An Introduction

This is the first in a series of cycling training diaries, done in conjunction with The FredCast, using products developed by Racermate Inc., ErgVideo Inc. and Online Bike Coach Richard Wharton.

First, a little introduction:

My name’s Ken. I’m 47 years old, with a wife and two kids (10 and 6), a full-time career in the film industry in Southern California, and have been cycling semi-regularly for the past 3 years. A scary--but ultimately harmless--health scare was the wake up call that I had better take my fitness more serious. I went out and bought a bike that seemed reasonably capable of letting me achieve that purpose, and started riding. A year into cycling and I was hooked.

As I learned more about cycling, I realized that to get better I would need some form of structured training. My efforts at self-training have always been hit and miss. I get into a relatively good level of fitness, and then something or other keeps me off the bike for an extended period of time and I lose much of the ground that I had gained. An employer who trained on a CompuTrainer liked it so much that he was kind enough to buy me one as a company bonus. My wife would have preferred the cash.

After a long cold winter working in Toronto, Canada my CompuTrainer has spent the last 6 months in the shipping container as I enjoyed riding in the sunshine in my hometown of Pasadena, CA. Now that our anemic version of winter is settling in, with chilly mornings, early nightfall and the occasional rain showers, I have resurrected the CT and set my bike up in the bedroom for nightly training sessions.

And I have hatched a plan.

My plan is to work with online bike coach Richard Wharton to help prepare me for a couple of cycling events in 2009, and report my progress to you via the FredCast and this training blog.

The first event is the Solvang Century, which will be my third (and most difficult) Century. And second, climbing Mont Ventoux in southern France in July as part of a trip to see some stages of the Tour de France. Rich’s training tools of choice just happen to be the same tools I have been using on and off for the past year--the CompuTrainer and the ErgVideo library.

It is my belief that there are a lot of people in my situation:

1. Hobby cyclists (ie, not racing competitively)
2. Busy home lives with limited time to ride
3. Looking to improve fitness as efficiently as possible
4. Finding it difficult to justify the expense of one-on-one coaching
5. Willing to spend some money on training plans and cycling technology if they work