2nd Jan

Sainsbury shop

3 meals

1st Jan

Zwift LSD

WOD ankle post workout

Hit steps goal

31st Dec

Zwift Race - Replaced with Pretzel setting new KOMs

WOTR setup and first rounds

10 mins WOD post workout  Overhead

Newbury Velo

First email from Newbury Velo today, will be interesting to see how it turns out....

Tired but good TT

Bit tired yesterday even more so today.

But still managed a good Zwift ride yesterday, coming 6th overall.

Beer and Bajjis - new ATB

Awesome ride yesterday, worked off the beer and bhajis consumed at Banjo with a 3000m VAM ride.  Hit target in 2:40 averaging 268W a new all time best, 12W higher than ever managed prior to turning 60....

15 years of Banjo - birth of Newbury velo

Quite by coincidence after recalling buying my first bike from Banjo I went to an event there last night to launch Newbury Velo only to find out it was also a celebration of Banjo's 15th birthday.

Event was rammed and pretty inspiring. Joined up and hope it goes well.

Mr M's bike

Buying the Roubaix was one of the best decisions I ever made. It got me round France and far beyond...

The Giant MTB perished however, the M in the UK stands for Mud and I got sick of spending more time cleaning the bike than riding it.
 


 24/3/2006

A couple of months ago I had a bit of a scare on while riding my trusty old Kellogs Raleigh. It started making strange sounds and when I stopped to check I found part of the frame had rusted through and it was literally falling to pieces. Since I was 15 miles from home I had a bit of a scary journey back as my bike self destructed. Anyway I made it home but left me with an urgent need to buy a new bike that I would use for the ride itself. (I plan to mount the old Raleigh on my wall as an object d'art).



I went into my local bike store and after trying a few different models I settled for a Specialized Roubaix Expert
http://www.specialized.com/bc/SBCBkModel.jsp?spid=13023


I chose this bike because my plan is to travel very light so I did not want a heavy touring model with a lot of luggage carrying capacity. This particular machine is perfect for my needs because it is specifically aimed at long distance fast rides over difficult road surfaces. (The name implies this as the "Paris-Roubaix" is a classic bike race that has been ridden for over 100 years, being especially famous for part of the route being over cobbles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris-Roubaix).
It has a carbon fibre frame with dimensions that allow you to ride more upright than on a full racing bike. This means you lose a bit of aerodynamic efficiency but get a much more comfortable ride, especially if have a dodgy back like I do. Being carbon fibre means it is nice and light but also more forgiving than aluminium (and it won't rust like my old Raleigh!!). So far it has lived up to its claims, the longest ride I have done was over 5 hours in cold/wind and had no aches or pains the day after (touch wood it will stay that way.....).

The upright position also helps with climbing of which I expect to do a lot. To help further with this I did make one change to the standard bike spec. In place of the factory 2 cog 50x36 chain-ring I have a 3 cog 52X39X30 ring (with the supplied 12-27 rear cassette). I chose this because I would much rather have extra gears that I do not need rather than the other way round, especially if I find this half way up an Alp.


Also having extra low gears gives you more options in terms of how to tackle climbs, especially the long ones you get in France that do not exist here in the UK. No less an authority than Lance Armstrong advocates turning low gears at high revs when going uphill, which makes me feel a lot less girly when I move down to the smallest cog and spin my way to the top rather than grunt it.

My "other" bike which I used for trail riding is a Giant TCR. Main reason for choosing this was that it had hydraulic disc brakes. If you ride in a lot of mud like I do these are something that once you have them you will never buy a bike without, believe me.

Bonjour, et bienvenu a Mr Miff's Tour de France - revisited

I hope you enjoy travelling with us.

2019 thoughts....

Many thanks to Mrs Miff for kicking this off way back....

Seems like only yesterday and a long time ago.

I definitely made the right decision to eschew my mountain aka mud bike for the road.

Still one of the defining moments of my life came in my first ever "sportive", the Winter Solstice on Salisbury plain.

Totally exhausted with miles still to go I had the choice of cutting over to the short course. I demurred and pushed on finally finishing 3rd from dead last completely famished and ODing on bananas.

It was both my worst and best ever result.

Books

Sadly this post aged.... lots of much better books around now though the first couple stand the test of time and ofc it was the first one that started it all

Some books that have been of use. Also at the end some stuff about someone who rode the route last year.



