A tin pot or two

The George Crouch Trophy

It's been a relatively big week on the bike, and started off really well. A pretty easy 20 miles taking the long way home from work and I felt really good and started to feel that the turbo sessions are really starting to get my bike fitness back. But once that was done, the rest of the week was really hard work and by Friday evening I had my usual scratchy throat which is my 'overtraining' indicator. Well, maybe not in this case as I had actually only done relatively few hours, but the early starts in order to get the sessions done have taken their toll and I don't think I was getting quite enough sleep to compensate. Yesterday, Simon and I went out on the TT bikes for the first time this year and we did 2 laps of the G10/42 course at a tempo effort. It was very hard work going out riding into a stiff southerly and I was well down on Simon on both loops, although I held station with him over the last 5 miles at the end, so not all bad.

We both ended up at the Phoenix Awards and Dinner Dance last night, which was a lovely occasion for us all. As well as the usual ceremonies we took time out to Remember Frank Cubis, and everything that he did for the club. It was fitting that Dale received the lion's share of the trophies including the 12hr trophy in which he also beat Frank's record which had stood for over 40 years. It was nice for me to win a couple of tin pots too. The one I had my eye on all last year was the George Crouch Trophy for the best improvement over 25 miles, and I won it having improved from 1:02:30 in 2015 to 55:49 in 2016. It made all those hours in a damp shed doing the Trainerroad plans worthwhile.

off my feet

So two weeks of solid bike work and quite chuffed that I have not missed any Trainerroad sessions since the first week, which has panned out as three turbo sessions with a long road ride each Saturday morning. Last week was my longest ride in about a year, covering a shade over 60 miles going out to Windsor and then finishing off with a little lap around home. Yesterday I was joined by Simon again and I found it pretty hard going as it was my fifth ride in five days, with the proceeding two being quite long sweetspot turbo sessions which left me feeling pretty battered. I have one more big bike week this week which I am hoping to finish off with a long tt ride on Saturday.

Running has been a bit of a false dawn. I was looking forward to the Hampton Court Half this morning until my foot flared up on Friday evening. It was ok on the bike but quite painful to walk on so there was no way I was going to run 13 miles on it, so today was a rest day. Once it clears up in a couple of days I need to get back on my feet and start to integrate some weekly running properly. I also need to enter a couple of races and see where I stand.

Mr Consistent

So four weeks into my trainerroad plan and I've only dropped one session; result! This was in the first week before I committed to getting up early and getting my sessions done. It's getting easier to get up at 5am and do my turbo sessions, in fact it's now not a factor at all. Everyone wins as I'm not stressing about getting them done late at night after a full day's work and usually some work in the evening too and being a parent. But I'm trying to ensure that I get my long weekend ride in too, as that's where last season didn't work out and I think that the trainerroad sessions in the week with a long road ride at the weekend will hopefully be the magic bullet that will see my cycling improve from last season.

I do get asked quite a bit how I can do two plus hours on the turbo and I think the attached photograph probably explains how. While I miss riding outdoors, punctures and rubbish weather is something I don't miss at all. I went out with Simon to Windsor last week and repeated it yesterday and suffering four punctures in two rides is frustrating in the extreme. The facial mudpack is my own doing however. Sitting on Simon's wheel for 40 miles of a 46 mile ride, without either of us having mudguards is not wise and I didn't realise quite how bad it was. The Windsor route was very much like riding a turbo with it being so flat that one had to pedal all the time with no increased effort up hills and no coasting downhill. The route took us out through Walton, Staines, Shepperton etc; all places that while being local to me I had not seen since the 2012 DW and in particular, the bridges took me back to those early morning hours, sat in a kayak while crying in a pool of my own wee. Happy times!

Running is ticking over. This week has been a rest week on Trainerroad, so I took the decision to only do one short run too. With two weeks until the Hampton Court Half I'm going to get a bigger volume week in this week then bimble my way through the race and see where I am. I did a hilly 9 miler last weekend which went well, and by that I mean I was not injured at the end of it. As far as running goes, that's the most important thing; pace and volume are not important, I just don't want to get injured so soon into my tri plan.

Mojo Rising

I've finally got back onto the Trainerroad horse properly and it feels good. Despite being very hacked off with the amount of time I spent off training owing to the virus and resulting cough that I had, it's had the effect of giving my mojo a much needed boost. The plan is to be even more consistent than I was last year. Despite following three TR plans from November 2015 through to June 2016 and training much more consistently on a bike than I ever had before, I was still losing at least a session per week, most weeks. So I really want to not have so many missed workouts and the way I am going to do that is to get my sessions done early. Sometimes I was not starting my workouts until 10:30 at night, which just left me very tired the next day. So I have been getting up at 5am and getting them done before work. I have to admit it was a struggle for the first week but my body clock has adjusted now and it's getting easier every time. The main disadvantage is that it just takes a while to get my heart rate up, despite a good warm up; I am literally rolling out of bed and onto the turbo, so my power output seems a little bit down at the moment, but I also think that might be to do with just getting used to the intensity of turbo sessions again.

