Sorting out the race calendar

While a friend has been busy racing at Hillingdon the effect of seeing him get points and a 3rd cat license made me get a little more focused and motivated.

After starting the commuting to work back up I ended up spending an hour looking through the BCF website to see which events I'm going to target for the comming 6 months. After picking out one particular event, which is 50 miles, it made me think more about my training that will be required for the event. The commute to work will become one of the base sessions for this, which will be backed up by some hill work at the weekends as I think its 6 laps of a 8.6 mile loop with a stonker of a hill (2 miles long and 100m) near the finish line, which should blow the field appart.

Food will also be critical on this one due to the duration as it is just long enough at a reasonable intensity to loose more than 20% of your power if you don't eat and drink.

Plot of the day is from Sunday's random cycle with the sun as my compass (still have not learnt the local names) and getting quite lost. This was a burst up a small hill on a rolling road through a village, averaging 1022W for 10 seconds, which sent my HR up 30bpm in 15 seconds !

Commuting safety - faster you go the safer you are

Within reason.

Finally started commuting to work again, reluctantly as I'd much rather prefer just to ride around the countryside for training, however the job and commute mean I only have time for that at the weekend. Turning the 1h 10m train commute into a 1:30 and 1:45 bike ride make a lot more sense from a training perspective and strangeley a lot more enjoyable (even though it's through London). The distance is just over 28 miles each way, which makes for a long day when the start is 6am out the door and 8pm back in the door, however in the mornings it is really nice to ride along with hardly anyone around.

Great ride until you get to the start of London, traffic builds, stress levels increase, stupidity arrives in a 4x4, van or some other clapped out heap with no mirrors and a horse driving (blinkers on).

While getting back to riding after last years illness I noticed one thing, which I thought was quite interesting and have applied it to commuting and all road riding. The slower you go the more likely you are to be pushed off the road and drivers will take more risks with your safety to pass you. Look at it another way and it works out quite well because a driver will stay behind a cyclist at +20mph and only pass them when there is a lot of room.

Riding in to London on Wednesday I had a lorry stay behind me for about a mile and seemed quite content to wait (no reving the engine or dropping to a lower gear) until he had a lot of space to pass. The other aspect is the bus lanes in London seem to have taxi drivers as the main hazard because the majority are that used to squeezing through gaps they will squeeze past you if they could. Solution, ride a bit quicker and in the middle of the bus lane or far enough out to give yourself a lot of safety room if they do decide to squeeze past (you have somewhere other than the kerb to ride into). If they blow the horn at you, just ignore them, don't respond (my temptation is to ride further into the middle and to slow down) and keep riding at your own pace, they don't own the bus lane and neither do you.

Another option and strategy is to wobble more frequently as this has been proven in a previous study to increase the distance that drivers will pass you by. Ride a streight line and you will be brushed by a bus or taxi passing you, waver and they give you more room. Just remember to do it when you have the space and not to wobble into the path of the vehicle. You only seem to have to move by a couple of inches or just stand on the pedals and swing the bike as during night riding it's the movement of the light that matters.

The other amusing element to commuting is riding past a slow moving column of vehicles, especially if it has someone in a Ferrari slowing down and speeding up just to rev the engine. The again I suppose I'd be a bit pissed at spending £100k on a car and then driving it round London at an average speed of 18mph rather than 180mph.

Power and HR distributions for winter

Last 28 days training have been to stay below anerobic and either be around threashold power or a combination of recovering and a low base aerobic workout. Someone at work told me to ride either at a high enough intensity or to ride an aerobic pace but to stay out of the middle ground as it did not do you much good appart from drain your glycol reserves. Figured he should know as he won his age group in the world Ironman championships.

Anyhow the power profile looks a little different to go with the HR plot with the mid point around 270W and a drop off just over 400W. Part of my target for this year is to get to over 400W for the hour, up from the 375W late last year. So far this year I have done a couple of tests and on one managed to get to 395W for 10min at an average HR of 162bmp, although the last 4 minutes averaged out at 168bpm (at 399W) with a max of 170bpm and that was without any fan cooling. After the 10 min I was roasting and was glad to stop, cool down a little and have a drink. From that test I figured that I may be able to do 400W for 20min with cooling (+10-20W or -3-5bpm) on and about a weeks recovery afterwards ! The hour is still beyond me for now, but when I get there (Apr/May) game on.

From a downhill holding mode to training

Finally bought the full version of CyclingPeaks after putting up with the handicap version that came with the Ergomo and would not import my iMagic files any more. Plus I could not chart out the CTL, ATL and TSB, which left me riding by feel a bit too much for me at this stage.

The plot of training over the last year is a little different to how I remember although a bit supprising at the end of August peak. The big drop then was falling ill after riding in a race in the wet without the right gear.

From the re-start in October after a month off the training was not very well coordinated and still a bit random with the club run over and under cooking your when you went out and generally not helping much. Christmas saw a bit of excess in the opposite direction and I certainly felt it as it took me about 2 weeks to recover properly as I spent too much time in the red during the rides and not because of the distance.

The training the last week has been a little more structered and feel that I can get this time in each week as a minimum now, which will be added to by riding in to work again, not that it's my 1st choice of training methods (dodging stressed out drivers who want to run you over or don't even notice).

The key pieces of equipment for the commute will be a siren as what's the point of a crap bell that can't even scare birds away when you can have a 120dB alarm siren hooked up to the bike ? Should be quite funny to see the startled reactions from people when it sounds like a police car is inside their car. The other key bit is the head torch, brighter the better.