VELOBIOS.com Press release
If anyone is near Souderton, Penn Sept. 9th go check out the Univest GP Cyclosportif 100K. This looks like a top notch event with amazing support. There are not very many opportunities where you can race on open roads and get support just like the Tour de France guys!

My old friend from Ft Collins, Chris Spaeth, is helping to organize this ride along with pro legend John Eustice.

Training Peaks executive team members and scientific advisory board members met this week in Boulder and I am very excited with the energy and concepts that were generated. Dr. Andy Coggan was generous enough to come in and lend us his advice on future planning and analysis tools.

Thanks to all of our customers at TrainingPeaks.com and Cycling Peaks for all of the support throughout the years.

Dirk

I placed 2nd beind Baldwin tonight!
Alright! I am super happy with this result especially since my time tied last week's winning time of 23:50 set by Will Frishkorn. Baldwin of course killed the rest of us with his training wheels on. He didn't have anything aero except his Carbon P3 and a skin suit...No dep dish wheels, no aero helmet, nothing.

see results at www.recordracer.com

Tonight had completely different weather conditions than last week, but after my morning recon ride I posted here that I felt it would be a slower day as the temperature was very high at 100F and very windy. Even warming up with Chuck and Baldwin heading out to the start I thought it was going to be a slow night. However all of a sudden within the race I realized it was a cross tailwind a lot of the time and on the climbs it felt as if I could hold one bigger gear than last week.


Here is my Garmin Forerunner file from my race. I'm particularly happy with how my HR rose quickly to 180 and heald steady and very flat for the rest of the race. I was able to just raise it to 185 for the last minute.

My training between last week's TT and today went fairly well with two intense days including a criterium Sunday in Ft Collins (was in a 7-man break with Baldwin). I also had a good hard CP6 day with 8 x 2 minutes at CP6 intensity in a low cadence specifically meant to help improve my TT pace over the short climbs. The key to tonight's TT is cresting climbs and accelerating hard over the top.

I also had a few other tricks that may have helped tonight.
1- I borrowed a Zipp disc which was a great wheel to ride. Amazing. I wish I could afford one right now to call my own.
2-I had a massage Monday from Kim McCormack, the wife of my teammate Alan. That may have realy helped me recover from Sundays criterium especially since my hamstrings were very sore.
3- I started out a little more conservative tonight and tried to ramp into it at about minute 4.

Nice to see the hard work and focus paying off. Now I can go on vacation Friday with my family and really relax. I will be riding my road bike up around Steamboat CO while we are away camping in an RV until next Wednesday. I just hope I don't drink too much beer and become too much of a redneck. I will have a lot of fitness to regain next week if so.

Thanks for reading
Ciao
Dirk

Today's AM training sightings:
This morning I went out for a quick 40-minute ride to help loosen up before tonight's Time Trial and happened to see two of the world's best female riders out training on their individual rides.

First I had a Gunn-Rita Dahle sighting (see her at
http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2006/diaries/gunn-rita/ ) as she was going in the opposite direction on her mountain bike MOTORPACING, yes motorpacing behind a scooter on her MTB with slick tires. Pretty cool to see actually. That is hard core.

Then I ran into Kimberly Baldwin (see http://www.cyclingnews.com/riders/2006/diaries/kimberly/ ) out riding and warming up for her sprescribed hill intervals. I had a chance to talk to her and she sounded very relieved to finally be back home after several months of a world-wide travel schedule. Her last race was Phladelphia where she helped her teammate Ina Teutenberg get 2nd.

Kimberly also said her husband Chris Baldwin will be racing tonight, so it looks as if we have the best American TT Specialist to go head to head with tonight. Should be good to see what time he can post so the rest of us can compare how far back we really are from the top pro level. Although I feel it will be a slow night compared to last week as it is 100F and very windy.