THE TOUR DE FRANCE RIDING EXPERIENCE

French Revolutions - Tim Moore
The book that started it all. Relates how the author did pretty much as I did and rode the 2000 route prior to the race itself. Funny, honest and self deprecating it is a good read even for those who have little or no interest in cycling (like my wife...).

Riding High: Shadow Riding the Tour De France - Paul Howard
Just to prove that no matter how daft you are there is always someone dafter. Every year some nutters "shadow ride" the Tour de France, by, each day of the race itself, riding the route the tour will follow shortly after. They almost literally shadow ride as they need to start very early in the morning so as to be able to finish the course without being overtaken by the event itself, so one of the many problems they face is navigating in the dark. To try doing this you naturally have to be a pretty good cyclist as in many ways it is even harder than doing the real thing. Paul Howard's book recounts his tale of doing this in 2004 and is a good read, though more so for cyclists than others.

12 hour power

 Still pretty impressed with myself for ending up not only doing one 12 but several and setting a new club record in the process....


Following on from previous post I have been thinking about what sort of power I will pace at.


I did a tryout on our 10TT course a few nights ago. Conditions were not very helpful with a strong headwind out and tailwind back. Ended up averaging 36kph for 234W/246NW.

Also tried using calculator here: http://bikecalculator.com/wattsMetric.html which reckoned that 34kph should take 195W on the drops and 240W on the hoods. (Aerobar would be 160W but I will not be using one for first attempt for reasons I will go into shortly).

Based on above 2 bits of info I reckon I will need to average somewhere in the region of 220W or so. This is 10w short of my "endurance" zone so is in the right sort of place. Also taking a look at my normal power curve:



My longest ride was my chase of 5000m climbing last year in France. Here I averaged 216NW for 9:30. This is short of target but that is not really a typical day as it was more of a hard tour than a race. This year on the Highclere I averaged 240NW for 7 hours and for the Marmotte 235 NW for 7:30. Extrapolating these as above gives me a guesstimated 12 hour power of between 230 and 215W. So pretty much dead on what I will need to achieve to do the 12 hours at above 20mph.

I will do a few more trials and see what results....

Beauty of the Beast

November 2019 - still a beauty after all these years.....

On a completely different topic on return from Legbreaker I was followed by/followed a beautiful yellow Lamborghini Diablo. I actually heard it before I saw it and it made the most fantastic sight and sound.

By coincidence I saw a Murcielago parked up the night before and definitely of the opinion that the Diablo knocks it into a cocked hat in terms of looks.

Legbreaker 2008

Update 21st November 2019

Ah the Legbreaker. Still up there as one of my hardest ever rides.

The jersey and cap are still going strong and habitual attire.

Sadly the edition I rode turned out to be the last. Bit of a shame as it was well ahead of the trend in terms of UK sportives both in time and difficulty. It also had some of the best food at the finish.

These days there is pretty much one sportive or another happening most every weekend.



 

Did the Legbreaker ride yesterday and, as planned, rode it without looking at my power computer (except for occasional peek).

Actually ride is one where power meter is of least use as consists of lots of sharp, steep ascents and hairy single track descents (as profiles above show...). Quite pleased with how I managed on it, I forced myself to go hard on the climbs and took it easy(ish) otherwise. (ish because high winds and occasional showers made going tough, groups did not really form given nature of terrain).

Overall stats were not too bad. I did the ride in just under 6 hours (it was meant to be 130km but a missing signpost turned it into 140km) and set a new PB for 5 hour normal power at 256NW.

The power distribution makes an interesting picture:
Work time was spread pretty evenly across all of the buckets with near an hour being spent at VMax+Anaerobic. This is in sharp contrast to the Highclere Sportive:


and even sharper contrast to the Marmotte:

While happy I did it not sure I will do Legbreaker again. Not so much the climbing (dont mind that) but the fact that the whole ride felt very samey, just a constant succession of short steep climbs, often in woods, followed by similarly steep descents down single track roads. Latter led to a couple of accidents (fortunately all involved are OK) but even if trouble free are not really much fun.
Next weekend is Tour of Black Mountains, with several serious (but for the UK long) climbs which is definitely more my cup of tea. Just hope weather improves a bit...

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.

