Here I am, well into Week 2 of my base training for the CTR and it is seemingly going well. I am coming off a low base fitness this year, which my Threshold Test confirmed with quite low heart rate zones. The Threshold Test is never much fun as it involves a 50 minute warm up then 20 minutes of going as hard as you can - and by that it means finishing just as strongly as you started - which can be pretty tricky to judge. I think I went a bit easy at the start as I felt quite strong still by the end but it can be a very fine line and I didn't want to stuff it up thereby having to punish myself and do it again. At worst, my zones are on the low side which is safer from an overtraining point of view. I will get the pleasure of doing it again next month though as your zones change as you get fitter.....looking forward to that one..... :(
It has actually been nice to enter a structured training plan as well. I think I need to have a goal with my cycling. Whenever I don't I feel like I am just going through the motions to some extent and the last few months my mtbing has been a bit stale. I am also enjoying the little bit of strength training in the gym as a distraction from the bike. I can already feel the muscle memory coming back from the last two big training efforts in 2015 and 2018.
This has been exacerbated this year by a challenge that Dean Anderson (he did the AZTR750 in 2018 with me) threw out there late last year. He challenged all of us on the Strava platform (think Facebook for cyclists and runners) to ride for at least 15 minutes, EVERY day of 2020.
It sounded like my kind of challenge!
But do you realise how hard it is to ride EVERY day? No? Well, I can tell you it has been pretty tough some days, seeing me out on the bike at 2340 some nights just to squeeze that 15 minutes in because once you are out of the challenge, you are OUT!!
Dean at Kelvin Bridge in the 2018 AZTR750 race
Anyway, I am pleased to say that I have not missed a day and this CTR training is making it far easier to meet the challenge. Not that I have any excuse as despite the rain here, it is not the -13C that Dean is dealing with in Canada!
January efforts
February so far.....
Today's training ride saw me cop a drenching but at least it is warm here.
Speaking of the rain, it just hasn't stopped for a week now! We have had seven days of constant, heavy rain and our total here is somewhere in the 400mm(16inch) range - give or take a few. To say the contrast from ten days ago to now is dramatic is a massive understatement. We went from still worrying about bushfires to having floods in the space of about four days!
Mid December - but it could have been last Wednesday - just 8 days ago!
Today - the 13th of February 2020!!
That's not to say that the whole country is enjoying some rain. I witnessed a pretty intense dust storm last Friday on my way to Perth. It was somewhere in the Riverland region of South Australia and was still impressive from 34 000 feet!
Speaking of work, this bloody Coronavirus - Covid19 - to give it it's newly minted name is wreaking havoc with inbound tourism here in Australia. Working for an airline does have me worried about the knock-on effects that are yet to be played out. Bus, accommodation and general tourism operators who rely on Chinese tourists are doing it very tough already. Anecdotally, as a company and from what I see, we are very reliant on the Chinese as well and this thing is going to knock us all pretty badly for the rest of 2020. (Bloody gut feeling was right - see comments on this post)
On another note, I was made on offer too good to refuse on my beloved BMW. Here she is, going to a new master just before the rains hit last week. She will have a good home as he is not only an a/c engineer but a fellow mtber.
Now don't panic because that was always the plan. Find an inexpensive adventure bike to see if I liked it, then if so (HELL YES!!!) to buy a more capable (read expensive) adventure bike. I am now working on Stage 2 (as I hope are the Covid19 vaccine scientists) of that plan so watch this space.
Arriving home from a nights work at 6am the outlook for my weekend training ride wasn’t good. Rain, rain and some more rain for Southeast Queensland. Riding 20 hours and camping in the rain held exactly ZERO appeal, especially in my sleep deprived state.
After a day of moping around I eventually made a late decision to drive down to Grafton in New South Wales (aka The Police State) and ride the Old Glenn Innes road. It wouldn’t be the "course specific” ride that the training plan called for but it would be plenty long enough AND most importantly, mostly dry (I hoped!).
I was up at 3:30am for the 3+ hour drive to Grafton. It wasn’t easy dragging myself out of bed that early after working a “red eye” the night before but it had to be done. Anyway, it was good training for the race plan, getting up dead tired! The drive down was pretty uneventful with a few rain showers but with a clearing horizon the closer I got to Grafton.
I parked the car in the loading area out the back of the local Coles and quickly prepped the bike. I was pleased to get away at my planned 8am and warmed up on the 7km of busy road out to the Old Glenn Innes turn off.
