Position, Positioning and Power

After having a few position related lower back issues. thursday this week I was Taken by Peter Horn, to visit Frans Vanmarcke, an expert in the art of building a riders bike to fit their body. Having fitted many of the top pro's during his career including Eddy and son Axel Merckx, as well as Jan Ulrich, I was expecting wonderful things, despite one team mate returning with a position resembling that of a cylosportif rider. Considerable time was spent measuring body part ratios and then crunching the numbers resulting in a chart with the perfect bike dimensions/geometry for my body.
The challenge then became replacing/swapping parts on my team bike so that it conformed to my ideal position which took quite some time. once everything was in order, except for the stem length which needed to be swapped for a 130mm when i got back to the team house, I was on my way, riding home from the bike fit. Immediately I noticed the difference in pedal stroke, which felt more fluid and efficient, and once the stem was swapped to be the same as what the calculations had stipulated i noticed the difference in the pressure of my hands on the hoods.

The following day i head out for a ride with Addison, one of the yanks, to recon the course of a small kermese we were both put down to race. After susing out the course and doing a few hard laps both of us felt confident that the next day would be a good race, until i returned to the apartment to find out that i would not be racing the small Kermese but another Large UCI race near Liege in the east of belgium. With daylight saving ending, meaning the clocks would be wound foreward an hour, and an early race start and subsequent early departure from the teams base there was little time to prepare.

AALST - TROFEE v HASPENGOUW was a 150km race consisting of one large, 100km lap, followed by 5 local laps. The temperature was COLD, due to the strong icy wind and despite the shunshine early the forcast was for rain. It was essential to be near or at the front with our teams 3 protected rider Peter Horn, Paavo, and Roderic Muscat, to help them maintaing good position and be best prepared fro the inevitable carnage of the crosswinds at the 20km mark and 50km mark. Finaly starting to feel comfortable in the bunch i was able to do my job until the second crosswind section blew the race to pieces, when i took Roderick who had fallen earlier in the race toward the front before the legs went KABOOM! and i slipped back to the next echelon. Job Done.
It turned out to be a disaterous day for the team with roderick succuming to the injuries from his early tumble and witdrawing as well as both Peter and Paavo falling in seperate incidents, meanwhile carnage involving several other team mates occured at the kermese i was originally scheduled to do.

The following day, Monday was scheduled to be a rest day, but after the team manager decided i would be in the pre selection for some more larger races i would be required to go visit the Radioshack Team Doctor, to do some lactate/Power testing so that he and my team manager could decide on a training program that would best prepare me for upcoming races.
for those of you who dont know about lactate/power testing or havent done one before they are not fun. Basically you ride on a stationary bike with your power output controlled by a computer which increases the required power output by 50 watts every 3 minute until you Blow Up meanwhile drops of blood are taken and analyzed to determine how much lactic acid your muscles are producing at the various power outputs.

"Whoopdee doo basil what does it all mean?" you say. Lactic acid is produced by muscle when you are excercising and limits the extent to which you can exercise/operate. any level up to 2 milli mole of Lactate is the point where the body can break it down as quickly as it is being produced. anything over this and it begins to build up, and at 4mMol starts to hurt. I made it up to 10.7 mMol but Blew Up just short of the 450watt mark, registering a 2mMol lactate level at 322 watts and a 4mMol lactate level at 375 watts, which i am told is fairly good and should enable me to be competative in the racing here, meaning my skill/ability to race efficiently is what is holding me back (ie positioning in the bunch being infront of splits and out of the wind etc).
So for now my trainin will be focussed on increasing the power outputs of both my 2 mMol and 4mMol points so that my body is producing less lactate at higher power.
So basically the goal of training is to increase the power output for both points.