Thursday, September 27, 2012

June-Sept Training Diary

I thought I'd post my training diary/experiences for the past 3 months.

Original plan/goals: I started off late, untrained and overweight. Main goal was lose the last 8kg of the 18kg I had put on since stopping serious training end 2009. I didn't really have any performance goals but thought it would be interesting to see how I compared with previous levels though not expecting to get close.

June: A couple of sunny days got me out on the bike but that was pretty much the end of the summer. Didn't fancy getting wet so thought I would give combination of HIIT and 10mile efforts on the trainer while getting out on my bike when the sun shone.
Good: Got/felt fitter. I was pretty feeble at the start, trying to hold 240W (my old 4 hour pace) for 5 minutes put my HR into the red zone. By the end of the month I could hold that pace 25 mins.
Bad: I put on weight. Classic mistake, thinking training means you can eat more...
Month hours: 20.

July: Refocus on losing weight. Decided to use tour de France as a training aid. “Plan” was simple, I watched the race while on trainer and mirrored what riders did. When they sprint I sprint, when they TT I TT, when they climb I climb, when they take it easy so do I.
Good: Worked like a dream. Ended up losing 3 kg and gaining power. Plus sweating along with the pros really brings the event to life :)
Bad: Quite a few junk miles when not a lot was happening. Might have got similar results in less time but on the other hand used this time to work and improve pedal stroke.
Month hours: 49.

August: Final tour TT power of was much better than I had hoped for. So decided to up intensity and push for old levels of performance. Most sessions were targeted at or above threshold power. Very surprised by how easy sessions turned out to be, by the end of the month was actively chasing old power targets.
Good: Equalled or bettered some previous bests, including full “comfortable” hour over 300W. Lost another 3kg too.
Bad: Nothing. The sun even shone a bit.
Month hours: 44

Total outcome
  • lost 7.8 kg
  • power from feeble back to old levels or better.

Full diary here: 
 

Saturday, September 22, 2012

It just keeps getting better and better

Training continues to go well. As above my meanmax comparison of this season to previous ones is starting to show some clear blue water between the 2 lines, something I would never have imagined possible back in June.(Dotted line this season, solid line previous years)

Over last 3 days I set a number of all time bests:
  • Saturday: Lovely day so we decided to pick some apples. I just had enough time to do a short workout so did a ramp test.  Managed comfortably up to 400W then pushed 420. Overshot a bit and final minute 434W, never done higher.
  • Sunday: Felt rough due to getting stung badly by nettles while picking. Still managed to summon up the energy to do an hour, averaging ATB 320W for 55 mins. 
  • Today: 10TT in 21:19. Another PB 345W and ATB from 10 min 355W>21min 345W
It's interesting the TT matches well with Wattbike guestimate of 20 min power from the ramp test (it predicted 347, did 346). 

Friday, September 21, 2012

Batman vs The Matrix .. and the winner is..

No contest. The Matrix by a country mile.

From bad can come good. As already said, the rubbish of Batman 3 prompted me to rewatch Batman Begins and remember how good it was and Batman 2, finding this was, truth to tell fun but pretty rubbish.

It also prompted me to break the shrinkwrap of The Matrix trilogy I had bought on special offer a while back and watch this again.

Damn I'm glad I did. It blew me away, I had forgotten how utterly superb these films were. What a contrast to Batman. 

  • The plot is rock hard, though pretty hairy at times, probably a bit too much so for its own good.  
  • The special effects were and still are stunning, each film containing epic set pieces. Each also tries to be new in this respect, not just rehash old ideas with more bangs.
  • The look/feel are still as fresh today as when first seen, not many other pieces of work could claim a monopoly on one of the prime colours.
Couple of other thoughts
  • One very few of the Hollywood films to let both its main characters die. 
  • Others die as well, pretty horribly in many cases. Compare and contrast to the kiddy playground action in Batman 3...
  • Final visit of Neo to machine city strong echoes of LOTR and Frodo/Mount Doom.
  • Second 2 films mix lot of complicated ideas up with the action. Too many maybe for the average audience which may explain their reception. Nonetheless something to praise not criticise. Matrix Reloaded in particular went down this road and felt similar to Inception.  
  • I'm not a great fan of 3D but its a real shame it wasn't around when the films were made.
Anyway some personal awards. 
  • Best Comic Book Film ever (despite not being an adaptation the overall look/feel is best at breaking boundary between graphic novel and screen)
  • Best Original Trilogy
 I won't leave it so long before watching it again. 

