The Intermontane Challenge Rip Off

Just a quick reminder that the Intermontane Challenge MTB stage race in Kamloops is once again running this year to take big entry fees of us MTB racers and provide absolutely nothing in return.

Will there be adequate course marking?....Nope.

Will there be feed zones?....Nope.

Will there be accurate course maps?....Not a chance.

Will the organiser lie about the prize fund?....Absolutely

Will he make the race up each day and blame every one else but himself for the potentially dangerous incidents, such as lost riders, feed zones not being where they are supposed to be, no course sweep and the list goes on and on? Of course he will because the race is a con.

There are two other great races on in Canada at the same time The BC Bike race and the Test of Metal. Enter these races and you are guaranteed to ride some of the best trails in the world with some of the best race management you could hope for.

If you choose to ride the Intermontane Challenge you risk a very big disappointment both financially and emotionally. In the 25 years I have been travelling the world racing mountain bikes I have never seen such a shambles. And to add insult to injury the organiser, some idiot who claimed to be new to race organisation and expected us to put up with the disaster would not even return our emails requesting a refund after we pulled out after stage 3.

A quick recap of how bad it was

Course marking was so bad only about 2 percent of the field made it home without getting lost on day 1 rendering the race practically null and void on the first stage.

40 + degrees and only 1 feed zone over a marathon distance

The back markers were dropped and lost during the neutral start before they even reached the course proper.

The race organiser led the lead group the wrong way then neutralised the stage when riders who were lost on stage 1 were getting time back, there were riders literally crying at the track side.

The race got worse as it went on, a rider was hurt after a bad crash where there was no medical support and his team mates and competitors including Tinker Juarez had to go to get help. He also got lost and ended up getting a lift home in a truck.

On the final stage Tinker went fishing instead of racing.

If you have entered this bullshit excuse for a race I hope it has some better organisation and that you are not as disappointed as we were. If you are thinking about a last minute entry, please don’t. Do anything else in Canada, ride the trails of Whistler or take a trip to Squamish and pop in to the great Corsa Cycles where you can find out about the local group rides. Chuck Brennan the organiser although he comes across as a simple “I tried my best” type is a calculated con man and his actions in the race last year were dangerous and unlawful he should not have been given a second chance to run this event

Use it or lose it

It’s been far too long since my last blog but that doesn't mean I have given up cycling for fishing, although I am enjoying my fly fishing. I have had an issue with my left hip for some years. I initially thought that it was due to wear and tear as a result of a life of MTB racing separated by 14 years running and jumping about with a big back pack on, then compounded by a further 10 years of bike racing.

An X ray a couple of years ago didn't show any problems, so I embarked on one of my epic training programmes. This was specifically designed for an XC skiing trip I was going on in Norway and the subsequent training routine was a hip and core, strength and stability focused plan which incorporated roller ski work around a local running track (where I did actually manage to tear most tendons in my wrist) along with a couple of hard circuit sessions each week which also helped with my hip stability.

What was noticeable during this time was that my hip pain vanished and my strength in the gym and power on the bike was huge. Now it doesn't take a genius to realise that strong core muscles and a good global fitness is essential for most sports. What was surprising this year at is the age of 38 and with a disrupted year due to our move, even riding on and off road for at least 10 hours during any week and the odd circuit session, how quickly my strength and condition reversed. It got to the point where my hip stability one again gave way to incorrect muscle firing patterns, muscle imbalance, muscle weakness and the dreaded hip pain.

I have given myself a full sports injury evaluation and had a few sessions with a physio to confirm my thoughts on the cause. After a couple of weeks getting back on top of the hip stability and core exercises I am well on the way to recovery, and now I live in a country where I can XC ski so a trip down to the South Island may be on the cards.

I managed to get out on the bike again last week and do some big rides at low intensity and my hip was fine. The picture below shows that winter has caught up with New Zealand and the Mountain is covered in snow and the ski field is open. Winter is very different here compared to Manchester, it pours down for the odd day or two then a high pressure will roll over and it’s like riding on a rare still early spring UK day. Except they come around every week and the temperature will hold around 10-15 degrees it’s just perfect for getting the miles in.

