Trail Building

I worked last Saturday on the new Upper Macatawa Cycling Trails in Zeeland, MI. Once complete, the new trail will offer 6-8 miles of single track along a beautiful wooded ridge that includes several ravines. I also took some video of the work with my iPhone via One Second Epic. Check it out:

The Ill-Advised Novice Training Plan

I bought a trainer for my bike. Now I need to do something with it. I’ve read several different articles from former pro riders, current training pro’s, and other hobby training geeks. So tonight I took a stab at developing a training plan.

I have a rather hectic and variable schedule from week to week and prefer to ride at night. On top of that, it’s the off season, so I’ve been working extra hard on my eating and lounging skills. I haven’t really ridden hard since Iceman (which has actually been harder than I thought to lay off for a month). What I ended up with are three main drills for the trainer and two outdoor rides (as I’ve documented on this blog before, I like riding outside all winter long) that can be extended as winter rolls along and as I get stronger. So, I’ve decided to plan the workouts as individual drills that can be completed at any time during the week. I’ve also decided to plan them week by week so I can monitor/manage my progress.

One of the key reasons why I bought a trainer was ultimately to be able to add saddle time every week without having to leave the house. My goal next summer is to get another 2 hours per week in on the bike. The other advantage of having a trainer is that I don’t have to skip training when weather simply won’t cooperate (rain is about the only thing I don’t like to ride in). Having some training drills and plans will help give structure to those extra hours during the racing season as well.

So, while these drills may change as I get used to them, here’s my first training plan for next week (the first week after a month off – kinda):

TRAINING SCHEDULE: WEEK OF DECEMBER 2, 2012

 

Sprints – High Cadence:

10 minute warm up – 30%

15 second on – 100%

15 second rest – 20%    –   10 total reps (5 minutes)

5 minute rest – 40%

15 second on – 100%

15 second rest – 20%    –   10 total reps (5 minutes)

5 minute rest – 40%

15 second on – 100%

15 second rest – 20%    –   10 total reps (5 minutes)

10 minute cool down – 40%

 

Total workout time: 45 Minutes

 

Sprints – Low Cadence:

10 minute warm up – 30%

40 seconds on – 90%

20 seconds off – 40%    5 total reps (5 minutes)

5 minute rest – 40%

40 seconds on – 90%

20 seconds off – 40%    5 total reps (5 minutes)

5 minute rest – 40%

40 seconds on – 90%

20 seconds off – 40%    5 total reps (5 minutes)

10 minute cool down

 

Total workout time:  45 Minutes

 

Sustain:

10 minute warm up – 30%

20 minute sustain – 75%

5 minute rest – 30%

20 minute sustain – 75%

5 minute cool down – 30%

 

Total workout time: 60 Minutes

 

Outdoor Fun Ride:

Whatever for however long

 

Outdoor Lakeshore Ride:

Wherever; just at 75-80% effort for 90 minutes

My New Library

I bought a new GoPro POV video camera with my Iceman Cometh winnings and have been having fun learning how to take good video with it. There’s a bit of a learning curve unless you purchase either the digital display or WiFi add-ons to view your camera set up before you ride. So far I’m 2 for 4 in successful videos. I was excited to get some video of the new trail in Zeeland on Wednesday, but my final adjustment put my brake cable squarely in the center of my field of view. So, scrap that file and on to the next ride.

My whole goal with this camera is to create a library of trails that I can share with other enthusiasts. This would include sharing via the MMBA’s forum’s with riders from other parts of the state so they can check out a trail if they wish before heading over this way to ride it. The other use of this library is to have something to watch while on my trainer this winter. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I bought a new trainer, too. It’s a Kinetic magnetic trainer and I’m excited to add that element to my training this coming year.

