Turbo Week 8

Wednesday
Missed Tuesdays workout as I needed to take my daughter to the dentist for treatment so completed Tuesdays workout a day late.
Today's workout consisted of fast pedalling which I thought would be a piece of cake, after all the instructions are to select an easy gear and just concentrate on a smooth circular motion with a cadence of 108 – 120 rpm and only 1 set of 4 x 3 minute intervals with 3 minutes rest between intervals. Were they easy? Yes and no(ish) yes to getting into the range and no for keeping it there…

The hardest part of this workout was keeping it in the range as the intervals progressed so even though this doesn’t sound much of a workout it was still quite hard at times, for how hard this workout was I would give it a 6.5 out of 10… Not much to be said about them really, I think Carmichael has thrown them in for this week as a way of getting a mild workout, giving the ‘athlete’ a bit of a rest…

Thursday
Today's workout promises to be to last big workout before the Cheshire cat, I'm at week 8 in the Chris Carmichael Time Crunched Training Plan, 8 weeks that started off at a nice steady canter and ends in a full blown sprint so to speak. Today's workout is a mix of power intervals and over/unders. Power intervals first that saw me averaging around 245 Watts for the duration of the short intervals. Over/Unders next with a more modest 177 - 206w.

So what can I say now I'm coming towards the end of my first training block under 'the plan'?

1. My power has increased, gone from barely scratching 206 watts in the first weeks to 245 watts, an increase of 19% in just 8 weeks. Great stuff...

2. My heart rate has gone down. For any given power output say for example in the first week I was putting out 150 watts my heart rate was around 150 bpm, now for the same power output my HR is down to 135. Great stuff again...

3. I can train more by training intelligently and efficiently. Previous to 'the plan', any more than 2 turbo/road training sessions and a week-end ride would have me on the edge of illness and that's purely because I didn't know how to train, I would just go hard at it every time. Now I have been educated to 'train right' by Mr 'train right', I can train 3 times a week along with a big week-end ride without anything nasty happening with my health...

4. As a result of all this time in the saddle my posterior can handle nearly any saddle going...

5. Thank goodness it's all coming to an end, I have run out of 'Turbo saddle' motif pictures that start these turbo blog posts...

It's not quite the end just the end of the power intervals. Saturday I will be out but taking it a little easier and Sunday there's the club ride. Next week in the run up to the Cheshire Cat I will mostly be taking it easy. On Tuesday I will have a hour or two ride probably incorporating some over/unders, Thursday maybe an hour easy ride/turbo and then it's rest until Sunday.

My Stats
Wednesday 14.8 miles, 1 hr, Av Speed - guess...
Thursday 14.72 miles, 1 hr, Av speed - work it out...

North Cheshire Clarion Club Run 7 Feb 2010

First 50+ mile ride of the year and I lost a virginity...

It's Feb already and this is my first biggish ride of the year, this stinkin weather has a lot to answer for - keeping me cooped up inside on my turbo just ain't cricket!!!

Nine of us set out from Stretton on a pre-planned route that would take us around 52 miles of North Cheshire countryside with the climb of Artists lane being literally the highlight of the ride. Three punctures along the way (none of them mine) - it was just the one rider that had the misfortune of being singled out for special treatment by the puncture fairy, must have really took a fancy to Phil J the poor guy.

The route was fairly flat with just under 1400ft climbing according to Bikehike but there were a few hills to be found along the way and I'm glad to say that I enjoyed them all, I felt really good on them and unlike my last ride I was able to keep up with the stronger riders. Artist lane was a different story though, it was a 'proper' hill, not especially long or steep but it was winding and pretty and did give the old ticker a good working over, here my special tactics of slow plodding came into force, didn't matter what everyone else was doing I just went at my own pace just as fast as my desperate breathing would allow - thats my excuse and line of reasoning and I'm sticking to it!!!

I hope with the training regime I am following that my climbing ability will improve over the coming weeks, it especially needs to seeing as the Cheshire Cat is just 7 Sundays away. I need more POWER!!!. This week sees a ramp up in the Chris Carmichael training plan with the introduction of power intervals into the mix - gulp....

Oh yes the virginity bit, would you believe it I have never ever needed to traverse a cattle grid! but on todays route as we traveled through Tatton park we had to bounce over three of them!!! wasn't as uncomfortable as I tought it would be but there again these grids looked even and well maintained. Adopting a light but firm grip on the bike and approaching at 90' with a moderate speed was enough to do the buisiness. I wonder, was there a three theme on todays ride? three cattle grids, three punctures and three huge birds of prey (buzzards) spotted...

My Stats
52.8 miles, 3hrs 37min, Avg Sp 14.6mph, 1389 ft climbing

Total Mileage for the week
111 miles. My target of 100 miles has been achieved.

Week of Turbo

Not really the right weather to take the bike out on the road so it's back on the turbo for this weeks biking adventures. The Cheshire cat is just a few weeks away so it's time to start my training regime, it's time for me to listen to my coach Chris Carmichael who wrote a book just for me called 'the time crunched cyclist', so with all my figures worked out (working in watts) as of last Tuesday I am now on week 1 day 1's workout which consisted of 60-90 min of Endurance miles with 3 x 8 minute Steady State intervals thrown in somewhere within the 90 minutes.

