It's been a busy few days, so here are the training stats from this weekend's activities. Unfortunately, I forgot to press 'start' on my Edge when setting out this morning on the Twickenham Cycling Club Sunday ride (of which more later), so the stats for that only cover the second 2/3rds of the ride.
Strength: 5 min Intervals (Cadence 50/90) (Friday night)
Skills: Bike Handling + High Cadence + Out of Saddle (Saturday afternoon)
Conditioning: Twickenham Cycling Club Sunday Morning Ride - 50 miles (umm...Sunday morning)
Just as a recap, the three categories - Strength/Skills/Conditioning - relate to the three types of session recommended in my training programme. At the moment, I'm supposed to be doing a minimum of 3 conditioning sessions, 1 strength session and 1 skills session per week, which I've managed to keep to so far.
I'd targeted doing 8 hours of work this week, and a couple of 2+ hour rides, but I reassessed that a little bit this week, in light of more information about 'over-training', and also being a bit more realistice. As it was, I did 7 hours, and managed to do the recommended number of sessions in each group.
The 30 minute skills session I did on Saturday was actually surprisingly useful. Because I'm so new to riding a road bike, I really needed to get a bit more experience of cornering and adjusting my cadence to suit wind/gradient etc., and although it was only a short session, I learnt a lot.
Prior to this, on Friday night, I'd done a strength interval session to try and build up my power production. The format was: 5 minutes, in a high gear, at a cadence of around 50, followed by 5 minutes in a low gear at a cadence of around 90. The whole thing was repeated 3 times, giving a total of 30 minutes plus warmup/warmdown. I think I got the intensity about right - hard, but not flat out, and although the strength sessions don't seem to be much fun, I'm hoping I'll reap the benefits on Ventoux in July.
Anyway - back to today and the Twickenham Cycling Club Sunday ride. I know that I need to get some experience of riding in a group, holding a wheel etc., and I guess joining a club is probably the best way to do it. It's also a more sociable way of getting the miles in. My big concern was that my fitness levels wouldn't be up to it, and I'd end up being disheartened rather than energised by the experience. I was still in two minds when I got up, but the weather was so lovely that I figured if I didn't go out today, then I would never go out - which would be a bad thing.
So -being careful to wear my least-branded, least-garish gear (The cycling branch of the fashion police are notoriously strict), I headed down to Twickenham Green, to the meeting point.
Everyone was immediately really friendly and welcoming, and I definitely felt 'looked after'. When we set out, Des - who was leading the group - cycled alongside me and gave me some friendly and really helpful advice about the do's and don'ts of group riding and the whole process was neatly demystified for me.
The friendliness of the group was reinforced for me, when after 5 or 6 miles I heard the telltale hiss of air escaping from my tyre, as I got my first puncture on my new bike. Everyone immediately stopped, and it was if a Ferrari pit-crew had sprung into action - I had barely come to a standstill before the back wheel (initial misdiagnosis) and then the front wheel were off, and my inner tube was replaced - the whole process taking no more than 2 or 3 minutes. Again, it made everything much less stressful for me, 'cos I wasn't fiddling around amateurishly, feeling like I was holding everyone up.
Once we got going again, it became clear to me that the most difficult thing about group riding is having the confidence (in yourself as much as the other riders) to sit 6 inches behind the back wheel of the cyclist in front of you and maintain that position without braking or accelerating suddenly. Having said that, once you can do it, the efficiency gains are enormous. I read somewhere that you can use up to 40% less oxygen if you're 'drafting' another rider and whilst I probably wasn't saving quite that much, your cycling just feels a hell of a lot easier.
Partly as a result, the pace of the group never felt uncomfortable, and overall, I felt less tired after this 50 miles than I did after my 40 mile solo ride earlier in the week. The 'hills' also felt a lot more comfortable, but as the benefits from drafting are not so extreme when climbing, I'm hoping this was more a mark of my improving fitness.
The most important discovery was that I'm going to have to get a bit more handy at clipping into my new pedals. Today it was really slowing me up in pulling away from traffic lights and roundabouts, and although I won't have to do that much clipping and unclipping in the Etape, I definitely need to get better at it in the short-term to make training a bit less stressful
Because I've only got partial stats from my Garmin, it might be useful to say here that the ride was just a smidge under a round 50 miles, and it was probably 3 1/2 hours in the saddle.
It was a good start to the training week anyway, and I'm going to need to get ahead of myself in my 'work' weeks. At the moment, I'm working part-time, and the way my shifts works is that one week (eg. this coming week), I work Mon/Tue then Fri/Sat/Sun. The flip side is that I don't work at all in the alternate weeks, so have a bit more time available for training, once my other course commitments are dealt with.
I will have 40 minutes per day of bike commuting time to keep me ticking over, so generally I'll just have to do a long ride and maybe a bigger strength session on the Wed/Thur of my work weeks. This is slightly complicated this week by the fact that I have my physiological testing at Sportstest on Thursday, and you're supposed to be well rested before it, so I'll have to try and fit in some evening turbo sessions after work.