I hadn't done much research on the road as it was such a late decision to ride down here. I had just built a route with Ride With GPS and uploaded it to the gps. I knew the road was the main highway until 1962, there was a tunnel build circa 1867, some big hills and some ghost towns but that was it. Best case scenario, I would make it all the way to Glenn Innes, 177km (and a big climb) away. Worst case I would camp where I dropped. Being honest with myself, Option 2 was the most likely outcome.
The first 30km or so were sealed road and pretty uninteresting, with lots of little climbs and descents. Once I hit the dirt, what little traffic had been on the road ceased altogether. Perfect. The road didn't become any more interesting and I felt like I was just grovelling along quite slowly. I probably was as I had only obtained 8 hours sleep in the previous 2.5 days and this Beast isn't the sprightliest bike packing rig. Working against me was the ever-so-slight but ever present gentle climb. Of course, you couldn't see this with the naked eye and even the gps struggled to show it on the elevation profile. Never the less, it was there!
The track began to parallel the Boyd River for quite some time and this was a very pleasant pedal, mainly because it was level-ish and the speed was high. I was passed by lots of adventure bikes coming the other way and I thought "that is the way to see this country". Interestingly, most of the bikes were DRZ400s, KLR650s or XR400s with just a small number of high end KTM or BMWs. Clearly, you don't need to spend a fortune to have fun off road.
After much deliberation and consternation I had pulled the trigger on a GoPro replacement. With much assistance from DCRainmaker's excellent review I turned my Single Speed mountain bike into a GoPro Hero 6 Black. This was now a camera shakedown ride as well as a training ride.
I eventually came to the old settlement of Dalmorton. I have seen figures of past population range from 300 to 3000. Who really knows now and does it really matter? Back in the day it would have been small and remote, but vital. The Parks service is slowly restoring the remaining old buildings and it is definitely worth stopping for a look around as it is in a very pretty valley.
I sat and ate my home made chicken roll here at a picnic bench. Being midday and having been up for nearly 9 hours I decided to shut my eyes for 30 minutes. The green grass looked so soft and inviting. Of course, with this being Australia I knew something would bite me while I slept. Sure enough, after 20 minutes I was rudely awakened by a green ant nipping at my chest. How do these little buggers sting so much?!! Oh well, time to get going again I guess?
Getting away from the blasted green ants!
Initially I felt doughy but soon I was feeling great again. I must remember to use the nap strategy when I feel hopelessly tired as it definitely refreshed me. The climbs didn't seem so bad any more, even though they were getting longer and steeper.
Much steeper than it looks!
The hand hewn tunnel hove into view and while not very long, it is clearly very necessary as the rock outcrop juts right out to drop into the river. I can just imagine the original road surveyors thinking to themselves....."bugger". Some serious grunt work would have been required to build this beauty!
I passed a cenotaph in the middle of nowhere (Newton Boyd was the locality) honouring the 30 local lads who had gone off to fight in WWI. It is so touching whenever I come across these things in my travels. Here, these names were someone's son, brother or husband, not just names on a monument. They left these idyllic little valleys, their families and loved ones for the horror of WWI, almost all on this cenotaph never to return.........
Lest We Forget
The road climbed away from the river and I was getting a bit concerned about my water supply. Mainly concerned that the water filter (Sawyer Mini) I was carrying (and had been for 2 months now) was completely untested by me.
I was hoping it was idiot proof.....
Turns out it was!
Much to my relief, the hardest part of filtering water was hanging down off the bridge to fill the filter bag at the Henry River crossing.
With a full 5.5 litre complement of water I slowly climbed away from the river crossing. This water is heavy! But I would need it as I wasn't sure what would be available as I climbed higher up into the hills.
The road was quite nicely surfaced, being a crushed granite surface with plenty of corrugates on the highly cambered corners where the water had run to the inside. This meant I had to go the long way around bends, on the outside of the turn, to keep some forward momentum up. Luckily, there was zero traffic.
As I approached the 9 hour mark I decided that I would not be making the top of the climb, let alone the extra 30km into Glenn Innes as this was to be a 10 hour training day. I also still had to ride back to Grafton tomorrow, get in the car and then drive 3 hours home then got to work for 14 hours the next day. Curse working for a living!!
Diehard
I reached a spot that my phone mapping app, Galileo, called "Diehard". I figured this was a good place to call the turnaround as the road dipped down about 300ft to cross the Mann River before hiking back up for the main range climb.
