First 2x20

There was a post on the BikeRadar training forum about "2x20" drills so I thought I would try them out with a view to adding into my late base build training.

Did this last Friday as starter to a deliberately hard weekend, done in the knowledge that week following would include a couple of days off.

I decided to target 300W as the 20 minute effort, being midway between 20 and 60 minute pace. Given this target I decided to use the rollers rather than turbo to help with speed skills.

First interval was largely about finding the right gear/cadence. I found third from back cog and around 95rpm was about right to average 300W. I aimed for a target of 350KJ as this felt like it would happen in approx 20 minutes and I find having an energy target more motivating than watching seconds pass by. The interval was hard but doable ending up at 301W average over 19:32.

I deliberately did not monitor HR but the interval felt quite hard by the end. I took a 50kj breather then started another interval, this one on top cog but turning over at a far more sedate 73rpm. I felt it "easier" to keep the power up this way and was going quite well until I lost concentration and fell of the rollers. No harm done, but lost momentum and limped over the line with a 295W average in 20:18.

On WKO+ the most interesting plot proved to be the HR line. On interval 1 this moved up steadily through the interval, hitting 180 by the end. Interval 2 the HR was flat lining until I fell off...This ties up with my feeling out on the road, where, despite knowing the theory about high cadence being best, I find myself most comfortable on the flat turning a big gear over more slowly.

Overall found the 2x20 drill to be pretty hard but also a pretty good workout. I will include in base/build weeks from now on.

How much to eat on a sportive

One of the many topics covered in the tri-talk podcasts was how much you need to consume in terms of calories during an even.

There is a handy calculator here http://www.tri-talk.com/TriTalkNC/TriTalkNC.htm

that allows you to play around with various variables and come up with an estimated cals/hour.

It confirms something I have learned by experience, that I don't need to eat as much as I expected. On my most strenuous sportive last year (Tour of the Black Mountains) I burned 4800 cals or so over 6:30 hours at an average effort of around 80%MHR. It reckons I need to consume between 250-300 cals per hour, which is not too much.

Backing this up is my Dragon experience, the only time I have ever bonked in my life. On this event I went for 6 hours doing 4000 cals at 80% drinking only water (becuase I forgot my sports drink) and eating about 4 bananas and about (because I lost most of them) 8 flapjacks. I think this adds up to around 2000 cals so I guess I had around 2000 cals stored in glycogen.

Another good day - fixed ride, podcasts and turbos

Another good day yesterday. Weather grey but still good enough to go for a 50km ride on my fixed bike. Aim was just to take things easy as turbo session planned for the evening. So listened to some of the tri-talk podcasts I downloaded.


They turned out to be pretty good. Yes there was some advertising but the host David Warden is very open about what is advertising and comes across first and foremost as a keen enthusiast who wants to share his experience.


Came home not too tired and later in the day did a very good turbo workout with NRC. Still on the 4minute work intervals big ring 7>1 rear. Now down to 1:30 rest. I put in a very good series of intervals
G7 243W HR130-162 Avg 153
G6 264W HR134-166 Avg 158
G5 291W HR140-171 Avg 164
G4 301W HR138-174 Avg 165
G3 307W HR148-175 Avg 169
G2 317W HR146-176 Avg 169
G1 327W HR143-182 Avg 171


On all but the last I kept breathing nice and easy to keep this an aerobic session (on last I gave it a bit in the last 30 secs) and comfortably held and slowly raised the power through each interval. Resultant graph looks pretty nice. Next week is a rest week (and my sons 18th birthday) so will be taking it easy and miss turbo. Will be interesting to see how I fare the week after when rest will be down to 30 secs.

Isnt the internet wonderful

The internet can be wonderful at times. I have a number of books by Joe Friel and have recently being looking at his blog (see sidebar).

Yesterday he mentioned that he would be giving a talk re training for cycle events, specifically a century ride. I posted a comment to say that I would like to have gone but difficult given my living in UK and wondering if talk would be available as a podcast.

He replied the same day advising me to check out http://www.tri-talk.com/ which I did to find a whole host of podcasts that will help pass time in traffic jams for weeks to come.

Fartleking Away

My smorgesbord approach to training continued well last night. Following my hardish ride Sunday I still felt good so thought I would do some roller work.

This ended badly last time I tried it as I could not seem to keep going and struggled to do much over 220W, not helped by the fact I was finding it hard to keep on rollers.

I attempted to fix the latter by moving front roller forward one notch and that seemed to do the trick, I felt a lot less wobblier.

