Day 2 Day

Back but lacking the winter base

2009-03-12T12:02:00.001Z

After around a month of changed training pattern and the first venture out onto the road since December I realised I'm lacking quite a bit of base from the reduced winter riding. More specifically the lack of any real long rides over the winter has taken it's toll.

Work stress and a general lack of time (plus the weather) meant I ended up spending all the time indoors, even on the odd sunny day, to try and get the most out of the time I had available.
Over the weekend I went for an hour and a half ride, which was interesting and a bit painfull to realise the difference out on the road. I kept my HR low and though I'd just go for a reasonably gentle couple of hours, although it ended up a lot shorter than expected. Getting out late did not help either and part of the decision to cut the ride short.

Last night I spent an hour and a bit on the trainer watching an episode of top gear, which was quite hilarious as the film crew or editing suite made sure they captured Clarkson breaking the law twice (crossing a single line and overtaking on hash markings). After that I thought I'd see what I could do for 5 minutes and set off gently just over 400W. Towards the end I was doing around 460W and my HR up at 179bpm (need rest / more sleep). The average ended up around 443W, which does not seem too bad and makes me thing I need to get some more miles in gently to round off before building further. I think I still have the possibility of an additional 50W to add onto this, providing I get the right training and rest.

Milton Keynes sprint

2008-07-25T12:28:00.002Z

Well, the circuit was interesting to say the least and more like Crystal Palace for turns and arrangement. Just throw in the exposure to the wind as a hill replacement and the match is almost there. Route was on the upper circuit due to a concert in the bowl going through rehersals and was extended out over the bridge and around the mini roundabout for a hairpin turn. Due to the circuit the CAT1+2 and 3+4 could not be on the same circuit so it was 20 minutes + 5 laps. Sprint time !

From the finish line it starts sloping down slightly and the circuit turns right gradually until you get a 90 degree right hander that can be taken without slowing down if you get the line right, although you have some bushes and a few trees to dodge if you get it wrong. From there it flattens out to a long right hand sweeping curve that takes your up to the bridge crossing and over to the roundabout. Hairpin turn round the roundabout, while avoiding the stones lining the edge of the roundabout and then back across the bridge to a sharp left hand turn. The left hand turn needs a bit of speed decrease before turning in, although the runoff is onto the grass field if you go too wide. Then flat to the finish line.

The race was started off at the finish line so that the bunch had a bit more time to file out as the bridge crossing had cones and barriers down the center and was wide enough for 2 bikes each side (probably 3 if your Mark Canvendish !) For this I realised you needed to be at or very near the front if you had any hope of getting ay points unless you should really have been riding a CAT 2 event... From the start I moved up to within the first 6, avoiding to be at the front for the start.

One rider was away almost from the start though and he was then the chase target for the rest of us. After the first lap I tried to bridge the gap and spent a few laps on the front but could not manage to get across and the gap seemed to stay static. After about 5 laps I started to get a stitch (probably the water or 2 bits of flapjack I had an hour prior) and had to either throw up or back off, so I eased up and joined in the chase bunch for a rest. Another rider went off the front and tried to catch the first break, who punctured on the roundabout with a blowout of the front tyre and hit the deck. Seemed ok, if not a little road rash.

That left another solo out in front, which I had nother go at bridging (solo) before trying with the rest of the bunch we ended up with at this point (about 6-7 of us ?). Once back in the bunch I derifted back a few spots and a couple of riders moved off the front an nobody else closed the gap and I held back thinking they would !!!! So it was now 1+2 out in front ahead of a smaller chasing group, which seemed to be driven by around 3 /4 of us semi chaotically rather than a nice through and off sequence. Hence the chase did not do too well and we never cought the 3. I was already in recovery mode at this point for the finish.

Going into the last lap I moved up, making a point of not ending up on the front, slotting in 4th place going over the bridge and took a place after the hairpin to be 3rd. Going into the left hander the rider in front either hit his pedal on the desk or his tyre slipped and I though he was going down so breaked slightly. He stayed up and I chased in a sprint for the line but could not reach them and ended up 6th overall (1+2+2 riders ahead of me overall).

We had started lapping riders around lap 15 ? and it was one of the hardest races I had done for a long while. Looking back the circuit is actually quite good, if not a little on the harsh side, but who's to say racing is suposed ot be easy !

Race 2 down, lungs out of action

2008-06-15T13:11:00.002Z

Well, an interesting first real time out on the new bike, in a crit. First conclusion is nice, handles very well and is smooth.. but... the wheels are a little more flexible than I hoped they would be. I bought a pair of Zipp 404's and like them a lot and as long as your not putting out over around 700W they will be fine. The problem starts when you start going up hill at a pace, which is where I was starting to experience brake rub on alternating sides. Maybe it was in part due to the way I stand and swing the bike, however I never get anything with the old SSCL's. Will have to try some different bike handling out to counter some of the lateral flex pressure at the next race.

During the race I started off with hayfeaver and a sore throat, which I put down mainly to the sneezing as I usually get a sore throat early on when I get hayfeaver, although I suspected I may have had a very light cold. Anyhow, during the race I was not going all out and my nose was starting to really hurt on the right hand nostril, which was a bit of a distraction. Manouvering to the side to blow snot rather than blunderbus the pack behind seemed a little more sivilised and safer after hearing about a crash being caused by riders swerving out of the way of a snot blast ! The pain only dissapeared a couple of times when I was chasing breaks down. After the race, the following day, the worst I thought would happend and the throat infection had been sucked into my lungs, so back to the vitamins, sleep and R&R. Bit dissapointing but another lesson learnt.

The race itself was a little dull as it was on the inner circuit and you did not really require your brakes (appart from stopping yourself ramming the rider in front) so it was a repetition of a break attempt on every 2-3 laps going off the front and then either they drifted back or were pulled back in. A couple of times some riders broke off and loked as if they would hold as nobody was really wanting to chase that much and I pulled a couple of breaks in, which left me at the front or very near a fair bit of the time. As time went on a couple of riders broke away and then another two and at that point I realised I did not have a clue what time it was, cue the quick drift around the bunch to look at cycle computers and watches. Did to have time to fix my garmin on, which is what I wanted to use as it would do lap times, but did not have time on the day. For quite a few laps I could tell they were not doing a pace much faster than the bunch as they were only pulling away relatively slowly.

Anyhow, the time was near an hour after the start and the 5 lap countdown started, which left me with the option of breaking to chase or waiting to see if the pace picked up before going later (lap 2 or 3). By the time a couple of laps went past I was near the front and ended up going into the last lap at the front, not where I wanted to be as I could not do anything without dragging everyone along, so I slowed down a bit. Nobody passed and I trundled along hoping the pace would get picked up by someone else, which never happened until we were near the base of the hill. By this time a few riders accelerated past from a few poisitions behind and I had to accelerate to catch up. Halfway up the hill I was around 4th, which meant 8th overall, in the bunch and going well as I could see some of the riders pace level off or decrease, however I thought chasing for 8th is not what I want to do and eased off. Bad thing to do I suppose but I was happy with what happened as I almost free wheeled over the line as riders were still sprinting past.

Lesson for the next race is to turn up 100% fit, not stressed, better clothed (was a little too cold for what I was wearing and my shirt was riding up my back), water bottle and my garmin attached. Then I'll ride a better race to aim for 5th upwards and put some more effort in.

Recovery completed with a new max heart rate ?

2008-06-10T17:27:00.002Z

Well, must have been over doing it quite a bit on lack of quality recovery time (60%) and over training (40%) from what I can fathom out of the whole experience. Rode in to work last week and on the return leg home I managed to get my heart rate up to 187bpm on the one small hill I have to climb en route and felt reasonable (as reasonable as you can be after 45 miles on the bike and a day at work). So, it was a nice day on Sunday and ventured back out with the club run to initially intend to have a very gentle ride out and back to wherever was the scheduled destination (never bother to find out as it does not really matter).

The ride out was nice and gentle, quite moderate, with no sprint or interval sessions mixed in with the ride not turning into a race on the outward leg. Spent some time on the front, which allowed the pace to be controlled a little to just below my threashold for a period of time and all felt ok, even into the headwind !

The ride home started off reasonable and moderate, for a period, before the pace started to pick up and turned into a 25-30mph run for a while, which was good as I was sat in line and had no intention to have a go on the front at that pace. Further on the pace eased a little as we approached one of the longer slow hills and then the power stepped up during the climb, again all going well. Then one of the riders passed by (2 were in front of me at the time) as he put the hammer down for one of the usual race periods and I set off to follow, it was during this sprint catch up effort that I put my heart rate at 190bpm for 18 seconds. It was not during that effort either that I managed to get my 3rd best 20 second output, so all being well I'm racing on Thursday, recovered :-)

More sleep and a very big hole

2008-05-24T22:22:00.003Z

Did another test today on the same hill that I have done the previous ones on so far, although the test last weekend was a little distorted as I was pushed into the side of the road by a rider trying to move out of my way while I was undertaking. The hill was being used as part of a charity ride route so I laughed it off, after all it was not as bad as the fall I took while out with my son earlier in the day covering the 10mile loop. I got cought in a deepening tyre rut in the grass (riding on the sides of a gravel track) to the point that I ended up falling sideways and unable to clip out I landed sideways in a heap. Was quite funny as I was on my training bike in kit ready to go for a ride afterwards and looked a right sight laid out on the side of the road ! My son did not think it was as funny and was more concerned about me being ok, although I was laughing too much....

Anyhow, did the same hill again today and this time looked at the time and set off. The dip in power output is when I changed down a gear or two as my cadence felt wrong. Further up the hill I looked at the time and kept on going another 10 seconds until the minute was up.. net result.... 721W.

Well... I'm starting to think about my training and previous style of blasting around, no wonder I did not get much improvement ?

This now brings my profile to a point that says I need to work more on my sprint....

Recovery almost done but at a cost

2008-05-15T18:19:00.003Z

Seems like my HR response is almost or is back to normal now as my max on the last hill home was 175bpm without too much bother. Compared to Crystal Palace the pick up to 175bpm was a lot, lot faster and the recovery after seemed better.

The overall impact was quite large in terms of time off (3 weeks) and a major dent in my race calendar as the one race I was really looking forward to is this weekend. After the current training outage and the style of course involved I have decided not to enter, which is a great disappointment.

What was gained ? A big lesson on how over training can creep up on you when you ignore what your body is telling you, namely when to recover more. The other really good lesson, which has made it a worth while experience (not really) is the difference a reasonable recovery break can make.

My previous best for 60 a second output was 622W and at the weekend a brief test I managed 649W although I stopped at 55 seconds (not consciously going for a 60 second test, more a heart rate response) and the 55 second average was 689W with my heart rate topping out at 175bpm. Interesting and frustrating as my previous 55 second figure was 624W, which indicated an over 10% improvement on the back of the rest, but frustrating from the point that I had to let it slide to get my heart rate back on further rest.

The other side of the lesson is the difference that recovery rides make, both from a physical and psychological level. They make you feel much better and if kept at a low enough intensity help recovery by boosting circulation for a period of time. I'm at the point of thinking that time off the bike with total rest is at times more detrimental than a period with recovery rides only.

28W and 6bpm recovery so far

2008-04-29T19:42:00.003Z

Against Crystal Palace race last week and the intervening time off the bike (only 2 hour long sessions since then) my recovey has been slow with my max HR on the Saturday test getting up to 179bpm and then tonights session and test up to 181bpm. Still a long way short of 188/9bpm, which was last achived over christmas and looking back at my log the only other excursion into the 180 zone was to 184bpm at the end of the march when I set a new 60 second power output personal best. That has left me confused as I though that over trained showed through as a decrease in power ability rather than lower HR and increased power, unless the training had compensated to a certain degree and the over training (or under recovery) just showed through as a lower than possible reading ?
Will take it easy for the rest of the week and at the weekend go for a long steady paced ride or ride in to work on Friday at a much reduced pace.

Over trained and 14bpm short at Palace as a result

2008-04-23T18:42:00.002Z

From the increased number of outings, which were generally a TSS of 100+ my CTL increased rather quickly, while my TSB dropped like a stone. Not really listening to my body until it was a point blank refusal to play ball when I did my first race of the season at Crystal Palace last night.

The original plan was to ride into work the previous day and then ride out to Palace to watch the first race of the season. Instead I ended up riding into work and then to Palace and entering, which racked up over 40 miles prior to racing.

On the line the people were still signing on and thinking there were going to be some crashes due to the number of people (50+) navigating the hairpin I thought I'd get out of the way. With this in mind as soons as the start was given I was off and first round the hairpin and into the next curve before easing up a little. Nobody passed before the next corner so I eased up again and then the stream started as about 10 riders passed and I thought I'd recover a bit. This is when I noticed my heart rate was not quite behaving normal as it was only 166bpm after the effort (528W over 1min 28sec). Keeping up with the bunch up the hill was then a bit more of a struggle but did not let too much space slip as the hill min to max averaged 456W (44 sec).

The first lap (excluding the hairpin turn) took 2min 8sec at an average 463W and the second lap over the same distance then averaged 1min 54sec at 354W with 10 seconds null output for the hairpin. Third lap was chasing the lead split in the bunch as it was big enough to stay and bridging the gaps from riders dropping out of the bunch, which ended up with a 382W lap (inc hairpin). Fith lap much the same but at 406W and a maximum heart rate over the race of 175bpm. This time it was blatent that something was wrong as it was now 8 minutes into the race with a 396W average (438W norm) and my heart rate was 14bpm below maximum so I eased off after catching the bunch and the next lap averaged 290W. Next lap 324W, still not feeling right. Next lap another gap and 342W, 330W, 379W, 354W. By the 11th lap I was chasing the lead bunch and cought them as 3 riders peeled off the back, which opened up yet another gap to bridge, which was 20 years and ended up averaging 422W through and up the hill and my heart rate was now only 169bpm. Time to pull up.