Next up Bourne...

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Wattbike power test

I have been very pleasantly surprised by the results of my training so far. Without really trying I have managed to get back to form that has approached, sometimes even bettered, my lifetime best.

The main factor in this has been to change the way I pedal, largely achieved by the happy chance of crap summer weather resulting in me spending most of my training time on my Wattbike.

I have felt very good when on this, so good in fact it crossed my mind that it may simply be down to the Wattbike giving high power readings.

So I plan to do a few tests to check this and did the first of these over the last couple of days. Simple process, ride the same power interval on Wattbike and road bike + Powertap and compare how they look in terms of RPE and HR. 

Yesterday I did a session on the Wattbike including a solid 30mins alternating 5 mins at 280W+/5mins 300W+. (push a bit on last 5 mins) I chose this as I was pretty sure I could repeat it on the road. Further it represents a key power zone that I would aim to compete at and the zone that marks transition to from sweetspot to hard going.

Today was a nice sunny day so I went out on the bike and did a session aiming to do the same 30 min interval. As expected it was quite straightforward to achieve, (which by itself is an indication of how well I am going!). It ended up being slightly longer due to traffic conditions.


In terms of RPE:  If anything it felt easier than the Wattbike. Partly due I think to time just passing more quickly when you are riding for real. Obviously power was a bit more up variable on road but I still managed to hit the targets np and felt really strong.

HR: Summary stats for the two sessions are

Wattbike 30:08 296W/296NW HR av 159bpm max 168bpm drift 2.13%
Bike 34:38 302W/303NW HR av 161bpm max 170bpm drift 2.42%

Breakdown of the 6 intervals is as follows (Wattbike first, HR shows average and peak during the interval)
    Wattbike                     Powertap
I1 281W 149>154bpm 293W 149>155bpm
I2 310W 159>162bpm 311W 159>163bpm
I3 286W 160>161bpm 286W 161>165bpm * 8 min long including slow/sprints
I4 306W 163>166bpm 317W 164>168bpm
I5 281W 161>164bpm 289W 163>167bpm
I6 313W 165>168bpm 327W 160>170bpm * 6 mins long
Bottom line is that both sets are pretty much identical in terms of HR and RPE to produce this power interval. Which is good news, in terms of the zone most relevant to me in terms of real world performance the Wattbike is pretty much dead on compared to my bike.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Pedaling Power

I keep banging on about how changing the way you pedal can improve performance. 

This is because it's worked so well for me, I just regret not doing something earlier and would encourage others to give it a go. The more so since there is no downside. To the contrary I have regained form amazingly quickly after a big break in training and I don't think its coincidence that since restarting a key focus has been pedaling differently.

It's not that I haven't worked on pedaling before, way back my first training guide was Joe Friel's "Bible" and that includes what he calls "speed skills" in his program and I have been doing these in some form or other most always. The problem was that it's difficult to know exactly if you are pedaling right or wrong. (This btw is also an issue with studies into pedaling.)

Using a Wattbike changed that. It has a display that gives a real time view on how you are pedaling (see here for a description).  It also helps demonstrate the changes I have made. 

Three pictures tell the story. First is the "before" polar view below. Its from an hour long 2x20 under/over session when I was in lifetime best peak form.
"Before pedal stroke"


It shows a couple of things:
  • I  actually had 2 pedal actions. At low its intensity pretty circular. However when the intensity increases the pedal stroke changes into something quite different becoming distorted and more elliptical. Also right and left legs work differently.
  • There are wide fluctuations in power each stroke, especially right leg which peaks near 600W each revolution (to generate at most 320W)
Despite this I was achieving good results with this action. The actual power delivered to the wheel was nice and steady. I could also keep it going high enough and long enough to get some impressive results both in terms of power profile and events. 


I took a couple of years off cycling. When I started again in June the crap weather in the UK meant I did lots of training on a Wattbike so I decided to take the opportunity to see if changing how I pedaled had any effect. It did.

