BAGS SORTED

 

As it is getting quite boring talking about my training routine without a

nice long ride with nice pictures to show, let's talk about preparation.

Part of the journey to prepare for the race in August is to learn what it means to go bikepacking from an equipment point of view. Researching the internet and watching a ton of videos on YouTube, I learned very quick that this is not only about being fit and strong. It is about being very careful in preparation and there is a ton of things that needs to be sorted out like sleeping stuff, lights, tools and replacement parts, food and water, what to wear while on the bike and out of the bike, etc. 

It is a lot of stuff to bring with you on the bike and the first thing that I decided to sort it out was the types of bags that I would be using. I had a lot of questions for what combination of bags should I use. There are many options, like: small frame bag with water bottles or large frame bag with a camelbag in my back or a large frame bag with a water bladder inside? A small handlebar bag in front for the sleeping stuff or shove everything in the saddle bag? Where to hold the battery pack, mobile, passport, etc.

I read many blogs and videos on youtube from people that have done this type of thing before and shared a lot of tips. But at the end there is a lot of personal trial and error and preferences and the advice to adapt for the type of event one is going. So a lot of thinking and experimenting during the training rides prior to the big event is required and that is what I'm planning to do. 

But there are a couple of general advices for any setup. The most common is to keep the heaviest items lower and centered on the bike to help with the center of gravity, the lightest items should be on the handlebar to avoid messing with the ability to manage and steer the bike and make sure they if you have a large saddle bag, they are very secure on the bike to avoid getting the bike off balance.

Another really important point is that a lot of stuff means and bags also mean a lot of weight. And more weight means harder climbing. So, it is not only the weight of everything one has to bring, which I will create a post later, but the eight of the bags themselves. Which added a lot of complexity to my search. It is not only a matter of throwing money at it and buy the most expensive. It has to be also light and considering that I'm not sure I will do an event like this more than once (I know, said the same thing about the Etape du Tour de France), I don't need to buy the strongest.

My research for the cheapest and lightest bags showed the follow results:

Saddlebag

1. Zefal Z Adventure R17 - 17l - 620g - 60 euros

2. Apidura Expedition - 17l - 425 g - 149 euros

3. Ortlieb 16.5 l - 456 g - 135 euros

4. Topeak backloader - 565 g - 65 euros

5. Woho - 13 l - 390 g - 85 euros

6. Columbus - 18 l - 355 g - 42 euros

Handlebar bag

1. ORTLIEB HANDLEBAR PACK - 15L - 420g - 

2. RESTRAP BAR STUURTAS - 14 L - 550g -  100 euros

3. Zefal Z-Adventure - 10 l - 340 g - 50 euros 

4. Apidura Expedition Handlebar - 9 l - 250 - 109 euros

5. Apidura Expedition Handlebar - 14 l - 275 - 118 euros 

6. Topeak front loader - 8 l - 325 g - 60 euros

7. No brand - 15 l - 200 g - cheap as you wouldn't believe

So, all the big brands are quite expensive. And I was very surprised how heavy some of them are. They feel very sturdy and nice when you pick them up in the store, but is that worth the price of the weight you need to carry? And while I was about to buy the hype of all those youtubers telling me to buy (maybe endorsed) stuff, the most expensive Apidura bags, I decided that I will do all my next training using the cheapest and light bags from Columbus and the one with no brand and see how they hold. The Columbus feels a bit wobbly but I will find a way to get it more secure with an extra strap. And the front one is a mystery. We will see in real life conditions...

If all good, then we will see how they last one crazy adventure and if tossed at the end, no big deal. If I get hooked and continue in the future doing this type of crazy shit, I will consider the expensive toys.

FRAMEBAG AND WATER SYSTEM - The only big brand bag I bought was the framebag Blackburn Outpost Elite (even the name is pedantic). And that was for two reasons: it is the only one that fit my frame nicely without leaving too much space unused. And because it has two compartments with a divider in the middle that I can keep or remove.

I thought that would be the perfect way to store water on the top and tools at the bottom. Water is is really heavy and I wanted in securely attached to the center of the bike and I don't have to carry it on me. I also wanted to have opportunity to carry 3 liters and not the traditional 2 bottles of 1 liter, just in case one of the stretches goes thru a desert and it is too long. Read too many stories about it! And I found the perfect one from Evoc that had exactly the dimensions of the top part of the Blackburn.