The Good Life

Where to start? It's been so long...

It's been absolutely ages since we've posted anything on our blog, and I've no doubt that many of our regular followers will have long since given up on us. Apologies, and we will try harder.

We touched down in Auckland on December 7th, and had a great Christmas and New Year with the family, all together for the first time in five years. New Year's was spent in the classic Kiwi way - camping at the beach. We drove all the way up to Taupo Bay in the Bay of Islands (not in Taupo as I'd originally thought) with my brother Rod and sister-in-law Jess, and it was everything a beach holiday is supposed to be. New Year's eve was spent in deck chairs on the lawn at somebody's bach, playing guitar, singing (badly in my case) and eating crayfish and snapper that had been caught that day. Good friends, good times and an endless starry sky. I've never felt so profoundly happy to be home.

The Patterson Training team tent, put to good use in the Taupo Bay campground.

Rod (left) and Andy somewhere we rode out to on our bikes in the Bay of Islands.

Back home in Taranaki, Andy's also found the fishing bug. It's taken him a fair few goes at it, but he's started catching a few Kahawai, an ocean fish he's caught by surfcasting on the beach. Last week we sat down to a 100% home grown meal - sweetcorn, peas, cabbage and new potatoes from out of our garden and Kahawai from Andy's line. We had a good joke about living "The Good Life". Andy's now turned his hand to fly fishing, which hasn't been such a huge success. So far he's hooked up a hole in his Gore-Tex jacket, and last night caught the fly hook in the back of his own neck. So we spent the rest of the evening in A&E with the gout-ridden obese people and the kids with pots on their heads waiting to cut Andy free of his line. Hopefully he'll get his casting technique a bit slicker before he loses an eye.

Andy's Kahawai. Tasted good too. Still waiting for the trout.

Taranaki is one of the few places in the world with black sand beaches. The sand has a high iron content and is super fine and velvety soft. It gets really hot though.

Our biggest task since coming home has been clearing out the basement in my parent's old house, which is where Andy and I are now living. Mum and Dad have moved into their newly built home on the other side of town, and the upstairs stuff has been successfully shifted over, and our stuff moved out of the container and into what is now our new home. The basement is taking a little longer. My Dad is an engineer, car builder, bike builder and tinkerer of the highest realm, and his basement is 30 years' worth of tools, machinery, jems and junk. Getting it all shifted across into the new (much bigger) basement is a work in progress, and everything had fallen into disarry over the past year, but we have our bikes in now and it's looking a lot better than it does in this pic.

Andy and Dad spent four hours cleaning up so they could clear a path to the lathe and make a space for my Scalpel.

And what about riding bikes? We haven't been neglecting our bikes either, in fact I raced on January 31st in the Round the Mountain, which is a local race and this year was part of the Elite National Road Series. It's a bit of an odd setup, whereby the main field of non-elite riders goes out at 8am, and the Elite women go off at 10am. The Elite men then set of 15 minutes after the women, so for us it was a matter of keeping things ticking over until the men came past, and then trying to hang on for dear life. There were only about 15 women and 20 men, so it was touch and go.

I got in with the very lead men's group and hung with them for a bit, but when they started to attack I got spat out. I tried so hard to get back in with the group that when the next bunch came through, both men and women, I didn't have the legs to jump in with them. It was bad timing on my part, and I ended up having to work with a bunch of five women off the back of the bunch, who were working hard, but simply couldn't keep up the pace. I made a break from them with one other girl, and we had a two-person break working for the rest of the 175km race, but there was no chance of catching back up with the boys. I had a good ride but finished out of the podium placings, and I was kicking myself as I knew I was strong. Road racing is all about timing though, and I just didn't get it right this time.

We're also enjoying being part of the local MTB club, and took a women's skills day in the local forest, Mangamahoe, a couple of weeks ago. About 30 women turned up, which was a great turnout for a local event, and some of them were really keen and great riders. We spent the day working the trails at Mangamahoe, including some freshly dug switchbacks and berms, then had a barbeque in the middle of the forest with sausages paid for by Sport Taranaki. All good.