Second picture shows polar view of my action now.(90 minute session including steady power hour, average and peak power same/greater than first picture)

It's pretty clearly different from the first picture.
  • First thing to note is this is now my habitual action. It took a while to adapt and while I was doing that I would always have the polar display running. Now however I don't use it much and just focus on maintaining target intensity. 
  • There is just one action now, all the same "peanut" shape for all intensities.
  • The shape is much smoother with highs and lows during each stroke much reduced. Actual output power during this session was higher than the first picture but the peak power per stroke is much less.
  • Left and right are more balanced, if anything now the left leg is contributing more to overall power (something to check out...)    
All this is well and good but what the picture doesn't show is what really matters.

First off, my riding feels completely different. It's hard to put into words but it feels much smoother, more "connected" and "centred" like much more of my body is involved in pedaling. I remember a very good rider describing how he managed to do a sub 20 10TT pre aero and he talked about just focusing on generating all his power from his stomach. I never understood that before but it make sense now. Put simply riding hard feels easier and more fun.
Most important of all though is actual power generated and this has been the most surprising thing. Since picking up from a zero fitness base I have done around 100 hours of training over a couple of months. I never expected in this time to get close to the power I could put out at peak form. So I was surprised to find that over the last couple of weeks  I was posting some good figures. 

I've been training with a power meter since 2007 and over the years have got pretty used to associating power on the computer with how hard it feels to ride. When I started again ofc I was finding this was way off, it felt really tough to generate 20 mins of power I used to comfortably ride all day. 

More recently though things have been going the other way. When glancing down to check power I'm getting surprises and see myself putting out 20W-40W more than I thought I was doing. 

Most of the sessions were on the Wattbike so at first I thought it was a problem with the power reading. However also been doing rides on 2 different Powertaps and both give the same result.  

Best example of how good I feel  was the session below (it's the same as the polar view above). Most everyone who does a lot of training experiences a few "breakthrough" workouts when they wildly exceed their expectations and have to recalibrate their training zones.  This was one of them for me. In the past I have rarely maintained 300W over a full hour and when I did it was hard work.  

This workout I averaged 300W for a full hour and it felt great.  Power was steady throughout, nice negative split and plenty left at the end. HR pretty much flat til I ramped things up for fun as the end came in sight. 


It wasn't exactly an easy workout, just very controlled. It felt exactly the same in terms of intensity  as the way I tackle long mountain climbs. But the power is as least 20W up. 

What's more I didn't peak for this session. To the contrary I was pretty tired, the day before I had spent 6 hours heavy lifting helping my daughter move flat. Prior to that I had done 3 days consecutive training, last being a knackering VO2. Also over the last few weeks I have been concentrating on shedding flab, losing 1-2 pounds per week.

The session while a great example is not exceptional.  I'm now riding pretty much at lifetime best form. This has come as a complete surprise and the only distinguishing feature I can put it down to is my change the way I pedal. 

This seems like a bit of a claim, time will tell once I start doing some peaking for an event. The real acid test will be next time I go mountaineering, when I will set 300W+ as target power. 

Still while slightly incredible it does make a bit of sense. As mentioned my pedal action has changed now, in fact its actually quite hard to go back and try to replicate the pattern in the first picture. In order to do this I have to push hard with my quads, that pretty much dominates the whole of the stroke. It would seem sensible that the way I pedal now will be better because it uses more muscles to generate power. No doubt the quads still do a lot of work but they don't have to push to quite the extremes which reduces stress and consequent fatigue.
















Sunday, September 02, 2012

Training Going Well

Training is going well.  A little late, I have finally got around to setting up an excellent environment to work out in. 

Key thing is using the Wattbike software on my PC to monitor training. This is much improved over the Wattbike display.

Example above shows ramp up during warmup. HR on left and power on right. Each is coloured, power shows training zones and HR shows steps highlighting those above 164 which is where I sense a cutover from endurance to threshold levels. 

Apart from being better using the above frees up the Wattbike computer so that I can use its race function to help push training.  Good example of this yesterday, I did a VO2 session 2 x (3x3) yesterday pushing 400W. Followed by a drift test that was great, 18 mins at 280W averaging 153bpm and only 1.24% drift.