After a layoff...

The last week has been a case of catch up for my riding. My week on call at work was not an easy one, with some difficult stuff going down. The end result was not much riding, with just a single decent ride, aside from the Thursday racing at DISC. Nonetheless, I am happy with how the track is progressing.

This week has been better, though still not a heavy week of training. Track racing this week was my best yet. Got left behind by the sprinters at the last lap of the scratch and fought to get over one of the women who was finishing strongly. Pulled it back to 3rd, which was not too bad. One of these days, I think that I will manage to hold the sprinters and maybe win it. The points race was a little sketchy in parts, with the field breaking up after the first sprint, which I got 4th in. Managed to hold 4th in the second, and pulled off the front for the third, being overtaken on the line for 2nd. Unfortunately I let it go at the end and finished in the pack. End result- 3rd. Pretty happy. The motor pace was done on 94.5 (49/14), and I have to say that I felt much better with it this week. When the bike pulled of I was in 5th or 6th wheel, and pretty rapidly overtook a couple, chasing those with more fast twitch fibres than I have. As the gear wound up I was coming up and found myself in the final straight coming up on first. Threw the bike at the line but lost by 1/2 a wheel, coming second. A great result for me- I really feel like the tactics are coming along and I am getting just where to put in the efforts.

Got out with the TE bunch up in the Dandenongs today and had a smooth and pleasant ride. Slightly marred by a hint of precipitation, the ride was nonetheless beautiful with the spring flowers in evidence on the eastern side of the range. I was also happy that my bike seems to have fallen back into a comfortable and powerful feeling position after all my stuffing around with seat and handlebars height of the past months. Enough adjustments!

The coming week will hold some training challenges- how much riding can I do whilst on holiday up on the Sunshine coast? Not much. I suspect. We can but do our best!

Of things not quite...

Pulled out a big Saturday morning- a decaf Kinglake. Oh, I stopped short of the big hill, no doubt, but what a ride! Such style and finesse has rarely been seen in the outer north eastern suburbs. Showing true class, I recovered as if I had done the whole lot, pulling up sore on Sunday morning. Now you tell me that all this track cycling isn't the best preparation for hillclimbing?

Sunday, being father's day brought a certain amount of family togetherness. Ernesto Colnago's comb over would curl in disgust at the use of one of his thoroughbreds for packhorse duty, but I had to race. Perhaps it was the multitasking that slowed me down on the undulating time trial- I did make sure I unhitched the trailer first!

Purchasing Sleep

Imagine if sleep could be bought. I am sure it's performance enhancing properties would place it on the prohibited list. I would think that a 10% performance increase for an extra hour or two would not be out of the question, something that no amount of dimpling of your jersey, knicks or rims is going to achieve. Therefore, it stands to reason that it should be banned, or at least regulated and handicapped for. All these young students who can pull off 9-10 hours per night should be forced to carry weights so that those of us with young children, sex lives, or even addictions to late night series on TV can have a chance to be competitive.

That said, I am off to bed for a well earned 7 hours, and boy am I happy to get it! It has been worse... much worse.

Squeeze

Sometimes the tetris like precision of my life takes its toll. Last night I went to the track for a bit of a training session with the Quickcycle group. Home from work at 5, pick up from childcare, duck home and put on some dinner for the boy, entertain him while trying to calm him down prior to his bedtime, wait for J to get home from work to take over the reins, rushout the door arriving just prior to the start of the warmup, still need to switch my cog and get changed. Finally on the track about half way through the warmup, feeling thoroughly out of sync.

The disjointedness continued through the evening. During team TT intervals with 2 other groups on the track, I did my honest best to get in the way of a passing group, narrowly avoiding much ugliness. The next interval I managed to hold it together until just prior to the end, when I lost my line in the corner and swung up again. Nothing like letting down "the team" to make you feel like a fool! Things became marginally better through the warm down scratch race (warmdown?) where despite giving up a couple of times, I seemed to keep catching the leaders, and ended up coming in 4th. Strange.