I started my session with view to doing better than last time, which would not be too difficult, and maintaining 235W plus. To help I set some session rules:

• I would warm up properly in middle ring, middle rear cog


• I would keep cadence between 80-95rpm


• I would watch the watts average. Following the warmup I would increase cadence so it started to go up gradually. Each time it crossed a 10W step I would up a rear gear then move to big ring and continue


• Once I got to 170bpm (so round about my LT) I would ease off cadence and then maintain a range 162-170bpm


• I would stop at 800KJ.

The results were very pleasing. The session was hard but not at all a killer and I progressed nicely the average watts eventually moving up to 260 over the 50 minutes or so it took to do the 800kj of effort. As a whole I think the session was a sort of fartlek, with me playing around with pace and power in the higher aerobic zone.

I was not monitoring my actual watts during the session and was surprised when I downloaded to see that for 40 minutes I was averaging 280W which should be my FTP with peaks over 300W. Think this plus the MAP test I did last week means I should up my FTP a bit. Will adjust to 290W from now on, which means my sweetspot zone will be 245W-275W.

Sunday club run - hardest day yet

Did the club run down to Thruxton yesterday. Weather wettish and windy plus a few hills. Ended up doing 80km or so. Run in took us up to Wash Common so peeled off just before home and did 5 runs up the lane that runs parallel to the Andover road. This is a 1 mile run that goes uphill at around 1-2% pretty much all the way. 5 intervals averaged from 266W to 324W each one increasing from the last. Pretty happy with this.

All in all ride set a new high for this season of 284TSS points.

MAP comparison - November to Han

I took a bit more of a detailed look at the 2 MAP tests I have done so far. The chart above shows the power and HR curves for the two tests (power curve is a rolling average of past 20 seconds power to keep curve smooth)

The power curves are pretty much identical up to around 270W, then they start to diverge with the November test being about 10W higher. The reason for this is I adjusted the power readout to average over 30secs for training and forgot to reduce.

More interestingly the HR curves are separate right through the test, with the January curve being consistently less than the November curve, consistent with my being able to keep going for longer. Conditions were pretty much the same in terms of temperature, so I put at least part of this down to my training.

That said very aware I need some more data before I can make any firm conclusions. Will continue to focus work on the zone 240W-280W over the next 4 weeks and retest again after then. Will be interesting to see if HR in this zone maintains its gap (or hopefully widens).

One variable I know I will change for the next test is not to display HR. I know my "max" is around 185 and think this may be a limiter as when I see the HR getting above 180 I think I must be near the end. (One other benefit I get from having a power meter. Getting power up is a motivator for me but seeing HR touch unknown zones makes me worried.)

Going for Gold?

Just taken a look at the Tour of Wessed details http://209.132.24.3/downloads/Information_manual1.pdf

The standards are pretty tough, which is probably as it should be. For me gold means
Day 1 148km 5:00 (avs 29.6kmh)
Day 2 166km 5:30 (avs 30.1kmh)
Day 3 171km 6:00 (avs 28.5 kmh)

The times are doable, I averaged 30.2 on the TOW day1 and 28.7 for the 188km Tour of the Black Mountains, but will leave little margin for error. The weather+riding single speed meant I only did 26kmh on TOW day 2 this year and this combination left me pooped for the final day when I averaged the same speed. Still I have more experience now and hopefully will be fitter this year than last. So overall glad the standards are so tough and prefer this to situation where I can get a gold when not even trying.

January MAP test

Did first MAP test of 2008. Felt a bit rough past couple of days, due I think to slightly overdoing the diet. So had a day off yesterday and did MAP this morning.

Felt pretty good and result very pleasing. Kept going for a minute more than Nov test and broke 400W with MAP of 401. Gives me a power/mass of 22.63 which is still "Good". Training zones in line with my training plan. Given I have not been doing any specific training in the higher zone 6 end hope that I can improve further. Time will tell...

Russel Brand - fails the exercise bike test

Slightly off topic, but not entirely. Started cycling as way to get fit and lose weight and remains key goal. Helped in this by having an indoor exercise bike + a small DVD/TV. So I often pedal along while watching a film/TV series.

One by product of this is that how good or otherwise the DVD is can be judged by how hard I am exercising. The better it the easier it is to pedal (e.g. now watching the Sopranos and for some episodes have been chugging along at a good tempo pace without even noticing.)

On the other hand if the show is rubbish I find pedalling harder. To date the worst thing I have seen was the film Alexander. However this was beaten yesterday when (at sons insistance because apparently I am the only person in the universe who does not find him funny) I watched a DVD of Russel Brand's live show. This was real hard work, despite choosing a very easy exercise program it was hard to keep concentrating. Fortunately the DVD skipped a bit which gave me the excuse to fast forward through long sections where all he did was moan about how he had been treated at some awards or other or read out bits of the Daily Star to his audience.