After drifting down to the start line I pulled over and out of the race after 22min 22sec and an average wattage of 361W (407W norm) with my max heart rate 14bmp below my normal maximum at an average of 162bpm. Cadence 92rpm, 175m climbing, 47.7TSS 1.131IF, 38.5kph.

By this time I'd clocked up a TSS for the day of over 200 over around 50 miles with commuting, getting to the event and racing, which should not have been too bad if I was rested. Even now, I still feel very tired and in need of a few days R&R with some easy short rides at the weekend only. Time to allow the CTL to drift back to the 60's and feel right.

CTL 80+ for a win and a CAT 3/4 road event ?

2008-04-19T08:54:00.004Z

Been thinking about the race performance last year and my training level at the time, which brings me to one of 2 criteria for a win in my target road race event (56 miles 804m climbing over 6 laps). Either you have to have "quality" CTL above 80 and / or get a good set of wheels.

The wheels and tyres would focus around 20-30W back onto road speed rather than blowing in the wind (5-10W for the tyres and 20W for the wheels) and will make a >5% difference. When it comes to the hill the lower weight of myself and the bike (3kg down from a month ago) should make a difference on the one long climb of just over 100m. Providing the bunch does not disintegrate totally within the first lap and at least holds together for 2-3 laps it should provide a good warm up for the 2nd hour.

For the next month, ahread of the race, I have 3 weeks (last week taper) of training to add around 3-4TSS / week to my CTL, which should bring the level up to around 82-85 before dropping back ahead of the event.

Too much too soon, patience...

2008-04-16T18:49:00.002Z

CTL peaked at 76.5 yesterday after the commute to London and felt quite good. TSB was -35 after the commute on Wednesday after dipping to -42 on Sunday and recovering on Monday/Tuesday to -15. From the weekend and commuting experience this week the benefit seems to be dipping to around -35 to the most -40 steadily and then recovering but the impact does not come through if you don't get the TSB down enough and most importantly recover effectively. Monday was a bit of a wakeup as I knew that something was a little wrong as I noticed I had a runny nose first thing when I woke up with the alarm and felt pretty bad on top of that. Back to bed and waking up around 5 hours later seemed to work wonders and felt a lot lot better for it.

The only other recent time that my TSB has gone lower was around Christmas time when it dipped to -50 after a few rides (Fri 85, Sun 136 and Mon 274) which pushed the ATL up far too quickly at the time to a high of at the time 96 compared to the ATL of 117 on Sunday. The CTL increase at Christmas was from 38.4 to 45.7 in a few days vs the step of 68.5 to 76.5 over last week.

Lesson - too much too quickly... time for a little easy spinning and sleep.

Slow and steady progress - maybe a bit too slow

2008-04-09T19:27:00.003Z

With time constraints bound by a family and work commitments the the challenge of fitting in all the training becomes a trade off at times between quality and quantity. Commuting to work gives some of the quantity but not the quality (and tires you out in the process) while dedicated trainer sessions are good quality but you need to leave your brain outside to do 90 minutes plus.

So far the commuting went well, although a bit of a transition in training as the training stress from 1 day took a while to get used to, which also meant that the quality took a hit as London commuting is not the best of trining environments. Recovery time seems to be improving and having 1 week off the commute (replaced with leaving work early and going out for an hour and a bit) and holding the training stress seems to feel better now. Possibly from increased recovery time and a more balanced workload throughout the week.

Plan for the next week is ride in and get some extra quality time in at the weekend to build up the training stress before racing the week after at Crystal Palace. What I'll be racing on I'm not quite sure as there is a slight o slim chance I'll have a new bike ready in time for the first event.

The Criteriums on Tuesday and Thursday (Crystal Palace and Milton Keynes) will hopefully provide an incremental training load for the following month ahead of the road race.

First club run in a while

2008-03-30T20:01:00.002Z

Decided to go out on the club run again, seeing that the weather was looking all right and was wondering how my form was developing. Unfortunately the majority of the club was out at an event so only a handfull of riders turned out, so I started off with 4 others with the moderate group as there was no fast group.

The ride out was ok, sat on the back as I had no mudguards and the majority of the road was wet, so I did not feel too guilty about that, even though I recieved a fair bit of spray from the bike in front (with mudguards).

On the way back the wind was begining to tell on two of the other rides, one of whom was not feeling too well shortly after we set off and a couple of hill later they broke off. The other rider and myself did not wait for them as we were closer to home so I took the opportunity to burn some energy in a test.

Big ring and head down I pushed hard until we reached the city sign and then backed off a bit.
The end result was a peak 435W average over 5 minutes at 175bpm average, which is 29W lower and 2pbm higher than my peak from last summer. But..... one was a hill climb.

Conclusion so far - the training is improving things but the cumulative training stress from riding to work is not returning the same results as sitting on the trainer in the shed for a shorter period of time ! The jury may still be out as the commuting is only 7 weeks (trips) so far.

Going nowhere fast or no perception of going somewhere

2008-03-29T14:15:00.004Z

Click on the images for the full resolution.

Trianing solo can be good and bad over time, the best bits (for me) are riding round on an early morning blue sky day in summer (the worst are commuting in the p***ing rain) with the main problem bein a lack of feedback or measurment to see how your going.

After doing a bit of a 5 minute test out on the road (417W) I though I'd have a go at my 60 second record today. My previous was actually 603W early last year and not 640 (not sure where I'd got that from) and todays test I managed 622W.

The first try I burned out far too quickly after setting off 200W over a sustainable level and by 30 seconds I was out of gas and a bit put out, however I waited for my HR to drop back to into 120 and then went for it again but a more steady pace, which felt right. I did not have any particular target worked out rather I rode at a pace, which I thought I could sustain before falling off the bike.

My 622W at a lardy 75.5kg puts me at 8.24W/kg for 60 seconds rather than 8.5W/kg if I were down to 73kg. So, now I'm into CAT3 zone for 1 minute I should at least be able to do a decent solo in a CAT4 event for the last lap (in theory) but if that where the case (according to cycling peaks) I'd already have won a lot more events by just riding off the front for the whole race. Hmmm...

Power to weight cost for criteriums of 2.5 watts / kg

2008-03-29T10:27:00.003Z

Looking at new wheels is a bit of a mine field in terms of the different benefits that are listed with the list that I have seen in various adverts indicating different characteristics with the main three being weight, aerodynamic drag and stiffness.

Thinking about weight and the cost of this over either a time trial or creiterium and the weight characteristic is split into three elements. Horizontal energy expelled lifting a mass is not fully recoverable in cycling as the down hill speed is not necessarily recoverable in the same degree as the speed is higher and therefore more aerodynamic drag as a whole is increased.

When you take a 1kg mass and lift it 300 meters you would need to input 2940 joules of energy or an average of 0.817 watts over an hour. For a typical crit, which lasts just under an hour you could approximate this to around 1 Watt per kg of weight you are carrying around, on average.
So, if your on a heavier bike, heavier body and lugging 2 water bottles around you could need an extra 10 watts more than the next person.

Accelleration and inertia are the next element to evaluate, in terms of the constant accelleration and decelleration during a crit. Suppose the riders mass is 80kg (inc bike) and is accelerating from zero to 22.4mph in the space of 30 seconds, which would require 133 watts input (excluding drag, rolling resistance, etc.) just to accelerate the mass. The cost of an extra 1kg in mass would equate to an extra 1.7 watts over the 30 seconds.
The typical crit could involve 3 accelerations per lap of 10mph average increase in speed and over 30 laps this would equate to an average energy requirement of 100 watts if the event lasted 45 minutes. So, add and extra 1 kg into the pot and this equates to 1.25 watts per kg average.

Rim weight is the next interesting one as the acceleration of the bike, effectively includes the energy required to accelerate the rim weight to an average speed of the bike but the rim is travelling between zero and twice the speed of the bike as you move. As the potential energy includes the square of the velocity this makes the rim more critical and the hub can be ignored. The energy input for the rim is therefore double that of a mass attached to the bike, so your extra 500g on the rim could equates to approximately an extra 1 watt over the duration of a crit.

Drag is the last one to add could be anywhere depending upon your bike position and choice of wheels the easiest options to change, for this example we will assume the bike position is un changed and the wheels equate to a 10 watt difference in drag (approximation for medium carbon rims and a reasonable alloy race wheel)

So, summary so far is you require an extra 2.25 watts per kg for a crit to cover just the kinetic and potential energy of the mass, if it where attached to the bike (not the rotating mass of the wheels). If you were a 77kg rider on a 8.2kg bike racing against a rider on a 7kg bike and weighed 73kg you would need an extra 11.7 watts just to compensate for the kinetic and potential of the mass.
Add in an extra 1 watt due to the heavier rims and then throw in the extra 10 watts for the arodynamics and you end up with a 22.7 watts difference in energy requirement for the two riders.

Station run TSS

2008-03-19T13:53:00.000Z

When returning home from my weekly longer commute into London one evening last week I ended up getting the train for the last stop, having almost made it home but ran into thermal dropout (i.e. I was starting to get tool cold from being wet and not eating enough).From the station I had a typical ride back home and then had a look at what the TSS was for the ride, which I had previously been logging as a conservative TSS of 6.

Turns out the ride home (one way) registered at 10, so in theory my daily TSS was getting a weekday base support of around 15-20, which now seems to make some sense in relation to my previous training and impact. I now can notice the impact (good and bad times) when I do not have a day on the bike, which either helped with the recovery, misses an input at a time it would have had a beneficial effect or a detrimental jaunt.

Riding no more than 150% your event distance

2008-03-19T13:52:00.000Z

I had a thought about this in relation to my crit performance from last year, the training for my events this year, the comments from some other riders and a bit of common sense. Taking an extreme approach to this would mean that training for a 1km persiut event you would only ever ride 1.5km and potentially spend the rest of the day in the gym or ride the 1.5km repetatively ? The other extreme would be for a 24 hour event would you try and ride for 36 hours ? This leaves you with a mix inbetween where a degree of moderation exists but I do believe that the longer rides are beneficial in different ways than just riding 1.5 times the event distance. Training for a 10 mile time trail by riding 15 miles every day would help but a single longer ride (replacing some of the other miles) at the weekends should help a lot more.

The other way to think about it is with your training stress as you need to build up the training stress to get fitter and this equates to getting on your bike and doing some miles. As a guide I think you will not win a race on a CTL of sub 50 and a minimum of 45 is required for a top 10 (on a reasonable CAT3/4 event).

To get to a CTL of 60 you will need to be doing a minimum of around 120 miles per week (at 3.5 TSS per mile).

Remember, remember, a map

2008-03-01T21:09:00.003Z

Well, the day started off a little later than planned with the usual directional aid from the sun and the wind, which should have worked quite well if I took a watch out and kept track of the time. Once the sun dissapeared from the sky that was the first sign things were not going to plan (basically to get back home while I can still see the road). So, about 20 miles from home and only a rough guide for directions (London 33 miles, Hemmel 16 ? on a signpost) I set off, fortunately with a back wind, down the A14, alhough it's not the best of roads to be riding in sunlight. With 2 lights on the bike (both rear) flashing away like a christmass tree I did not feel too alarmed at riding down a dual carrageway. With cars thundering past I only recieved one blast of the horn from a white van driver, which summed that up and carried on praying the light would not fade too quickly. In the end I managed to get back while I could just see the road with a couple of lessons learnt.
1 - Always take full lights out if you run the risk of getting cought out in the dark (a puncture would have delayed me to the point I'd have been on the phone for the recovery vehicle !)
2 - Take a map if you don't know the area, unless you have plenty of time to leasurely ride around in circles.
Days ride - 266TSS, 301Wavg, 324Wnorm, 3624Kcal, 56.3miles, 3h 7m (3h 24m lapsed - inc food stop)

Sorting out the race calendar

2008-02-19T19:31:00.003Z

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

2008-02-15T19:19:00.004Z

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

2008-02-10T16:55:00.000Z

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

2008-02-03T22:26:00.000Z

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.

Simon Jones vs iMagic

2008-01-05T16:26:00.000Z

Well, plugged in the training profile of 10 minutes alternating 300W for 20 seconds and 430W for 10 seconds (iMagic profile woul deither do 420 or 430) and a 10 minute warmup at 220W to get the legs spinning. This is when the power profile went to pot as the iMagic is susceptable to tyre and wheel dynamics a bit as per my previous testing, otherwise, if you get the speed right it's quite accurate. Anyhow I did not get the speed right and a 10 minute session that should average out at around 343W ended up at 356W with the rest periods at sub 300W and the peaks at around 465W, hmmm, no wonder my legs felt it. My HR average at the end 2 minutes was around 160bpm so it seemed about right in terms of average HR but not on my legs (or maybe right and not what I'm used to).

Winter training the wrong way

2008-01-05T13:37:00.000Z

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.

Dry winter and carbon monoxide free

2007-12-16T21:08:00.000Z

Chart of the session (from the 23rd Nov) was a cadence plot, which maxed out at 195rpm at 646W.

Bought a dehumidifier, which has a carbon filer in, to try and dry out the shed a bit as I have been sweating in it for a few weeks and it seemed to be getting a little unhealthy. The moisture was causing problems as it was starting to cause everthing to rust withn a week and it was always a little stuffy. So, plan 1 (after opening the door) was to see how much water would be taken out over the space of a week.

The dimensions of the shed are 5m x 4m (ok, not quite the ordinary size) with a pitched roof, which gives a volume of around 42 cubic meters and so far around 10 litres of water (in 4 days) has been taken out. Considering I was adding around 0.5 - 0.75 litres per hour this is getting near to a months worth of water, although I think there is a bit more to go yet.

This then got me onto thinking about altitude training in a slightly different way, due to the active carbon fiter and how they are used in confined environments (for removing / scrubbing carbon monoxide). My thought was in the space of 2 hours, if you do not open any door or window and excersize at say 75%, how much of a decrease would be seen in the oxygen level ? If you can remove the carbon monoxide and filter out any other bits in the process then you should be able to simulate a session from sea level to as high as you want (providing you don't pass out).

