Ridiculous to Sublime

Today's training stats: Threshold Strength: TT 1 lap of Richmond Park

After yesterday's horrible weather, I was a bit apprehensive about training when I woke up - although I did have the fallback position that if it was really horrid I could always do some intervals on the turbo.

However, when I pulled back the curtains, it was absolutely lovely outside - sunny and not too windy. After doing a few jobs in the morning, I popped out on the bike around lunchtime. The wind was behind me as I headed through Twickenham up to Richmond Park, so I was averaging 19-20 mph without really pushing myself at all, which was a nice feeling. It takes me about 15 mins to get up to the park, so it's a nice warmup. After grabbing a quick drink, I set out on my 1 lap "Time Trial". In today's training I was aiming at 'Threshold' level - which for me is a heart rate in the zone 162-172 bpm.

Here's the science bit..."This level of effort involves the fast-twitch oxidative (type 2a) muscle fibres, which require large amounts of oxygen to function properly".

This compares with the 'Endurance' level training which I was doing yesterday, which "uses the slow twitch (type 1) aerobic muscle fibre that it's vital to train for improved endurance. (NB: This is a fat-burning fibre - just one more reason why I need to be doing more training at this level!).

The reason why it was important for me to stay in the Endurance zone yesterday was that if I did that, I wasn't using any of the fast-twitch fibres - meaning they weren't fatigued, and I could get more out of training them today.

Anyway, I really caught the best of the weather in the park - although the northerly wind was still quite stiff. Doing my best to push myself quite hard, while keeping in the Threshold zone, I felt exactly how I think I should have - out of breath, but not completely flat out and 'ruined'.

This is a photo of me after I got back. I took it for my Etape 'memories' book, which Katy at Face Partnership is putting together. I'm gonna put the ludicrous 'belly' down to the fact that I'd just drunk almost a litre and a half of SiS 'Go' and 'Rego' energy drinks, but it should make the difference between my 'before' and 'after photos look a bit more impressive. I thought black was supposed to be slimming, anyway! 

As you'll see from the stats above, I finished with a time of 23.24 - an average speed of exactly 17mph. I'm aware this isn't particularly great, as decent club cyclists aim at doing 3 laps in an hour. However, I'm also aware that I'm just doing my best to train myself and I won't be racing anyone in the Etape.

The key thing again today was making sure that I did as much of my training in the required threshold zone, and again I think I achieved that pretty well. As you can see from today's graph, the vast majority (84%) of my ride was in the Threshold

 zone, so I was training exactly the right types of muscle. This way, I should be able to alternate my Endurance and Threshold training, without my muscles ever getting too fatigued. It should mean that I get more training in total, and also that whatever training I do is more effective. 

Despite yesterday's grim weather, I'm pretty

pleased with how this week's going so far, and hopefully it'll continue. Tomorrow should be another Endurance ride - weather permitting, and then I've got a rest day to look forward to on Thursday.

Moist Monday

I'll get onto today's dramatic training activities in a bit, but Monday is body composition stats day, so here they are:

Weight: 11 stone 10 pounds (same as last week)

Body Fat: 20.7% (up marginally)

Visceral Fat Rating: 7 (same as last week)

Basal Metabolic Rate: 7192 kJ/1719 kcal (up a bit - that's good I think)

Muscle Mass: 8 stone 11 pounds 6 ounces (same)

Water: 55.5%

There aren't actually many conclusions to be drawn, as I didn't actually do much in the way of training last week, so nothing's really changed. I'll be doing a lot more training this week, so I'll be hoping to see a much bigger difference.

Conditioning: Cobham and back - END (HR 142-152)

Annoyingly, the weather has been great the last ten days or so, but it's supposed to take a distinct turn for the worse this week. I'm going to have to work my training very much around that.

Today, for most of the morning, it was very windy, but not actually too cold. I knew the wind would be pretty hard work, but I thought that it would still be worth giving it a go. I'd downloaded a few routes from Bikely to my Garmin, and thought I'd give one of those a whirl. I decided on a route down to Cobham/Leatherhead and back.