There's a race on this weekend with the club, it's a 3-hour team or solo event. Andy's thinking about going solo, whilst I'm planning on turning up on the day and teaming up with whoever needs an extra rider. You could say I'm taking it easy for a bit.

Jenn

2 Days to push

The fact that I am leaving the UK to start another chapter in my life in sunny New Zealand is beginning to sink in. I changed a few simple lines on the website to state we are now a New Zealand based company, a simple task that doesn't give the full picture of how hard I will have to work to build my business in a new country.

Jenn has been getting as far away from the damp Macclesfield climate as much as she can, enjoying a break from work visiting her team mate Ruth in Brighton, and its just as well as we have had rain every day since we packed the flat up over 6 weeks ago. She did manage to get out on a short ride with Danni Rider who was up getting tested, and the rain did stay away for Jenns last ride in the Peak. She told me the other night she went to church with Ruth for what she thought was a fun carol service but turned out to be a full on sermon. As we are not religious folk she had trouble not cracking up, it is a load of nonsense that makes no sense.

I too have been staying off the bike as much as I can, running for an hour 2 times a week and have done some good gym sessions on the rower which I should have chosen as a sport instead of trying to compete against 65kg whippets in a power to weight critical sport. I always like doing power lifting exercises as they use my whole body and with a light weight I can do quite a few reps and get some high heart rates.

The next time I blog will be on my way to NZ or once I am there. Wish us luck and stay tuned to see how Patterson Training evolves.

The Marathonists

Dave Hayward and Mike Powell are the most dedicated athletes I know
but someone is lying on their food diary.

Training Log No2

Ok just a quick blog to keep you up to date on my training. Since last time I blogged Jenn and I have moved in with my family living out of 1 (rather large) Powerbar kit bag each. The situation is good and bad in that we have my mums cooking to look forward to most days, however that is also the bad bit as she still thinks I'm 13 years old and there is a need to feed me up. Me size portions don't mean a great deal in the Patterson household.

So moving swiftly onto the training, and body mass..... well what can I say the house is full of rich food and chocolate digestives so no change there I'm afraid 81.5 kg and my body fat using the electrical impedance is a shocking 15 %. There is a good side to over eating, yes you heard me right my body is a bit more of a carbohydrate burning furnace than It usually is albeit at the expense of my ability to burn fat for fuel but I will focus on that aspect of the training in a couple of weeks when I get to the sunnier NZ climate and I can get some big easy miles in without fear of being washed away.

So what is the benefit of this carbohydrate furnace? Well when there is a lot of glycogen in the muscle and glucose in the blood the enzymes that allow me to fuel forceful contractions are prevalent. I still need to teach my brain to fire the muscles more forcefully but when I do ask them to do contract hard I have the fuel supply working at a very high level.

The result of this is that I am able to put in some good strength work on the bike as you can see from strength section of my training session below my seated over geared efforts are creeping up to the 600 watt mark for 1 minute and I hope to be able to hold 1 minute at over 600 watts before I leave for NZ in a couple of weeks.

I have also seen a couple of new 5 second mean maximal values as I have got my body used to high velocity muscle contractions but these have been done away from the force work after a period of recovery, as I'm sure you are aware trying to co-ordinate your legs at high speed in sprint drills is a no go when force reps are a large part of the training. If sprinting is your thing, make sure you do the speed work first so you are building power onto good form and high leg speed not the other way around.

Apart from working on strength I have been doing the easy rides but not staying on the Cheshire plain, I have been cruising around the peaks just taking it easy and trying not to stray into zone 3 unless I'm doing specific tempo intervals. I am well aware of how efficiency is such a key component of endurance racing (2-6 hours) and I have a set pattern of aerobic training that can shift my aerobic threshold (not my OBLA (LT2) to some quite high power outputs, although it is sometimes hard to hold back during the long aerobic rides and focus on cadence rather than power and doing it in bad weather doesn't help so the lions share of that training can wait a few weeks.

