Fatter but fitter?!

Today's training stats: Conditioning: Turbo Conditioning Volume 60mins

I'm trialling a new feature today. As you can see above, I'm going to try putting each day's training stats - as downloaded from my Garmin Edge 705 - at the top of the day's blog entry. I just think that, frankly, it's the most interesting bit, and it's the bit I'd want to click on if I was reading somebody else's training blog.

I also have an ulterior motive, because I'm hoping it'll deflect attention from the other stats that I'm going to put in today's blog entry. Every Monday,

I'm going to try and record my weight, body fat percentage, muscle mass etc - that I've got from my Tanita Innerscan body composition scales - in an effort to track the changes. The thing is, I was kinda hoping that my weight and body fat percentage would magically decrease, thereby making me seem like a much more worthwhile person (oops, I think I must have been reading too much 'Heat' magazine again). Unfortunately, that hasn't quite proved to be the case - at least not in this first week. Anyway, without further ado, here's the newly-christened "Tale of the Tanita".

Weight: 11 stone 11 pounds

Body Fat Percentage: 19.8%

Body Water Percentage: 55.5%

Muscle Mass: 8 stone 14 pounds

Basal Metabolic Rate: 7300kJ/1745kcal

Visceral Fat Rating: 7

Basically, all of those seem to be a bit worse than last week's readings, which is disappointing to say the least. My body fat percentage in particular is starting to look a bit worrying, but I'm not entirely sure what I can do about it, because I eat pretty healthily anyway and don't really like a lot of fatty stuff anyway.

Inspired (or depressed..kinda depends how you look at it..I'm gonna go with inspired for now) by this, I've booked myself to have a full physiological assessment at Sportstest. This is a company run by Dr Garry Palmer, who co-wrote Elite Performance: Cycling: Succesful Sportives, which I raved about yesterday. As I said, I was very impressed by the detailed, but clear way in which the book goes into the science of training for Sportives and as I was looking to get a detailed

assessment anyway, I thought I'd look them up. It turns out that although they're based in the Midlands, they also do testing in Hampton, which is just round the corner from me. So, to cut a long story short, I'm booked in for 1 o'clock next Thursday.

They promise assessment of peak power output. VO2 max, power to weight ratio, maximum heart rate, endurance capacity and threshold determination. The key thing is that these figures aren't just to show off to your friends (and frankly I know I'm not going to have anything to show off about anyway), but from your maximum heart rate and your training thresholds, you can accurately work out your individual heart rate training zones, enabling you to train "smarter" as they say. Just to clarify, I would NEVER say that.

It's starting to feel like with all my cycling-related expenditure at the moment, I'm single-handedly administering a fiscal stimulus to the British economy, but I figure it really is a once in a lifetime experience and I want to get to the start line knowing I've done everything I can to be fit enough to finish the etape.

As far as today's actual training goes, I was out all day in town, so my only real opportunity was more work on the turbo tonight. I wanted to push myself a little bit harder today, so I thought I'd have a crack at riding at "Conditioning" volume. This is riding at a level where you have "difficulty" holding a conversation for long periods - a heart rate of 145-155 bpm. I thought I'd just see how I felt on the bike once I got going to determine how long I cycled for, and I ended up doing an hour. I'm just looking at my training sheet now, and it turns out that's the time recommended for "Advanced" cyclists, which I'm pleased about - although slightly concerned that I might have pushed it too far.

Actually, I'm not that concerned, because I felt good on the bike - and my legs again weren't particularly fatigued. I settled on a gear that gave me an equilibrium between my Heart Rate and pedalling Cadence - 150 and 80 respectively. Again, the slight limiting factor was a bit of saddle soreness - you can see this on the training stats where I had to hop off the bike for 20 seconds or so, to readjust my shorts - but there was definitely less soreness than yesterday, and I felt much more comfortable with the riding position.

'Cycling Successful Sportives' recommended loading up with carbs for this activity, as a lot of carbohydrate is apparently used at this intensity. Taking this to heart, I filled one of my water bottles with Science in Sport's PSP22 drink, and one of my bottles with their Go Electrolyte. It's

difficult to tell how much of an effect this had, because obviously I don't know how I would have felt if I hadn't taken them. However, I definitely felt much more comfortable at this intensity than I would have expected, so that's got to be a good thing. As a footnote, I also had a bottle of Sis's Rego afterwards. Chocolate flavour today, which had a slightly malty flavour, but I still preferred it to the Strawberry. I'm running out of the drinks from my SiS starter pack, so hopefully my order from Wiggle will arrive tomorrow. Molly's looking forward to that as she's hoping it'll give her more opportunities to build up her part.