Training

Interesting to revisit this.  I've always been a bit of a stathead. Power has superceded  heart rate now  and I've lost a  further 10lbs and gained 15+ VO2.

My max HR is down, I rarely if ever see  170+.

The Lifecyle is still going strong and now being used to watch Battlestar Galactica

Much can and indeed has been written on training for cycling and general fitness. Here is a hitlist of stuff I have found useful.

Best web site:
http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/


> This is the best general purpose web site that I have come across for training. It does not have much specific to cycling but has a wealth of other useful info.

Scales: I have been trying to lose weight for as long as I can remember. Buying a set of digital scales that also gave a fat% was the tipping point to me actually succeeding this time. Every day I weigh myself in the morning and evening, the variances can be surprising, some days I have gained or lost 6lbs. But that said there is a clear correspondence, not surprisingly between how much I eat/train and my weight. Digital scales let you see this very clearly, I feel much more in control of my weight as a result.

Heart Rate Monitoring: One thing all good exercise guides stress is the importance of knowing your heart rate when training. I fully endorse this, the heart rate is like a combination of speedometer and fuel gauge on a car. Monitoring it is gives a clear indication of how hard/efficiently you are working and so when to push yourself harder or ease off. It also gives you a gauge on fitness improvements, if you can carry out the same exercise routine at a lower heart rate then you are getting fitter. I mentioned elsewhere that I use a HAC4 monitor and would recommend this. A couple of other comments:

> To train effectively you need to know your "maximum heart rate". The usual rule of thumb to calculate this is 220-age. This is not accurate and I would recommend you try to find out your real maximum (see "brianmac" for suggestions, basically all mean pushing yourself to the limit of exhaustion and a bit more and seeing what your highest pulse rate is). This makes a difference, in my case (47 years old) my theoretical maximum is 173bpm but I have trained at 176bpm and seen peaks of 182.
> The other good measure is "resting heart beat". This can be tricky to measure, strictly speaking you need to measure it first thing in the morning when you are still lying flat in your bed. The lower the better though a reading of zero may mean you are overdoing things. TDF riders have famously low resting heart rates in the 30s or even 20s. Mine is 45.

Exercise bike: I have had exercise bikes in the past but stopped using them either because I got bored or they broke. This time I decided to avoid both by spending enough money to get a decent one. I chose the "Lifefitness R9i" for a number of reasons
> I had used them in the gym so I knew the brand well
> The model comes with loads of programs so I know I would not get bored.
> It is a recumbent cycle which makes it a lot easier to watch TV or read a book while exercising.
I would definitely recommend this machine or similar.

Results
The acid test as to whether all the above helps or not will of course be how I manage in the TDF. But so far good as I have
> Reduced my weight from 14st6lbs to 11st 10lbs (i.e. lost 38lbs or 17kg)
> Reduced body fat from 25% to 14%
> Increased my VO2 from 34 to 50.
> Increased person best on the exercise bike of calories burned in 30 mins from 300 to 550.

Workout 19th June

Good climb up Stelvio yesterday. Will aim to do similar up Sella today followed by some spin ups.

Workout 17th June Boiling a Frog

Boiling a Frog aiming to improve on yesterday

Went well, new PB then did a VR and went harder than I expected to setting new MPA and myFTP of 320W. 

In doing so ticked final box to become a Rouvy Legend...

Workoout 13th June Low Carb Race

Eggs for breakfast then race

Workout 12th June Final hard session + Xert fields

Do warmup long rest then Sella climb then just push TSS before recovery day.

Install Xert Whats my FTP and MAP fields to see how they work for motivation. 

Went remarkably well. Surprised to find my weight up to 155lbs which I guessed must be due to glycogen+water.

So set an arbitrary target to lose 5lbs+ during the session and did a series of workouts including warmup to 7 minute hard, short sharp intervals and Sella on G6.

Hit target but best thing was how good I felt and how time flew by. Ended up doing over 4 hours at 242NW, 242 also being TSS number. Post ride felt great, really strong not at all tired or sore.

Workout 11th June 20 then Boiling Frog

Do 20 in test mode doing chunks at 312+.

Focus heart rate.

Then see how far I can get on Boiling Frog 

Went well but Rouvy watts turned out to be misleading.

Felt tired later in the day, think combination of terrible weather and out of comfort zone training.