Jenn is enjoying some down time although she has been commuting most days keeping the miles in. And down time in another form as she was knocked off the scooter the other day which we had just fixed up. She is not badly injured as the impact was low speed (get well gifts of chocolate and Campagnolo ergo 11 spd shifters can be sent to me and ill pass them on... honest!) It highlights the problems of commuting in this country where drivers seem to have forgotten that you look right, left then right again before pulling out, not right then left then pull out still looking left. Its all very well delivering bike ability courses to get people out of cars and onto bikes but its damn dangerous at rush hour times. Drivers need educating as much as cyclists, perhaps a week commuting on a bike should be part of the driving licence that would make drivers be more aware.

The End is Nigh...

Or at least I hope it is. Andy and I have been living in a half-packed state for weeks now, and tonight is the last night in our flat before we move in with Andy's parents for a few weeks. The Patterson Training team bus and all our furniture and possessions will be loaded into a container bound for New Zealand on Monday.

The Rush, the Scalpel and my winter training bike are being packed away as I write this, so it will just be the Little White Bike for a while. Part of me thinks it would have been nice to get out for one last blast around Macclesfield Forest before we leave, but I've never been the sentimental type. I know I'll be back to ride around the Peak District hills that I've called home for the past 10 years. Right now I'm thinking about Mt Taranaki and the start of summer.

It's an all new start for Patterson Training. We've invested in an exciting new software system called Training Peaks, that will allow our clients to log in to their training plans from anywhere in the world. Andy will post up more details about Training Peaks once we've got this moving business out of the way.

By moving our permanent base to New Zealand we can drop a lot of our overheads and invest more time and money into providing the best service for our clients, both here in the UK and in New Zealand. So our clients need not worry - it won't be business as usual, it will be better than usual. The Patterson Training website, Trackside blog and our email addresses won't change either.

For me, I've got a new set of goals to look forward to. The New Zealand National Road Race Champs are on 10 January 2010 in Christchurch, and I'd like to have a go. Aside from that, I'll be riding the Round The Mountain road sportive in Taranaki on 30 January, and the NZ National XC Champs and Oceania Champs in February and March. It's a short season, to be followed by my first NZ winter since 1998.

I might even dust off the old snowboard.

End of Season Sale

PINK Hope Team Edition Mono Mini Pro Brakeset
One of only two sets in the world.

It's that time of year again, and we are selling off some of our kit to make way for new stuff. I've had a great deal of interest in my special edition pink Hope gear this year, which is hardly surprising as it is a bit special. I was the only female XC racer on the Hope Factory Team this year, so my custom pink kit is unique. There are only two sets of these brakes in the world - I'm keeping one and selling the other.

For pics and a rundown of the Hope kit take a look at my original review.

These are 2009 Mono Mini Pros (not the standard Mono Minis, which are available to the public in pink), and they come with a set of matching pink 6-bolt floating rotors. The Moni Mini Pro is being phased out for 2010, so there will never be another set in this colour. As I've had so much interest during the year for these, I'm offering them here before auctioning them off to the Giro-mad Italians. Email me at jenn@pattersontraining.com if you are interested. £300 for the set.

Minoura RDA 850 Turbo Trainer

This is about three years old but is in really good order. I've been using it for warming up before races, but otherwise it hasn't had much use (I'd rather ride in the rain than train on a turbo). Can be used for MTB or road bikes. These retail for about £175 new. We're selling ours for £75.

Training Log No1

I said I would put my training for the New Zealand Round the Mountain road race up on the blog so here it is. Why you may ask? Well I spend so much time mulling over hundreds of files and feedback reports from my clients that I find it hard to spend the time to fully plan my own training. A couple of good results in my last two MTB races has revived my enthusiasm for hard training, but that doesn't mean I am in any good shape or form. I'm not - in fact it was only my technical skills and my ability to suffer that has allowed me to be competitive in the last couple of races. I have a lot of work to do if I am to get good road speed in time for the New Zealand race at the end of January.

It all started today, with my power profile to establish strengths of each energy system. Maximal values are taken for 5 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes and for power at the onset of blood lactate accumulation (OBLA). These values give a reasonably valid, but more importantly, an easily repeatable indication of the strength of the neuromuscular system, anaerobic ability, aerobic capacity and muscular endurance. The results of the power profile are as follows.