I'm going to try and finally get out on the road tomorrow, so maybe I'll try some of the bars and gels on that ride and see what they're like. The weather's forecast to be 'mixed' and a bit rainy, but I think I should get out anyway. I've got a rest day planned for Wednesday, so I need to do something to have deserved it.

The Honeymoon's Over

There's been a small hiatus, in both blog and training terms, because my sister got married last weekend. Despite my best efforts, I didn't get a chance to throw in any gym sessions, because there was lots going on, but lots of fun things happened anyway.

First and foremost, my new bike (Felt F55 2008) arrived last week. I had an inkling that it was going to be good when I helped the delivery driver take it round to the back of the house, because even in the box it was much lighter than I expected it to be.

When I finally got it open, I was even more thrilled. She (for she's definitely a 'she') looks absolutely beautiful and is stunningly light. You really can lift her up with one finger, and every extra bit of weight I can trim will make a massive difference over the distance of the etape.

I also took delivery of a new Garmin Edge 705 - the GPS/heart rate monitor that I mentioned in a previous post. The kind people at Garmin have let me have one for review purposes, and I intend to make full use of it to track my training in as much detail as possible.

Unfortunately, I haven't yet had a chance to take the bike out, because I've been so busy, and indeed will be for the rest of the week. I've got an assignment for the Creative Writing Course I'm doing at the moment, which has to be handed in on Friday, and I've not got very far with it yet. Hopefully, I'll finally get out on Sunday and have a decent ride.

I did go to my usual Wednesday morning Yoga class this morning, and after that I did a solid 30 minutes on one of the exercise bikes. I basically did 8 minutes at effort level 6, followed by a couple of minutes recovery at effort level and then repeated that.

From now on, I'm going to try and take as many positives out of my training as possible, and the nice thing was that my legs didn't really feel tired during any of this stint - I just got very sweaty - which made me feel uncomfortable, rather than particularly fatigued. I also got a second wind after about 15 minutes, and managed to put out more power, at a higher cadence, over the second half of the session. That's reasonably encouraging I think.

I popped into work this evening, to check if there were any more details from Sky about the Etape, and indeed there were. The most important thing was the first month of our training programme, which has been put together with some of the coaches from British Cycling.

The headlines are that in the next month, I should be aiming at 6 hours of bike work in week 1, 6 again in week 2, 8 in week 3 and then down to 4 in week 4.

The work is split up into three key areas - Conditioning, Strength and Technique - with the initial focus being on Conditioning. Within each area, there are a number of different exercises. It's all very clearly set out, and all seems to make sense. At the moment, I've been placed at the "beginner" level, which suits me just fine I think, although because I have a bit more time off than most people, I think I will aim to do a bit more time on the bike than is suggested.

It did remind me that I probably need to get hold of a turbo trainer so that I can do work at home without going to the trouble of going out, particularly when the weather's bad, and I can also measure my performance a bit more accurately. More gadgets...mmmm.

On the science front, I took delivery of a Science in Sport starter pack of energy bars/gels/electrolytes/recovery drinks etc. which I wanted to try out, in order to see which flavours I like. Will be interesting to see if I can feel the difference, particularly with the electrolytes and stuff that are for drinking when you're doing exercise. Anything to help with the endurance side of things will be very useful.

Last but not least, I managed to get "starting point" figures for my weight, water percentage, muscle mass etc. from my Tanita scales on Monday, under reasonably controlled conditions. I'll try and get those details every week so that we can hopefully track the improvements.

Here they are anyway:

Weight: 11 stone 10 pounds

Body Fat Percentage: 18.4%

Visceral Fat Rating: 6

Basal Metabolic Rate: 7380KJ/1764Kcal

Muscle Mass: 9 stone 1 pound

The Visceral Fat rating is basically that fat that is in the internal abdominal cavity, surrounding the vital organs. Men tend to "lay down" more fat in this area, particlarly as they get older, hence the "beer belly".

The Basal Metabolic Rate is the minimum level of energy your body needs when at rest, to function effectively. The higher the rate, the more calories you burn - so I think it's better to have a higher BMR, although I'm not sure as yet how much this can be altered by training. We'll see I guess.

Encouragingly, all those readings seem to be pretty much slap bang in the middle of the "healthy" ranges. The only one that's a little out of kilter is the body fat percentage, which is towards the top of "healthy", but there's plenty of time to work on that.