Testing at Boulder Center for Sports Medicine~

Cesar Grajales is training in Boulder for the upcoming Tour of Utah August 7-12th. The altitude and mountain rides around Boulder should really benefit him and be perfect training prior to such a hard stage race.

Last week Cesar included a day of testing at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. We first conducted a lactate threshold ramp test which increased 25 watts every four minutes. At the end of each stage blood was drawn from a finger and then analyzed for the amount of lactate in his blood. Cesar's LT wattage occurred at 350watts and a HR of 174. This should help Cesar dial in his lactate threshold intervals on both the road and TT bikes.

What a Weekend...Cycling heaven in Colorado!

First Saturday was Mt Evans and then Sunday was the CO Eagle River Ride. Both events had plenty of support. nearly 1,000 riders showed up for Sunday's race and there had to be aleast that many Saturday too.

Mt Evans:
Bob Cook Mt Evans Hill Climb: Somehow I talked myself into racing it this year. I always hurts so much racing it but then the finish line and experience along the way makes it so worth while. I had to get up early and drive over from Vail as I was staying there with my family in order to do the Colorado Eagle River Ride on Sunday.

Mt Evans stats:
Very slow start. This added at least an additional 3 minutes to the overall time. Here is my screen shot from Cycling Peaks Software. I rode the race in a time of 2:05. Scott Moninger won again beating Ned Overand. Man talk about beating the youn guys. Add to this that Michael carter was 3rd and it looks like age has its benefits. I still have hope?

Colorado-Eagle River Ride, Vail CO July 23rd.

Here is the crew: Mom (Joyce), Dick Stebbins, Jane Stebbins, me, Kerstin Lieff.

We took off at 7am from the start line at Beaver Creek and headed west our of the Vail Valley. This was an amazing 100-mile loop. I have to applaude the organizers on their hard work. Every 20-miles was a well stocked aid station along the very safe route. Riding north west of Vail is like riding the outback of Colorado. I've lived in CO for 36 years and been in Vail hunderds of times and yet never explored the area. I fell in love immediatley and definitely have to make a point to go back soon to explore more of the tranquil roads.

Here is my mom showing the proper technique for riding on dirt roads. Way to go mom! We had a great time on these back roads of Colorado.

Great job Jen's!
(Hopefully you'll be sending us your file from the SRM today:)

I'm sure floyd is pretty focused now on not letting any other guys slip up the road and threaten his possibility of winning. He has plenty of time and like he said in his interview "as long I win in Paris I don't care who holds the yellow now."

The boys like Levi and Sastre may have more to lose than Floyd right now if they want to make the final podium spots in Paris. As you can see I am predicting that Floyd will win the Tour this year but that isn't too surprising. he is the odds on favourite right now. Sastre, Levi, Evans, and Menchov need to be careful who rides up the road in breakaways and their teams may have to take on some responsibility on the front just like Floyd's Phonak guys will. I can envsion Floyd calling those guys (Evans, Menchov, Sastre) out and making it a point to let certain danger men go up the road which would put pressure on those guys to chase and preserve their podium positions. Kloden would be a good one to attack and try to gain back time.

A lot will happen though in the Alpes and al of this may be far off once the Alpes are over with.

Ciao!
Dirk

Review of Vandevelde's First Nine Days Of the Tour de France:
The grey bars above in the chart show Christian's daily TSS values- TSS is relative to Functional Threshold Power (a 60-minute TT). So a score of 100 means you did a full one-hour TT. A score of 300 means your body "felt" relatively the same fatigue afterwards as if you did three one-hr TT's.

Sunday’s stage was the hardest so far for Vandevelde with a TSS of 308. Today's stage on the other hand was his easiest yet with a TSS score of only 146. As long as he gets good sleep he should be good to go for tomorrow’s first day in the mountains.

The biggest, and craziest wattage reading I’ve seen so far this tour has been Jens Voigt’s highest 6-minute average of 515w! He set this on stage 6.

Sleep well and we'll all be up early tomorrow to catch all the action in the Pyrenees!

Google Earth Blog: Tour de France 2006 in Google Earth
This is amazing! If you use Google earth this is well worth downloading. Visit this site above and download the 2006 Tour route. The file updates itself with live GPS data from the riders and even gives time checks between leaders and chase groups. Truly amazing!

Bobby Crashes out of the Tour Time Trial!!!!!
Christian just caught Levi in the TT! What is going on Levi! Come on pick it up.

GREAT JOB Christian. This is certainly no surprise as we've ben predicting all week long.

This Tour de France data is good stuff! Christian Vandevelde's daily data just keeps coming into us at CyclingPeaks.com and I keep updating my Cycling Peaks Software reports (I hope you are too!).

The numbers are starting to write a story that has never been written before. This is unheard of to have acces to so much raw, downloadable data. It must be the first time in history that the public has access to this amount of Tour de France physiological data.

The story portrayed within this data is the very unique and personal story of American Christian Vandevelde of team CSC. Every Tour de France cyclist has his own limits when it comes to wattage, heart rate total workload capabilities. Christian has opened up a window into his heart, soul and personal Tour de France history for all to share. Christian is one of the best professionals America has ever produced and he is definitely top 10 US ridrs in my book. He entered the Tour after having won the Tour of Luxemburg and placing top 15 overall in the Tour of Switzerland (6th in the final Time Trial). His job is to work for the CSC team leader (which was Ivan Basso and is now American Bobby Julich) and be as fresh as possible when the mountain stages start in week two. So far so good. He has finished each stage in good position and from the looks of his files he hasn't struggled too much so far. In fact he is in a recovery mode for close to 2hrs of each day's 5-hour stages (he coasted for 90 minutes in stage 1).

My partners and I at TrainingPeaks.com and Cycling Peaks Software will keep bringing you the best in training and racing analysis tools. Believe me this isn't too hard as we love this stuff and are living our dream. Thanks for all the support.

Be sure to go get Christian and Jen Voigt's data at http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/2006tourdata.asp and tune in during the stages to view live data feeds.

Go Christian!

Finally or first TdF Power file!
Stage 2 Christian Vande Velde
Here is Christian's stats from today's stage.

Entire workout (183 watts):
Duration: 6:01:56
Work: 3983 kJ
TSS: 287.5 (intensity factor 0.69)
Norm Power: 262
VI: 1.43
Distance: 144.252 mi
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 782 183 watts
Heart Rate: 0 240 14 bpm
Cadence: 29 253 91 rpm
Speed: 0 59.3 23.9 mph
Pace 1:01 0:00 2:31 min/mi
Crank Torque: 0 742 170 lb-in
Peak 5s (726 watts):
Duration: 0:06
Work: 4 kJ

Overall this looks like a fairly easy day for Christian as he was no where near his max power at any duration.
-His Critical Power 6 was 368 and he can easily do 410w+ for over 6 minutes.
-He eather coasted or pedalled below 20rpm for 85 minutes of the 6hrs
-Most of all he missed being in the crash with 2k to go!

Hopefully Christian can complete the first week's stages with this much ease everyday and enter the stage 7 time trial and then the Pyrenees with relatively fresh legs.
Dirk

Live Tour data on now! Look for file downloads at http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/2006tourdata.asp

A Family of products for the ULTIMATE Analysis of Cycling, Triathlon & Running Workouts

We are posting links to live Tour de France Power and Heart Rate data at CyclingPeaks.com. Look for same day postings of CSC rider Christian Vande Velde's SRM data too!