So, be more consistent. That means that I need to get that little blue line on the TSS graph above a lot flatter and consistently above 300. I think if I can do that, by August I should be flying. My ego is taking a bit of a battering on my 2 mile cycle into work though. There are always two blokes who come past me while I am spinning lightly on very battered legs while I mumble to myself about already having done a 90 minute session. I'll wait until July and then release the full force of my new found ftp on them. that'll learn them.

Trainerroad plans and the BBAR

Unfortunately the whole month of December has turned out to be a washout for training. As I type this I am coughing my lungs up and have a very bunged up chest. Wheezy by name - wheezy by nature. I thought that I had got over it on Monday and was feeling pretty good so I headed out for a gentle 4 mile run around my standard circuit at comfortable 8 minute miling but almost as soon as I got back I realised that was a mistake. I was then in bed for almost 20 hours feeling thoroughly miserable about it all, the only good thing being that at least I was not at work. So I think December has seen me run twice and do two turbo sessions. Talk about going out with a whimper!

So thoughts naturally turn to next year and the Outlaw. I spent this week flicking through the Trainer road plans and have decided how to attack it. I'm doing the full 12 week Triathlon Base Plan, followed by the 8 week full triathlon build and speciality plans. 28 weeks in total which will start on the week January 9th. So that gives me a couple more weeks to get this bug out of my system and be fit and healthy to start the plan in good shape, although I am sure that both my ftp and weight will be taking a dent. In terms of running I have entered the Hampton Court half Marathon in February which should give me a starting point for some useful run training.

For the rest of the season, I intend to do less tting, with the aim of using races as stepping stones towards to Outlaw and beyond. I intend to focus more on the longer tts with a view to getting a BBAR certificate, which didn't happen this year. I learnt that aerobic fitness over 25 miles simply doesn't translate over 50 and 100 if I have not done the long distance training too. As I am going to have to do that anyway in preparation for the Outlaw, the goals of a decent Outlaw and a BBAR certificate align quite nicely.

In the meantime, I'm off to drink a lemsip.

Frustrating fortnight.

A really frustrating fortnight with last week being a very busy work week; early mornings and late nights leaving very little time to do anything meaningful. I managed to get my 25th park run under my belt and bulked it out to 10 miles with a warm up and down, so my longest run of the year but that was it. Almost immediately on Saturday afternoon I came down with manflu which has put paid to all of this week too. But I am long enough in the tooth these days to not worry about it. Training starts again tomorrow evening with a gentle run before getting back on the turbo. There's still the best part of 7 months until the Outlaw so still plenty of time.

We go again

It was exactly  this time last year that I started to focus on being a better cyclist by focussing on turbo sessions and using trainerroad. Then, My first ftp test was 205 watts. Last night I tested myself again before starting on the sweetspot base programs and I have a ftp of 256 watts. This was really pleasing and quite a surprise as I have spent the month kicking back and not done any turbo work at all. Somehow my ftp has jumped from 233 to this new figure and I think there are a few things at play here.

 Firstly, temperature. All summer I have been slogging away in the shed when it has been at least 20 degree outside and I have not used any form of artificial cooling whereas last night it was barely above zero. It seems that I was dropping more watts than I thought in an effort to keep cool. I thought it might be a few but am surprised that it was almost 20. Secondly, freshness. My one criticism with Trainerroad programs is that they are quite intense and can leave my legs feeling dead when I need to do another tough session. I think the month's break while doing a little bit of exercise to tick over has actually left me feeling a lot fresher. Lastly, I am more practised at taking and pacing an ftp test which leads to a more accurate result. Anyway, it's all good and great for me to start the base phase with a pretty healthy ftp number.

I became a parkrun tourist for the first time last weekend. We had a weekend break in Weymouth so I decided to go along to the the Parkrun there in Lodmoor Country Park. I managed to squeak into the top 10 with a 19:16 but the weekend before I had achieved a Parkrun PB at Bushy Park and got under 19 for the first time with 18:55. Over the next few months I am going to tick over and try to incorporate some intervals and see if I can get down to a low 18, before starting to build a bit more endurance and try to remain injury free.

I'm still reeling a little bit from entering the Outlaw but I am excited about the challenge. I am going to race a bit less next year, particularly tting, but will focus on key events over the year to build towards the Outlaw triathlon at the end of July. I still feel there's a lot I can do to bring down my 10 and 25 times while my 50 and 100m tt times are still there for the taking and with another winter of focussed work I knw that I can have another good season.

Not sure how that happened...