Will let you know how I get on anyway, and there'll be an update after Sportstest on Thursday.
Strength: 5 min Intervals (Cadence 50/90) (Friday night)
Skills: Bike Handling + High Cadence + Out of Saddle (Saturday afternoon)
Conditioning: Twickenham Cycling Club Sunday Morning Ride - 50 miles (umm...Sunday morning)
Just as a recap, the three categories - Strength/Skills/Conditioning - relate to the three types of session recommended in my training programme. At the moment, I'm supposed to be doing a minimum of 3 conditioning sessions, 1 strength session and 1 skills session per week, which I've managed to keep to so far.
I'd targeted doing 8 hours of work this week, and a couple of 2+ hour rides, but I reassessed that a little bit this week, in light of more information about 'over-training', and also being a bit more realistice. As it was, I did 7 hours, and managed to do the recommended number of sessions in each group.
The 30 minute skills session I did on Saturday was actually surprisingly useful. Because I'm so new to riding a road bike, I really needed to get a bit more experience of cornering and adjusting my cadence to suit wind/gradient etc., and although it was only a short session, I learnt a lot.
Prior to this, on Friday night, I'd done a strength interval session to try and build up my power production. The format was: 5 minutes, in a high gear, at a cadence of around 50, followed by 5 minutes in a low gear at a cadence of around 90. The whole thing was repeated 3 times, giving a total of 30 minutes plus warmup/warmdown. I think I got the intensity about right - hard, but not flat out, and although the strength sessions don't seem to be much fun, I'm hoping I'll reap the benefits on Ventoux in July.
Anyway - back to today and the Twickenham Cycling Club Sunday ride. I know that I need to get some experience of riding in a group, holding a wheel etc., and I guess joining a club is probably the best way to do it. It's also a more sociable way of getting the miles in. My big concern was that my fitness levels wouldn't be up to it, and I'd end up being disheartened rather than energised by the experience. I was still in two minds when I got up, but the weather was so lovely that I figured if I didn't go out today, then I would never go out - which would be a bad thing.
So -being careful to wear my least-branded, least-garish gear (The cycling branch of the fashion police are notoriously strict), I headed down to Twickenham Green, to the meeting point.
Everyone was immediately really friendly and welcoming, and I definitely felt 'looked after'. When we set out, Des - who was leading the group - cycled alongside me and gave me some friendly and really helpful advice about the do's and don'ts of group riding and the whole process was neatly demystified for me.
The friendliness of the group was reinforced for me, when after 5 or 6 miles I heard the telltale hiss of air escaping from my tyre, as I got my first puncture on my new bike. Everyone immediately stopped, and it was if a Ferrari pit-crew had sprung into action - I had barely come to a standstill before the back wheel (initial misdiagnosis) and then the front wheel were off, and my inner tube was replaced - the whole process taking no more than 2 or 3 minutes. Again, it made everything much less stressful for me, 'cos I wasn't fiddling around amateurishly, feeling like I was holding everyone up.
Once we got going again, it became clear to me that the most difficult thing about group riding is having the confidence (in yourself as much as the other riders) to sit 6 inches behind the back wheel of the cyclist in front of you and maintain that position without braking or accelerating suddenly. Having said that, once you can do it, the efficiency gains are enormous. I read somewhere that you can use up to 40% less oxygen if you're 'drafting' another rider and whilst I probably wasn't saving quite that much, your cycling just feels a hell of a lot easier.
Partly as a result, the pace of the group never felt uncomfortable, and overall, I felt less tired after this 50 miles than I did after my 40 mile solo ride earlier in the week. The 'hills' also felt a lot more comfortable, but as the benefits from drafting are not so extreme when climbing, I'm hoping this was more a mark of my improving fitness.
The most important discovery was that I'm going to have to get a bit more handy at clipping into my new pedals. Today it was really slowing me up in pulling away from traffic lights and roundabouts, and although I won't have to do that much clipping and unclipping in the Etape, I definitely need to get better at it in the short-term to make training a bit less stressful
Because I've only got partial stats from my Garmin, it might be useful to say here that the ride was just a smidge under a round 50 miles, and it was probably 3 1/2 hours in the saddle.
It was a good start to the training week anyway, and I'm going to need to get ahead of myself in my 'work' weeks. At the moment, I'm working part-time, and the way my shifts works is that one week (eg. this coming week), I work Mon/Tue then Fri/Sat/Sun. The flip side is that I don't work at all in the alternate weeks, so have a bit more time available for training, once my other course commitments are dealt with.
I will have 40 minutes per day of bike commuting time to keep me ticking over, so generally I'll just have to do a long ride and maybe a bigger strength session on the Wed/Thur of my work weeks. This is slightly complicated this week by the fact that I have my physiological testing at Sportstest on Thursday, and you're supposed to be well rested before it, so I'll have to try and fit in some evening turbo sessions after work.
Will let you know how I get on anyway, and there'll be an update after Sportstest on Thursday.
No comments:
Post a Comment