Wednesday, November 28, 2012

TDF2006 Day 2 St Avold>Arlon

Memories of my second day:
  • Leaving St Avold and cycling past a huge American cemetery/dreary chemical factory.
  • Somewhat fitting then that grey skies replace sunny 
  • Boulangerie stop for croissants to have for lunch, no more 3 course blow outs.
  • Entering Luxembourg, sun returning and passing a tableau featuring a Harley Davison 
  • Trials and tribulations finding hotel at the end of the day. Go up and down several hills before finding it and in the process end up cycling in 3 different countries in one day.
  • Hotel worth finding, superb restaurant and celebrate with some Luxembourg champagne.

Monday, November 26, 2012

Reliving the tour - stage 1

It's been over 6 years since I did my tour and, with winter on it's way I thought it would be nice to revisit it, both for the memories and to think ahead for next year. 

Rather than go into details I will just recall a few of the day by day bullets, to act as a stimulus  to my memory. (Remarkably I can close my eyes and play back huge amounts of the ride as if I was there again). 

So here we go: Day 1 

  • Car to Entzeim airport, very well known from many trips by plane. But this time it's the start of quite a differerent journey and pedalling away from it feels somewhat strange/scary
  • Very shortly get lost which is ironic since this is the area of France I know best
  • Find my way and cycle through familiar scenery and up my first climb, which I know well
  • Mid morning start riding in new territory and realise tour is starting for real
  • Stop for lunch, eat far too much and find restarting hard going
  • Long hot ride in the afternoon. 
  • First planned stop has no hotels, find one in St Avold but its another 30km onwards.
  • Find the hotel and head out into a very quiet town to get some drink and pasta at a pub. 

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

One hour winter workout

First frosts of the winter so  thought I'd do write up on a one hour workout which has stood me in good stead and is great from this time this time of year through to next spring (though it's handy all year round).  It's especially meant for indoor training but can be adapted for short 1-2 hour rides outdoors. 


It's  a "sweetspot" routine that  aims to maximise the work done while minimising training stress, which means it can be repeated day after day, week after week and burns up amongst the greatest number of calories per time spent. (up to over 1000kcal/hour). It will also help maintain any fitness gained and carry it forward to next year.

It also has other benefits:
  • It's easy to do, requiring no special equipment, though it's easier with a speedometer and even better if you also have a HR monitor and/or power meter.
  • It's a solid hour of good effort with no breaks  which is what makes it particularly well suited for turbo/rollers in a cold garage (which prompted me to start using it out in the first place). It has constant changes of pace which also helps as time passes quickly. 
  • It includes a graduated ramp to threshold so can be used to help monitor your threshold capability.
  • It's good pacing practice for long hard efforts. If your goal is doing the Marmotte/Etape or similar that involves big climbs it's especially good, since it simulates the perfect effort profile for these (see below for some more on this specific topic).  
  • It calls for small controlled changes of effort which can be used to help work on and improve technique and also help with getting used to gauging effort for other workouts and events. 
  • It  needs little recovery and can be done 4-6 times a week , week after week. (If this is done then there is every chance not only will fitness be retained but there is a good chance it will improve).. 
  • It can (should) be done just drinking water and eating normal meals.
  • Warm-up is included so you can do it from cold. (Though I like to do 5 minutes of core work first)
The workout is as follows: a 40-45 minute ramp followed by 15-20 minute "under/over"  (yellow is power (axis starts 150W), red HR (axis starts 100bpm) green cadence, blue velocity) Lower yellow lines are roughly where sweetspot zone starts, upper is roughly threshold.
 (the dips in HR on the ramp up are where I took a drink)
  • Get setup and engage a gear that you think equates to threshold effort at reasonably high revs. (It doesn't matter too much if you can't do this precisely. After a few repeats you will get to know exactly what this is, which is one of the benefits of the routine.)
  • Start pedalling at around 2/3 of threshold effort (just enough to make you start to feel you are working a bit and starting to get warm, around 4-5 hour steady ride pace). Ideally stay in the same gear as above but if you need to change down no problem. Revs can be low, indeed its probably good to have them around 65-70 at the start. 
  •  Hold this pace for 4 minutes. Then increase the pace very slightly. Not by much, just the smallest amount that feels like a bit more effort. (This is the opportunity to work on technique, one way to do make the change is just focus on one part of the pedal stroke and push it a bit). If stay in same gear each increment is 1-2 rpm more, if you have a speedo then it should go up a little, if you have a power meter its around another 5-10W. 
  • Hold this new pace then after 4 minutes increase again as above. 
  • Repeat. After a couple of increments you will be warm. After 3-4 you will be at the bottom of the "sweetspot" zone and having to start breathing through your mouth. After 6-8 you will be working quite hard. After 9-10 (so 40ish minutes) you should be at just above your threshold level, the point where you  switch from having to breathe very hard but controlled to starting gasping.
  • Stop increasing power when you feel completing a 4 minute  interval is really tough.
  • Next 4 minutes after you hit top step down the effort just a bit, to around what it was 2-3 intervals previously.
  • 4 minutes after that step it up, this time by the equivalent of 2-3 level.
  • Next 4 minutes step it back 2-3 levels
  • Next 4 minutes step it up 2-3 levels again. This may be the last interval. You should be very well warmed up now so if you feel like it push this one hard.
  • Spend a couple of minutes spinning down and finish.
Judging the pace increments for each interval so that you hit threshold after around 9-10 increments may take a bit of trial and error, but if it does that's a good thing since it's pretty important to have a good sense of where your threshold is both for training and riding. 

A couple of ways to check are by continuing to do more step intervals to the point where you simply can't complete one. The interval 2-3 back is likely to be threshold. Another way to check is to try riding 20 minutes solid at the pace just before you have to stop increasing power. This should be tough but doable/repeatable. 

Anyway the routine is intended to be repeated easily day after day, so its straight forward to fine tune the effort and get used to ramping up to threshold. Once you get used to it then you should be able to work pretty hard yet still feel comfortable (in the example above average power for the hour was around 90% of threshold yet the workout still felt pretty easy). 

Couple of final points:
  • If you have more time the workout can be extended by doing more repeats of down/up intervals at the end. Alternatively stretch the ramp up to threshold by increasing the length of time of each step interval. 
  • Conversely for a shorter/more intense workout shorten the length of each step interval and/or cut the time spent "under" in the second section. 
  • I mentioned earlier this workout is good for simulating big climbs. The  ramp up to threshold is the perfect way to try to do these, starting easy then increasing effort gradually as the climb progresses so you hit the top just over your threshold effort and are ready to recover on the descent. This works especially well in group events, people will leave you at the bottom of the climb but you will easily pass them before you reach the top and you will be feeling at peak form just as they are feeling at their worst. 
    • So in this workout the first ramp is what your effort should look like, just adjusted according to the length of the climb (so a one hour climb each step lasts 6 minutes)
    • Things can go wrong, in the excitement of an event you can get carried away and push things too hard too soon. If this happens you should spot you are near/past threshold from your experience of this workout. If so then the best reaction is to step back and try to do the rest of the climb as the under/over section at the end of the routine (or if really bushed, just stay at under pace).
    • For a one off climb (or the last climb of a multiple climb event if you are feeling really good on the day) the best way to it is exactly this routine (ramp up then under/over to finish) as it maximises your power while minimising the risk of cracking.  So the example above is pretty much the perfect profile of how to do a climb like, say, Alpe 'd'Huez in an hour or so. (indeed  the power in the graph above is exactly what you need to do to that climb in under an hour if you are around 70kg).