3rd March New Hour PB

12 years ago, HR was much higher and power much lower..... 

 3/3/2007

Another end of build stretcher. Decided to do hour of Watts first thing in the morning on the Lifecycle. Started doing criss cross 230-270 but after 30 mins realised bit much following the heavy session the night before.

So stepped down to keep HR around 169 which in practice meant Watts varying 220-240. After 45 mins realised I may be on for a new PB for the hour so paced myself and did it, breaking 900 cals for the first time. Total 905 cals which equates to around 237W I guess.

Sweet sweetspot

Did my first true sweetspot session for a while yesterday. I tried doing it power blind just ramping up to RPE while watching a Sufferfest video.

End result was OK if not great, around 260W for 100 minutes, but a reminder of how much I like these workouts and I will start doing them once a week, which along with my 4x16 will be the "high" portion of my training this month.

One thing that definitely did not work was power blind. Next time I will set power targets and see how that goes.

Weekly Focus

Another new thing I am trying out this year is to have a weekly focus. This will be one of 4 things: weight, power, recovery or race.

The last 2 are usual in any plan but the first 2 are not. 

They are nothing complicated, all it means is that during weight weeks I will be especially trying to burn fat mainly through skipping lunch. As a result I will just be looking to maintain power rather than build it. 

During power weeks I will eat plenty of carbs prior to and during rides, aiming to hit season power PBs. 

21st March Road Club Turbo Training

Last session of the road clubs winter training. This one was for a "warm up" to be done day before a time trial.


Consisted of 3 sets of 5*15secs max effort WI, 1 min RI.













Session left me knackered. Mistake was to try to go to hard too soon so WIs show peak then sharp decline as struggle to hold power through interval

Clearly something I need to work on as I know I am no sprinter but think could do better than this. Peaks of 5s 720W and 15s 646W were pretty poor too, partly I guess because went quite hard last night as well.

This was followed by 10mins at race pace but by then pretty tired. Started too hard on 350W and dropped back to a pretty weedy 270 average at the 10 minute end.

5th March Well Earned Day Off

Day off today after the Audax. Legs tired but only sore bit on behind as result of 4 hours saddle rubbing against wet shorts....

4th March Wed and Windy Audax

No club run today, its the Newbury Audax.

This runs 106km south and west of Newbury up and over the downs. 3 climbs apparently, Shurlock Hill, Rivar Hill out and Asmansworth on the way back.

Weather forecast had the two words no cyclist wants to hear. "Wet and Windy". Fortunately when we (about 35 of us) started it was neither but this soon changed. Got absolutely soaked and my bottom bracket got even more noisy.

I had thought Audaxes were meant to be easy events so had planned this as a recovery day. Turned out not to be as I wanted to keep up with the lead group so as to get back asap and out of interest as to how Audax compared with Cyclosportif. Turned out very similar. Pace was quick(ish) at 26kph (considering the conditions). Eventually just two of us in front and I dropped of on last climb up to Ashmansworth as did not want to push it to the limit on what was planned as a recovery day.

All in all interesting. May do some more a bit farther afield.

Details here: http://www.aukweb.net/index2.htm

2nd March Max Intervals

End of last base period so decided to push it a bit on the Lifecycle. Sport 19 (almost max) for 30 mins then did 15 mins of Intervals at 20. Meant in practice doing 2*400W for 45 seconds. Managed no problems

1st March Day off

Day off. Got submerged in Oblivion instead, deciding to take it easy following unexpected exertion night before and bearing in mind got a long weekend of training planned.

28th February Training - Unexpected exertion

Went to NRC turbo training class. Was expecting it to be a bit tough, but not as tough as it turned out to be. Training schedule said 4*5mins at 90% MHR with a minutes rest. Actually we did 3*10mins at 90%MHR with 4 mins rest. But survived.

Still felt well enough on return to brave the rollers again and managed to do 4km without needing to grab the step ladder for support.

Training Diary 27th Feb

Boring but thought would use blog for training diary. So here goes.

Last night did first criss-cross 240W<>285W alternating every 2 mins for 40 minutes total. Really good drill with HR slowing oscillating up to just above LT.