Been a bit quiet here

Reason its been quiet...well its cross season innit.

Well also i have a tibial stress fracture so no running.

AND

A trapped ulnar nerve so no swimming.

Got the go ahead to do some running, no more than 15mins, on grass, and no intensity. Will be heading out tonight to try it out for the first time in over 6 weeks.

80km easy- how low can my hr go?

First off weight, Monday morning weigh in has me at 83kg. Looking trimmer, and the legs are getting a bit more defined, still to much on the waist.

Mixed weekened planned, needed to get in some rest time, needed to glue up some tubs, and needed to get in some personal stuff. So decided on one big ish but easy ride, and a run if i felt like it. I didn't.

Saturday Ride:

Plan was for a hilly ride in Wicklow, but the weather was terrible so ja

cked in that idea and went back to bed for 2 hours. Decided to get an IM paced ride in as i knew that once the cross season kicks off proper long rides are going to be a thing of the past. Bar maybe a few 2 hour turbo sessions of boredom.

Was a pretty good ride despite the weather (rain, headwind, grit, pretty standard for autumn about here). Puncture about half way through, not mu

ch i could do about that, but dragged the readings down a bit.

Heart rate was nice and low for the entire day out.Started out a little harder (140bpm ish) then settled into 126bpm for the next 2/3rds of the ride. Overall nice and low, felt good and was happy with keeping the HR spikes down.

Not a huge amount on the climbing on the route, rolling not flat, but was able to stay pretty steady for the ride. Didn't worry to much about being on the aerobars as it was a social ride, and to be honest it was windy and not going to be to much fun on some of the roads we were on.

Power values were pretty good. Rode it at an IF o

f about 0.65 so well well under what i'd be aiming for, but just over the 0.63 for the low end pacing strategy for IM. Aiming for 0.71 for the race myself. Just need to dig through the power data later....*

Nutrition, happy out, felt good the whole way, didnt eat a huge amount but drank more than needed resulting in 3 pee's on route! Not peeing on the bike in training...sorry kids.

~~

*power file breakdown: Graph is on 5mins smoothing

Peak PO: 611W - no power spikes as per normal (usually have a few 1,000W moments on climbs)

Peak 1min: 401W - Nice for the little kickers and a smooth back end to the trial with all my 1,2, 5,10, and 20mins peaks at the same point in the graph

Peak 5min: 283W - Sub threshold, wasn't actively going for it

Peak 10mins: 238W - IM Pace

Peak 20mins: 203W - Aerobic Pace

Peak Hour: 181W - Just above recovery pace at 170W

Q.Analysis: 46% Q3 , 38% Q4 IM ride if i've ever seen one, probably a bit to much low cadence work, but it was all done at low PO's so not minding so much.

Main find of the ride:

No torquing. Very very happy that my relative PO generation was well below the average PO. Looking like the way i want to ride, smooth steady shifting, no loading of the legs prior to the run. Just need to test it on some hilly rides!

Long Ride Recon

Weekend turned into a long ride focus at the last moment. Did a recovery session on Friday to keep the legs fresh then just sat at home and ate and drank to fill up stores. Didn't get to bed as early as i'd have liked but such is life.

6:30am to rise and get some food in. Plan did not work and all i could eat was 2 slices of toast and a cup of coffee and some grapefruit. Body is not used to the early morning rides at the moment so will have to start rectifying that.

Rolled out and rode the 23km to Stillorgan to meet Ollie, held a nice constant 232W on the way and just rolled along waiting for the stomach to wake up. Didn't spend enough time on the aerobars though.

Met Ollie and we headed to Wicklow, struggled up some hills with a 53/40 and 11-21, stupid climbing gears. Muppet. Over all ride came in at just over 130km, which was nice.

Now the nerding:

TSS for the ride 299.5 WOW, big big numbers, so in a 5 hour ride i spent 3 hours riding over threshold. Now i know this was a hilly route, and my gearing was stupid, but that was unexpected. So i think i need to do a re assess on my 20mins time :/

Power sat at a nice 179W Avg (229W NP) but there was allot of free wheeling on the descents. Peak 5 seconds: 820W, peak 10mins 273, peak 60mins 240W.

All reasonable numbers, but being honest it was still a solid ride, no where near max.

