Battenkill Gran Fondo

My journey to the Battenkill Gran Fondo started back in January. I had done the Centurion 50 in Lake George last year, finishing first in my age group and 6th woman overall. I really looked forward to doing that race again, and maybe doing one or two other Centurion events in the series. I found out in January that all of the Centurion events in the U.S. had been cancelled, and only the events in Canada would take place this year. Around the same time, I received information that the Tour of Battenkill was replacing the Sunday Pro UCI race with a Gran Fondo. Some of my cycling friends have done the Pro/Am race at Battenkill, and I had really wanted to ride the course some day. I had heard it was very challenging, and I knew I really couldn't be competitive in a Women's Cat 4 field, so the Fondo was a perfect opportunity to fulfill that wish, and a good replacement event for the Centurion. Through the Spinervals Cycling group page, I knew that a couple of my fellow Spinervalites were doing the race. Eddie and Kelly Mendoza had both signed up for Saturday's race, but with the announcement of the Fondo, Kelly switched her entry to Sunday. We talked back and forth, and with fingers crossed for decent weather, picked March 16th to meet in Cambridge, NY to pre-ride the course.
The pre-ride went well. The weather was sunny, low 30s, and no wind. The signature dirt roads of the Battenkill course were dry, and we had a great day. I was fairly pleased with my endurance. March is very early in the season to be doing a 65 mile ride, especially one that includes 16 miles of dirt roads and 5000' of climbing. I definitely credit all my hard work with the Spinervals Super 6 training plan with giving me the early season conditioning and endurance to tackle that course. The course is no joke; all ups and downs, with very few flat sections. The hills are short, steep, punchy hills--just the type I've always struggled with. I prefer long, gradual climbs, where my personal power-to-weight ratio gives me an advantage. I had difficulty with Juniper Swamp Road. It's a dirt road with a viciously steep little climb. The road there was a little wet, and when the pitch became uncomfortably steep, I stood up on the pedals to gain some power. Mistake! My rear tire started to spin, so I sat back down. By then I had lost all forward momentum, and after another attempt or two alternating between sitting and standing, I had to get off and push my bike up the hill. That pissed me off. I've only done that once before. I did fine for the rest of the ride, actually feeling a little stronger on the last two big climbs--Meeting House Road and Stage Road. I averaged 13.8 mph for the ride, and I wasn't very happy with that. Yes, it's a difficult and challenging ride, but I knew I'd have to do better than that on race day to finish well. After the ride, we went out to dinner with the Mendozas and had a great time. One of the nice things about our Spinervals Cycling page is that I feel like I've known many of these people a long time. Eddie, Kelly and I just clicked together, like we'd known each other our whole lives.

Fast forward to the weekend of the race. I had reserved a hotel room in Saratoga, NY for Saturday night. In retrospect, I wish we had gone down Friday night so we could've helped Kelly work the feed zones for Eddie and two of their friends who were racing that day. We left about 10:00 Saturday morning, made good time to Saratoga, checked into the hotel and headed to Cambridge. It took us awhile to find Kelly. We browsed the expo and neighboring businesses, finally found Kelly and stood at the finish line to cheer Eddie in. The Mendozas invited us for dinner at the house they rented. What a nice evening, visiting with the whole Mendoza clan and friends. Headed back to the hotel for a decent night's sleep.

We had a nice, solid breakfast at the hotel and drove out to Cambridge with about an hour to spare before the start. Turns out we had the start location wrong, so it was a good thing we were early. I was struggling with what to wear. It was cold and windy. If the sun had come out to stay, it would've been ok, but it didn't. I got all the way to the start and realized I'd forgotten my timing chip, and had to ride back to the car. I had plenty of time, it just made me panicky. Two guys that I ride with locally were doing the Fondo. I found them and Kelly well before the start. All four of us started together. It was a fast first hour, averaging over 17 mph. We stayed together until the first climb at seven miles in. Kelly rode out a little ahead and one of the guys went with her. The other guy got dropped on Juniper Swamp (I made it over on the bike, yea!), and Kelly waited up for me. We all met up at the first rest stop at mile 25. The Joe Bean climb was right after, and Kelly and I attacked together. We dropped the guys, and Kelly gapped me, I kept her in sight for awhile, but then lost her. I rode the rest of the race pretty much alone. I basically rode with the same group of 20 or so people. I would beat them up the climbs, and they'd blow by me on the downs. I tried grabbing wheels, but after I recovered a bit, they seemed too slow, so I'd pass, but they wouldn't grab my wheel. Or they'd blow by me too fast for me to get their wheel, but then I'd just catch them on the climb. It did get mentally tough after awhile. The wind made it difficult, and seemed to always be a headwind no matter which direction I went in. I did get a little bit of a tailwind push up Meeting House and Stage, which was awesome. My husband Wayne, Eddie, and Amanda--the Mendoza's friend, were just awesome. They were at both feed zones--I only spent a couple of minutes at each one--passed by me a couple of times, honking their horns and shouting encouragement. They actually stopped on the steepest part of Meeting House, cheered, took pictures, and Eddie ran alongside me, a la Tour de France. When I finished the last climb on Stage and got back on pavement, I pushed it as hard as I could for the last five miles. I averaged 15.1 mph for the race, and finished in 4:21 (Link to Garmin file). Finished 4th in my age group out of eight, 13 out of 27 women, and 125 out of 196 finishers. Not bad for an old, skinny woman. One difference between Battenkill and Centurion is that there weren't as many women at Battenkill, and the ones who showed up were serious riders.

