How stupid....

Sunday night, reading on the net, trying to find out what is wrong with me prior to asking the doctor to perform a TB test on Monday. Stumbled across an article with a fed entries from people with long term cough's, etc. The solution they perscribed was an ABC vitamin dose, which reading through the articles seemed to make some sort of sense and fit in with my pattern over the last 6 months. So, back in the house, popped a couple of one a day multi-vitamins with codliver oil in. 30 minutes later my throat started to clear up a bit, so as I seemed not to have much to loose at this point I took another one. By this point I had taken 300% of the RDA in A,B,C,D and E with B1, B2, B6 and B12 covered.

Monday morning I was a bit stunned as my throat was clear and my chest was almost fully clear... Bad diet and the lack of vitamins cost me 4 months of activity, not taking into account the implications for the previous year and how I was feeling on and off.

Anyway, Tuesday night, feeling ok, back on the bike. Tried upping the wattage for a bit and see how it felt.

Not too bad, although I was feeling that I should not be pushing it too much.

Wednesday night, back on it again.

Ended up being a shorter session, although at a higher intensity, which provided me with a guage as to how much I had dropped back over the last 4 months of on-off not quite training activity. Seems to have been a loss of somewhere between 20W and 40W.

Thursday night I was barred from going on the bike as my parents and grandmother were visiting, after all it was my grans 85th on Friday so I could hardly be unsociable.

Friday, birthday meal down at the local, the consmption of some wine and of course far too much food.

Saturday was again the consumption of far too much food, however I did manage to get another session in, with my dad watching and chatting for the first hour and a bit. The HR and power picked up towards the end of the 25 mile distance point, which my dad had a bit of a laugh about and found quite interesting.

This was also the first session that my HR had been above 170 in the last 4 months and was again interesting as my hour wattage seemed to be around 290-300 mark based on how the period around the hour mark went. Was hoping to do a couple of hours, although I think the burn in the middle had a bit more of an impact.

Short, hot, tired and pedaling backwards

Session duration : 125min
Average power : 196W
Average HR : 121bpm
Cadence avg : 88rpm
kCal : 632 (polar 658)
Liquid : 300ml water
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Before I got on the bike my HR seemed to be around 5-10bpm higher and took longer to slow down than on Wednesday and Sunday. So, took it very steady, possibly too steady early on to have any effect other than to reduce the spare tyre a little and tick things over.
For the first part I did not turn the fan on as it was a little chilly and warmed up nicey and then had to turn the fan on :-(
The thing I'll have to remember and follow is not to go mental on the way to the station in the morning and get some more sleep !

Wednesdays session update

Session duration : 125min
Average power : 210W
Average HR : 123bpm
Cadence avg : 86rpm
kCal : 1520 (polar 1570)
Liquid : 1000ml water
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Longer session watching some online documentaries.Not sure if I over did it a bit or the cold air in the mornings is having a disproportionate impact on my throat.

Slow and steady web browsing

Session duration : 105min
Average power : 218W
Average HR : 117bpm
Reference power : 117bpm=208W
Cadence avg : 87rpm
kCal : 1311 (polar 1160)
Liquid : 650ml water
No food.
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From the chart it may not show up very good but you can see a steady drop off in power, while the HR stayed stable, with a drop of around 8-9% in 105 minutes. Spent the time browsing the net and put in a few brief spots to test the legs a little (stopping when HR went above 150). Stopped too early really (not the right feeling), although for now it will do and see how the week progresses. Either way, done enough for today.... burnt off the 4 doughnuts at least :-)

Yesterday I tried out the 4 way compact flash array again after finding some even log entries that referenced an old driver (even though it is the most recent from the motherboard site). So, having tracked down the driver chip manufacturers website and uploading the latest driver I reconfigured the drive again. The drive is made up out fo 2x dual channel IDE to compact flash adapters, each with a 4GB card in (4 cards in total) to give 16GB of flash space.

The drives were recognised as DMA2 for the first pair (older cards) and UDMA 4 for the second pair. The first pair of flash cards, when accessed individually reported around 13-15MB/sec, while the second pair reported 20MB/sec flat, each.

Tested out 3 configurations :
1. 2 drive span across the DMA 2 pair
2. 2 drive span across the UDMA pair
3. 4 drive span across all 4 drives

Each drive was configured with 100MB space usage on each card for each drive array.

The copy speed for all of them (write) was slower than the individual speed at 17MB/sec for the 4 card array and the DMA pair returned only 7MB/sec, while the UDMA pair reported around 11MB/sec.

Interesting result and a bit strange, although I'll try them outa again with another 2 4GB cards that are UDMA compatible, so that the 4 card array in theory has no timing issues between the array...

Still with the lergy, back on the base

Session duration : 50min

Average power : 231W

Average HR : 135bpm

Reference power : 135bpm=230W

Cadence avg : 90rpm

kCal : 668 (polar 705)

Liquid : 200ml water

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Base session to start back with and short. Looking at the basics on the first session I have dropped 20W or over 10% in the space of 3 weeks and that's not even from a high starting point ! By the looks of it I'm back to the 17th Feb or a month back in training schedule, on top of the previous delay.
The other thing that was noticable again was the feeling of tiring a bit towards the end.