So, this is all sorted to start testing in real life and I'm really looking forward to get this junk on the road :)

Next decision: sleeping system! Not as simple as you might expect.

WEEK 5 TRAINING FULL & WIND

 

67 kms | 2 h 44 m | 25 km/h avg | wind force 5

Finally a full week of training done with a mix of high intensity training and one ride which was supposed to be endurance training with low heart rate, but it quickly turned into a battle against the wind and a heart rate going thru the roof just to keep moving ahead. The total in the week was 5 hours trained with 2 sessions of intervals on Monday and Wednesday and a longish ride Saturday of 3 hours. This is still 3 hours short of the indicated 8 hours of training per week for events such as an ultra-endurance cycling race. The agenda will have to be slightly adjusted adding one extra hour on the week and two extra hours on the weekend.

The ride on Saturday was absolutely crazy. Left home and decided to ride in the direction of a small island in the Northeast of Amsterdam, called Marker. It is a nice beautiful place with open fields and small wooden houses. But I didn't count on a crazy wind coming at force 5 and the route put me on a constant cross wind for the full 3 hours. On the way to the the wind was cross but sometimes helping, but on the 30 kms back which I decided to take a different route, it was either headwind os slightly from the right. It was a real hard training, pushing and pushing against it just to keep a meager 22 kms / h and sometimes going down even to 18 kms / h. 

At some point I passed a guy on a race bike hiding behind a woman on a normal electric bike. Later, 3 cyclists passed me on a comical slow motion way, advancing inch my inch and everybody having a blast! Há, blast of wind... not funny. It was really brutal and I got home completely empty and a bit dizzy from all the wind gushing thru my ears! I guess it was a good mental resilience training...

PERFORMANCE - Looking at Golden Cheetah,  the software I use to track my training load and how my fitness level is progressing, my performance seems to be going in the right direction. I recorded every training and ride into my Garmin or Tacx and then load into the app. It calculates training volume and based on that your fitness level and fatigue levels which I use to see if the training is going in the right direction and when I need to rest and recover. The graph shows that steady increase in fitness, going around 32 points on Sunday. The higher it gets the harder is to gain fitness but at this moment is pretty low, so I have a lot to increase. The goal is reach around 100 points by August.

The other part of the load is the amount of fatigue one is accumulating (stress balance = fatigue) and that should be used to indicated when to continue training and when to rest and recover. At the end of Saturday, my stress balance was around -24 points, which was a good result of the week but borderline when I need to rest. Indication is at any time below -30, the next day should be a rest / recovery day. Which is exactly what I did on Monday.

All of this is based on Trimp points (See below definition). This is a great way to check how much stress you are accumulating and how much risk of burnout / injury one has. 

A good solid week of training and some good preparations in the equipment front. Some decisions made in terms of water system, lights and bags. But that is a new post for later in the week. 

TRIMP is an abbreviation of TRaining IMPulse. It was originally defined as the product of training volume, measured in minutes, and training intensity, measured as average heart rate (beats per minute or bpm). For example, 50 min at 140 bpm TRIMP = 50 × 140 = 7000.

TRAINING WEEK 3 & 4: BACK IN NL AND CORONA

65 kms / 2 h 41 m / 25.8 avg km/h / wind force 5

Week 3 and 4 of my training plan came and went with a lot of unplanned interruptions again and I am falling even further behind what I expected myself to be doing in terms of number of hours training in the spinning and on endurance long rides. One good thing I managed to do before leaving Brazil to Holland on the 19th, was to squeeze one spinning interval session in the gym my brother arranged. The typical 5 times interval sessions of 3 and 5 minutes. That should have relaxed my body for the trip.

In Holland is when things got a little difficult. On the Sunday, I started the training week with a nice fitness session and thought it would be good start to get back in consistent training mode. Unfortunately I forgot that in the same day I had planned by Covid booster shoot and later in the day my daughter came down with a cold and self tested positive for Corona. So, since Sunday we are in quarantaine.