September week 1

So first week back training:

13 hour week, mostly bike focused, with one 6hour MTB ride at the end. Felt tired come the end

Weight - 82.9kg (7.9kg above RW)

FTP: 297W (untested in last month)

Peak hour: 254W (untested of late)

Planning a 20 min TT this week on the erg in work (probably Thursda

y) and swim times in pool on Wed.

Stats time:

Just been playing with Golden Cheetah for the last few days as it makes access to some metrics allot easier than WKO+ (thinking of shifting to it for my own use, not coaching). So decided to look at all my data since i've been using power. Then said 'hmm wonder how my FPT has been going',as suspected nice upward trend. But then me thinks, 'well IM needs at least hour or more power so lets look at that, and sure lets look at the speeds too'

Very happy to see this, tight cluster over the last year around the same point, this is all my data not race specific, measured over week averages. Some major outliers in the speed, so kinda ignoring it, but similar trend. Will have a look at some other things, but happy to see its all going well. Even more interesting to see when you look at it over years:

Working with Rich we started to focus on my hour power (red) so hence the increase from 2007 - 2009. This summer i maintained the work i had done with him (needed a personal training break) and started to focus on my main limitation in MTBing which was my 10(Green) and 20mins (Dark blue) (lap 1 on a 24 hr race, or 3 laps on a CX race). Great to see an increase here (and in 60mins) but a little concerned in the 30mins power (light blue).

Something to think about over the coming months. Wonder if i can get a metric for 3hrs.....

Current Status

Now these points of data make a beautiful line...

But in the real world we have a status too. Its measured by a few different things. Some are physical and some mental. As i know of no scientific (que screams from psych lecturer) way to measure most psychological things I'll just stick to the real science of physiology. Although I will admit that they are linked.

So its time to do some measuring and some admitting to myself. Things that need to get measured:

• Weight (kg)
• Body composition (Body fat) (% and total mm)
• VO2 @ OBLA (lactate 4mmol) and LT1 (+1mmol rise above baseline)
• FTP test (20mins normalised power *0.95 to get hour FTP)
• CHO use at FPT* 0.73 (IM pace - about 265W at the moment)
• CdA - Bit late, but need to set a baseline in the new position.
• 100m, 400m, 1000m swim set times
• 400m, 1km, 5km run times
• CHO use at 5min.km-1 pace (IM pace for a 3:30 mara)
• Sweat rate test @ normal and Lanza temps @ IM pace, run and bike

So lots to do and collect, but that's where working in a lab has its use. Plan for tomorrow will be to do the 20mins FTP test after i roll into the office. Rehydrate and refuel and do the 100m and 400m pool session in the evening.

Anyone who wants to know why my VO2max isn't on that list, well i know it. 5.4L.min-1. It hasn't changed that much in the last while. When racing light (while since that) its at 71ml.kg/min-1 (76kg) currently probably at 64ml.kg.min-1. I'll let you work out the weight.

August 2010

Bit of back and forth emailing with another friend/athlete I've worked with has lead me to have a bit of a think about targets for the coming year.

For Lanza i'm aiming to get my FTP back up over 4.2w.kg-1 where i am when racing at about 76kg, so about 320W (336W Normalised Power for 20mins). That'd be equivalent to about 4mmol blood lactate at that point. With a peak aerobic PO of about 400W (LT2 occuring at 86% Vo2max - i wont get this much higher i fear), so talking a Vo2 of ~70ml.kg.min-1 (5.4L.min-1) for the last season. That would put me at about 250W for LT1 and at my most economical (RER less than 1)

I have recorded lab tests at 5.6L.min-1 and PO's of 425W when i was 77kg, and ive done tests at 73kg (to light for me, all goes pear shaped). Ideal situation would be up at 76kg, Peak Aerobic PO about 425W, LT2 at 86% POmax -> 374W, and LT 1 at 65% POmax -> 276W. So riding at that. Have done 185km this summer at 265W NP and felt ok after, just not flexible happy. Ran 2km off the back and felt not great TBH. Would have to look at fuel use at that point, but thats a while ahead yet. Great thing about this plan is it'd put me at 3.6W.kg-1 @ LT1, and 4.9W.kg-1 (!!!!) at LT2. problem will be if i go over FTP i will go KABOOM! leave me good for climbing and longer stuff, but not much in between or short.

So if that's all it takes from a science point of view to do what I want on the bike, how do I get there?

That's what I plan to do here. Document where I am, where iI am going, and try to get there on time for Ironman Lanzarote. 276 days. Not that anyone is counting.