Opinion isnt changed. Don't like or dislike Russel Brand, he just isnt funny.

Marmotte - expanded

As result of earlier enquiry into multi day sportives (see earlier post) I found that there are a few more events taking place in Oisans at the time of the Marmotte.

These are
Vaujany Sportive (173km)
Grande Rousse (40km but 1600m climbing)
Grimpe Alpe (TT up Huez day after the Marmotte)


I have decided to do these as well. The Vaujany I will used as a f peak training ride plus it will be useful to get some experience of riding a mass sportive prior to the Marmotte.

The Rousse looks the sort of distance to do a final event week ride to keep me sharp and the final Grimpe should hopefully be just a bit of fun to round off the whole trip.

Result of all this is that I should be spending a couple of weeks in the Alps end June. Looking forward to it already..

Cereal Day

Despite my exploits on the bike over the weekend I still managed to put on a couple of pounds. This is a not unfamiliar situation, all of my long rides away have resulted in me coming back heavier than when I left.

Reason is that having slogged your guts out it feels only fair to fill them up again. At home my tendancy is to gaze longingly into the fridge with what Mrs M refers to as an "anteater" look, hoping to find some delicacy or other, usually involving cheese.

I have come to the conclusion I have little self control. So what I have started to do is have the occasional "cereal" day. This is pretty simple, on said days I will only eat bowls of cereal (the "good" ones like shredded wheat, weetabix etc.). I reckon these are about 200 cals a go with a reasonable balance of carbohdyrates/protein/fat/fibre, I allow myself one every couple of hours or so which I reckon ends up with me eating 2000cal or so on a day when I will just do some light recovery work.

Hopefully this will result in my shedding a few pounds before May.

Base vs Club ride

My two rides over the weekend showed what I think is the difference between a focussed base ride and a club ride. My base ride is below (smoothed to 5:00). The lines on the power graph show the start of my Endurance (157) Tempo (213) and Threshold(255) zones. Apart from the false start (my mudguards were playing up) and end warm down almost the whole ride is above the lowest endurance zone. (Even more would have been had I not needed a few map stops and avoided falling over in a ford..)

By contrast my Sunday club run shows a quite different picture. Here most of the effort is in the active recovery zone, with just a few spikes for climbs and the likes. While I felt tired at the end of the ride this was more of a rollover from the previous day than due to the ride itself and on Monday morning felt less tired than Sunday morning.

Hard old weekend

Had a hard old weekend of training. As an entre Friday evening did a max strength session, getting to target in terms of main exercise (single leg step ups 67kg). Then finished watching (and hugely enjoying) the last couple of episodes of the first Sopranos series.

Weather forecast for the weekend was constantly changing. So when I got up Saturday to see the sun shining I decided to have a ride out to Pewsey to recce the next club run I was due to lead. I did not go out with any special training plan in mind but feeling good aimed for an average 200W over the ride. Managed this comfortably averaging 210W(24oNP) for 3:45. Only downer (literally) was me falling over on a flooded road. My own fault, tryed to coast through to avoid getting too wet and ran out of momentum half way through.....

Sunday was forecast to be rain and wind. So I got well togged up for the club run, even to extent of using shower cap over helmet. This worked perfectly in making sure it did not rain at all. It was a bit windy and had to work a bit harder coming back than going out.

All in all did 9 hours over the weekend covering some 166km with 450TSS points. This resulted in my PMC CTL taking quite a hike upwards so will steady down a bit in week to come.

Multiday sportives/interesting tours.

Doing the Tour of Wessex again this year and also the Tour of Ireland. These are both multi-day sportives and thought it would be interesting to see if there are other multi-day events out there. After all if you take the trouble to go somewhere to ride a sportive why not do it for several days rather than just ride and come back.

So put a post up on Bike Radar and got some interesting replies.

Here is list to date. I have made a guess as to whether event is a sportive or tour (former meaning lots of riders, timed). All look very interesting and already thinking about 2009 and possible change of 2008 plans to do the Oisans event in July.

Sportives

UK 3 days Tour of Wessex - tourofwessex

UK 2 days Cycle Cairngorns cyclecairngorms

Ireland 4 days Tour of Ireland tourofireland

Italy 6 days Giro delle Dolomiti girodolomiti

Sardinia 7 days Giro Sardinia Giro Sardinia

France 4* days Trophee de L'Oisans bike-oisans (* 4 events spread over 7 days including the Marmotte)

France 2 days Cleremont-Aurillac ctmontferrand

Italy ? days ????? two events start August on this site but no details bicimilano

Tours

USA 7 days Ride the Rockies ridetherockies

USA 7 days Bike tour Colorado bicycletourcolorado

France 4 days Raid Pyreneen bikepyrenees

Italy Tour of Italy 33(!) days bike-dreams

Cardiac Drift - some more...