Monday I woke up feeling my whole body aching and feeling nauseated and I didn't know if it was the booster, the hard training after a long 26 hours trip from Brazil or I was going down with Covid. So, not to risk I had to cancel all sessions planned for the week and we went for an official PCR test. Which confirmed positive for my daughter and show negative to me. 

Things stay like that until Thursday when I started feeling better and planned a Tacx session at home with the goal of now try to stick to the training plan again and hope I don't get infected even if I'm living in a small 2 bedroom apartment with someone positive. We created a couple of rules to reduce the risk of contamination and so far things are going well. I didn't get sick and my daughter is no feeling too bad.

If I manage not to get sick during this time, this is a great proof of the obvious: distancing, cleaning your hands constantly, wearing a mask and vaccination really works. 

On Saturday I decided to do a longer ride and went out for a traditional 65 kms loop around my place. I do this ride quite a lot first because it is a constant ride to compare fitness and performance and because it is just nice almost with any city crossing (only in Hilversum there is a traffic light to stop).  The training was hard because a lot of wind was blowing from the south east, which meant my whole way back was with a very strong cross / head wind. I was not ready to push that much and the last kilometers was a drag to get back home. Felt completely exhausted but I'm happy for not being sick and to be back in training. 

SHOULDERS - Since November last year I started having very strong shoulder pains in both sides. My brother took a look and he believes I might have a calcification of the shoulder bones, which are pinching the nerves. The only solution is to strengthen the muscles around this area of go for surgery. As I don't want to go to the knife too quick, he gave for me a good upper body training scheme using elastic bands and my own weight. This takes only 30 minutes and I will be trying to do every day for the next 3 months before I call my doctor. Today was the first session and I can really feel my heavy shoulders now while I type. The plan is to get rid of this situation before the race in August. 

Training disrupted but not stopped

Tuesday and Thursday spinning interval training. First day 5 x 3 minutes interval. Second day 3 x 3 minutes + 2 times 4 minutes. Really hard training with big chunk of time on zone 4 and 5.

Once again my training plan got a little disrupted. I had to travel unexpectedly to Brazil last week and will be here for 2 weeks. This means just in actual travel I will loose 4 days in total and will be without an bike for those 2 weeks. Luckily I have two things that helped to stay active and keep some type of training during those days: a lot of time in my hands as I stop working after 16:00 due to the different timezone with Netherlands and access to a spinning bike.

The first weekend after I arrived I decided to dedicate it to fitness strenght and stretch. That meant I did 3 days of core and mobility exercizes of 45 minutes with the following sequence: squad + plank + side plank, ribbon upper body 15 pulls for shoulder and upper back, mountain climbers and abs). The upper body work with the ribbons were especially tought because of an injury that I have in both shoulders. My brother (who is a personal trainer) gave me a set of drills and that should be helping in the mid/long term. Just doing those sessions already helped me to go into the midset of stay active and not write off completely the week.

And because of that I decided to look if I could arrange a place to do my interval spinning sessions. Luckily my brother managed to arrange for me to have access to a gym close by that I could use their spinning bike. Simple and nice gym place and OKish bike. But perfect to drive the interval sessions. The first day was on Tuesday when I did 5 x 3 minutes intervals. The heart was jumping very quick to zone 4 (above 156 beats per minute) and also to zone 5 (above 176 bpm). But I manage to complete all intervals without slacking on the bike resistance. On Thursday, the heartrate was going up a little slower and more "in control". And I even managed to increase the size of the last two intervals to 4 minutes and finish the last 10 minutes with a tempo push. I felt much better for doing those sessions and today (saturday), I will go again for my 3rd and last session  before going back to Holland. 

In total, I won't loose completely the two weeks but won't be able to do any long endurance weekend ride that I was planning to start last week. Something around 2 hours. But as the weather in Holand is staying cold, just above 0 degrees Celsius and very misty, I'm not sure I would have done that either... Anyway, good to see the family and the 30 + degrees weather that I actually never missed...

WEEK 3 / FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

 

13 degrees and sunny on January 1st! Global warming anybody?

Today I finishes the 3rd week of training. Coming back to routine of interval training twice per week and an longer endurance ride on the weekend. The first part of the week after coming back from Spain on Tuesday was to log a interval training in the spinning bike on Wednesday and on Friday. Both were 5 repetitions of 3 minutes interval, with some 20 seconds all out sprints in the beginning. Sadly without the heart rate monitor. This is to build up strength and muscular endurance. 