More to come tonight or tomorrow on my TT experience.
Dirk

GS Ciao TT #1 was tonight.
Results for this 10-mile Boulder TT will be posted at this link:
Recordracer.com

This is a 5-race series with a race every Wednesday for the next five weeks. I was really pleased to hear about this race series as Colorado does need more time trials, plus the added bonus is having this in the evening and finishing just a kilometer from my house. What could be better than a weekly "neighborhood" TT!

Anyways, the joy was short lived as the pain settled in very quickly after the start. I had a bit of an unexpected rabbit from the gun when Davis Phinney happened to head up the road just about 30 seconds before my start. It took me a good four minutes to even catch him, and he was not even racing or in TT mode. The guy can still crank it out and I've seen him hammer up in the mountains too in recent weeks.

So once I finally caught Davis I had another few minutes before I reached the top of the first climb. Man what a tough start. It takes about six minutes to get up the first hill. I set my second highest CP6 of the year at 419w, but my highest was set (at 428w) in AZ 4,500ft lower than Boulder, so if you account for altitude I set a new record today. Nice bonus. I could never just do that in training alone.

The next battle on the road is a set of two rollers which will stop youi your tracks if you went out too hard from the start on the first climb. I knew to back off a bit leading into these short hills so I could roll over the top of them with good speed. if you enter them too fast and with too high of a "burn" or lactate build up you'll easily loose 30 seconds on each roller.

In the back of my mind I knew my teammate Chuck Coyle started only 30 seconds behind me and I'd measure my result today by whether I could hold him off or not. The last five miles of slight downhill were probably harder for me than the early hills. I don't tend to roll too well on the flat terrain and knew I'd have to have a full effort if I wanted to hold Chuck at bay.

In the end I had a good ride and I did hold Chuck off. I do not know the results at this time but hope to have a respectable time. I think Will F. is racing so I suspect he is the odds on favorite to win.

Caio!
DF

The photo below shows Dr. Lothar Heinrich, myself and Dr Stefan Vogt. They are part of the medical staff for team T-Mobile in Germany. They are based out of the University of Frieburg and Dr. Heinrich is not only the head medical doctor for the team, but also coaches several of the riders.


My day at the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) conference
I had the pleasure of being invited to the ACSM conference Friday by VeloPress. This was a great opportunity to roam the aisles of the expo hall and see all the latest medical and scientific devices and software on the market. One by one I walked by booths representing metabolic carts, motion analysis software, gait analysis products, treadmills, ergometers, and even quit a few
familiar faces from the cycling community.

The cycling community was out in force which was a bit unexpected. It was a bit like attending a min-Interbike trade show. I ran into Stephen Cheung of Pez Cycling news, Ultrafit coach Seiji Ishii, Uli and Daniel of SRM, Erin and Shaun of Colorado Altitude Training (their tent was up to 12,000ft in the booth if anyone wanted to exercise at that height while in their khakis), Chuck from Computrainer, Taro Smith of Boulder Cycle Sport, Neal Henderson of BDR Center for Sports Medicine, and plenty more.

Endurance Radio
Great interview with Ultrafit coach Eric Schwartz here.

Lee Hill/Deer Trail routes:
After posting yesterday's workout I thought it would be interesting to show the map of my interval hill, Lee Hill, and the nasty climb up Deer Trail I did yesterday with Carol Hutton.

82°F
Great workout with Carol yesterday. We did Lee Hill reps. My first three were 3-min. at 395-433, then a last 2-min effort at 455. HR stayed low and I could have done more but Carol was hurting from the altitude and we decided to go up Deer Trail to add some Musc. End. work to the workout (since she hasn't climbed since Tour of the Gila).


I think my form was good because of my long rides over the weekend (9.5hrs in 2 days/16,000ft of climbing) which may have raised my blood volume, especially with yesterday totally off the bike.

I also saw Will Frishkorn out yesterday doing TT efforts up Left Hand canyon. It seems his broken hand he suffered in France won't allow him to oull hard on the bars yet. I hope he is back in action soon. That guy gets a lot of injuries it seems mainly due to bad luck.

Dirk