5 seconds. 1400 watts
1 minute. 615 watts
5 minutes. 410 watts
OBLA. 320 watts


These values are divided by my body mass (80 kg), giving a power to weight value in watts per kilo (w/kg) which are then plotted on the power profile shown below.

Click on the image for larger view

As you can see, I'm not in good shape. To maintain a good all round cycling ability I need to raise my anaerobic power (1 minute mean maximal power) as this is clearly lacking behind the other energy systems and is a key component in road racing and mountain bike racing.

As this table is relative to my body mass one of the key areas I need to improve is my body composition, dropping some unwanted body fat will push all the power profile values up, improving my speed on climbs, my ability to accelerate and reduce my frontal area for flat terrain speed.

Click on image for lager view

The body composition values are taken three times from each skinfold site then the average is noted. The values don't look that bad on paper, but I am 6 feet 4 inches tall and 12mm of fat spread over quite a sizable abdomen adds a fair amount of dead weight and the same goes for the rest of my body. I know I am overweight by about 3-4 kg and am very healthy at this weight, but the speed increase on climbs is very noticeable at 76 kg, so that has to be my target.

That's some of the initial and very basic testing done, there is much more that I need to test, such as my efficiency, core strength and flexibility, but that can be done later. Field testing using the SRM power meter during longer training rides can be very valid and there is nothing stopping me conducting a full blood lactate profile after each training phase. The next phase is to evaluate the demands of the Round the Mountain race against the strength of each of my energy systems and set some goals, but that's a job for tomorrow.

British Mountain Bike Series - Round 5 Plymouth
Saturday, September 26th 2009

By Ruth Mordaunt

I have waited purposely to post my brief race report as not only did I enjoy reading Andy’s report below but more importantly his last paragraph expressing his adoration towards Jenn. It needed to be framed in the limelight for awhile before I rattled on about me!

To keep it brief, I had an excellent result for the last race of my season. The usual suspects were on the start line for a four lap race. However, Nina Davies (Ogmore Valley Wheelers) – whom was leading the British Series was nowhere to be seen and then Alli Northcott (Shred Racing) appeared in stealth like action on the start line, not having raced against her before, but knowing how strong she was when she helped our team at the Bedford 2-day road race. Due to a delay to the start, they set the Master Women off with the Junior Females, Expert Females and Veterans Female. It was a fast and frantic start but the opening climb sorted us all out and entering into the first section of singletrack I had no major hold up problems.

Alli, Kim Hamer-Hurst (Owens Cycles-Scott), Emma Bradley (Torq) and Malin Tindberg (West Drayton MBC) were all spaced out in front. So it was head down and start working hard. Andy’s motivational words during my warm up was “power on the climbs you southern softie!” It helped! I passed Emma and Malin on the second climb on the first lap. I could see Kim up in front, but I had lost sight of Alli within the first 5 minutes of the race. I could also see Maxine Filby (A5 Rangers) leading Expert rider just seconds in front, but she was looking strong. I used Maxine to help pace me and by the second lap I had passed her, but she was always hot on my tail. This helped me to remain focused on keeping the power on and track down the leaders. The course was super fast with two river crossings per lap and some short sharp climbs that zapped the power out of your legs before the super fast flowing single track, which I enjoyed with lots of smiles.

Unfortunately I was unable to catch Alli or Kim, whom finished respectively and I took bronze. I was really pleased with how strong I rode.

With the results all toted up from the series I finished second in the British Mountain Bike Series 2009. Excellent, considering I was not going to race much this year due to the traumatic loss of my father back in April and the lack of any kind of consistent training.

So this leads me nicely on to sending a huge thank you to Jenn and Andy whom have given me consistent support and belief in me as a racer especially when the chips were down. I feel proud to be part of the Altura Patterson Training Race Team. A huge Thank You and I wish you much love and happiness in New Zealand.

Thank you to all other sponsors too, for if it was not for the brilliant superlight Cannodale Scapel and other bike components and products, I could not have raced so well without the support given to me. Thank you all.

As with the look on the picture, it is time to recover (what a state!), reflect and refocus on next year’s goals.

Happy pedalling

Ruth