The second part of the training is to build up endurance with longer and longer rides.  Today it was a fantasy weather for a chilled ride to burn calories. 13 degrees of sunny and very mild wind conditions. Did an easy ride from Diemen to Almere Haven in the Markermeer. Totally on feeling as I didn’t have my bike computer with me. I only pushed twice when I was climbing a long bridge. I could feel the heavy legs from the interval training and my back was hurting from the many days sitting and eating. But it was a good start of 2022.

The second week didn’t  count as it was a Christmas break week and I did very little other than rest and eat a ton of good food and calories. One core fitness session and a couple of easy skateboard rides was all I could manage. 

Christmas break in Alicante was great to rest and catch up with my adventure companion. 

WEEK 1 TRAINING SUMMARY

Top of the small and challenging mountain bike trail by the Nedereindse Plas: cold,
muddy and no place to hide when is out of shape.

Finally the first full week of real training. Finished today with a short and hard 1 hour 45 minutes mix of road and mountain bike. This week felt like a proper one with two sessions on the Tacx on Tuesday and Thursday and this one "longer ride" on a real bike outside. I didn't feel particular strong in any of the sessions with clearly low power output especially today in the climbs. I really felt out of shape and high heart rate and sucking air like a vacuum cleaner. But let's consider this is just the beginning and take this as motivation to get down to business for go. No more "kidding" about it.

The ride today is a short mountain bike trail 20 minutes from my home. That is great because with 40 minutes of travel time back and forth there, which leaves me with 1 hour or pure mountain bike training. The place is a single trail route of 6.5 kms that goes up and down a kind of man-made hill. It is the type of dikes / sound barriers the Dutch build alongside their highways. The good thing is when you are going up the inclination is up to 15% in a narrow single track. And this being the end of fall season, was really muddy and slippery. Adding more difficulty to just clear the climb to the top with the back wheel going everywhere under you. It was cold around 5 degrees celsius but at least it wasn't raining

After every climb and one is on the top, it doesn't get easier. The ride on the very narrow single track requires constant attention or else you will be on the ground in a heartbeat, with the front wheel locking in. And the downhills were really nasty with all the mud and dead leaves. No time to really rest before one is down and start climbing again. I think that is good to train technical skills and start getting confidence with the handling of the new bike, which I'm still getting used to the big 29 inches wheel.

I did 3 loops today and decided to call it a day. In a good day I could do 4 or 5 loops but that will be later in better conditions and when I'm back in shape. For now good enough for a winter training.

Top to bottom: heart rate, speed, profile, inclination.

BACK TO TRAINING AFTER COLD

Finally since Thursday I felt good enough to go back into training. Thursday and Friday I did a small and fast mobility training to get the muscles unlocked and supple again. Just 15 minutes of quick stretch and a serie of 2 x10 repeats squat-planks-side planks-plank-squat, followed by 20 mountain climbers, followed by 30 abs and finished with arms curls. The muscles felt really stiff and sore for 3 weeks of inactivity due to the flu but that was expected.

On Sunday I had planned the first actual proper training on the spinning bike. But also had to start conservative. I decide to do the training as a tempo riding / aerobic training keeping my heart rate stable around 150 bpm. Which is the middle of my zone 2 if you follow training based on heart rate zones. After warm-up I kept the resistance on the pedal to a point where I could do around 80 rpm and keep the heart at 150 and just kept on going for 50 minutes. For the last 2 minutes of each 10 minutes, I did standing up on the pedals with more resistance but lower rpm.

The training felt good and legs and body were supple. Not much burning sensation or muscle tearing apart like I had in trainings like these after a long stop of training. I think it came from the two "warm-up" days before. So, I will keep doing that :). And this is a sequence I learn from the bootcamp I started doing with Andrew in Diemen. If you are around Diemen, I recommend. Every Saturday and Sunday under the yellow bridge (Diemen Aalscholverpad) at 10:30 am.

This week, the plan is for 2 interval sessions of 3 minutes and 1 tempo training + fitness. Let's go.

On the bike I have a Garmin. But I found the Wahoo app much better than all others on the spinning bike. Even thinking about switching to them if I buy a new bike computer. Unfortunately for this training, my HR belt stopped working right at the end of the training in the cool down section. That HR at the top is not correct. Should be something around 120 bpm.