The Inner Spring

That particularly Melbourne phenomenon of anticipating Spring before it is here is upon us once again- the inner spring. The herds flock to Beach Road and don the lycra once again. For the more consistent cyclists among us, it adds a degree of difficulty to the Sunday ride. Not necessarily a bad thing, I might add, as the deeps of winter can be pretty grim, and it is good to have a few more bodies out to dodge and/or look at, depending on the physical attributes of the rider. There are always the clothing faux pas to keep track of- these days are full of under and overdressed riders. Indeed, keeping abreast of the weather can be a full time job- whether to wear the jacket or gilet, the long sleeve fleecy top or the summer jersey with arm warmers. All of this keeps the inner spring cyclist's interest up. A fine ride is one where the fine balance of warm vs cold is maintained. All else is second.

Fun on the Parquetry

Thursday night races at DISC- the third I have attended, so still a rank amateur. Raced in C-grade, and pretty comfortable with the competition, but B still a long way off. First time I have raced all three races, and it makes the night a very worthwhile hitout.

Scratch race- riding 92.6, and it feels good. Coming off the front with too few to go leaves me near the back and I miss (am too timid to follow) Allan's move up on the outside. He gets caught by the end, and I manage to move up to an anonymous but reasonable high single figure result. Another lesson learnt.

Points race- same gear, different race. Let the first sprint go off and sit in about 8th wheel waiting for a split. Slowly move up in the second sprint but no place. Then find that there are 4 of us left to contest the remains- manage to get a 3rd on the last sprint at the finish. Quite satisfied with the racing- finishing at the right end of the field.

Motor pace- up to 94 (49/14)- see how it goes. Try to use my brain during the race so as not to stuff up, and to make the most of any opportunities. The gear feels good during the pacing but I can feel it is going to take some doing when the motorbike goes off. Good fortune lands me in second wheel behind Allan when the bike drops down, but I lag when he jumps and he gets a couple of lengths. I am winding up the gear, but can't quite get on top of it. I am gaining in the finshing straight, but can't close it down. Another guys pips me at the end- leaving me third by 1/2 a length. Very happy with how it turned out- now to put some more power in so I can push that big gear...

Back on Track...

After the write-off of the last couple of weeks, I am finally getting it back together. Viral infections and sleep deprivation form a headymix, leading to extreme amotivation. Today is the first day I have felt even vaguely normal on waking.

Made it to the morning motor pace at the track. 82 inch gear and a motor bike getting slowly faster. What fun. Hold on tight until you cannot keep your bum on the saddle and slink down to the blue. I am not so good at this- but I am getting better.

The Fuji is slowly getting to a stage where I can sit on it for more than 5 mins without feeling like I am being tortured. Now has 172.5 Sugino 75's and a wickedly upward slanting deda pista stem. Loks a bit freaky but feels OK. Hopefully it will carry me to a win or two one of these days.

A (Very) Slow Week

Times are tough in the Lantern household. Have been out on the bike but a couple of times in the last week. Waking with extreme lack of motivation. Not sure whether it is to do with still being sick or just... extreme lack of motivation. Not getting enough sleep doesn't help, I am sure. Must get to bed early, repeat, must get to bed early. If I was in a pro team, I am sure that some blood test would diagnose me as suffering a viral illness- had EBV/Glandular fever, so won't be that. As I am self diagnosing, I will just keep up the rest and get out when I can.

I have managed to get to the track a couple of times however, one of them the races on Thursday at DISC. Got 2 starts, with the points being cancelled due to a fella falling during the training session and probably breaking a rib, requiring a trip in an ambulance. Felt reasonable in the scratch, and with 2 to go, pulled off the front, pushing the 92.6 gear as hard as I could. Got a break and just kept going at it. Sadly Allan and 2 of the others managed to catch back on and come around on the last bend. Still, it was a good move, if I do say so myself. Left me a little empty for the motor pace, where I lost contact towards the end, and had to satisfy myself chasing down Nick, but failing to overhaul him. Good fun evening.

