Monday, September 26, 2011

BBAR!

The 2011 British Best All-Rounder aka the BBAR is now over including the shouting (I hope). And yep, I kept my position in the top slot, finishing with an average of 28.02mph. Second was Julian Jenkinson with 27.78, then Derek Parkinson (27.72), Andy Bason (27.71 - so close to third), Nik Bowdler (27.49) and Scott Povey (27.21). Not much in it!

This is the best thing I've won in cycling - and that includes five journo world titles. In fact one of the reasons I didn't go to Italy to defend that jersey was because I was fully focused on the BBAR. Focus can get you a long way in life.

The BBAR with its 80+ year history is almost anachronistic in modern day sport. How can it be 'all round' when the shortest distance is 50 miles? That's one of the criticisms levelled at it. But if the BBAR was widened to include 10 and 25 miles, you'd still find the same guys at the top. It's just a matter of what you focus on during the season.

Another criticism is that you can get lucky with the conditions and doing a fast ride while others miss out. This certainly happened this year: Andy Bason missed the BDCA 50 and opted not to ride the BDCA 100 or the Breckland 12, all of which were fast. But I missed the national 100 (which was fast and I wanted to do), the EDCA 100 (quick), the Shaftesbury 50 (where Jenkinson did his best 50) and the Yorkshire 50 (where Bason did his best 50). In fact the only time I met Bason in a BBAR event was the national 50, where I beat him by 22sec.

When you look at the overall results, some luck does come into it for sure, as well as some planning. And the fact that it was so close this year shows that it's remarkably resilient to conditions and course variation.

It has a huge amount of respect among time triallists. That's been clear at every event I've been to since I did my 50 and 12hr. I can see why. Apart from its history, its distances are pretty formidable. Mine this year totalled over 455 miles/732km in just three events. All alone against the clock.

Also despite the challenge it remains almost purely an amateur competition. Most pros don't do TTs longer than an hour as their focus is on road racing. If they did the BBAR, well it'd be scary. But that's not what they're paid to do.

The other thing I managed to do this year was finish 2nd in the Rudy Project national TT series again. My points total was 294 out of a possible 300, 5 more than last year but not enough to threaten Matt Bottrill, who won it again with 299 points.

Funnily enough the only guy to beat Matt was Sigma Sport pro Wouter Sybrandy, who I came up against in my final round last weekend (Bottrill DNS). It was extremely hot for October here (29 degrees!) and as always in the heat my power took a battering - I was a good 25W off my best. I'm sure everyone else was down too, as the results order didn't change much. Sybrandy did win but only beat me by 42 seconds over 29.2 miles, so that was a nice way to finish off the season.

Some drinking ensued.

It wasn't quite over for me though. I set myself an appointment with the turbo trainer on day for a maximal aerobic power test (see Ric Stern's article on Cyclingnews for a full explanation of the MAP test). This test is a VO2max style effort, where you gradually ramp up the power until you fail. There are a few different protocols but the one I used last year and this year was a 25W/minute ramp (5W/12sec) taking the power over the final minute as MAP. A better protocol for me would be 20W/minute, as it's more appropriate for fitter riders, but I'll do that next time.

As you can imagine, it's a fairly demanding test. It's quite hard to control the power ramp as the time ticks over and you're gradually going crosseyed with oxygen debt. However, it can be done.

Now, I didn't think MAP was that trainable once you've been racing for a few years, let alone 20 years. It's correlated with your VO2max, which is meant to peak after just 18 months of training then decline once you pass 25 years of age. Sounds grim.

I do know that you can train all levels underneath it to maximise the percentage of MAP that you can ride at for a given duration. If you scroll to the bottom of the Ric's article, you can see the percentage ranges for various durations. e.g. for 10 miles it's 75-81% of MAP, which is a good 25W of trainability if your MAP is 400W.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find out after doing the test that my MAP has increased by 31W this year. That's quite a lot. I've done a few tests over the years and this is by far the highest, both in absolute and power/weight terms. Or to put it another way, I'm currently fitter than I have ever been, despite being well into physical decline at age 40. Maybe there is something to the maxim, "you're only as old as you feel."

I think there's a lot of scope for improvement next year, in terms of both maximising percentage of MAP at various durations and lifting MAP itself.

Now it's time for a holiday.


The human body is amazing

Sunday, September 18, 2011

The end is in sight or nigh

Of the season that is. I have one race left, round 7 of the Rudy Project on the 1st of October. It's a great field (Bottrill, as well as Sybrandy and Hampton wot have been doing well in the Tour of Britain) so I'll be doing well to scrape 4th.

That said it doesn't matter too much, as I basically just need to finish to secure 2nd overall in the series again. Yay!

I did my fourth ride of the series on Saturday, and managed 2nd behind Adam Duggleby. It was my best ride of the season over that sort of distance (power pb!) and I've never gone that fast on a 'sporting' single carriageway course before. It was 24.1 miles/38.7km, very windy and the back half was quite undulating, but I managed to stay on top of it and didn't fade. The only annoyance was being stuck behind a tractor with 5 mins to go. It was going at a nice speed of 45km/h but I'd been sitting on 51 (tailwind) so I had to slow down for a minute or so until I found an opportunity to pass. It was only a few seconds lost, but it would have been nice to go sub-51 on that course.

I backed up today with a 50 on the U46/50 course. A fast day, 9-10 degs with little wind. I didn't have the legs to really capitalise on it, finishing in 1:43:25 to Scott Povey's 1:43:12. However, good to recoup some of the petrol money for the weekend.

Scroll back a bit to the BDCA 100, my last BBAR counter and an important race, as I had to improve on my 3:39:43 to buy some security at the top of the table. Turns out I needed it, as Mr Jenkinson improved on his 100 time with a storming 3:28:41 to win it. I was third in a very decent 3:31:51 with Derek Parkinson 2nd in 3:30:42. It wasn't a bad ride in speed terms (it was two laps of the 50 course, so very quick) but I did have a bad power fade in the second half, I suspect I was still recovering from the 12. My 100 in July was much better, just slower. Still, I've had two really good rides and one half decent one out of three for the BBAR, so I can't complain.

What that means is that I now have a more comfortable lead in the BBAR standings. With just one more 50 left next week and the top three in the BBAR not riding it, the only realistic contender is Andy Bason, who needs a 1:38 or better to overhaul me. If he does that then all credit to him, he'll have deserved it.

25 madness

In between all this I've also had a tilt at improving my 25 PB from 49'58 to something quicker. To that end, I entered a couple of events on the Welsh ski slope course, the R25/3L. One was the day after the aforementioned 100, the other one was a week later when I was going to be fresh. Both had stiff SW winds but by some crazy fluke I went much faster with trashed legs in the one after the 100 (49'26, pb!) on bugger all power, coming within 3sec of winning the thing. Then I did a disapppointing 50'32 with good legs a week later for a mere 8th place (better field but still...)

In the post mortem I realised I got a bit lucky with the conditions in the first one, getting the strongest wind in only the last 5 miles before the turn rather than the whole way. My turn split was 32'18 in the first week (the return leg is much shorter) and 34'06 the second week with 20W more power! Mother nature can be unkind at times. And yes it was the weekend of Hurricane Katia so it was a tad blowy.

The times in the second week were all over the shop too because of the varying conditions in the 5 hrs that the event was run over. Some people got it bad, others were a bit luckier, but everyone agreed it wasn't a quick day.

I'll try to nail a 48 there next year. If you ride these courses enough eventually you get good conditions.

One more race...