YEAR TRAINING PLAN UPDATED

The original plan for next year cycling challenge was to ride the Badlands ultra-cycling event, which is very similar in terms of distance and climbing meters to the Basajaun that I end-up signing up. The two main differences are the location and the dates. Badlands is around Granada and Basajaun is around Vitoria, in the Basque Country. And the reason for signing up for one instead of the other was just bad luck or timing. For some reason, Badlands is way more popular and it was sold-out in minutes, while Basajaun still had open places. 

Another big difference are the dates. Badlands was at the end of September while Basajaun is at the end of July. Which shorten the time to get in shape and training by almost two months. Which will put a little more strain in the training ramp-up. And while I still can't go training due to the strong cold and throat infection I have for a week now, it It was a good moment to review the initial year training plan and adjust for the new dates, the type of training I will do and the number of hours I will be investing on a weekly basis. That also to make me feel better that I'm not out in the rain training or suffering in my Tacx/Spinning bike.

Every year I have an event to participate I like to create a plan with detail of what training I will do every week and which type of training every day of the week. I also plan the intensity and type of training per phases with a ramp-up towards being at top fitness just around the event dates.  I have been doing this for years now out of the The Cyclist Training Bible book from Joel Friel, which was a tip from a good cycling buddy 12 years ago. It is a great book to learn how to train effectively and focus effort, time and ways of training for best outcome. It had helped me a lot in the first years of cycling and I still use it every year to prep and review my plan.

Now the training is more or less completed and I need just to start getting the hours in. I've planned 2 "spinning" bike sessions per week, 2 fitness sessions and one long ride in the weekend. Leaving two days of  rest and recovery. That should be good enough. Later in the year I will select which events I will be participating and complete with more of them as they get confirmed or cancelled due to Covid. I have already included some of the traditional race bikes races that are around my region and will need to look for some new events for gravel / off road riding. The good news is that apparently gravel riding is really hype right now and I should have plenty of opportunities. Another thing I will be planning is a multi-day training ride (maybe two or three days) to get use to it and test myself and my bike setup prior to the race day. Maybe in the south of Holland and Belgium where the steep hills are.

Now I just need to get rid of this cold and start training! 

NEW CHALLENGE: TRANSIBERICA ULTRACYCLING CHALLENGE

Yesterday I signed myself to a new cycling challenge: the Transiberica Basajaun. An unassisted ultra-cycling multiple day event that will take me thru 760 kms of forest, desert and mountain and make me climb 15 thousand vertical meters. That is if I manage to finish it. Running a strong cold, coughing my lungs out and feeling like shit, felt like a great moment to find a new grueling challenge and re-discover motivation to start training when I'm feeling better again.

After 12 years participating in the L'Etape du Tour de France without missing an year, I had decided in 2020 that I was ready to a new challenge. Tired of the same training and 1 day event that usually involved a lot of stress, waking up early and not even riding that much in the week that I was in France. All because we were saving our legs for racing day. So, I didn't sign-up for the race and was ready to hook up with a group of colleagues to do a 12 days race bike cross thru the Pyrenees from France to Spain. 

Sadly, between sickness in the family of one of the organizers and the pandemic, the event got cancelled. Most of the guys were coming from USA and that was not possible anymore. The Etape itself got cancelled and all other events. With no race / cycling event to participate, my training start to slack more and more. And if it wasn't for the annual visit to the Alps with a group of friends to force me to go out training, my condition would have deteriorated to a very bad state. I am the type of cyclist that needs to have a goal. But if that is there, I will train at all costs in any condition.

Well, now I have a goal. A real huge challenge to cycle all those 760 kilometers without any assistance other what you can carry on your bike and what you can find or buy on the way. You are not supposed to arrange anything upfront, like hotels or other places to stay. You are not going to be helped by the organization and they will track you whereabouts all the time to make sure you follow the route and rules. You need to be able to carry your food and liquids, navigation equipment, lights and clothing and sleep in the open in some points. 

I have never done anything like this. Hell, I only once did camping in my whole life. And that was it the backyard of some people. The wildest thing that day was that those people had two basset puppies that wouldn't stop playing! This is whole new level. Of fitness, mental and physical and of planning and preparation. This whole thing will will require a lot learning. 