Training so far seems to be progressing well and even better after getting rid of a slight cold / cough that was doing the rounds in the office and train. This next week will be some steady hours on the trainer, ready for some good rides and miles over the chistmas break. Consistency and steady progress will continue to be the focus for now, but may go to pot if the weather is nice as I'll try and get out each day (as long as it does not cause any arguments !)

2 day 1 day + more

2007-11-25T21:03:00.000Z

Sunday - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -- - - Saturday - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -- - - Friday

The training over the last 3 days has been a bit of an experiment in restraint, boredom and trying to read, on a static trainer with the fan blowing in your face. The first 2 days were done at a relaxed pace and output with my HR average of 125ish (259W 1h 35m), 128 (262W 1h 46m) and 136 (282W 1h 42m) with todays session including 30min at 350W (155bpm avg).

The first 2 days were at an easy enough pace and generally felt quite good at the end of each session as they were just above recovery zone, although I did the majority of it at a lower cadence. Todays session I felt quite good and after half an hour I thought I'd increase to sub threashold power and see how my HR responded, backing off when it was getting close to going over 160bpm.

Will be interesting to see how I feel during tomorrow nights session (providing I get the time).

Conclusion - more of the same in my plan.

Good start to the winter ?

2007-11-18T20:30:00.001Z

The combination of yesterdays session and tonights left me feeling quite good (new 5 sec max)and very hopefull for next years results with the only big issue being time. My commute to the station has changed a little from the sprint sessions to one of a little more moderation but higher gears for the hills. The moderation is a partial attempt to prevent myself from catching a cold (chilled lungs in a sweaty train is not good) and to get in some strength training instead. The direction to the station is more downhill than up and that provides 2 climbs to navigate, although the first is outside the door and not too good to start off on. Comming home is a lot better as I put it into top and then wind up the hill on return, which provides something like a 20 second all out blast on the legs at 60-70rpm.

The other strategy, which I have been thinking about is the development of fast twitch vs slow twitch and the "genetic" bias which seems to exist and the theories about the difficulties in trying to get fast twich fibers to develop. My thought is around a different in training style for strength which does not involve slow strenght actions.

Leg presses are good for strength but they would only develop slow twitch fibers because the time for the leg extension, when compared to a pedal revolution is much, much slower. The other option is to train on the bike, but, instead of changing up a few gears and slowing to 60rpm why not effectively do an all out 10-20 second effort at 100-120rpm ? After all, if your training for sprinting then why not effectively sprint train ? That said the efforts should stop well before your HR gets up too far as all your after doing is getting fast high power cadence in.

This is the combination that I'm going to apply this winter for my strength build combining some high spin high power with the slow hill commutes and see how this works out.

10 mile TT test 22:23 at 379W

2007-11-14T21:11:00.000Z

Was going great guns, up until just after 7 minutes when the half litre I drank 15 minutes ago started to threaten a return and backed off. Up until that point I averaged 415W but my heart rate had crept upto 174bpm. After a brief easing off for a few seconds I pushed on at a lower pace (366W) to cap my HR but that droped the wattage average down to 397W by the 11min mark and the drink was still not settling. After 25 seconds at 250W I upped the pace again to around 364W and finished off the distance, which dropped the average down, still at least it was above my 25 mile pace so have not lost too much so far.

Weekly total 4h 3m

2007-11-11T13:41:00.000Z

Not a great start so far for the week, although a stready increase in TSS for each session to 78.9 today at a very relaxed IF of 0.66. Distance was 86 imagic miles as it was all on the trainer spread across 3 sessions.

Winter training starts with a whimper

2007-11-02T23:08:00.000Z

Well, after having the best part of a month off the bike I certainly noticed it as all those odd bottles of wine, chocolate and cakes cought up. In terms of fitness it has not dropped off a cliff but it is certainly noticeble as to what you loose after a few weeks of treating your body like s**t. For my next years training I need to get into a more balanced regime, which does not involve vegitating in front of the TV, rather sleeping instead as this will go some way to remaining health.

Tube and train travel in London seems to be a strange place in winter as hoards of people insist on dragging themselves into work coughing and spluttering all over. Thoughts on this are to keep my immune system as topped up as possible without reaching for the vitamins until required. From a training and balance perspective this also means base is base training, no mad moments on the club runs and lots of sleep so that I'm in great shape for late March before winding things up.

Goals for the winter are to get out for at least 6 hours at the weekends and include indoor trainer sessions on Monday, Wednesday and Friday towards the back end of winter. This should give me a block of 4 days volume and a weekly total of around 10-12 hours of quality riding. With this volume, based at the right intensity, I figure that it should be enough to get me where I want to be by around May/June, which is in the >400W category. 1st race will be mine.

Finally got around to putting a new chain on, although I still need to give the bike a bit more of a clean and sat on the trainer for half an hour easy spin. Next real job is to get the sterio moved in and update the music tracks, then I'm all set for a stready build.

My ergomo battery finally gave up the ghost and cyclepowermeters were very quick to exchange the unit out, arriving the next day, which is a rare level of customer service these days. For my next bike (2008 purchase) a power meter will be a must adn they will be top of the list.

25 mile TT test

2007-09-15T19:36:00.000Z

With a bit of additional motivation in the form of my dad sitting with me while I sat on the iMagic the decision was to do a 25 mile TT. Did a warm up for 13 minutes and then re-set the program to zero and then set off for the test. Unfortunately 11 minutes later the program stopped as I had done my TT pace at 378W for the same distance as my warm-up, so cooled down for 3 min before creating a specific program (1 segment of 25 miles) and then starting off again. Oh, well a 30 minute warm-up period should be ok...

Time : 55min 27sec

Power : 375W (376W norm)

Heart rate : 168bpm (187bpm max)

Cadence : 99prm (107 rpm max)

2-4 Weeks catch up

2007-09-03T21:30:00.000Z

Managed to get out for a coule of hours tonight, before it became too dark (had not took any lights out and do not want to ride the roads round here in the dark as I'd like to see the sun again). 2 Hours 5minutes and 40.2miles later I was a bit stuffed but feeling like I'd had a good and productive ride, although looking at the data it seems like I'm about 2-4 weeks back from my peak (3 weeks ago).

NP60 was 358W (avg 335W) with an average HR of 140bpm and max 175bpm over the local area that included 300m of climbing and about 2 minutes of stops. The average speed of 20.1mph gives a fair idea of my aerodynamics on the bike, resting on the hoods. Need to work on my stability a bit when I'm resting on the tops of the bars.

With the additional weight loss the one thing, which did stand out a little, was going up the hills as it seemed a little more comfortable to get into a pace at 400W for 3-5min at a time with my HR picking up to 169bpm. Conditions were cooler (16C) and I did go out with my longs on (arm warmers in the pocket until after 90min), which probably helped more.

So, tomorrow night is hopefully an hour on the bike to the park with Luke as a recovery spin before another session on Wednesday as the build to the next race.

Back in training and it feels good

2007-09-01T19:29:00.000Z

Back in training, but did not feel up to it to start off with as I was still feeling tired and unsettled. Once I was on the bike the feeling did not go until about 10 minutes in when it started to settle down and felt good, which was helped by an indication that I had not lost too much over the previous 2 weeks.
After a mixed session on the trainer I ventured out onto the road for a quick 15min blast up the road and averaged 385W, but my HR was way high, touching 184 at times before backing off a little.

I have to refine my bike position as I think that this is the key element to my next season as this is where I have not really focused as much as I should have. Reading through Obree and Hutchinsons books they both recognised that aerodynamics are the end game, which has a far higher impact that outright watts.

My goals for the rest of this year are to ride one more crit in around 4 weeks before entering winter mode and preparing for next year, which I'm going to hit full on this time, with avengance. I know now that if I carry some of what I have this year into next and train properly in the preceeding months I should be able to win the first crit.

Even with the recent weight loss I still have a bit of a gut hanging over my shorts, but it's only my spare....

Nobody has replied so far to my 2 queries in relation to the results from Milton Keynes.

Half bottle of peptobismol later and 71kg

2007-08-28T21:06:00.000Z

Well, in the end I resorted to desparate measures and reached for some medicine. Hourly doses of peptobismol for a few hours with a little bit of water and that seemed to have sorted things out. Enough anyway for me to have something reasonable to eat later on without having any rumbling guts so far. My weight dropped to 71kg before I resorted to this in the hope that added vitamins and liquid would be enough, although that did not seem to be enough on it's own, or may have been in a few more days, but who knows. Hopefully sorted for now.

Managed to read Michael Hutchinsons hour record attempt while in bed, which was interesting in his character and the physical characteristics / genetic side of things. Found a link later, which has some interesting statistics for the hour record holders and indicates what is really required for the hour and to win the Tour de France. Goes to show I'm a long way off...

Milton Keynes results in question

2007-08-27T18:07:00.000Z

From the 16th event in the series, which I thought I had come 5th (after checking with the marshal on the line at the end of the event) the results appear to indicate otherwise and according to the BC website results that have been posted.

5th and 6th had a 3/4 of a lap head start (the unofficial handicap start). 7th place is a CAT2 rider, who at the time of the event seems to have had more than 40 points, so according to BC rules should have been a CAT2 entrant. 10th place was another, who would have had 3/4 of a lap head start, although I'm reasonably sure we lapped them if there were only 4 in front.

For the results from the 18th event the winner of the CAT3/4 race was a CAT3 license, CAT2 ability with more than 40 points as a CAT3 ?

Need to read up on the details of the rules as it appears the racing is not done as I thought and is possibly a lot more mixed than expected... puzzled.

Stomach troubles and the 4yr old 10 miler

2007-08-27T17:03:00.000Z

After the race in the wet the previous weekend it was about 3 days until I felt really off, not quite sick but a feeling that something was deffinately not right. Wednesday evening I was asleep very early and after about 12-14 hours sleep I ended up spending the next few hours in bed and on the toilet... not nice... After a 36 hour period of not feeling that great things seemed to be getting better again, although after a couple of days it seems to have returned and again, not feeling too great if I have a lot to eat, so a liquid diet for now. Riding to the station on Friday was an experience as the lack of an quantity of food for 36hrs depleted the energy a noticable amount.

Currenty down to below 72kg, which is not good due to the way in which this has been achieved and does not leave me with a gut to burn while I'm drinking mainly water. Justr focusing on keeping hydrated well and hope the injection will work it's way through or be zapped by my imune system.

Thought it was a good opportunity though to take some time off the bike (my excuse and rasoning not to get pissed off about it), even though it has been one of the best weekends this year and would have loved to have been out on the bike. A good break with the family.

While away for the weekend I took my £50 commuter special with us and Lukes pedal bike, which he likes to ride a lot now. Luke and myself set off from the site we were staying at to the local Reservoir, which has a track / path running round it and made our way to the playground at first (about 1.5 miles away). Following a few minutes on the rotting climbing frame Luke got back on his bike and we set off further round the circuit, along the top of the dam wall, with a few stops for Luke to have a look over the top and see what was about. Before long we were half way round and at the local pub for snack with a lemonade and coke.

After the pit stop we set off back the way we came and I ended up pushing Luke along about a mile of the road (sort of short cut) that ran paralle to the paths before we arrived at the start of the dam. Returning back along the same route to the caravan the distance all in all seemed to be around 10 miles. Not bad for a 4yr old...

Welyn Wheelers 55mi - Lost my bottle and pulled out

2007-08-19T12:31:00.000Z

The weather on the drive to the start at Cardington seemed hopefull, with warm overcast conditions with very light drizzle. The promise of clear skys, however did not materialise and the rain arrived early and constant from the start.

5 Laps of the Northill circuit were on the cards and with the conditions as they were I was a but dubious about starting, but after paying to enter and having Richard there (who rides to work all weathers) I did not want to look like a bit of a wimp (a dry one at that).

For the first lap the combination of the spray and rain quickly made sure that the decision to pull out or not on the first lap was almost irrelevant as I could not get any more wet and felt quite good. Stayed towards the back of the bunch at the start, however after seeing how much it strung out, the number of break attempts and the probability of accidents I thought it would be better all round to move up.

Seond lap went reasonable, until my bottle bounced out and slid down the road, clipped by a few wheels on it's way into the gutter. This was a bit of a disaster as a 2hr + ride without any drink would be a bit of a killer and I would not be able to get any points without a drink.

The thoughts that came to mind were to ask for a drink, however that would probably be met with quite a few refusals and me in a more desparate position.

Drinking road wash came to mind, however that was discounted in a few milliseconds when I recieved a load of spray off the road from the bike in front dosed with horse shit, which left me with a couple of options. Part of the strategy was to colect my bottle on the next lap round.

The first option was just to have a go off the front and see what I could do in terms of gap and duration of staying away, which I did shortly afterwards and settled down for 3 min at 460W before dropping back to 390W for the next 4 minutes, staying away for 4.7km before drifting back to the bunch. What I was thinking about was creating a bit of confusion by breaking off the front and then pulling out, but I did the break at the wrong point in the loop to collect my bottle. Would have been quite funny though, although Im not sure how it would have been taken by some. I was picturing the thought of the bunch on a perpetual chase for the next 2 laps.

After being cought I stayed close to the front and rode along, until we came closer to the bottle drop and then drifted back in the bunch before stopping, turning arund and collecting the now empty bottle.

Arriving back at the start I felt a little dissapointed about the bottle drop and the weather, although the weather was not as bad in some ways as it at least kept me cooler, even if I could not see a thing out of my glasses.

Before the bottle colection :
Duration 1h 14m
Power : 309W (357W norm)
TSS : 129 / IF 1.02 / VI 1.16
Altitude : sensor blocked with water....
Speed : 39kph
Power averae : 5min 441W / 10min 401W / 20min 364W

Conclusion : Would have finished with the bunch (possible points as the hill finishe was long enough to suit me better), must get a different water bottle that will not bounce out of it's holder.

