Winter training the wrong way

Well, the Christmas period was one of excess and I tried to get in a fair bit of riding while the weather was not too bad. My training plan went to pot as the TSS for the rides pushed me into the over training zone, but it felt good to be out on the bike and knowing it would be a while before I was out again I did not care too much. The weekly hours went to 8:47 and the distance was somewhere over 150 miles (speed sensor stopped working on one ride), TSS of 496 and came down with a cold as a result. That was on the back of the week on week increase being too much too soon, but I'm feeling a lot better now after 6 days off the bike.

Looking back over the last year and a bit and how my profile has changed I'm starting to ralise how much of a delayed training effect some things have. My 5 minute power has been distorted by the 5 minute sprint to the station and back with the default training mode on the iMagic being a steady pace pushing my FT power up. The 1 minute and 10s powers have been lagging and only picking up more recently.

This weeks Cycling Weekly had my power profile in and comment by Simon Jones, which I read with great interest. The training session indicated to me was a 10 minute 300W for 20 seconds and then 425W for 10 seconds alternating power. I'll give this a try today for a single 10 minute block and see how it turns out. This is quite an interesting profile to try out as I had tried something a little similar early Dec (9th) but spaced out differently (5second sprint, 55sec recovery) which was more intended for leg strength (as my HR avg was 125bpm, max 135bpm) rather than anything else and had not thought about it from the perspective and profile, which Simon sugested. Will give it a try and post the results but it already has me thinking about getting a coach to optimise my time.