When it was all said and done, I decided that I loved the dirt sections. They are speed and power sappers, but they make the ride so much more interesting. Now that I know the course a little better, I will ride it more intelligently next time. I can't wait to go back next year!

Tanita InnerScan BC-533

I've been using the Tanita Inner-Scan BC-533 for about a month and a half now, and I feel I have enough data to draw some conclusions. I chose this particular model of Tanita because, at $85.00, it seemed to be a good value for the price. It's advertised as the best selling scale on the market. The next model up was not only a lot more expensive, but provided more data than I was interested in having. Between my Kurt Kinetic inRide and my Garmins 110 and 500, Training Peaks and Garmin Connect, I feel a little overwhelmed by all the numbers I'm looking at every day. However, I really do want to gain muscle, and just tracking my weight every day wasn't giving me any useful information about if and how all the training and eating was helping me accomplish that goal.
This model of the Tanita provides the following data: weight, body fat %, body water %, muscle mass/physique rating, bone mass, visceral fat, daily caloric intake/metabolic age. The Tanita uses Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis to calculate your body composition. It passes a low electrical signal through your body, carried by water and fluids. According to their literature, "Fat tissue does not contain much water and creates resistance to impedance to the signal. (Fat is approximately 10-15% hydrated, whereas muscle is normally between 50-70%.)" The Tanita uses this information along with formulas based on other information that the user provides: height, weight, gender, body type and age, to estimate the user's lean and fat tissue. I've discovered that my hydration level is the most important factor in getting consistent data. But, more about that later.
The Tanita was very easy to set up. There is a guest mode, and up to four users can store their personal data to get more accurate readings. Once I turned the scale on (it runs on 4-AA batteries), and selected my Personal Key Number, I entered age, sex, height, and activity level (I selected "3", which is an "adult involved in intense physical activity of approximately 10 hours per week and who has a resting heart rate of approximately 60 beats per minute or less." ) That's it, set-up complete.
Each time you weigh yourself, you need to first select your personal key before stepping on the scale. Tanita recommends that you weigh yourself under consistent conditions of hydration. This is important, because you can get very different numbers with seemingly insignificant differences in hydration. You also need to be barefoot, so that your skin can make contact with the electrodes. Further, it is recommended that you be unclothed, and wait three hours after rising, eating or exercising. These stipulations basically give me a small window of time on weekdays, so I find I'm not using the scale every day. But, if I use that window, I have the best chance of getting consistent readings, and I can see the effect that illness or poor hydration has on my readings. When I am adequately hydrated, I see my highest muscle mass, highest bone mass, and lowest fat percentage. Not surprisingly, this corresponds with my highest weight, though not always. Also, some of my lowest body weight readings were coupled with some of my highest body fat percentages, simply because I was dehydrated. For me, my best readings happen when I weigh myself after work and before my workout, and when I've had two meals (breakfast and lunch), two snacks, and about 60 oz of fluid, at the time of weighing. Here are the differences I've seen between my highest and lowest readings: weight-4.2 lbs, muscle mass-9 lbs, bone mass-0.4 lbs, body water-5.3%, body fat-7.3%. My worst readings were when I had an intestinal bug, my best were two weeks after I finished the Challenge Phase of the Spinervals Super 6 training plan. It was an intense month of focused muscular endurance training.
Time for some conclusions: The day I recovered from two days of intestinal nastiness, I gained 2 lbs, gained 0.4 lbs of bone mass, gained 9 lbs of muscle mass, lost 6.6% of my body fat, and had 4.8% more body water. Clearly, I didn't have 9 more lbs of muscle from one day to the next, but it illustrates how important hydration is for correct readings. I can see trends, and I can use those numbers to make decisions about my training. For example, when I look at my numbers for January 14th and February 11th, all of my numbers are virtually the same, except I weighed 1.6 lbs less and had 1.2 lbs less of muscle mass on February 11th. Since my current training phase has been mostly aerobic endurance work, I feel I've done a good job maintaining my muscle gains, and I'm ready for the next phase of my training. I also really like the Tanita because it forces me to focus on hydration, something I have been casual about in the past to my detriment. So, if you like to quantify your progress and are serious about training and improving your chances for success, the Tanita scale can be a very useful tool to have.