What a great week to be a cyclist!  I wanted to just jot a few lines to remind everyone what all is going on this week.  First and foremost, the Tour de France starts this Saturday and it creates a unique opportunity to learn and study race tactics.  I would encourage you to view this race as a crash course in strategy.

The Tour de France

Versus will be airing all of the stages each morning, and then will re-air a two or three hour edited version each night.  Saturday’s coverage will start at 8:30 am . . . during YPYG, but Sunday and most other mornings it will start at 7:30am.  Sunday’s and Monday’s stages will have some fantastic finishes and if you don’t get to watch them in their entirety, at least catch the final thirty minutes.  The final part of those stages will resemble the crits and most of the road races that we will run.  You can watch and learn team tactics from the comfort of your easy chair (or indoor trainer if you’re truly addicted).

Your Best Time Trial Ever

Texarkana Bicycling Club is once again hosting their 8 mile Time Trial this Thursday night at the intersection of Highway 108 and Highway 71.  This is a fantastic opportunity to see what the YPYG camps have done for you.  Last Saturday, we determined our Maximum Heart Rate and our Lactate Threshold.  If you have never ridden a Time Trial based on heart rate, this is a great opportunity.  We did an eleven minute interval Saturday at just-below-LT and it was the best I’ve ever seen our team ride in a paceline.  This twenty-plus minute race will allow you to put that training to immediate use.  If you can concentrate on taking the first minute of your Time Trial to get your heart rate up to just under your threshold, you should be able to maintain that effort for the first seven miles.  After that, gradually work yourself up above your threshold and endure the pain for the last two minutes.  This is a great way to ride your first heart-rate-based TT if you aren’t familiar with this style.  Just remember to adjust your gearing throughout the ride to maintain your heart rate and you should see your best time ever.
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I accept full responsibility.  It was my fault.  I should have learned my lesson last week.  I had proposed a strategy last week that would generate single rider attacks to wear down the opposition and Brady had counter-proposed a two-man attack strategy.   We emailed back and forth and finally decided on the two-man attack proposal . . .  until the warm-up laps, that is.  During those, we scrapped all our plans and went with a more passive “watch and react” strategy.  We lost both sprints and Eric yielded four points to his closest competition.  You would think I wouldn’t make the same mistake this week, wouldn’t you?  Wrong!

James Gillum's attack is reigned in as Dee checks the field for our fearless GC Leader, Eric

The Plan

When we arrived at Burns Park for the final crit in the Ronde van Burns series, we were all on the same page.  The strategy this week was more agressive.  After seeing John Elmore wear himself out chasing me for two weeks during the first two crits, I had proposed an attack on the first lap using Brady and myself.  Dee had counter-proposed an incredible three-man break on lap three.  The prospect of attacking with Brady and Tim on my wheel was too tantalizing to pass up.  That was the plan we arrived with.  That wasn’t the plan we carried out.

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The YPYG session 6 was incredibly productive today.  We did a lactate threshold test and a maximum heart rate test.  We then took these numbers and used them in a couple of high-power intervals.  The last pre-LT interval we did was the best I’ve ever seen our team work.  We had a paceline that sustained over 22mph into a slight headwind for eight minutes with only four riders;  Chris Ross, Kale Magness, John Warmack and Brady Paddock.  They each took turns riding just under their LT and rotated beautifully.  No one dropped off after a pull and everyone took their turn.  The only thing that stopped them was the 6% bump in the road that got in their way.  Great job, guys.

We are going to start from the Genoa High School Parking Lot in the morning.  If you’ve never been there, it’s REAL easy.

Just take Loop 245 from the Interstate and exit on Hwy 196 going East . . . away from town.  Drive until you think you are lost and then look for a school on the right.  You will drive through a small town ( 5 buildings) before you get there, so don’t worry . . .  you can’t miss it.

This is a GREAT place to workout.  One HUGE climb and then about 6 miles of flat, straight, low-traffic, beautiful, smooth highway.

