Testing Videos

This is my Wingate test from last week, best effort yet!  1041 W 5 sec max, 780 W 30 sec average.

Aaaand... my second muscle biopsy.  Yum!

Cyclists' Night Out

I'm a bit behind on updating my blog, so I'll try to catch up...

Last Monday, the researchers took us hard working test subjects out to dinner in Les Rousses. It was great to get out of the center and have some real food! The restaurant was a small out of the way place with a wood fired oven and great handmade pizza. For my initial pizza, I had a tasty concoction called La Juriassen or something of that nature... it had a few local cheeses and some ham. Very good! It was gone in a few minutes and it felt like there was a good amount of room left in my stomach. So, Logan and I split a second pizza known as the Quatre Saisons (Four Seasons if you don't speak French). This was possibly even better than the first pizza, with peppers, bacon, and some other veggies which I can't remember. My stomach and taste buds were now very happy. Looking around the room, everyone was having a great time, and some getting a bit animated with the beer and wine flowing freely. Spirits and morale had been getting a little low with the current situation back at the training center. 16 hours in the room, monotonous food, hard training, and no time to unwind had started to raise tensions in a lot of us. So the night out was a great way to relieve some stress and cheer everyone up.

Happy and full

I don't think I've mentioned the mustache competition yet...  The researchers are putting up 120 euros for the best mustache by the end of the study, you can see some of the top contenders:

Jesse incorporates the sideburns nicely

Travis working on a nice horseshoe 'stache

Darren's looking nice and creepy...

Andrew rockin' the scuzzball look

Shaun's classic mustache and goatee...

I'm not sure what style AJ is rocking.

After the fabulous night out, some of the crew decided to continue the fun times.  Starting off with some mountain bike trials in my room, which ended when Shaun nailed his head on the ceiling trying to bunny hop onto my bed.

Then we watched the ever classic Anchorman, one of my favorites.  The laptop speakers weren't loud enough, so I turned on the captioning and read the dialogue (in character of course) so that everyone could hear better.  I think this really improved the movie, especially the fight scene between Burgundy and Corningstone.  If you haven't seen this cinematic masterpiece, you should.  Stay Classy!

Great Sunday ride

I went on a very nice ride Sunday, it was beautiful, sunny and warm 65 degrees out.  Following in Andrew's footsteps, or tire tracks I guess, the loop included 3 huge climbs- La Dôle, Col de la Faucille, and D304 out of St. Claude.  He had done this ride the day before, so to out-do him a little bit I tacked on an extra 10 miles by riding out to the Shell climb aka Marchiaruz.  This is not as big as the big 3, but is still a nice 4 miler which gets pretty steep in some parts.  All in all, a great day of climbing with about 11,500 feet in 103 miles.  Here is my route.  Some views along the way-

View from the top of La Dole

Busy day at La Dole!

Coming up to La Faucille

Look at the size of that bike!!  I guess its a decoration from the Tour...

Somewhere in the beginning of my ride, I think when I stopped at the top of La Dôle, one of my rear brake pads fell out.  I started riding down, just using my front brakes.  This was working fine, but seeing sticks on the side of the road gave me an idea... So I stopped and jammed a nicely sized piece of wood into the shoe holder to use as a brake pad, and it actually worked pretty well!

Back back, back to the lab...

After a nice 2 week break, we are going back to the hospital this week for more rounds of tests.  Yesterday was my least favorite, the arterial VO2.  Getting a blood catheter put in the artery in your arm is not pleasant, then doing 2 VO2 max tests with an hour and a half in between means about 4 hours at the hospital having the thing stuck in the arm...  Anyway its over now, and I'm very happy about that.  I managed to improve a little from last time, maxing out at 475 watts instead of 450, then 425 instead of 400 in the 2nd (hypoxic) round.  Not sure if this is evidence that I am indeed in a hypoxic room, or if its just from training hard.

About to start the hypoxic VO2 test, breathing low oxygen air through this tube...

Today was another Wingate (30 sec max effort) and then a 40 minute time trial for the submax effort test.  Improved significantly on both, which was pretty sweet.  Up to 990 watts from 860 in the Wingate, and 316 from 287 in the TT, 4.1 watts per kg.  Apparently on the indoor trainer the power is less than what you can do outside in real life, I must borrow someones power meter and check this out sometime.

The weather has cleared up in the past few days, it is sunny and 65 degrees today and should be the same tomorrow. Perfect weather, it is very beautiful out.  I'm finished with this week's tests, so plan to head out for a nice long ride tomorrow.  Unfortunately next week is looking like more cold and rain, but maybe the weather forecast will be wrong...