Milton Keynes - 8th

2007-08-16T20:33:00.000Z

Turned out a bit different his week, bunch not as big or did not seem to be at first and then everyone lined up. Few less than last week due to the weather nt looking all that great earlier in the day, although the forecast was for it to clear and driving through a couple of showers I had my doubts.
Blue sky start, sun blinding on one corner (must get my glasses sorted out) to the dergee that I could not really see the road very well. Not a good situation when your surrounded by bikes at speed, leaning into a corner.

The bunch pretty much stayed together for the whole race with a few smal breaks off the front, although almost non of them seemed to have the momentum to hold. One did seem to have the momentum, although the riders did not give it the commitment as a group and it faded after a couple of laps. Perhaps I should try another tactic in the next race by trying to form a break or getting a group to work together.

Did a few laps on the front as I thought I'd put a bit of pressure on up the hill and see if I could thin the group out a bit, although there were still the odd one or two riders, who would attack on the down hill section and then get cought within a lap.

No real attempt to do a solo as I thought the group may have formed a split in the bunch later on, which would have provided me with the points that I needed, however it did not materialise as too many people were following wheels (me included).

Comming round to the last laps the pace picked up a bit for 5 to go, then a bit more for 4 to go and then dropped a little for the 3 to go before someone put the pressure on the hill going into the last lap. Trying to hold a position not too close to the front (around 10-11th) but probably a bit too far back in retrospect was better this time as the pace was higher and the line a bit more drawn out. Starting the hill section I put the power down and ducked for cover wherever possible, while moving up. Approaching the line I managed to pass another rider to put me into 8th place, 1 point less than I needed !!! DOH !!! Should have 9 points now :-)

Race duration : 1:08:18
Distance : 43.84km (312m climb)
Power : 318W avg (389W norm)
Heart Rate : 154bpm avg (183 max - need more sleep !)
Speed : 38.5kph
5s (1134) 10s (1080) 30s (854) 1m (564) 5m (408/449) 20m (355/409) 60m (322/385)
IF : 1.11 ? / VI 1.22
TSS : 140 (1304k)

To Brighton and not quite back

2007-08-11T20:06:00.000Z

Long ride today, from Herne Hill to Brighton and back to Haywards Heath for the train back as it was near 6:30pm and the sun was low. Riding to the next station would have put us in darkness from the home stations or left riding with a low sun on the horizon, which makes you a great target for drivers who can't see you.

Ride summary TSS 321.1, 118.5km, 4h 32m, 1420m climbing, avg 238W, 295W norm.

Peak 30min was 353W/363NP and peak 5min was 464W/481NP while going up Ditchling beacon (109m of the 159m climb), which was a new high above my 449W from a couple of weeks back. According to CyclingPeaks that in theory puts me close to a domestic pro.. hmmm... maybe not... but should make a break on the criteriums more of a possibility.

Longest day out on the road at nearly 6:30 including stops.

5th at Milton Keynes

2007-08-09T20:48:00.000Z

Well, driving to Milton Keynes I was still tired and not feeling up to racing, although after leaving work early I though I could not get away with blagging a story afterward, but it was very tempting.

The start was very different, full circuit to start with, lower loop in an anti-clockwise direction, which meant the climb was not as steep (or did not feel it) but the first corner from the down hill section was interesting (more on that later). Lining us up the usual occured at first with the CAT1+2 at the front and then the CAT3+4 behind. What happened next was they asked all those who did not have a top 10 finish to move to the front out of the CAT3+4 group and then set them off first. About 0 seconds later a CAT1+2 came through on the grass shouting he had to catch up, which was highly amusing to all of us as it was probably about 60 seconds later he would hvae realised what happened !

Next the CAT1+2's went off and then us, although it seemed quite a long while since the first bunch set off (3/4 of a lap estimate from the guy starting us off). This gave the pace a bit of a kick from the start and the chase was on, which was not too bad and I held a position around 10th for the first few laps before having a pull on the front for a lap a rest and then another go at the front before moving back into the pack.

About 25-35min in we ought the front 34 group, at which point a small goup broke off the front at some pace and I though thy may stay out, but I was boxed in and about 15 paces back, so I had to sit in and then move up. This is the point where it became a bit more confusing as another group must have split off the front, which I chased and joined, which made 5 of us. I thought we were the 5 at the front at the time and did not know another 4 were still in front.

The next few laps we worked together and dopped one off, and then a few laps later another dropped, and then another, which then left myself and 103, with somewhere between 10 and 20 minues to go.. Thinking we were off the front and in the lead I pressed on and we both worked together and I made sure I kept the other guy on board to help me and help him, as a solo it may have been good for the ego but I would not have lasted (lesson from the previous week).

We cought one 34 bunch and passed them and then came across another 34/12 mixed bunch, which we passed and then the pair of us worked at the front. Comming into the last laps I was getting close to being worked into the ground and a little annoyed that we were towing them along, which in a way helped as I pressed on more at certain points to try and drop them as well !

Onto the last lap it was a joy and fortunately I did not sit up and punch the air as I would have looked a right plonker ! The final result was 5th and a hard earned 5 points with 103 comming in 6th behind me.

Race overall averaged 345W with an NP of 381W in 1hr 9min 22sec. My HR average was 163 with a speed of 40kph and 367m of climbing.

The break lasted around 21min (I think) with an average power of 380W, NP406W, 174bpm avg at 100rpm.

Peak 60min (343 watts): Work: 1236 kJ
TSS: 116.7 (intensity factor 1.08)
Norm Power: 378 VI: 1.1
Distance: 39.785 km - Elevation Gain: 320 m
Power: 0 1024 343 watts
Heart rate: 133 184 162 bpm
Cadence: 44 120 95 rpm
Speed: 28.6 52.9 39.8 kph

Now for some much needed cerials and sleep !

Road junctions take more than watts

2007-08-08T20:10:00.000Z

When you get on a nice stretch of road and get into a rhythm, along comes a junction with about 300 cars to mess things up. That is unless you adopt a high risk strategy and see if you can get someone to either flash their light, honk the horn or are so gracious as to bounce you off thier vehicle bonet. My approach is one of enjoy it while I can, so I have to sit and wait for 300 people (all 1 person per vehicle) to pass by on their way home, or not.

Anyhow, the first 20 minutes started off without the intention of going too hard, but that quickly fell appart after about 4 minutes. The next 17 minutes were spent at a comfortable but hard pace that felt ok and not out of breath. Unfortunately my HR strap needs a new battery as the reception range on the Ergomo only picks up the signal when I'm stood or lent over the bars, not too good for comfort... but at the end of the 20 min range my HR topped out at 173 on the top of a small rise. Looking back at the data I recorded an NP of 399W and an average of 388W, cool, a new record !

At this point I thought that's it,otherwise I will be totally out of action tomorrow night. Easy 10 minutes followed and then a mixed set on the next hill for a couple of minutes, ok a bit short.... turn around, 2:15 burst up the other side again at 458W before a slow ride back.

All in all a short ride of just over an hour, hopefully enough to set me up for tomorrow.

Thursday race + Sunday = watt ?

2007-08-07T20:18:00.000Z

From the test a couple of weeks ago I noticed that the power was loaded to the back with the lats 20 minutes at 359W average or 357W taking out the last 2 minutes. The first 25 minutes averaged 353W and backing off when I got the chest pain at 35min took another 2-3W off the average. The one thing that I'll have to look into though is the normalised vs average aspect, when the intensity factor is calculated as my rides are now getting close to an IF of 1 and over (Sundays ride of just over an hour was 1.001 - as below) even though the average is way below my threashold.

Raced on Thursday night last week, which was good, although I managed to get no points. But it was not for trying and helped some guy win.... hmmmm...

The race was the clockwise loop with the upper circuit for the 2nd half of the hour + 5 laps, which I preffered as the hill seems steeper and more effective than the clockwise loop. What tuned out a bit diferent was the pace was higher, never split up much and did not join the CAT1+2's when they came past. That was better as I could then sit in for a while before putting much effort in, with the original strategy to go at 3 laps to go.

Within the race the pace picked up and slowed down as usual with the odd occurance of people going for a break (or more likely a stretch of the legs) on the down hill sections, which seemed a bit pointless or a place where you were going to burn more effort to gain a given gap.

Slowly through the first hour people dropped off the back with the sustained pace and the odd bit of pressure placed at the front.

4 laps to go, started to move into position, when a bunch of CAT1+2 came by and then sat about 10-20 yards in front with the CAT3+4 at the back. Going into the 3rd lap the situation was the same and into the 2nd.

With the last lap approaching going up the hill I realised this was the only option left, unless I waited for the final sprint. So, I picked up the pace and moved through the bunch and off the front past the CAT1+2's that were sitting at the front.

Going round the first corner at the top with no brakes I almost over cooked it and nearly ended up on the grass, which helped push my HR up to 188bpm and then I looked back to see where I was. From the vauge image I figured about 20-30 yards and did not notice anyone on my wheel so I pressed on again into the next corner, where again I almost ended up in the bushes.

Looking back again I think I had about 40 yards and someone was on my wheel, so as we entered the flatter section I signaled for him to come through and I took cover.

As we came to the bottom of the hill section I knew I had less energy left than him and shouted "go for it I'm knackered", which probably wasn't the best of things to do in retrospect....

He launched off the front and I continued to plug on, with the energy draining from my legs.

Reaching near the top and thinking I did have a chance of 2nd with 30 yards to go and the first person past me on the final sprint, then the 2nd, 3rd...... 10th, 11th.... "bollocks!" With 30 yards to go and 10 seconds later I was out of the points after backing off completely when I realised.

The aspectes of the race and the lessons are that I don't know when the other guy got on my wheel and if the CAT1+2 group helped pull the rest of the 3+4 back up a bit. Either way I felt it was a great race and a great lesson in racing strategy and tactics. My lesson is to make sure you look fully, guage your pace better and get some more luck. Plus, get out and add some more watts...

60min test

2007-07-26T12:50:00.000Z

Not feeling brilliant and a bit tired I started off last nights session on the trainer at an easy pace for 10min and then picked up a bit. By the 15min mark I was at threashold output and my HR was still low and not picking up very much, although it was quite cool (2 fans blowing from 2ft away) so I put this down to body temperature. After about 15min I was still feeling ok, HR low (but rising) so I thought I'd hold for an hour and see what happens. 40 min in my HR was up to 160 and then by 50min 170 (from memory, will post the chart and clarify). At the 60min mark a pickup in pace was in order, which did not last very long. 354W average on the Ergomo Pro and 357W on the iMagic (supprised the iMagic matched up so close with the Ergomo). All in all not a bad session, but not quite intended.

Nice roads and a long hill

2007-07-19T11:52:00.000Z

Went out at the weekend for a couple of longer rides than normal, while I had the chance of riding on uncongested smooth tramac instead of fume filled potholes. Both days were quite nice at around 3 hours with a test on the 2nd outing to see if I could set a new 5 min power. One of my theories is that cooling is far more important to 5min+ efforts than what is generally looked at for performance improvements, hence the test. During an indoor effort I set a 5 min record of 421W at the begining of July, which had fan cooling only on the upper body. The test ride at the weekend was out in the open with approx 20C broken sky conditions and I managed 449W, which put me into the CAT1 are on the power profile. Either I managed to get better motivation riding out in the open (30%), improved by 28W in 2 weeks (10%) or had better cooling (60%). The percentages being what I think the difference came from - a combined effect.

During the home bound section of the ride on Monday I ended up on a time trial course with 2 riders ahead to chase. I managed to pass one of them and then stayed about 100m behind the other, who had better aero performance than me (on a section at 33mph he was pulling away slightly). The aero element is something else that I need to work on so that I do not have the profile of a brick.

So, all I need to do now is (appart from the impossible) to maintain my 5 min output for an hour and then I can enter the toru next year.... ha... ha...

Empty legs and no riding

2007-07-06T14:13:00.000Z

Bit of a supprise in sundays session as I thought my attempt at setting a new 60sec power record went really badly when my legs fel appart about 40 seconds in. Looking at the power profile over the 60 seconds it was a start with too much output that caused my legs to empty in no time at all and I could feel them loosing power by the second. At around the 50 second mark I almost gave it up as a bad job because I did the test after an hour and a half at 270W (294W norm) that had 1 hour at 300W (315W norm). Seeing how low the power had dropped I though it was a sub 600W average and not the 640W recorded. My HR finished at 179 (10bpm lower than my max) but my legs were well and truly shot.

Since then I have not touched my road bike and only done the short run to the station, now it's Friday and my CTL is back to what it was a month ago... Oh, well.

The weather this weekend is looking good and the Tour is in town, so it's either a ride down to watch it on Saturday or take the camera on foot. The ride down seems more appealing in some way, afterall I can always sit on my bike to watch it..

Progress stalling on time

2007-07-01T14:28:00.000Z

Progress so far has been a little mixed with relatively small gains on the back of a low training load. Felt quite good last night after a bit of a break and some hill work on a couple of days last week and set a new 5 min power output at 5.61W/kg (421W).

My CTL is stalling around 55 as I struggle with the time to get some decent hours in when either the weather is not too bad or it is not too late at night after work. The problem with the after work sessions is that a couple of hours on the trainer finishing at 8:30pm or 9:00pm leaves you wide awake, which is not too good for either getting some sleep or making sure you eat for a good recovery. Fortunately the High-5 recovery powder seem to work quite well with some semi-skimmed and have been thinking about using a mix on some cerials to save some time.... bannana milk on wheetabix... mmmmmm...

Well, considering the weather this weeks crit at MK seems like it will be 50/50 so I'm going to train the rest of this week and then ride in to London on Saturday to watch the Tour and then possibly ride out again on Sunday to watch the 2nd stage depart.

Wattage inversely correlated to pain

2007-06-11T18:39:00.000Z

Had a bit of a strange episode where a higher wattage was more unfomfortable, although a lot less painfull than the feeling after reducing the wattage after a period of time. 30 minutes at 345W with a 6 repeats of alternating 1 minute 380W-390W and 2 min at 320W in the middle was quite interesting as backing off to 160W afterwards started to really hurt after about a minute. Increasing the wattage back up to 280-300 dulled the pain after about 30 seconds.