I had passed a really nice camping spot along the river about 10km back and that would make my 10 hours. I knew that it was downhill but didn't think it would take only 20 minutes to reach it. There really had been some climbing here!
Finding a nice spot with a few well positioned trees I quickly set up camp, boiled some water and had dinner. I managed to just get done before dark and pretty much as soon as it was dark turned in for the night, setting an alarm for 6am.
It was a warm night and I didn't sleep that well so it took a little effort to climb out of bed this morning but once up I quickly downed a cup of tea and a few bars for breakfast (mmmmm..mmmm, yum....bars.....) and packed up. Once rolling I noticed the legs weren't sore at all, meaning I hadn't tried hard enough yesterday!
Morningglory
I was soon down to the Henry river crossing where I had filtered water yesterday and I topped up with about a litre and a half now. I didn't do a "maxi tanker" load as I knew there were more crossings ahead and I had confidence in my filter AND how the water tasted now!
Testing the GoPro voice command
Getting it done.
Today was just all about getting back to the car and getting home. My butt was a bit sore so I stood and pedalled a lot today to give it some relief. I stood and mashed the pedals on most of the climbs and was pleasantly surprised to feel that my legs didn't hurt at all. They weren't begging me to stop so all of the training must be paying off. In fact, I could quite regularly put the bike in top gear and while standing, mash the pedals for a while. Good-o!
I thought I had phone service.....but no......thank you Telstra!
I passed quite a few more motorcyclists today. What is it with DRZ400s? They smell like they are all burning oil every time one passes? I will have to ask an owner one day if they chew the oil a bit because it sure smells like it..
I didn't take many photos this morning as it was basically the same scenery as yesterday, just from a different angle. I did get this screen grab from a video as I went back through Dalmorton where a group of motorcyclists were looking around. See that guy down the road? Yeah, the one with his back to me? Well he just strolled across the road like there was nobody around, only looking over his right shoulder at the last second, the second that I was about to plow into him at 30km/h! I was videoing with one hand so couldn't do much to avoid him. Lucky for both of us he stopped in the middle of the road, just in time!!
G'day champ.......
The rest of the ride consisted of lots of little ups and downs. There proved to be 1500m(5000ft) of climbing in this downhill direction! I was glad to see the road turn back to sealed surface as this meant only about 30km to go. It also meant more traffic but nothing that wasn't manageable.
The last 7km into Grafton was into a strong headwind (isn't it always the way?) and I was pretty glad to get to my car (and glad to see it still there!) as I was getting a little sore by now.
A quick visit to the BP truck stop for a shower and a trucky works burger and I was feeling a million bucks again! The two days had seen me cover 242km(150mi) with 3500m(11500ft) of climbing on bugger all sleep.
I didn't feel too bad but I need to look at my right shoe insole as my right foot was quite sore. My right hand had some feeling issues as well but I will be changing grips once my new bar ends arrive from China so they should sort that problem. I was glad of the long saddle time as it was a great reminder of how little time I have spent on the seat during this training. Most rides are in the 2 hour range and simply do not replicate what it feels like to be on a bike all day long, day after day. This worries me a little as this is meant to be my last overnight training ride before the AZTR750. For the TD I did at least 15 x 12 hour days in the saddle so it never really bothered me during that race. I may need to get a few more 12 hour days on this bike - even if it is just on the rail trail or somewhere equally boring.
I arrived home at a very civil 5:30pm, not the 9-10pm that I had originally warned the family about, so I was in the good books. ;)
That is what I have been doing these last few weeks. Just plodding away, trying to follow my 10 Day Bikepacking Race plan from coach Linda. It worked well for the Tour Divide in 2015 and if I follow it as closely as I can (with a few modifications for carrying a bike!) I should be in a good place come April 5th.
I have sort of settled on taking my Cannondale Beast of the East for the race. I really don't want to buy another bike and I guess this will do the job. Especially now that I have carbon wheels on it and soon to come 2.8 width tyres (down from the 3.0 currently on it) I feel it will be a better rolling option. Still not as quick as a standard 29" 2.2/2.4 wide equipped mtb but close enough........
Another leg on the front and a dynamo hub in between and I'm set!
Now , where was I? Ah, yes, training.
To this end I have ventured back to an old favourite of many endurance riders, Brisbane Forest Park (or D'Aguilar Forest as it is known these days).
It never looks as steep in a photo, especially a pano.