After my physiological testing last week, I'd worked out a training programme tailored to my work schedule. The suggested training for today was a 60-120 minute ride at "Endurance" Heart Rate - ie. 142-152 bpm. I set my Garmin to give me me alerts whenever my heart rate stepped outside of that zone and then set off.

Unfortunately, the route finding side of my Garmin started going a bit haywire - I think because I hadn't started from the exact starting point of the downloaded route, so I eventually decided to just ride wherever my wheels took me. As the point of the training was just to keep my heart rate in the Endurance zone, then it didn't really matter exactly where I went. I also knew that I had the safety net of the "Go Home" function on my Garmin to get me back too.

As I'd expected, the wind was pretty stiff, but as I was only worried about my heart rate rather than absolute speed, that wasn't a problem. It was actually quite hard to keep myself in the right HR zone, because it didn't always feel like I was putting "enough" effort in. With training, you 

always feel like you should be pushing yourself to your limits, but I know now that that's not necessarily all that useful in the long run. Having said that, you can see from the graph that I did ok...most of the stuff in the lower heart rate zone was on my way home, when I was wet and miserable and it was difficult to get much speed up because the roads were wet. The really key thing is to keep out of the upper "mixed muscle" zone too much, and I achieved that pretty well. The beeping of my heart rate alerts definitely helped. 

I ended up taking a fairly similar route to the one I'd planned anyway, and ended up in Stoke d'Abernon. I stopped for 5 minutes and had a Go Bar and something to drink, but as I did the weather started closing in a bit. I thought I'd better head home as soon as I could, but after I'd been back on my bike for a couple of minutes, suddenly the wind whipped up and hail started flying into my face. I was instantly soaked, but luckily I quickly came across a petrol station, and I pulled in to shelter under their awning. 

I had to wait 15 mins or so, and the rain hadn't even got close to stopping, but I was getting cold and I figured the important thing was just to get home. It was a pretty miserable 10 or 15 miles home...my legs were cold, and my feet were wet and freezing...but I got home eventually.

In the end, I'm glad I went out, cos it was a couple of hours training that I wouldn't otherwise have got and it was reassuring that I managed to get through it all right.

The weather's supposed to be a bit better tomorrow, so I'll try and do my threshold training tomorrow up in Richmond Park. I'm supposed to do a 15-20 minute Time Trial session at higher heart rates, so one lap of the park is probably a good way of doing it. It'll be important to get out tomorrow, because it might not be possible for the rest of the week.

First 'Long' Ride

I know...it's all relative. I had a really nice morning anyway, doing a quick zip down to Chobham and back to Twickenham, all using my Edge 705 to give me "bike sat-nav" for the first time, as well as logging all my stats.

I've popped both the Motion Based and the (now working again) Garmin Connect stats below, as they give you slightly different analysis of the information, and it can't hurt.

Twickenham-Chobham-Twickenham Stats (Motion Based)

Conditioning: Twickenham - Chobham - Twickenham 40 Miles (Garmin Connect)

So those are the basic facts and figures. The reality was that I had a good morning. I guess in my heart of hearts, I felt like I wanted to do a ride with a good chunk of mileage so that I felt like the Etape would at least be a possibility.

I'd planned to do the ride at a quite leisurely pace, because I was also getting to grips with the sat-nav side of my Edge 705. I chose the route by doing a quick search on Bikely - a site which enables riders to share their routes. Once I'd found a route that looked promising, in terms of mileage and scenery, I used the option to download it as a GPX file. It's then a simple matter of copying the file to the GPS folder on the Edge by dragging and dropping - the route then turns up in the list of "Saved Routes" on the unit.

After fitting my newly arrived Look Keo Sprint pedals, and attaching the cleats to my new Pearl Izumi Attack Road Shoes, I was ready to go. At first, I wasn't very confident about the routing the Edge was taking - I didn't seem to be going in the right direction at all, and this meant that I spent more time looking at the mapping screen than I did at the road at some points. However, about 15 mins of winding around the back roads of Hampton, I figured out what the problem was.

The route was a big loop, and without thinking, I'd just assumed that the loop went in a clockwise direction, and had started out. What became clear was that the route was actually plotted anti-clockwise, and so the Edge was doing its best to get me back "on track". Once I'd worked that out, it became clear that the Edge had actually done a really good job of getting me back to the proper route, by using cyclist-friendly roads with very little traffic.