Anyhow, tonight set a new max 5 min average, although not quite sure how you can have a normalised power reading lower than the average ? Good thing was the average HR was nearly 10bpm lower than 1 month ago, but, the previous 5 min was out on the road.
5 minute average = 412W (410W norm ? - hr 162 avg )
Previous = 410W (416W norm - hr 171 avg)

Set a new 5 second last night.
5 second 1135W (1171 max) - max reading on ergomo was 1203W ?
Previous 1123W (1200 max) - ergomo >1200W ?
Not quite sure how the ergomo is reading >1200W when the sampling was set to 2 revs / sample as my cadence was lower than 120, which should represent 1 second...

It's not the only distortion

2007-06-03T20:19:00.000Z

Trying to put together an email to FSA to try and ask them to resolve or answer what is going on and it seemed a bit long winded. At the end of the mail I was not really clear what I was asking for or how the problem could be resolved.

Putting some options together I thought I could use my Dura-Ace chainrings on the FSA spider and in the process really see if the chainring was bent by putting it on a flat surface. At first I did not know it the Dura-Ace rings would fit and then after a quick measurement and check I fit them onto the FSA spider and it almost looks good.... hmmm...

This left me with the first check to see how much the FSA chainring was out of shape, so I laid it the desk to see if it was out of shape, thinking the table was not flat I turned it round a bit, then a bit more, bit more and finally figured out the desk was not bent....

Going back to the chainring on my bike I now had a look to see if that was bent anymore and it was now showing a slight eliptical distortion and a distortion in the other plane as well that I had not noticed before (both sideways and vertical, which I had not checked for before removing the chainrings).

Now that I have probably invalidated the warranty in a quest to prove a case and in the process making my bike look a little bit more odd, anyone want to buy a bent FSA chainring, only 1,000 miles ?

Bendy FSA-SLK Crank chainrings ?

2007-06-03T18:35:00.000Z

After having a power meter installed (Ergomo) I had to change my cranks from Dura Ace to FSA or more to the point the choice was limited at the time. This in itself did not seem to be much of an issue at the time, however strange things have occured since and the chainrings seem to have a life of thier own.

I did not have any means to directly measure the chape of the chainring profile, so thought the camera resolution would provide a good view of what I am seeing.

To clarify what was going on I setup my camera on a tripod (to eliminate camera shift) and then took pictures at 6 tooth increments around the chainring, which then gave me 9 shots (well about 9 in the end after about 40-50 trial shots).

From each of the pictures I took a slice at 800% enlargement (so that the pixel size was hightly visible) at the location shown on the top image and then shrunk it width ways into Excel so that the tooth profile was visible again. Each of the 9 images was processed in this way to give an end picture as shown to the right.

As a secondary means of measuring the distortion I then shrunk the row height to 0.75 and marked off each row position that correlated to the tip of the tooth on the chainring, took the row location and normalised the row numbers to a zero base, which gives the figures in the base of the picture.

The first image represents the right hand crank (chainring side) pointing upwards to 12 o'clock.

What stands out is the profile is non eliptical and distorted in 2 areas with the main distortion with the crank position around 90 degrees (each picture is a 40.75 degree inrement from (6/53)*360 degrees) that resulted from the chain in the 12 tooth sprocket on the cassette when I was training as this either creates a chain angle just enough for the pedal force to bend the chainring or the carbon fiber crank arm is distorting ?

I'm a bit puzzled as to why they are bending, although I can bend them out of shape in the opposite direction if I end up climbing in a 53-23 combination and put on a lot of pressure. That said, the doo seem to be very stable sub 1000W, it's just when you go above this some jelly seems to become involved.

Chain problems

2007-06-03T17:19:00.000Z

This is what happened to one link in my Dura-Ace chain, which did not have the pin inserted correctly. After about 20 miles the chain eventually fell off..

Right place at the right time, just did not hold it...

2007-05-24T20:27:00.000Z

Well, 2nd race at Milton Keynes and nill points, now comes the excuses, err, sorry, analysis.

Read the race quite well and managed to keep with the lead bunch and conserve energy, even when they tagged on to the CAT1/2 bunch, which subsequently ripped the CAT3/4 field appart. They also reversed the circuit round so we were turning right (clockwise round the circuit), which form the warmup laps I figured that I'd be better waiting until the last lap and joining the sprint on the hill as it was just enough (and with a back wind) to make an outright power (aerodynamics less relevant) based sprint possible, which should have suited me better. The crux of the problem was getting in to the right position and holding it until the last turn before the hill, which I did not manage to do.

For the sprint I maxed out with a HR at 189 (new high), 1083W peak and a 30sec power of 750W, which allowed me to pass around 10 rides, however a very small gap had opened up on the last 2 corners (the difference between those at the front going round corners without braking and the right line and those following...) which I had not noticed until passing through the bunch on the hill. After getting through the back group I continued up and joined the front 12 just before the line, outside the top 10.

Earlier on when the CAT1/2 bunch passed through I kept and eye out as I was expecting them to tag on, however with the first bunch they did not, but the 2nd they did. This subsequently created a couple of difficult laps (HR at 172 avg, 183 max and 378W avg), which in turn dropped over half the field. I held on after bridging some gaps and tagged along, hoping it would last for a few more laps before turning back down again as this would thin the pack out further as it seemed to have reduced to around 15. ,Unfortunately it did not last and they eased off and the following 2 laps were 100W lower, which allowed the chasing bunch to catch up again (alternate strategy out the window).

The chart at the top includes the warm up and cool down. The cadence distribution shows how much time was free wheeling in the bunch (around 10-15min) and the spinning up the hill section (15min)

Duration 1:09:26 - 47km - 1137kJ

TSS 110 IF 0.977 VI 1.25

Norm power : 342W avg 273W

Max 1083W, 10sec 1014W, 1min 503W, 30min 286W, 60min 277W (344norm)

Climb 380m

Things I did differently

- spin up the hill 100+rpm on more occasions

- decide to go for the last lap gallop

- take it easy until I had to put the power on

Mistakes

- Breaking harder than required on the 4th to last corner

- Not staying in a good position when I had the chance on the 3rd lap to go

- Thinking the bunch had a deathwish

What I'd do differently

- Hold the position better towards the last laps

- Try and position for the corners better so I don't have to break or as much

Sunday ride with no coffeee stop

2007-05-20T17:37:00.000Z

Todays outing was made a bit harder by not stopping for the usual coffee and cake at the mid point in the run, which created a TSS of 256.8 for the ride as a result, which in turn is the largest TSS for any day I have done this year. Riding to work and back would create a TSS of 226 (60 miles round trip) although todays run was 70 miles. 3,500kCal burned in the process and my CTL is still below 50, although todays ride gave it a kick up 5 points.

Registered a new max HR at 187 for 5 seconds on one of the climbs, out of breath a bit and looked down to see where my HR was and then supprised at a 186 value at the time as I did not expect it to go so high. The 1 min power during the clumb was still sub cat 4, although registered my 3rd best 5 min power. The previous 1 min power readings were done from rest as a comparison.

Debating weather to postpone any more races this week and to get more longer training sessions in and then race the following week, which should provide enough of a boost to win if I get the recovery period right.

Broken chain woes - must remember to get a link kit

2007-05-19T21:26:00.000Z

Riding out today, though I'd swap the chain back to a Dura Ace chain for my training and unclipped the other chain and put the new one on. The pins that come with Dura Ace seem reasonable, although they can be problematic if coupled with a bent FSA chainset. Well, after a few miles a click developed, which (sod's law came into effect) at the furthest point away from home it snapped. Anyhow, 30 minutes later and now acomplishet with the chain tool I managed to bend a few more links and shorten the chain that much I could not use some of the gears, but I managed to get home. Oh, well.

The picture above is early on when I went to the front to pull a group back and to try out the pace a little as I was not feeling all that good and had not done anything for the first few laps. I though the group was all on, however on the slight hill on the circuit it appears not as 3 of us ended up creating a gap. 3rd back was the guy who I think won as he was on my wheel on the lap before the bell when I thought I'd try and split things up a bit or see what happened. Thinking back I should have tried a break to make a gap and then end up dropping back in rather than tow anyone along. When I moved to the front it was without any significant speed difference, but it was at the start of the hill where everyone seems start the breaks from.

Strategy for next week is to possibly try something along the same lines again a little later and with more conviction at the start, although if I'm feeling better then I'll go for the jump break and then 2 / 3 up if we get much of a gap.

Compared to how I have felt in the previous few weeks I should have been stronger than what I was and felt a lot better (weather that would have translated into watts and a few more seconds on the front is unknown). All good fun though...

Milton Keynes 2/3 points for 8th or 9th

2007-05-17T20:35:00.000Z

Not feeling that great at the start (feeling hungry driving down the motorway did not feel right) I had a couple of biters of a bannana and some sweets in the car on the way. 15 min of gentle tootling round on my bike (getting passed by everyone) during warm up made things a bit more calm and then felt a bit better.

The race was on the shorter oval circuit (no braking) for the first 30 min and then opened up to the extened circuit (3 corders where you ended up braking some of the time) for the remainder of the hour+5 laps.

During the race for the first few laps my HR was quite low averaging 146bpm before going at the front for a lap warmed things up a bit, but did not feel as good as I thought it should.

Overall the power output was lower than expected, averaging 273W for the race and 318W normalised, with a HR avg of 154bpm (ok sat at the back for a while). The periods of rest at the back and the downhill free wheeling did distort things a little as well. The chart on the right is a good indication of what happened, the bar on the right is the race compared to the previous 3 weeks of training and riding. Picked the wrong day !

The difference was in the last few laps where I moved up from the back as we had 5 laps to go.

As the 3rd lap came round I figured I had over 10bpm left in the tank and moved further up, into the 2nd lap to go I pushed a bit more and moved into the front at a pace I thought may have split the bunch a bit more. My reasoning was I did not have the sprint, so the only other option was to try and go at the 2nd or 3rd lap to go with a break or to fragment the bunch. On the bell I went through the line 2nd having pushed my HR to 182bpm and in need of a little rest I hooked on to the guys wheel, who had passed me. Looking back I can't recall if we had a gap as I think a gap had opened as he indicated for me to move up again to work 2 up, however the pedal was near to the floor and I needed some reserve for the last half lap to make sure I got some points as I started to realise we were not going to hold out the full distance. On the last corner people moved by anbd I gave it all realising my position was moving backwards.

Across the line with my HR at max (186) and a 15sec sprint at 658W, which in retrospect is a lot lower than what I can do (if you exclude the previous hour and a bit of racing). Crossing the line I tried to count my poisition out and it was either 8th or 9th.

The last 3 minutes were at 420W and 5 min were at 380W (NP404W).

Race: Duration: 1:12:53 Work: 1196 kJ

TSS: 100.7 (intensity factor 0.91)

Norm Power: 319 VI: 1.16

Distance: 46.727 km

Elevation Gain: 385 m Elevation Loss: 376 m

Power: max 964 avg 274 watts

Heart rate: max 186 avg 154 bpm

Speed: max 56.7 avg 38.5 kph

TSS for 12 minutes in a farmers field ?

2007-05-12T17:24:00.000Z

What a week, rain, gales and the inability to get out (or the lack of wet weather gear and a 2nd bike).

What I was hoping to be a good training week's holiday turned out to be a wet and windy session with only 2 days half decent riding.

The most amusing session was a quick run out between the rain that was forecast to arrive in a few hours. Into a near headwind that was about 25-30mph and only going about 14mph forwards a truck on the opposite side of the road passed by, which prompty blew the cap off my head with what must have been a 50-60mph gust. Upon stopping I realised that it had possibly gone into or over the top of the 7ft embankment at the side of the road and then spent the next 12 minutes wanderin up and down it trying to find my cap. The cap turned up eventually a few feet into the field of what was fortunately short green wheat shoots. After the off road session my cleats were a bit clogged up and any sprint felt quite loose on the pedals as a result, although they never came out of the pedal.

The first days run out was quite good and I felt good after a gap off the bike with only 1 day on during the week, although I should have eased in with an easier session, I ended up setting a new personal best for 5min power on some of the hills of 5.52W/kg. Tonights session on the iMagic also set a new peak 5 sec power at 1123W (14.97W/kg) and is just in to the CAT 4 zone in cyclingpeaks.

One thing that seems to be the case (for me) is that it is easier to get watts out on the move than on a trainer. The developing power profile also seems to indicate that I am more suited to an early (joint) or late (sole) break than going for the sprint finish in a bunch....

Race analysis form last year and a bike tune up

2007-05-03T19:26:00.000Z

Looking back at the race traces (Crystal palace and Milton Keynes) from last year I think I need to try a bit harder during the races. My HR max is 186 and my average for a Cyrstal Palace 3+4 event was 166bpm, which included a coule of laps off the front (1st mistake - not commited - gave up after the first lap and thinking I could not maintain my HR at around 177 for 8 or so laps). During this event the average speed was 24.2mph with 343 meters of climbing. That was not so bad...Milton Keynes was a little different as my HR averages were 156, 157 and 158 for 3 races with average speeds of 26, 24.4 and 24.5. The first race was on the inner circuit, which had effectively no corners but stil had 285m ofclimbing over the 28.1 miles. The other 2 races at Milton Kenes were 33.7 miles and 29.8 miles (approx 1 hour + 5 laps) in distance with around 343 meters of climbing (matching CP). The difference between Milton Keynes and Crystal Palace though is the duration, the inclusion of a hairpin that drops the speed right off and a single steeper hill climb. Crystal Palace seems more of a sprinter / interval style intense burst type circuit as a result, which makes it harder. The one difference though is it can be easier off the front,as long as you have the average power... From a friends trace (www.lbrc.org) the average lap power seems to be around 360W-380W (I'm guessing this was with his nose in the wind from the picture he sent me) so in theory all you have to do is maintain that on your own for 45-50min !