EM miles are 45-73% (watts) of the CTS field test so not so bad but the SS intervals are 86-90% of the field test and are easyish for the first 5 minutes or so then you have to start concentrating to keep the power up as you start to tire. My figures are all worked out from the field test I completed sometime before the end of the year and it seems that I have lost a fair bit of power over the new year with it's hiccups so I struggled with this workout and could barely reach the required power output for the full 24 minutes of the Steady state intervals.

Thursdays workout was exactly the same and I found it very much just as hard. After Tuesdays workout I was fairly leg tired so eased off time-wise on the Thursday workout. Come Saturday my legs felt great for the weekend rides so on Saturday the workout consisted of EM miles but cut short with Sundays 50 mile ride in mind.

Sundays club ride looked a really good ride but because of the flippin snow that fell on Saturday evening the ride was off so again I had to resort to the turbo. Today's workout called for up to 2 hours of EM miles and that's exactly what I did, 2 hours cycling in front of a TV watching Star Trek and a zoo program that was very interesting watching 2 cast off lion cubs struggling for survival, all good stuff and helped the time pass by.

My Stats
Tuesday 1.30hrs, 20.65 miles
Thursday 1.10hrs, 16.04 miles
Saturday 1.0 hr, 13.08 miles
Sunday 2.0 hrs, 28.07 miles

Total for the week
77.84 miles
5 hrs 40 minutes
22.16 miles short of my target of 100 miles

Week end ride 11 Oct 2009

No Clarion ride this w/e, the Clarionists meet every two weeks for the road run until the time that there is the demand and numbers for a weekly ride.

So we (myself & Phil) resorted to our own devices and old habits setting off for our usual cafe stop at the Ice Cream Farm near Tattenhall. By old habits I mean finding hills to climb and once climbed then riding at a fair old whack to the next hill. Now in our locality there are hills to climb if you look for them, there is a spine of hills ranging from Frodsham in the north through Helsby and finishing around Willington in the south and our usual route takes us through these areas - deliberately of course simply because not too long ago I in particular was crap on hills and the general advice for improving your hill climbing ability is simple - ride them thar hills, seek out and conquer them. A year on I have improved somewhat, not as much as I would have liked but all the hills I at one time walked up in this area are now conquered every weekend. I'm not saying I'm a mountain goat able to just waltz up em, no, I take the hills at my own slow pace, sometimes out of the saddle more usually in the saddle and in my lowest gear.

Old habits die hard they say and yes they do, but what we have come to understand is that your body mind and spirit needs rest, you cannot continuously go at it 100% all year round, you need to back off and give yourself chance to rest and heal. I have bought a few books over the last year or so looking for training regimes in particular and what I have generally found is that these books are designed for serious 'athletes' who have at least 8 hours per week to spare for training. I have found that my body atm cannot cope with that amount - that's over training to me complete with colds and sleeping problems but in saying that, in these programmes defence - I have not tried to follow them - I just know that going 'at it' as I have done in the past for 8hrs a week wipes me out and is defo no fun - not that these books endorse 'going at it', far from it, I have to sit down read them thoroughly, stick to the plan and make them work for me

Anyway I aim to get some serious training in for next years Sportives so I bought myself 'The Time Crunched Cyclist - Fit, Fast and Powerful in 6 Hours a Week' by Chris Carmichael to help me along. It sounds ideal for me, I'm not a racer nor is my goal to ride some huge foreign Sportive - although that would change if I could pass the required medical. I'm the weekend warrior with a few domestic sportives in the pipeline who enjoys his riding and wants to improve.

This book makes good reading, Carmichael goes into some detail about the theory behind his workouts. He details four different training programmes depending on your goals. He has you go through a 'field test' to determine your average max heart rate or power before you start any of these programmes then gives you a series of ratios to workout the various HR zones or power zones you will be working in. What I have now learnt from working out my zones is that I have gone out too hard every time I have ridden my bike - I have been working at too high a HR for way way too long and that cannot be doing me any good.

So back to old habits and all that, we (myself & Phil) discussed before this ride that following the advice from this book we should be doing 'EMs' - Endurance Miles before starting one of the training programmes which meant taking it easy and avoiding the hills to keep the HR down contrary to our normal habits of 'going for it'. My HR max although not tested properly (i'm no masochist) has peaked at 191 bpm so working out the ratios I need to keep my HR below 150bpm and that is not easy on the hills we needed to ride to get to our cafe stop.

So that was the 'story' behind this ride - keep that HR down even if it meant being overtaken by grandma on her zimmerframe. I think we were mostly successful, for much of the ride we were able to keep to less than 150bpm but of course when we hit the hills our HR's did go up to 160bpm at times, can't be helped on this route I'm afraid, we will just have to work out a few more flat routes for future rides...

My Stats

Distance 44.14 miles - Duration 3:25 - Av Speed 12.9mpg - Climbing 2000ft - Av HR 143bpm