My first foray was on one of the hottest days we have had this year! It got up to 38C (100F) which is very hot for Brisbane. We normally only see low 30s, which with the humidity of the sub-tropics is plenty enough thank-you-very-much! As a result of the heat (and going too hard the day before) I struggled my way around the 50km loop I set for myself. I chose some of the steepest trails in there so that I could practice pushing my bike. Well, normally I can ride all of these climbs but that day I was definitely pushing on almost all of them while the Cicadas almost sent me mad/deaf with their high pitched screeching. I include a small snippet of their "song" for your hearing pleasure......turn your speakers up LOUD for the full experience as these things are easily over 100 decibels in the bush when they are in their tens of thousands!
After another week at work where I squeezed my training around life I decided to head out again for Round 2 of my BFP loop. I was really pleased to see that I felt waaay stronger and could have ridden all of the stupidly steep climbs. I had to force myself to get off the bike and push because that IS part of the training after all!
I was also rocking my new Camelbak Octane hydration pack. It is a lumbar model with the bladder being down low, across your hips. I hate wearing a backpack these days as it makes it very difficult to regulate your body temperature but I must say, the Octane sits there nicely and the relatively small "pack" section of the backpack allows plenty of air to get at your back, keeping you much cooler than traditional hydration packs with the bladder mid back. I chose this smaller version so that I won't/can't load it up with too much crap during the race. It will also form part of my bike portage system for the Grand Canyon crossing when it is combined with my Mountainsmith Strapetts. I just need to figure out how to actually do that......
Octane win.
On other fronts I have renewed the insoles in my mtb shoes as I found for the TD in 2015 that I needed a small "dome" attached to the insole to help spread my metatarsals and stop nerve pinching that feels like a hot foot after a while. They worked perfectly in 2015 so I thought I had better get onto that again so as to eliminate one possible cause of body failure.
I also jagged a trip to New Zealand during the week, where we have all of our heavy maintenance conducted.
Empty 737.
I didn't get locked up on arrival so I guess there were no outstanding speeding fines from our 2014 motorcycle trip......
While the ferry was a bit of fun, the training ride on the gym bike wasn't! It was a hot day for Christchurch (in the mid 30sC) and there was no air conditioning in the closet-sized hotel gym. Suffice to say, after 2 hours of hard efforts I was fairly swimming! On the plus side, I did feel good after a shower (don't worry, no photos...)
Sweat box gym.
So, here we are, 8 weeks out from the race and I just have to get a standard suspension fork for my bike so that I can run my dyno hub. I then have to have that dyno hub laced into my new front wheel, then I have to load the whole shebang up and take it on a few overnight rides to shake down my gear. Oh, and learn how to set it up on a backpack so I can carry it 35km(22mi) across the Grand Canyon......plus I need to get started on my route notes.....
Some good news last week regarding my riding plans for 2018. My requested annual leave was approved!
Great news, right? Well yes and no. The down side to this is that with our company, leave approval is always notified in the first week or so of January each year. Why the downside? Well, I was hoping (half heartedly) to get leave to compete in the Arizona Trail Race 750 (AZTR750) which is in early April this year. That would only barely leave me 3 months to prepare if my leave was approved.
Three months.
That is not a lot of time. I had six months notice for the Tour Divide in 2015 and that was only just enough time to prepare. Yes, I realise that I could have been preparing during the closing months of last year but it is extremely difficult to push yourself through the torture er, training for potentially no reason. (I wasn't confident I would get leave at Easter, the most sought after time of the year).
Neil Beltchenko photo.
Another reason, if I am being honest is I guess I don't have the emotional investment in the AZTR that I had in the Tour Divide. I had watched the TD for four or five years before I made the leap to race it. While I have looked on at the AZTR for about a similar time it just hasn't struck a chord like the TD. This is partly because it is only 750 miles (it's really 800miles) and it is stupidly HARD. Every racer that has done both the TD and the AZTR says hands down the AZTR is waaay harder than the TD, mile for mile. I am wondering if part of that is people's thinking? I can see that if you have done the TD you might think to yourself "750 miles? How hard can it be?"
John Schilling photo
Well, I am trying very hard not to fall into that trap! I am also giving myself a little bit of a mental out. While I am certainly no athlete, when I raced the TD I really wanted to push myself and see what the best that I could achieve would be. With the AZTR a competitive time for someone of my limited ability would be about 10 or 11 days. I have 28 days leave.......... and therein lies my race strategy.