Spent a while last night doing some fixes and adjustments to the bike, which had been overdue, whic included taking 16" off the brake and gear cables that were almost usable as a washing line on the front of the bike. That in theory should save a watt or two into the wind !

The other change was fiting 25x700's with my old 23x700's inside them with about 7mm cut out and the beading cut off by around 4mm on each side. This makes the tyres quite heavy (dual garotskins) although they should make them near on as puncture proof as you can get, while making the hills a bit longer. That was after a couple of punctures in the space of 7 days (glass and flint pushed through a gatorskin) and also wanted to try out some 25's for more comfort while training. The weight is irrelevant at the moment as the power meter will show the same value regardless and I will just be a little bit slower on the flat and a bit more slower up hill.

This weeks training total has added up to around 50 minutes on Tuesday night and that's it until Saturday before a big week in Devon with lots of miles and hills.

Some pictures of the family and garden

2007-04-29T16:14:00.000Z

The family photo on the hill in front of the shed I use for training and storing all the other sh*t that is banned from the house.

The windows are wired to the mains as part of the alarm systems, although that is part of the silent alarm system....

The training setup has changed a little since this photo as well, although the fan is still used, or was... The PC, as usual, is in bits or part built with the cover off and insulation has been added to the roof to stop it from being either a fridge or oven depending if the sun is out.

The iMagic is linked up to the PC and one of the speakers for the music is visible.

Last picture is playtime in the garden before the shed was built, but after we burnt down the other 2 sheds that were in the garden beforehand. The fence was replaced as well, in part due to it falling downs and the other part was it ended up a bit charred from the heat of the shed's blazing away.

Click on the images to load the full size image.

FT power up to CAT2, 5 sec improvement next..

2007-04-29T15:58:00.000Z

After yesterdays ride the FT power reading was pushed up a bit, although with finishing at the 45min mark the average was knocked back a bit from where it should have been. Should have chose a longer run and measured a true average. The FT on the chart is around 4.35W/kg and should be closer to 4.6W/kg, which in theory puts me in good stead for a time trial but not for criteriums. My sprint 5s and 1min still need working on to bring them up to CAT2 level, which will require around 1350W for the 5sec (up about 250W) and 675W for the 1min mark (up 75W) with a weight loss down to a race weight of 73kg. The sprint wattage will be the most difficult to get, although I will have to try it with a decent set of wheels on as the Askiums I use for training flex too much, rub against the brake blocks and feel like jelly at times. May be tempted to do Crystal palace on Tuesday, although I would have to either ride in tomorrow or take my bike in a bag on the train and ride to the circuit. Would be interesting to see the power profile for a crystal palace race. Tonight will probably be 30 min on the rollers as a prep for either riding in tomorrow or a recovery for Tuesday night.

Catch up

2007-04-28T19:35:00.000Z

Monday was my first long session in a gym, which I spent the majority of time on the bike and next the stepper. The stepper machine was interesting as it had a wattage reading and you could see the effect of increasing and decreasing the difficulty level. Overall I spent around an hour on the machines and did some weights for the legs, although they did not have a specific machine to do leg extensions, rather just the thighs or calfs depending on the setup. 160kg lifts for the thighs and around 120kg for the calfs.

Thursday was a ride in to work and back, which turned out a bit more interesting. Stepped out the door at 5:45am and realised it had just started to spit with rain a little. Given the conditions and what I thought was the forecast I expected it to be brief and stop after 30 minutes or when I got closer to London. Big mistake, about 30 minutes later my shoes were starting to fill with water and I still had an hour to go. Fortunately it eased up and never really rained hard so it was more road splash that soaked the shoes than direct rain. One thing I did realise was my overshoes were not very waterproof at all, rather more like a sponge.

On the way in I did not get any abuse, just a taxi driver trying to get past in a bus lane and on the way home I got a friendly toot from a trucker I waved past on one section of road. All in all one of the better rides in realtion to traffic, oh, appart from the twat who did a U turn in front of me and then breaked like a moron to carry out an emergency left turn. Oh, and the van that cut in front of me in the bus lane to turn left.

The ride home in the end took over 2 hours and felt quite long and I almost was desparate enough for food to ride through the drive in at a MacDonalds. That was before the throught of puking up a greasy burger 5 minutes later up the only long climb back home put me off and I stopped and had a go bar instead.

Today I ended up doing a brief warm up on the rollers and then heading out on the road on the usual 28km route (out and back) with 267m of climbing (50m up one hill at the turning point after a fast desent). Once I started I felt good so decided to even the power out and push it a bit and see what happened. The power figures were good, although I get the feeling I'm riding like a sail into the wind and need to work on position and aerodynamics a lot more. The speed was brought down a bit by the 14 junctions and 1 turn at the bottom of the hill though.

---------Out ----- Return ------ Trip Avg
Watts -- 356/364 - 360/368 ----- 350/363 (average / normalised)
Speed -- 31.6 ---- 36.8 -------- 34.2 (kilometers per hour)
HR avg - 156 ----- 164 --------- 159 (beats per minute)
Distance ----------------------- 25.2km

Trying to watch a film

2007-04-22T16:36:00.000Z

Well, session set, film set, drinks, food, go..... steady pace, nice and easy...... what the hell is this s**t I'm watching. Oh, well, though it was a good sci-fi but turned out to be one hell of a boaring chick flick, so about half an hour in I swapped it.

1hr 38m long on the bike with TSS of 98 and IF of 0.747, which is among of the lowest of Intensity Factor rides. Felt good and I think the sweat sessions have helped but not worked completely as I sounded like I had smoked a dozen cigars when I woke up this morning.

Training charts so far

2007-04-21T17:07:00.000Z

This is the power profile for the 60 second burst last night and how the last few weeks have turned out so far in terms of my performance build.

On the chart you can see where I changed down a gear to maintain a higher cadence but the power drop was quite large as a result. I should have maybe started off more easy and then finished with a peak or tried to maintain a more flat profile.

Training has been progressive but a bit random in a way with a reasonable build in daily TTS, although factoring in the on-off health perception so far so good. Alt least I have not porgressed back to A&E.

Comparing last year to this I think I'm on track to be ready in another 4 weeks to race, providing the XRay does not come back with anything and my sweat sessions have worked. In theory I should be able to get some points in a CAT4 race relatively easy (in theory).

What's up doc ? Nothing.... go have an XRay

2007-04-21T15:19:00.000Z

Went to the doc's on Friday morning to have another checkup, which I knew he would not find anything from listening to my chest and testing my blood pressure. "What do you want me to do ?" he then asked, which sort of summed things up so far. So he sent me for a chest xray to see if anything will show up on that, in the interim I had an idea.... maybe not a good one or one that may be recomended. Off I trundled to the hospital to get an XRay and then be told it may be 2 weeks before I hear anything, unless I have something that stands out.

Given that when you have an infection your body heats up in the process of killing off the invader, not necessarily though increased workload but to make the host less inhabitable and kill off whatever has invaded. So my theory was to turn the fan off (or point it away so at least there is a little air circulation), ride indoors and sweat it out.

Friday nights session was just over an hour long with an IF of 0.87 and TSS of 79.7 but a new 60s personal record (previous was 512W the previous weekend during the club run). During the session I thought that I'd give the 60 second power interval a go, see how my heart reacts and try and help convince myself I'm not mad (or am).

So, 39min into the ride upped the gears and gave it all. After 40 seconds I had to change down as my HR increased and finished the 60 seconds at 186bpm on the polar but only 184bpm on the ergomo with a power average of 603W. The first 40 seconds was 638W followed by the next 20 at 547W. So, that answered one question.

Todays session was a bit longer with one sprint to see what my 5s was 1h 48m into the ride a single sprint topped out at 1156W with a 1078W average. I forgot to tighten the forks into the steering frame and almost ended up on the floor when they nearly jumped out a few times. Total ride was 1h 50m long with TSS of 120, IF 0.81, avg power 240W, norm power 267W.

Before the ride I weighed my self (76.4kg), after (75.7kg) and also measured out the water and food at around 1.2 litres with another 120g of food/gell. This equated to a sweat loss of around 2 litres in the space of 2 hours between readings or 1 litre per hour. I estimate that my peak sweat loss during one part in the session was at a rate of around 1.4 lires / hour.

With the 2 sweat sessions it may be working.....

Lergy still not gone ?

2007-04-17T20:17:00.000Z

Tonights session (TSS 95) seemed a little odd, although I'm not entirely sure what is going on in relation to my HR and power output. Started off nice and easy with my HR avg at 127bpm and power 266W avg 269W NP over the first half hour. Then ramped it up a bit to see where it would settle for a given output and to get some data to compare the iMagic power levels to the Ergomo. 2min at 345W avg pushed my HR to 149bpm but my legs started to feel as if they had done 60 miles, ramped back down for a few min and then ramped back up to 390W for 30 seconds and then pushed it up to 500W over the next 15 seconds, HR peaked at 156bpm ? felt wrong or different. Backed off for 14min and then did another 2 min at 375W, HR peaked at 157bpm.

Later on again, tried a run, 4min 45 at 339W avg and my HR peaked at 158bpm (last 20 seconds at 370W).

Looking back at the weekend my max HR was only 179bpm (vs 186bpm max) in retrospect (the highest this year) either I was not trying my max or I need to back off for a while until I get rid of the flem in my throat that seems to be still hanging around, even after nearly 5 months.

Been trying the vitamins and took a Barroca today to see what effect that would have, although I now suspect that some of it is passing through as my urine has changed colour to a brighter yellow from normal. This seems to be vitamin C passing through. So, next test, is to drink only water and juices while keeping well hydrated with no vitamin supplements for 2 days. See how that goes before riding in to work again on Friday.

Entire workout (245 watts) Duration: 1:20:15 Work: 1178 kJ
TSS: 95.1 (intensity factor 0.843) Norm Power: 270 VI: 1.1
Distance: 52.231 km
Power Max 502 Avg 245 Heart rate max 158 avg 123 bpm

Sunday ride data

2007-04-15T14:44:00.000Z

The reason why so many people prefer to ride on thier own is the effects of the bunch and drafting. While it is good to talk (not on the phone) and get out with other like minded cyclists the impact as a source of training can be quite mixed.

Consider the effects on your HR and your power output as within a bunch the effects of drafting can make it quite easy at times as you end up getting pretty much sucked along and only have to put a bit of power out. That is until it goes up hill.

The effect of the bunch (majority have the competitive drive to burn themselves out on a Sunday given a group - me included) can be good or bad. During one of the climbs I gave it a go and you can see my HR maxing out and then the power slowly dissapearing away, along with my immune system and a fair few drops of sweat. Started off too hard due to being in a group and trying to keep pace with someone else, rather than go it at my own pace for the whole climb. This can be a good thing, as long as it's not done too frequently (every day).

The overall summary for the ride was interesting with peak power just over 1000W.

The power distribution shows the full effect of drafting where you end up not pedaling for quite a time as you would otherwise end up running up the back of someone, unless you choose to ride on the front for the whole time.

The heart rate distribution is also skewed further up and more broad as you have the easy times mixed in with the hill climbs at pace. For a training run I would have though you would be better of setting a couple of criteria for power zone and HR tone time and then riding to suit.

Then again for race training it is the only time you may get the urge and motivation to push yourself harder than you would on your own.

I would not tend to ride as far on my own and probably spend too much time at a higher pace than what I should be doing, so the group is good.

Sunny weekend rides

2007-04-15T13:12:00.000Z

Saturday was a little cooler than expected, however that did not stop the milkbottle legs from dazzling drivers as they screamed past me. The suntan lotion (kids - all I could find in the house) also had extra whitening in so between the original state of my legs and the suncream I must have been the brightest rider out. For the ride I ended up just riding anywhere with no real set route, appart from the one hill climb that I wanted to do. THH of 117 over 1h 13 with an IF of 0.977 was a little higher than I thought and will need to adjust my threashold.
Later on I took Luke out on his bike to the park the park, so had a gentle 45min afterwards (TSS of 15.8).

Sunday ride consistend of the usual 3 stages - to the meeting point - cafe stop - home.
Cutting out the first few mins the norm power for the cafe run was NP 257W, avg 204W, 31.7kph. I did have the original intention of going out for a ride with the moderate group to take it easy and ended up in the fast group.

The homeward leg has a few different points with a couple of reasonable hills included. After someone had a puncture the next 32 min were at 31.5kph but NP319W, avg 264W with 126m of climbing. The homeward leg in total was NP287W, avg 214W at 31.9kph.

For the ride as a whole the TSS was higher than the ride to work and back at 270 with a similar intensity factor, although the ride has pushed my cumulative training stress very negative (time for an easy week...). I did set a new personal record 60sec avg wattage of 512W but my 5 min was 392W, still down on last year, although I still need to run another analysis with the iMagic vs Ergomo to verify what is what.

The 5 min power was set on one of the climbs where I thought I would give it go a bit and try and keep up with Matt (cat 2 rider) who promptly ride off into the distance leaving me gasping for air. The first 2 min of the climb was at 448W avg.

Overall felt good, better that I thought, although I do need to ease off this week to recover properly. Time to do some spinning on the rollers.

Ride to work - 61.4 miles

2007-04-13T19:40:00.000Z

Felt better than I thought after getting home as I was expecting the first homeward leg to be a bit more of a drain, although the power meter has made a difference, even with a wobbly crank (more on that one later). The journey to work and back always seems very interesting from the aspect of driver mentality within London compared to the rest of the country. I was called a "f***ing p**k" once and cut up twice, all for riding my bike in accordance with the highway code.... nice eh ?

But, it gets the hours in (improves my sanity) and once I'm out of London the rest of the ride is quite nice, so nice I will be investigating a longer route (and more quite) for the return journey. Setting off early in the morning ensures you have less of the 4x4's, BMW X5's and rust buckets to try and knock you off or kill you with fumes....