And that is why I decided to come back and write in this blog after 6 years of absence. I want to document the next 7 months of training and preparations leading out to July 30th and the event itself. All the good moments, frustrations, doubts and hopefully accomplishment of this adventure. And the good news is that I'm not alone. I'm doing this with broader in law, which apart from company and support during the event, will mean I have someone to compare notes during the next training months.

And that gave me a reason to buy a new bike :) some say that was the actual reason why I signed up...

TEAM TOUR DU ALS REUNION

130 kms | 4 h 25 m | avg speed 29.6 km/h | avg hr 135 bpm | 2.264 kcal

Great ride today around Ermelo with the men that participate on the Tour du AlS and climbed the Mont Ventoux in the last 3 years. Good speed, good legs and nice sprints to test the power. Rode the whole day not looking at my heart rate but only at cadence and speed, with the idea to see if by looking at it is making me save too much. It worked quite well as I pushed to my limits during the sprints and sticking to main bunch. Happy with that.

MERGELLAND ROUTE II

Second attempt today to do the Mergelland Route in Limburg. Another failure to follow the route. For one reason or another I never get this one right. This time the Ironman Limburg was happening in exactly good part of the same route we were try to follow. But overall it was a great 96kms ride with Stef and Tom (who took the above picture) and a good climbing training.

I’ve downloaded the route to my Garmin and today I have to say it worked perfect. I didn’t miss any turn and could follow the course perfectly. The only problem is that I’ve set the route in the “easy” direction (clockwise) and not on the way you get all the big climbs. In this way you get the climbs going downhill but the route is full of long false flats, which sucks energy.

We were just going thru the climbs nicely but at around 70 kms we all started feeling tired, what is unusual. Usually one or two are not feeling strong. But this time the legs were not there. Stef and Tom could still drop me on the climbs but they couldn’t do their normal push. At that point it started raining quite heavily, so we decided to stop at a little restaurant to get some coffee and a rice cake (with the vain hope to regain some energy) which are very good in Limburg.

When we finished, the rain has stopped and we continue. But just a little over 2 kilometers we were forced to stop as the road was blocked due to the bike leg of the Limburg Ironman. Tired and not being able to complete, we decided to call it a day and ride straight to the car. Good ride but clearly not my day. I need to focus on strength training…

Clearly I was going the wrong way…

Some say Stef was pushing me uphill.
Some say he was trying to hang on my jersey for dear life.

Coffee and rice cake in Mheer

LIMBURG

130 kms | 4 h 58 m | 26 kmh | avg hr 145 bpm | 2.665 kcal

Tried today to enjoy the great weather doing a ride that I haven’t complete for a couple of years: the mergelland route in the south Limburg. It is a 130 kms ride that goes thru several of the famous climbs in the region. Unfortunately because they stop maintaining the boards that indicates direction and because the Garmin is very bad with navigation, Tom and I lost the route several times and decided to follow the more reliable Amstel Gold Race boards instead. A hard day in the saddle especially climbing the Keutenberg and Kruisweg, two very steep climb with 16% inclinations.

Also hard because Tom is much stronger than me and was dropping me every time. Which meant I had to push hard at the end of the climbs to catch up. Although he was slowing down for me, I didn’t want to let him wait too long and pushing whenever the gradients went below 6%, took some energy. I need to do more of this!

QUICKY

60 kms | 2 h 00 m | 30 km/h | 1053 kcal

SHOULD BE WORKIN IN THE GARDEN

80 kms | 2 h 47 m | avg 28.8 kmh | 150 bp hr | 1.729 kcal

L’ETAPE DU TOUR RACE DAY

Start line in Megeve. 18 degrees at 7 am. 35 degrees later in the day.

Another cycling season closed by the L’Etape du Tour ride. A great long weekend in the French Alpes closed by the most important event of the year for me. And it was again a very hot day in the French summer, with temperatures around 35 degrees, steep hills and hard climbs. The result for me was mixed feeling: I bit my expected target by 16 minutes, finishing in 5 hours and 44 minutes. But finished with the sensation I could’ve done better, could have pushed harder. As in my all of my good Etapes…