stop to put it back on. Chasing was horrible, but I caught back on to the
1st chase group. I just had my bike tuned up at Sprockets, am I doing
something wrong to make it fly off when going big to little?

Got beat out by a speedy girl from Alto Vela and one girl form stanford at
the final sprint. 2 girls form stanford, I chased the wrong one and the
other hopped on my wheel and sling-shotted around me. Oh, well, we were out
of points anyways. I got somewhere around 9th-10th out of 20-something.

Not an eventful or satisfying race.

Kim

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Friday, March 17, 2006

Virtual Time Trial

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Brooke Miller's McLane experience

Monday, March 13, 2006

RE: Livin' La Vida Domestica

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Conversation with Kevin McNaulty

Darn gay-rog....

Saturday, March 04, 2006

CSC TT Videos

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Staying hydrated

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Andrew Coggan`s Power Training Levels
		TT wattage	220
		TT heart rate	177
		Threshold heart rate	177
		Maximum hart rate	194
		Resting Hart rate
	Zone	Heart rate Range		Wattage Range		RPE
Active recovery	1	less than	120	less than	121	1
Endurance	2	122	147	123	165	1
Tempo	3	149	166	167	198	2
Threshold	4	168	186	200	231	2
Aerobic Power	5	186	+	233	264	3
Anaerobic capacity	6	188	na	266	330	3