Anyway, I’m now 1.5 videos in to my library (the Luton video is only about 60% of the trail before I unknowingly hit a wrong button and took still shots for the rest of the ride). Yesterday’s ride at Yankee Springs won’t count as a ‘trail video’ because we rode the trail backwards and explored some areas that aren’t on the trail map. But it was simply a fun ride so I loaded it up to YouTube anyway (which takes an astronomical amount of time, by the way). I also turned on monetization for YouTube, so I’m not adding music to these files; which I found to be more interesting while training before Iceman on my dad’s trainer. We’ll see if anyone actually clicks on the ads (not counting on becoming a YouTube Millionaire just yet) . So, if you have an hour and forty minutes free, or are looking for something to watch while on the trainer this winter, check these out:

 

A Little Bit More About Me

I love putting video montage’s together. Nerdy love, too. I had worked on this video to share with People for Bikes in response to their question: ‘what does biking mean to you?’ I really hoped I would be able to put up a 1st place victory at Iceman to put punch into the ending of this video, but 2nd was all I could muster. Anyway, I’ve posted it here from my YouTube account. Enjoy

Iceman Cometh Challenge 2012

Well, the 2012 mountain bike race season is officially over for me. I have begun my off season resting period (this is hard for me to stay away from the bike). I didn’t end up winning the Clydesdale division this year at Iceman, but I did take second and by all accounts, that’s great. I knew 20 minutes into the race that I wasn’t going to have my best day, as my legs felt like concrete up until Williamsburg Road, the notorious road crossing a little over half way through the race. That was all it took to fall ~2 1/2 minutes behind the winner. It was still a fun time, and I have a video to share using the One Second Epic app I mentioned in my last post. This one is slightly different in that I mashed a bunch of clips from my epic with by brother’s epic to create one comprehensive video. I still think this whole thing is cool, considering everything is shot with an iPhone. Enjoy.

OneSecondEpic and IFTTT

This weekend is Iceman, folks. It’s been a whirlwind of a summer between my new job, mountain bike racing, and having fun with my family. I’m nervous, excited, and anxious all at the same time for the race Saturday. I believe I have real money at stake, and a cap to a fantastic year. I took first overall in my category, and never lost a race in the CPS series (though Boyne was close and required the leader to flat 1/2 mile from the finish line). I’m starting in the 6th wave on Saturday, which gives me a good starting position, but I need to have a clean race (no mechanical issues or major accidents) and not bonk to do well. I believe I’m trained enough to win my division.

Somewhere in the last 3 months since my last post I’ve been able to find the time to dink around with some new tools. For iPhone, the OneSecondEpic app has been a ton of fun. The video app allows you to take between 1-5 second videos with one push of a button and automatically edits/splices them into your short film to share with friends. The app launched last week, but I had the opportunity to land the app early as a beta user so I’ve been using it since mid summer (something about working at Start Garden who is an early investor in the company). Here’s a couple I’ve done, though because of music licensing red tape you can’t add music through the app itself, I just added it with Windows Movie Maker and uploaded it to YouTube:

 

 

 

 

 

I’m having a riot with it and look forward to capturing some more videos over this coming weekend and the Holidays ahead.

 

In other news, I just found out about a website called IfThisThenThat, or IFTTT. I think it’s been around for a while, but I’ve been looking for something that would collect all of my social media inputs into one timeline and this is the closest thing I’ve been able to find. What I’ve done is created a blog over on Blogger called Joseph Lampen Presents. Then I set up through IFTTT to have all of my social media content that I create, like, and favorite, to automatically flow to my new blog. That includes this blog. It’s an impressive list of services that can be triggered to auto post on my Blogger page. The only limitation currently is Twitter. You can only push TO Twitter, not pull from it to feed into my Blogger page. Otherwise, I have my YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, WordPress, SoundCloud, FourSquare, Tumblr, Flicker, and Instagram all flowing to my Blogger page whenever I post something, Like something, or place into favorites.

I know Facebook has timeline, but I like that this is just slightly less public than sharing stuff with 400 of my closest friends.
That’s all for now.