Here is a link to the high school

Link to High School

Well, we won the crit series, yea!  Now, back to work.  I would like to slighly change our direction in the Camp if everyone is okay with it.  We had five hard weeks of training our legs to be mroe explosive and our respiratory systems to recover more quickly.   I know a lot of riders are trying to do the Hotter-Than-Hell 100 this year, and there are a number of important road races coming up so I would like to spend the next four or five weeks focused on building power and endurance.  This will require longer intervals, but they won’t be at maximum effort (generally).  We also have a big Time Trial coming up Thursday and I would really like to see some improvement in our times.  If you have a Heart Rate Monitor, we will begin using it for nearly every interval, so please bring it.  Please post a comment to let us know if you are planning on attending.  We will start again at 8:00am again if that works for everyone.

What a series of crits!  It was a great learning experience and we made enough mistakes in the fourth race that we could spend two weeks reviewing what we learned, but for right now, I wanted to post the pics from the win.  We will have a re-cap Thursday night, but let’s just enjoy this.  Congrats to Eric and all of Team Edge.  This was a team win and everyone played a part.

Bringing Home the Hardware

The team brought home 3 of the 5 places in this event; scoring first, fourth and fifth place.  Brady Paddock was one point off the podium in sixth place.

Kale and Steve are both unavailable Sunday afternoon for the weekly race.  If you are planning on  attending or NOT attending, please post a comment!  Thanks

This week’s race was a tactical nightmare going in.  We had two riders positioned to make the podium and therefore needed protecting. Unfortunately, they were two of the stronger riders on the team which created a bit of a problem.  We had another strong rider still having his USCF status debated and therefore he was ineligible.  We had Dee coming off a monstrous trip back from California and unsure of his legs, and we had four different strategies we were debating.  If we went with the “constant attacks” strategy, with either one or two riders, then we risked losing riders early and wearing ourselves out instead of the competition.  Until the warm-up laps, though, that was the direction we were leaning.  We had decided to go in groups of two until we realized with the five remaining riders, we just couldn’t handle the load and still provide a lead-out for Eric and Tim.  This led us to our most conservative plan of the remaining options.  (Scenario 3 from the strategy email).

The Plan

Under this plan, we would sit back and watch the race until the final laps.  Brady and I would move to the front when the clock showed six minutes left and we would rotate out and keep the pace high enough that it would be difficult for other riders to position themselves for the final sprint. 
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It was a fantastic day once again for Team Edge as Brady Paddock brought home a second-place finish and helped propel Eric Smith up the GC ladder.  After three races, the standings are:

Eric Smith	40
John Elmore – (Pink Jersey this week)	29
Tim Loving	26
Brady Paddock	24
Applegate, Racher, Steve Campisi	20

These totals are based on my calculations. Based on this, as long as Eric comes up with no worse than seventh place next week, the only way he can lose the GC is if John Elmore wins next week. Any finish that is worse than first and Eric takes the win. That means we HAVE to get Eric into the top seven. Of course, fifth is his worst finish of the three races so this shouldn’t be terribly difficult. Essentially, if Eric just hangs onto the back wheel of John Elmore, he will win the series.  Eric has been fantastic in this series so y’all make sure he knows it. The official results will be posted tomorrow and I will update any mistakes I have made. There was some huge tactical decisions this week and everyone needs to understand their ramifications so I will post a re-cap tomorrow night. I do want to mention what a heckuva breakaway Brady ran and what a beautiful lead-out Dee Bell did. It was great to see Dee step in and sacrifice his finish to put Eric and Tim in position to get maximum points. Great TEAMWORK! BTW, my own personal Liz Kreutz was there last night and once again took some fantastic shots.  They are posted here: http://edgecitycycling.com/ronde3/

It is getting warmer and warmer and I want to suggest an earlier start time again for the YPYG camps. In particular, this Saturday as both Ant and I have commitments later Saturday afternoon. I would suggest we start from Timothy’s at 8:00 am Saturday and if anyone can’t/won’t get up that early, they can just join us down on Richmond Road when they get going. You could even park at the church in Wamba if you show up after 8 if that makes it easier for you. There is a chance that I won’t make this weekend’s camp, but I still don’t know for sure. I am planning on being there and doing some cool Heart Rate stuff, so wear your HRM if you have one. With the crit series winding down, we will introduce some different workouts this weekend to help us in our longer, endurance rides. It’ll be fun! not.