Today I tried the first of my masks that I have bought to ride with, once in a high traffic area, which is a near chemical biological protection mask. The filtering is P3 (you get P1-P3 with P3 filtering out the smallest particles) so it seems to get rid of all the soot from the busses quite well and better than the screwfix special, which is a P2. The mask filtered out everything and for the whole journey I could not smell anything, appart from when I lifted it up for a drink.

The mask did make it more difficult to breath in slightly and was a bit uncomfortable around the nose as the fitting seems to be for when you are not gasping for air with your mouth wide open. Wearing the mask could only be done for upto 45min to an hour before it would need emptying (water) and your nose re-adjusting back. But, I'd rather breath through a mask than the inner London smog, ozone and whatever else is released into the air. Later on I'll post the pictures and a better review.

This week (last 7 days) I have managed to get in 9:45 on the bike with a TSS of 766 and a kCal burn of 9,025 (at 22%). Nice weekend ahead and a gentle club run for a recovery.

Ergomo vs iMagic

2007-04-10T19:32:00.000Z

iMagic vs Ergomo Pro wattage accuracy is on trial here as I have been dubious about the wattages being recorded by the iMagic and an element of how it seemed to be working. Having purchased an Ergomo Pro I was then able to match the two up and see what the differences are. My Ergomo was purchased from cyclepowermeters and installed during a visit on Friday morning.

It should be noted that I have set the scaling factor to 115 in the iMagic (i.e. for every 115W read as 100W) as I was trying to calibrate it against my polar kCal burn. The quick test seems to explain why I was still not convinced it was correct, but thought it was closer than it was.

The initial chart of a ramp up over 3 minutes shows how the iMagic over and then under reads against the Ergomo over a range with the top end out by upto 10%. Comparing a small stable time slice at 302W in iMagic mode this equated to 322W in Ergomo watts. At this point I was more curious as to what the diference was as I had a feeling it may have been due to wheel speed. The reason was that when training in fixed wattage mode on the iMagic it always appeared to feel easier at higher cadences, which encouraged you to increase your cadence... After looking at another part of the data it starts to make more sense, as it does get easier as the wheel speed increases on the iMagic, although not by enough to cancel out the differences.

Comparing wheel speeds on the second wattage test the two systems seem to be comparable enough over the range, although out by a slight amount. This may be partially due to the wheel circumference in the Ergomo at 2130 compared to the measured 2125, although the difference seems too small to make a >5% diference in speeds. Overall though once the axese are corrected the scales seem to match up for the test.

The correlation was quite good with an r squared of 98.14% for the formula of (Wheel mph = 0.903 iMagic mph + 0.6457)

Next was the second quick test but this time the iMagic was set to a fixed wattage mode and then increased over a period of time. The difference starts to become a lot more apparent with a slower wheel speed and a higher wattage as the accuracy starts to drift out considerably.

Increasing the cadence and wheel speed, while not altering the iMagic wattage it did reduce the real Ergomo wattage from a 50W error down to a minimum error of around 20W. The difference in wheel speed between 21mph and 24mph should not have made anywhere near a 30W difference, although the wheel was a shimano R550 with a conti trainer tyre on at 120psi.

Summary - I'm happy as my wattage is around 10% higher than what I was training with, instant watts !

1 hour tired circuits

2007-04-09T18:03:00.000Z

Headed off to the park for an hour of riding with the strong wind making things interesting from the aspect of watching the power on the headwind section. Warmed up for a few laps and then tried a few sprints out along the streight section, which had a slight back wind.

Entire workout (264 watts)

Avgerage HR 140pbm - max 178

Duration: 1:08:09 Work: 1079 kJ

TSS: 101.3 (intensity factor 0.945)

Norm Power: 302 Distance: 22.617 mi

Elevation Gain: 312 ft

Not sure where 300ft came from as I thought the circuit was flat.

Peak 5s (1047W) 10s (959W) 20s (679W) 30s (561W)

Peak 1min (437W) 2min (384W) 5min (358W) 10min (335W) Peak 30min (303W)
Peak 60min (280 watts) - Norm Power: 311

For the sprints one sprint was a longer one with my heart rate finishing at 173bpm and 32.3mph with the help of a back wind. My dad told me the speed limit was 10mph in the park... ooops.

1 second wattages over the period :

345, 388, 476, 583, 757, 938, 1014, 1001, 1035, 1056, 1057, 1036, 1008, 691, 422, 263

Sunday trundle, until the speed sensor

2007-04-08T19:48:00.000Z

Set off for a gentle ride to recover properly from the previous 2 days so that I can finish off tomorrow with a harder session out on the road before returning to the indorr sessions. With a strong headwind on the outward run it was very interesting to see change in wattage and speed between sitting high like a sail into the wind or closer to the bars more aero style.
For the first 30 min or so I was riding alone, until I met up with a guy just past Little Weighton who I though it would be polite an sociable to have a chat with. The next 30 miles were at a nice steady pace, chatting about bikes, police, cctv, cycling clubs, old routes, etc.

On the way back in to Hull on a slight downhill section they had installed a 30mph speed sign (the ones that fash a hazard warning slow down), so with little warning to the guy I was riding with I set off for a sprint. 36.9mph and 1189W peak later the sign flashed ! The power readings seemed to be a little odd though, although it may have been due to my back wheel lifting off the ground at one point. 174W, 294W, 468W,691W, 885W, 1065W, 1189W, 1161W, 1125W, 0W, 1019W, 814W, 814W.

Entire workout (197 watts)
Distance: 41.475 mi Elevation Gain: 2008 ft
Peak 5s (1085 watts) 10s (886 watts) 20s (720 watts) 30s (603 watts) 1min (414 watts)
Peak 10min (295 watts) 20min (286 watts) 30min (283 watts) 60min (245 watts)

Tomorrow may be another park circle with some sprint sessions in again or another route out and about, while I can.

Ergomo a go go...errr... watts up ?

2007-04-08T19:03:00.000Z

Well, drove to Rugby to pick up my ergomo, where it was fitted and fiddled around with. The ergomo does not support Dura Ace cranks, so I ended up getting some FSA SLK's with the ergomo as a kit, all in. The cranks were a bit dissapointing as they had about 1mm of lateral play on the chainrings, which was identified after they had been pressed and fitted on. So with the prospect of having to take the whole kit off and replacing it with my Dura Ace or seeing how it goes, I was far too keen to get ride this weekend with the power meter on. So, with FSA still on I set off back to Hull to visit the parents and try out the power meter.

Friday afternoon I managed to get away before it became too dark and headed off down to the local park, which has a road running round it as I figured it would be sod's law that I rode out my usual route and ended up in the dark with no lights on. Setting off was quite interesting, with my eyes glued to the screen watching the power jump around. So, with power equipted bike I set off on the first circuit, then the next and the next. Sprint down one section, recovery, sprint, recovery and a few experiments.
Unfortunately, after the ride I was unable to download the data. Due to a great combination of events the Ergomo had a default time setting in 2044. Cycling peaks, however, blows up if you set the system clock forward past 2038 (or somewhere around). So, lesson no 1, set the date...

Saturday was a bit more interesting riding out over my old usual route (wiuth a few diversions and tea break). After a quick data check I set out, tired from the sprint session on Friday. I think I have to revise my threashold power setting... Fridays spint registered 1098W, however sunday topped nearly 1200W.

Heart rate: max 175bpm avg 144bpm
Entire workout (276 watts) Norm Power: 298W
Distance: 42.096 mi Elevation : 1696 ft
Peak 5s (882 watts) 10s (800 watts) 20s (737 watts) 30s (636 watts)
Peak 1min (473 watts) 2min (384 watts) 5min (340 watts)
Peak 10min (328 watts) 20min (319 watts) 60min (297 watts)

Random training set 12.6.2.1.a - felt right though - but too short

2007-04-04T19:06:00.000Z

The remote control unit for the sterio seems to interfere with the heart rate sensor as every time I turn up the volume with the remote within 6" the HR maxes out !

4:30 avg power was 333W and my HR finished at 176bpm and that was about all I could do at the moment. With the second random set of sprints the wattages were down on the previous session, although this time I decided not to take the trainer dancing across the floor. The sprints are intended to be a weight training substitute mainly rather than top end HR and lactate training so I have been waiting for my HR to drop to 140bpm and then sprinting a bit and stopping before I get stressed. 11 build sprints and then 4 smaller ones. Yesterdays was 12 main sprints, progressively building up to the dancing session.

Included an energy dring this time and also drinking on the rego now (1.6kg tub to use up).

Pedals addived today (Speedplay X1) and a new chain so I'm ready for the power meter fitting on Friday. Have eneded up with an FSA SLK chainset to go with the power meter as they were supposedly having difficulties getting hold of a stronglight pulsion. Been emailing the UK distributor to see what the issue was with them... Can't wait for the weekend :-)

Ouch, short, ouch, session

2007-04-02T17:53:00.000Z

First off I managed to squash the muscles in the ball of my foot by riding my commuter bike with soft soled shoes on, which made walking a bit painful.

This session added to that a little as I realised where the other part of my performance has dissapeared over the last few months, peak power.

The gentle warm up felt ok, not really feeling up to a long session (sleep calling) so started off slow and then had a try out with a sprint. Ouch.... felt lousy, so next time put a bit more into it, then again, again and then the last one was pulling the trainer across the floor. Each one was stopped to prevent my HR from going above 170bpm, although not too soon. The wattages are iMagic watts (take the Magic element as probably where they come from, as in reality I may be able to light a 60W bulb and that's it).

Peak 10 second theory (with rest beforehand) wattages were 782, 799, 806, 863.

Due to the lack of a weight machine I will probably fit in one fo these short sessions in per week as I should be able to do this late on Wednesday night's every week or other week, depending on how I feel tomorrow.

Lovely day and missed the club run

2007-04-01T16:31:00.000Z

Had a long sleep in today and then managed to get a session in, bliss. Starting to feel good now and my form (or what I had that was close to form) is returning quickly, so maybe back to racing sooner that I thought. From the session today I think the conclusion is that I need to get riding in to work again for a few days to get my system back into the swing of things again. This should take a few weeks and I would like to try for a full week of riding in within a few months, to see what it is like and see what effect it has on my training.

For the week the kCal total is 4921 and iMagic distance of 138miles and a time on the bike of 6 hours. Next week should be interesting as the training will build to a peak over the weekend as I will get to pick up my Ergomo on Friday morning and have a reason to ride the full weekend :-)

How stupid....

2007-03-31T17:36:00.000Z

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

2007-03-22T19:40:00.000Z

Session duration : 125min
Average power : 196W
Average HR : 121bpm
Cadence avg : 88rpm
kCal : 632 (polar 658)
Liquid : 300ml water
.
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

2007-03-22T18:38:00.000Z

Session duration : 125min
Average power : 210W
Average HR : 123bpm
Cadence avg : 86rpm
kCal : 1520 (polar 1570)
Liquid : 1000ml water
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.
.
.
.
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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

2007-03-18T18:02:00.000Z

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

2007-03-17T17:47:00.000Z

Session duration : 50min

Average power : 231W

Average HR : 135bpm

Reference power : 135bpm=230W

Cadence avg : 90rpm

kCal : 668 (polar 705)

Liquid : 200ml water

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.

Off

2007-02-28T21:43:00.000Z

Sundays session seems to have been a little too much too early. Either that or I need to investigate if my training area is contaminated from the hours of a lack of ventilation while training ! Maybe I should have left the door open more often.....

This weekend will be spent having a clear out, extended ventilation and wash down of the floor of the challet. It could do with it anyway and on the safe side as well.

Did an ownindex check on Tuesday night and it was back to 66, although my resting HR had picked up 2bpm to 44-45 since Saturday and I feel it as well. With this in mind taking the time off the bike is not such a bad thing and I should be able to get back to race speed in around 2 months once everything clears up based on what I feltlike over the last few weeks.

Now that I know what I need to train at this year will still be much better than last year.

Plus, recieved by BCF license renewal through..... 2 months after paying....

20% swing ?

2007-02-25T19:15:00.000Z

Thursday night session was followed up on a huge bender Friday night, which did not go down too well, all round. Saturday was a recovery day, with no ride and spent some of the day buying replacement cycling kit. Friday night I had my bag stolen from All Bar One while it was within 5ft of me and within 2ft of the people in our group, well pissed off. Had my waterproofs, shoes, gloves and jacket in, most amazing of all was the luminous yellow jacket was on the outside of the bag and they still nicked it, bastards !

Anyway, felt good (although not 100% yet), HR was dropping to 48-49bpm while I sat at the computer sorting the music out before the session.

The one interesting thing is the polar kCal count to the iMagic as it seems to have swung around by upto 20%. During the first half hour the polar clocked up around 10% less kCal than the iMagic (50-70kCal) and then held that difference until around to 80 min mark and then started to close. That was the point I though was where I should stop as I'm curious as to the kCal rate changing through the session and want to do some analysis on it. Given the previous weeks were showing a 10% difference in the opposite direction it's quite interesting, although it does fit with how I had been feeling.

Session duration : 91min
Average power : 251W
Average HR : 136bpm
Reference power : 139bpm=256W
Cadence avg : 94rpm
kCal : 1314 (polar 1286)
Liquid : 800ml water

Session time for the week a low 3:31 and last week was 4:37 and 4:56 the week before.

Feeling better

2007-02-22T20:42:00.000Z

Well, resting HR last night was down to 42bpm and all that is left at the moment is a lingering bit in my throat, my chest seems fully clear now, the whisky must have worked (not) !

Felt a good session, started off slow and steady and then slowly wound up to around 300W after about 15min and then held that for about 10 min - HR increased to 160. Ramped up to 380W for the last minute as my HR topped at 171bpm, before resting around 210W.

Up to the hour was again around 250W before finishing the last 4 minutes of the first hour at 305W at 158bpm average. The a sandwich (cheese and branston on brown) while spinning slowly at 130W followed by the last 10 min.