It works almost exactly like a car sat-nav, giving you a warning (in both time and distance), of your next turning, and then giving you a reminder of the turning when you're just about to reach it - counting down from ten seconds on a few occasions.

Having said that, there were a couple of points on the ride when the Edge did get lost without any rider assistance.On one of these occasions it got me back to the proper route after a bit of thinking, but the second time I had to figure it out myself. The best way of doing this is to zoom out the map display, so that you can see the pink line marking your route, and then work your way back towards that line, until eventually the Edge picks it up.

Overall though, it was clearly a much better solution than constantly pulling a sweaty map out of my back pocket, and meant I could concentrate on my cycling, rather than always being worried about where I was.

The jury's still out on the pedals I think. I'm used to double sided Shimano SPD cleats/pedals for commuting, so I think it's going to take me a little while to get used to the engagement process for these Look single-sided ones. When they're engaged, the connection feels very secure, and there seems to be just the right amount of 'play' so that your knees don't feel like they're waggling around all the time, but they never get sore from being in the same position too much.

The shoes felt good though. They seem to fit well, and although there was an occasional twinge around the instep area, I think that's just a natural part of the adjustment process. Again, they felt secure without ever feeling tight and restrictive.

On the way 'out' the blustery wind was pretty much dead against me all the way, but I still managed to keep up a 17-18mph pace, without feeling tired. In fact, that was the encouraging thing about the ride as a whole. My legs and lungs never felt particularly stressed, which is a good sign on the endurance side of things. The ride was pretty flat, but on what 'hills' there were, I managed generally to keep it on the big chainring.

I had a 5 minute stop at a pub in Chobham, to refuel with drinks and an energy bar, but again I was encouraged that I didn't feel like I needed more of a rest. I did need to stretch out my back though, because it was starting to feel a bit sore from bending over in the 'tuck' position. In fact, whenever I felt a bit 'tired' I could generally narrow it down to my back feeling a bit sore, but again I'm hoping this is just part of the adjustment process.

Something that'll be easier to adjust to is feeling part of the camaraderie of the road. It's a small thing I know, but it was nice to exchange a nod and a smile with other cyclists out on the road training. Just makes you feel that you're not out there suffering on your own, and I guess on a deeper level it reminds you that you're a part of a a self-selecting group of slightly twisted loners. For some that might seem depressing - I find it strangely liberating!

By the time I got home, my quads were starting to feel slightly achey, but I had enough energy to manage a sprint to the doorway. I still need to refine my saddle position I think, as that obviously has an effect on which muscles you use. I've gradually been raising the saddle over the last week or so, in an effort to get a more 'powerful' position, but now that I've got my new pedals, I think I might need to move the saddle back slightly on the fore/aft plane, to get the most out of my legs. Will have a go at that the next time I get back on the turbo I think.

As far as the overall training plan's going, I've done almost six hours this week, which is the recommended amount according to my training plan. Although at the beginning of this week I think I said I'd like to try and get eight hours in, the more I read the more I think I should try and stick to the recommendations, in order to avoid 'overtraining', particularly at the start.

I also feel slightly guilty, because although I'd planned to do today's ride mostly in the "endurance" heart rate zone, (Zone 3, in yellow, on the chart) my Motion Based stats show me that I did a significant proportion in the Mixed Muscle Zone ( Zone 4, in orange, on the chart) above that.

This is pretty firmly discouraged in my training book, because it's not particularly useful in conditioning, and stresses two different types of muscle fibre, meaning that it's more difficult to target an individual kind of fibre on your next day of training.

I'm going to put that down as a learning experience though, and remember to drop my gearing and raise my cadence on uphill sections, so that my heart rate doesn't get too high.

I still need to do a 'strength' session from my menu of training activities, and also practice some of my 'skills', so I think I'll do an interval session on the turbo trainer on Friday, and then maybe a short, easy skills ride on Saturday.

I'm going to try myself out on the Twickenham Cycling Club Sunday morning run this weekend, because I need to get some experience of cycling in groups, and that'll give me a big jump on my training requirements for next week.