John Schilling photo
I will train as hard as I can in the next 2.5 months, get my gear setup as optimally as I can (TD experience does help here) and research the route much more thoroughly than I did the TD route. This will give me a fair chance of having a good outcome and in the back of my mind I will have the knowledge that if something isn't going according to script that I have time on my side. I can cool my jets if needs be and look after whatever ailment I pick up (oh yes, there will be at least one!) and hopefully continue on at whatever pace I can manage.
I also have a secret weapon in the form of Dave Wicks. Dave is an awesome bloke (for a Kiwi) :) and has done the AZTR 3 times in the past. He is also very generous with his advice and support so I will be leaning on him a little heavier than I would otherwise like but I am sure I can repay his kindness with some frothy beverages along the way! Dave will be doing this year's version so we can hopefully share a ride to the start line on the Mexican border.
Now, back to the three core problems for my race.
I am not fit enough
I don't have a bike
I don't know the route
Fitness
I am doing what I can on the fitness front but I did lose most of last week as I was/am still getting over this flu. I couldn't subject myself to the rigours of regimented training so I opted for some general singletrack riding, putting in bursts of effort where I could (the guys were probably wondering why I was charging up every hill like a demented xc racer). Unfortunately, these bursts just highlighted that I have simply no endurance in the upper rev range. I can diesel along all day at a slow rate but I really need to work on my upper rev range.
Bike
The bike thing. Yeah, kind of critical. I don't have a bike currently that is suited to the demands of the race and I don't need to make the race any harder by taking a knife to a gun fight! I also really like my current steeds and don't want to trash them. This has me on the hunt for a secondhand mount and I am currently searching for either a Norco Revolver FS or a Kona Unit X. Two very different bikes but two that can get the job done.
Research
For my route research I have joined the Arizona Trail Association and have the badge and a 2 for 1 beer voucher to prove it! Funds from membership go toward trail maintenance. Most of you know my feelings about trail care so any small help I can provide to brother/sister trail builders is money well spent.
Via the ATA membership I can extract trail Beta from their great website. As stated above, I will be leaning on Dave and I have also read back through multiple years of race prep threads that are in that treasure trove of information that is bikepacking.net, making many notes along the way.
The training rides are under way and one good thing (if there is a silver lining) to this scorching heat we are experiencing here in Oztraylia is that it is PERFECT training conditions to replicate a race in the Arizona desert!
Well, I guess I had better get stuck into some training for this race then...eh? Yes, yes I should.
Perth suburb of Peppermint Grove.
I was at a bit of a loss as to what training plan to go with. I have previously employed the "ride my bike heaps because I enjoy it" training regime but I feel this might not be up to scratch for an endeavour such as the Tour Divide....!
I did some formal training this time last year which was meant to be structured around my work commitments. But it wasn't. And it wasn't cheap.
Check my pro set-up. Seriously strangled bottle. It was 38C after all !
So, for this time around I figured that a generic training plan, aimed at an, er-hem, 40+ athletewould be fine. It wouldn't be tailored to my roster but it would cost about 25% of what the supposedly tailored (and wasn't) plan would cost. I could even add a Bikepacking specific plan onto that and I am still 50% ahead.
What did I go with? Well, after some research I came across US coach Lynda Wallenfels via TrainingPeaks.com She is an accomplished coach and has competed in bikepacking races and has won the AZT300 outright in 2011, so she knows bikepacking. She also answers all of my stupid questions via her training forum so that others can learn from our conversations. Likewise, I can glean information from other threads she runs with other trainee riders.
Will it help me? Who knows but I need to have something in place to maximise the returns for all the saddle time that I am putting in while training for this race. Sure I would get better just by riding a LOT, but I did see good gains made in the few months that I followed a structured plan last year. I had strength and I laughed hills in the face. I want me some more of that tonic!
I managed some cross training today with another regular trail care day getting us out to Daisy Hill Forest to tidy up the new trails we built back in October. We had a good roll up and were done by 9am - a new record for us!
This meant we weren't absolutely flogged-out and could barely stand as has been the case for the last few years after a trail care day. Today we enjoyed standing around, chatting and munching sausage sangers, washed down with Coke. Superb training!
We are off to do some club racing in the morning. By we, I mean the kids. It is round 1 of the Brisbane Sth MTB Club's Summer Cup short course racing series.
The kids are keen as mustard. And me? Well, I will be dishing out the mustard by working in the BBQ tent! Yep, sticking to the long term plan.......for the moment.
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