Renovations for the bike to come include a new stem to raise and stretch me out, and longer cranks (172.5 Sugino 75's). Should be able to flog off the FSA cranks to cover the price. Crit next saturday.

Gene Therapy and Doping

Gene therapy does hold a lot of potential for doping. Unfortunately it could be very hard to detect, let alone the possible adverse effects on the athlete. There are even a few areas of paediatrics where gene therapy has already been used, but by and large it is still in the "potential" basket.

In short, genes are the "messages" contained in your chromosomes/DNA which tell individual cells which proteins to make and which regulate the use of these proteins. Proteins pretty much make up all your enzymes, and the other parts of your cells which "do stuff". When people have a genetic disorder, which includes things like Cystic Fibrosis, Muscular Dystrophy, and inumerable others, a faulty gene causes them to have either too little or too much of some protein or other which lead to a the cell to not function correctly and much further down the line, the organism as a whole to manifest some problem. This can be so minor as to be unnoticable or so profound that it is incompatible with life. (Down syndrome is also a genetic disorder, but involves having an extra chromosome no.21 which has thousands of genes, leading to lots of potential problems).

The aim of gene therapy is to alter the expression of a single gene, hoping to change the end effect on the person so as to alleviate the problem produced by the faulty gene. The problem is that all of our genes are regulated by our DNA in complex ways that are kind of like using the dimmer switch on a light- relatively few are of the simple on-off variety- and the precise "intensity" of the gene expression is critically important to our function. These genes are much harder to do gene thearpy on than the on-off ones. Why? read on.

Gene therapy involves trying to insert a working copy of the faulty gene into your DNA using a carrier, which is usually a virus or bacteria which has the ability to incorporate into your DNA (or genome). At present, this is no precise science, rather more like throwing anough sh*t and hoping that some will stick. The best success rate the I have read about recently is a 1% take- so you have 1% of the normal gene function. In a condition where you have no functioning gene at all, this can be the diffenence between life and death (I can think of an immune deficiency where this is the case). In other situations, it may be a total waste of time that make no noticable difference. Other techniques involve trying to block a gene that is producing too much of a harmful protein- I am not aware of any of these that are successful. Back to our cow- if we were trying to get really big muscles, we could try to block the myostatin gene.

The problems of gene therapy can involve the carrier virus/bacteria being harmful- some kids have got leukaemia which is definitely related to their gene therapy; the gene alteration having unpredicted consequences- hypothetically, making your muscles bigger might occur so quickly that tendon ruptures occur, as seen in steroid use; or other ways that we don't yet know about.

That all said, you can imagine that there is plenty of energy being put into this field, and like EPO (the magnitude of sporting use is miniscule compared to its valid medical uses), and if sporting spinoffs can be found they will be.

Hope that is of some interest.

For those of you interested in random medical facts, and sports doping links, the Belgian Blue cow is lacking the gene for myostatin (if I am correct), which regulates muscle growth. If you don't have it, you get massive muscles. They recently discovered a baby born lacking the gene- they will probably be more suited to track sprinting than climbing cols. I am sure it will be on the athletes recipe book soon enough! Check out the pics.

Tough day at the office

Spent the evening at Enoteca in Gertrude St with TE, drinking Chablis and Bourgogne Rouge, eating Coq au Vin and Beaufort cheese. Stage 9 on the big screen thanks to Big Phil. Hospitality thanks to James B and co for the careful matching of vittels and terrain.

Much cheering and jeering for Cadel, who eventually came in a close 3rd to Valverde, far behind the obligatory anonymous Columbian climber who smashed it up.

Stuey O'Grady continues to impress with his dry humour in the face of his injuries.

Off to Canberra this weekend for my stepfather's 60th birthday. Leaving the roadie at home for a few MTB rides instead. Got to keep the training happening- struggle, struggle, struggle.