Found a useful secret in WKO (thanks to Joe Friel blog

http://www2.trainingbible.com/joesblog/2007/08/ironman-uk-power-graph.html

(see comments for instructions)

on how to get WKO to show a measure of cardiac drift. I went back to the cardiac drift test I did a bit earlier and is showed for 30 minutes at 200W my drift is 2.8%.

In other tests 30 mins at 230W showed a drift of 4.6% and 90 mins of varying 160-185W actually showed a negative 2.6% drift.

Interested in this new measure I went back to my time trials last year these showed

H10/3 10mile flat TT (first ever) 325W (NP 328) drift -1.39%

H10/3 10mile flat TT (second ever) 328W (NP331) drift 9.2%

These show in figures what happened in practice. First time out I took things conservatively going out then put power on coming back but still had a bit to spare.

Second time out I pushed too hard in the first half, averaging 337W(NP345) but got knackered. This shows in a drift of 13%. So had to peg back on return averaging only 317W.

H10/3A (rolling with headwind) 10 mile TT 324W(NP 331) drift 10.2% - again got pacing wrong as first ride on the course and did not leave enough for headwind coming back.

HC248 (hilly 24km TT) 304W(NP313) drift 4.6% - first time on an unfamiliar course, so took things conservatively

HCC247 (flattish 25mile TT) 280W(NP 284) drift 3.7% - first (so far only) 25 mile ride which I did at last minute. So again rode conservatively.

So overall interesting how drift measure ties up with how I rode. I guess one measure of fitness is being able to push up your power while keeping drift stable. Will be interesting to see what rides in 2008 will show.

Wi

Powertap flat battery frustration

NRC turbo session last night. Still doing 4 minute intervals on big ring from 7th rear cog down to smallest. Down to 2 and a half minutes rest.

Was planning to try doing these at 290-320W but my Powertap again refused to read the rear hub. Bizarre as was working fine Saturday.

Replacing the batteries sorted the problem out but could only do this once I returned home so no power data for session which is a smidge frustrating...

Training smorgasbord

Responded to a forum question yesterday asking how people dealt with training plans, where planned workout could not happen for one reason or other.

This was something I learned from last years experience. I found that trying to plan a given workout on a given day was both time consuming and pointless. More often than not I did not do the workout and sometimes even when I did some of the fun was taken out because it felt like going back to school.

So this year have adopted a smorgasbord approach. I have a range of workouts suited to the training phase I am in and pick and choose from that according to time, conditions and how I feel. I use WKO and its performance management chart to take care of ensuring my overall training load is on plan.

Today was good example. I had a day off so had planned a middle distance fixed "E3" ride. I got up to find that weather was combination of wind and rain and prospect of slogging round for a few hours outside had little appeal. So instead I stayed indoors and did a highish (for base) M1 session where I ramped up from 230W to 300W over 60 mins. The whole session including warm up/down came in at TSS 115 IF 0.847 (This compares to my last fixed ride that was 2:40 long, with a TSS of 106 and IF 0.647, showing loads comparable, albeit at different intensity )

I felt really good and strong doing the workout and overall am sure it did me more good than slavishly following a rigid plan.

Beware black ice

Bit of a downer on Sunday in more ways than one. Volunteered to share the load and lead some club runs. First was last Sunday and I did a recce ride of the route just before Xmas. (as here:
Ride

Snow was forecast for the week, but never materialised, so went to bed Saturday hoping it would not be wet. Woke up Sunday to lovely blue sky, so rode off with a happy heart to the club run start point, resplendent in purple stegasaurus helmet cover (Xmas pres, see SPAM photos).

Very good turnout, something like 15 or so. However a number of stories re icy roads with some saying they had already had a spill. I did not pay this too much heed until we started out. We had gone no more than 400m or so and a call came up someone had crashed. I was at the front so stopped, then turned to go back and see what had happened.

Or to be more accurate tried to turn, my front wheel went at a 90 degree angle to where it was meant to and I hit the road. This turned out to have a sheet of sheer ice right along it.

I was very surprised as I had cycled along said road earlier and noticed nothing. Think this is a case of ignorance being bliss as not expecting ice I had not noticed it.

Anyway unfortunately we had to change route plans and go via main roads. Nonetheless passed 2 accidents during the ride, in both of which cars had gone off the road. Strangely both were 4x4s.

So bit disappointed plans went awry. Still the route is in the bag ready for another try later, when hopefully weathe will be a bit kinder...