Felt good, although it did not feel like the best of sessions in terms of time benefit, but then again I don't quite want to enter back into TT hour sessions again just yet !

Session duration : 75min
Average power : 246W
Average HR : 138bpm
Reference power : 140bpm=257W - around half way through
Cadence avg : 90rpm
kCal : 1058 (polar 1094)
Liquid : 850ml water

The weekend ride was out along a local run, which has a bit of traffic on it at the start before getting onto the nice quiet back roads. The run is an out and back 18 miles if you include the hill, but I missed it out this time.

Session duration : 55min
Average HR : 151bpm
Average speed : 18mph
Distance : 17.5miles
Ascent : 184m
kCal : 920

Short as a pancake

2007-02-20T19:22:00.000Z

Over the weekend I managed to get out for an hour on the road (stats to follow later) which was quite good, although I wanted it to be longer but knew it was not going to happen this time or it would bite back.

Today's session was fine for the first 15min and then I was joined by my 4 year old, who promptly asked 400 questions in rapid fire leading to 395 interruptions and 5 stops. So, a short ride.

Session duration : 40min
Average power : 199W - typo !
Average HR : 122bpm
Reference power : 129bpm=236W - around half way through
Cadence avg : 82rpm
kCal : 459 (polar 460)
Liquid : 100ml water

Sleep, sleep and more sleep

2007-02-17T19:11:00.000Z

Inlaws were around yesterday and while still feeling tired with my throat still not right I was not motivated enough to get on the trainer.

Finally got up at noon today after a long sleep in and went looking for a bike "with pedals just like the one in the park" for my son, who can now balance his no pedal machine. Did not find anything that does not resemble scaffolding poles welded together with 6" nail brakes. It would be really good if someone managed to build a bike for kids that was light and effective. His existing £30 no pedal machine has a drum brake on it and this does not compare well to the £90 scaffold tubes. I'd rather pay £200 for a good bike he would have respect for.

This morning I tested my resting HR and it was arround 44-46, which seems about right given how I'm feeling and does show the 5bpm differential for not feeling too good.

Anyway, after around 10 min I upped the wattage to 290 for a while to see where my heart rate would settle and how I would feel, which promptly gave me the answer. 152bpm before I had to slow up and then cough up the felm from my throat without being ill.. not good... rest of the ride steady again at 230W with 135bpm. That said I did feel a lot better after managing to cough up the flem that had been aggrevating me since getting up this morning.

Session duration : 70min
Average power : 229W
Average HR : 135bpm
Reference power : 140bpm=242W - around half way through
Cadence avg : 88rpm
kCal : 921 (polar 989 - 20 kcal diff due to a pause to cough my guts up)
Liquid : 350ml water

Still tired

2007-02-15T19:16:00.000Z

Late night last night, midnight to bed after a nice Thai meal.... Inlaws are down as well.

Feeling tired still and not quite motivated tonight also as a precaution against aggrevating my throat more. Suppose an easy night tonight and then see how the ride to the station is and how tommorrow's session turns out.

Session duration : 46min
Average power : 203W
Average HR : 120bpm
Reference power : 124bpm=223W
Cadence avg : 88rpm
kCal : 537 (polar 534)
Liquid : 200ml water

Tired again

2007-02-13T20:52:00.000Z

Monday - tired again, even with all the sleep over the weekend. Today, slept in a bit longer and felt better for it, appart from the train journey to work. Early night tonight.

Tonight I packed up some sandwiches and managed to eat one at the 50 min mark and another around 30 min later, although at a very much reduced pace of 150W. The last one for when I'm writing this ! Aftert that, shower, more food (cerials) then sleep.

HR while sat on the chair at the start dropped to 51bpm, which seemed promising as well.

Throat is feeling better after the day off with just a thicker than normal salava being brought up every so often, even with being well hydrated. I recon it will be another 2 weeks before it is fully back to normal now, taking into account the changes over the last 2 weeks. The cycling seems to be doing 2 things, rebuilding my fitness and physical system and pushing out the duration of the virus, although I'm not too sure on the 2nd as it is a virus and I'm not exactly caning it.

Longer easy session, eating sandwiches, reading some papers and online news. Main base element above 200W was around 80min.

Session duration : 101min
Average power : 208W
Average HR : 132bpm (134bpm/227W first 50 min)
Reference power : 139bpm=232W (12min avg @28)
Cadence avg : 88rpm
kCal : 1210 (polar 1367)
Liquid : 800ml water

Happy to go nowhere fast, for now

2007-02-11T19:04:00.000Z

Reached a point now where I feel I'm close to treading water, unable to do much more without causing my throat to feel worse again. Probably not treading water, but do feel that I should be increaseing the base time up more than I am at the moment, then again that is probably how I ended up with a 2 month virus.

This session was spent reading the news on the net, while forgetting to drink and a single protein bar at the 70min stage as it was seemingly getting more difficult to read the news !

Earlier in the day I had a short session out on the station commute bike (£50 special) down to the park with my son (4) on his bike, which does not have any pedals. He has his balance really well now so I rode alongside him and pushed at a very slow pace, although going uphill on wet muddy grass was the limit of traction. Will have to see about getting him a bike with pedals now.

Session duration : 80min
Average power : 202W
Average HR : 122bpm
Reference power : 130bpm=231W
Cadence avg : 89rpm
kCal : 926 (polar 930 + a few minutes - forgot to start it !)

The reference power is a time slice around 70%-90% through the session and approximately a 5 min average.

More comfortable - easier ride without a hangover !

2007-02-10T20:13:00.000Z

From yesterdays ride I had another thought, maybe the bottle of wine the night before had something more to do with the performance and feeling on the bike... 1+1=2.

Felt better at the end of the session and could have gone on a bit longer, although at the moment I want to take it easy and ramp up slowly and more on feel. Compared to yesterdays session at the end of it I did feel tired and a little drained, which again was probably linked to the wine.

I did manage to get around 11 hours sleep in, which did seem to help a huge amount and feel that had more to do with todays session. Unfortunately I can't do that every day or I'd be divorced and out of work, ah well, theres more to life than my bike !

The polar to iMagic kCal count was less this session, which is interesting as I'm wondering if it also has something to do with the difference in wattage dissipated in the tyre energy transfer to the roller at a lower speed. I do think that a part of it is my legs, probably the majority of it, and will have to do more hill training when I can get out properly.

Session duration : 85min
Average power : 233W
Average HR : 140bpm
Reference power : 142bpm=243W
Cadence avg : 92rpm
kCal : 1137 (polar 1240)

Longer session - polar own index wrong ?

2007-02-09T20:23:00.000Z

Yesterday was a day off, in one way, however I still had a hell of a workout pulling my son uphill numerous times while sledging. He's only 4 but still makes for hard work uphill !

Did an ownindex test a couple of weeks back, which came up with 65, and a drop of 1 point from my previous (pre-illness) index of 66. On my trainer the wattage (kCal) and polar ended up matched a lot closer after the previous adjustments of calibrating the polar and iMagic together.

What the difference seems to be is that the training level setting in the polar needs dropping again, unless the kCal count was knocked out of sync on the iMagic because I included about 10 miles of a 1% grade this time ?

Looking back at Tuesdays kCal on the iMagic and Polar the difference seems to be only around 10% compared to the 20% variation tonight, which makes more sense meaning my own index is actually closer to 60.....

Next training session I will have to leave the gradient as flat and see how it matches. May also be an indication that I need to return to the hills a lot more frequently with a vastly different burn rate even on a small gradient....

Session duration : 76min
Average power : 211W
Average HR : 138bpm
Reference power : 137bpm=216W
Cadence avg : 87rpm
kCal : 920 (polar 1140)

Starting to wind up a little, gently does it...

2007-02-06T19:30:00.000Z

Went out on the weekend for a slow run up one of my old training routes out to South Cave and then back again, although my usual run included a few more trips up the hills on the west side of the wolds. This time it was once down the hill and back up again on saturday and then only to the top of the hill (very slow climb up somewhere around 150m in 8miles) on sunday as it was a little cooler with frost in the shade and my throat feeling a little tender. Around 28 miles on saturday (140bpm 1734kCal 1:58) and 24 on sunday (143bpm 1292kCal 1:24).

Had to buy some shorts on the way out as I managed to take everything with me, appart from the liners to my bibtights, doh !

Had to wait a while tonight for the room to warm up with the fan heater on, 11C after a while and good to go.

Session duration : 55min
Average power : 213W
Average HR : 135bpm
Reference power : 136bpm=221W
Cadence avg : 87rpm
kCal : 674

In retrospect the weekend rides were a lot more than tonight, although I was knackered yesterday.

Hangover cure session

2007-02-01T19:10:00.000Z

Still have an anoying cough and the virus, I guess, has still not gone, so the session was steady again. Recovering from a hangover the difference in this ride to the last two shows with the HR higher and wattage lower, not good. But, after around 35min it started to feel good (getting the fix in !) and should have stopped at the 40min mark.

That said, the avg W was 217 against 129bmp around the 6 mile mark, so it may just be an initial indication of just how much fitness I have lost. The extra time added around 4-5bpm around the 14 mile mark :-(

What did not help as well was riding to the station and pushing my HR over 160bpm in the cold air...

Session duration : 46 min
Average power : 200W
Average HR : 128bpm
Reference power : 134bpm=216W
Cadence avg : 90rpm
kCal : 527

iMagic calibration by polar

2007-01-28T20:33:00.000Z

For those who own a Polar HRM and an iMagic I have found an alternative way of seemingly calibrating the iMagic power setting (scale factor adjustment).

On your polar you can identify your VO2 max (OwnIndex) which will then adjust your kCal per bpm (assuming you fit within the general population) on your polar so that your kCal count will increase at a set rate for a given heart rate.

Next, once you have set your OwnIndex value and your kCal count should be more accurate (not sure what the % is..), you can then sit on the iMagic at say a 75% HR value and then note the kCal and wattage on the iMagic vs the polar.

Once you have the kCal on your iMagic and your polar, divide one by the other (and multiply by 100) and that is then the scale factor to set in your iMagic.

Accuracy wise I'm not sure how well this would work as it relies on the OwnIndex formulation accuracy and assuming your kCal per bpm fits with this through your HR range. What I do know is that it's more accurate than the default scale factor the iMagic has.

What I found, for me, was that I needed to adjust the iMagic back around 15% (scale factor 115), which in one sense was a bit disappointing, however it was the final landing back on planet earth realising that I was not ready to enter the tour. Plus, my sprint power decreased back below the 1000W level, which is a good target for me now.

2nd time, feeling a lot better

2007-01-28T20:20:00.000Z

After the previous day of easy riding I felt a lot better for it, possibly as much psychologically as well as physically. The easy session was, again, avoiding my breathing increasing above an easy walking pace equivalent so as to not dry my throat out as it still feels a bit groggy.

Session duration : 35 min
Average power : 205W
Average HR : 123bpm
Reference power : 126bpm=210W
Cadence avg : 89rpm
kCal : 415

Back on the bike, well 30 min anyway

2007-01-27T20:27:00.000Z

First session back on the iMagic and a gentle one at that. My throat steel feels wrong and subsequently do not want to do anything to go high aerobic and so the brief 30 min was nice and gentle.

The very brief rides to the station (5-6min) have helped my legs get a kick start early and my legs felt ok during the session although you could tell you had not been on the trainer for a while. My ride to the station is usually a near sprint at times (not the best of things to do) and the last few weeks have been recovery pace with the one day I regretted going too hard.

Session duration : 30 min
Average power : 194W
Average HR : 123bpm
Reference power : 130bpm=220W
Cadence : 84 - 95
kCal : 336

That last 1% seems to take a long time

2007-01-23T20:34:00.000Z

Riding to and back from the station on my bike (5 min) is the current measure of my recovery and the last 1% of lung health seems to be taking quite a while.

The first trip to the station a couple of weeks ago was a very slow and steady affair, however I was almost throwing up when I got to the station, even though I rode at the same intensity as a medium walk. Riding back home I even had to stop as the coughing took my breath away.

The following week was a bit better, still with the steady slow pace and trying not to breath any different to walking intensity.

This week seems to be almost there with the last 1% just enough to create a noticable difference in breathing and feel to the lungs, even though I can now pick the pace up without throwing up I'm still taking it steady. I want to be back on the bike for good, not just one sunny day.

Over trained and sick of it all, where is my bike !

2007-01-21T17:20:00.000Z

In the run up to Christmas my training volume fluctuted between 1 hour and 10 hours per week with the majority of the training completed indoors on the iMagic. During November I did a 2 hour session just below AT, which with the rest of the activity for the week topped the total time out at just over 10 hours. The only problem seemed to be that 25% of it was in Zone 4 just below AT and I did not spend enough time recovering during the following 4 weeks.

I would have thought that due to the lower volume of training time this should have provided the recovery time, although I have my doubts as I tend to find it difficult to have an easy ride.

4 weeks later I cought a virus that seemed to be doing the usual rounds, however the difference seemed to be either the way that I coughed or my immune system was hammered. The end result was that the impact of the virus allowed or caused my lungs to become infected and this spread in the space of just under a week from top to bottom.

The local doctor prescribed some penicillin (7 days), which cleared a bit of my throat in 2 days and did not do anything after that.

Visiting the local hospital for a checkup as my throat seemed to be closing up they then prescribed some other antibiotics (7 day) to clear up the infection, which seemed to work in 2 phases. The first phase was a reduction in green gunk over 3 days and then the second phase 3-4 days seemed to be like pneumonia with a lot of fluid build up in my lungs. 7 more days of a reduced strength (50%) dose seemed to have stopped the bacterial infection.

The duration of the virus infection (feel 98% recovered at the moment) so far has been 42 days.

The current outlook is I'll be back on the bike this week with the prospect of re-training in around 3 months (84 days - 2 for 1) and back racing for May or June, can't wait !

The start

2007-01-21T17:14:00.000Z

Oh, well, time for a blog...