I've gone and entered the Outlaw Triathlon next year. One minute I'm merely looking at the website and the next I have a congratulatory e-mail confirming my entry. I genuinely don't know what came over me but I'm quite excited. My basic plan is this:

Bike; lots, especially on trainerroad.
Run; a bit. Keep ticking over, enjoying PArkrun and think about some longer miles in March.
Swim; meh. That's cheating.

All the nineteens

It was my 19th Bushy parkrun yesterday and I ran 19:19! Spooky. Even more spooky was the fact that I ran 20:20 the week before, but I guess I should aim to run that next week. I started much nearer  the front so didn't get too hindered and had a clear run. My main motivation was chasing down the man dressed in a carrot costume and I managed to overhaul him in the last 400metres. Running a solid sub-20 time and being beaten by a fancy dress vegetable would be just too hard to bear. Anyway, second fastest ever time on fairly minimal training. Having a lovely break from the turbo and already feeling quite refreshed. Onwards.

2017

So it was my last tt today with a 25 mile effort on the lumpy G25/56 course. It was frankly a bit rubbish as I developed a cold earlier on in the week and I just couldn't get much power through the cranks. The first half was ok but a 4 minute negative split showed the fact I bombed pretty badly over the second half. 1:05:20, almost a full 10 minutes slower than my pb three and a half months ago, which in fact seems like almost a lifetime ago. So a crap end to the season but not entirely unexpected.

However it's been my most successful season ever. Taking over 5 minutes off my 25 mile pb and almost 2 minutes off my 10 mile time, as well as setting a course pb on the club G10/42 course by over a minute. That's all something I am super chuffed with and beyond my expectations before the season started and I believe that there could still be more to come next year. My 21:58 10 was on a pretty slow day and I had not done as much VO2 max work in the build up so I think that a sub 21 is achievable and a target for next year. I think that a sub 53 25 m tt could also be achieved and I am going to see if I can set a fast enough time to enter the National 25. So, that's the two main targets for next year and I need to get a decent 50 under my belt. My pb is still around 2:06 which is well below where it really should be.

How to achieve all this though? Well, a bit more of the same, in the sense that I'm going to hit the turbo hard again this winter, but as I said above, I'm going to do more VO2 max sessions and really try to boost my ftp over the winter. If time allows I would like to get a monthly long ride in of around 70-80 miles to aid the fat burning and aerobic efficiency. I think that's where I have lost out when competing over the longer distances. The first half of my season was way better than the second so I need to think about how I can not lose focus from June onwards. I'm going to need to lose a few more kgs too. Too many biscuits and crisps are slowing me down and that's where a little bit of running and some Parkruns come in.

All that said, I'm looking forward to a bit of a break over the next 4 weeks. The plan is to have no plan except to keep doing a little bit of running and some very unstructured cycling before getting back on it at the beginning of November. Then it's time to get it on like Donkey Kong.

When is a 25m tt not a 25m TT?

When it's 22.5 miles.

It was the Epsom Open 25 on the G25/54 course, two laps with a pretty testing climb over the first mile and a half of the lap. Only it wasn't. The organiser found out at 5am this morning that dozens of cones had been put out on the second half where a 'Tough Mudder' event was going to be taking place with all the ensuing traffic that would entail. The promoter changed the event to avoid this and it became three shortened laps and therefore three times up the hill. Bah. After the last couple of months I was not expecting much but it was my best ride in a long while. 53:18 for 22.5m equates to a 59:20 25mile TT and on such a lumpy course I'm pretty pleased with that, with me pretty much negative splitting over the course. So I have one more 25 next week and the Bec Hill climb for a bit of fun and then I'm planning to take a month off from anything structured before starting up again in November. I'm not sure what I'm going to change, if anything. I'll be sticking with Trainerroad over the winter but as I intend to focus primarily on 10 and 25 tts again, I am not sure whether to change plans. The guys at Trainerroad are uber-helpful so I might ping them an e-mail and see what they suggest.

I have been ticking over with a few short runs every week and I was back at Bushy for the Parkrun yesterday and recorded a 19:36. Usual scenario. Started too far back, worked my way through and felt comfortable and was blowing like a train over the last mile. 4th in my age group and 49th overall, so quite pleased. Might see if I can do a little speedwork and give sub 19 a go. Onwards.

End of the season

The last month has been a bit of a wash out but to be honest, that's been no bad thing. A couple of tts but my lack of training really showed. One thing I have learned this season is that my age is starting to show, mainly in the fact that a) if I stop consistent training I lose fitness very quickly and b) I need a lot more rest between hard sessions than I used to. Even when on the bike, a hard Trainerroad interval session leaves me barely able to turn the cranks the next day. It's not a major pronblem but it is a readjustment that I have to make. Two hard, back to back sessions are simply counter-productive for me now.

I have started running again, which has been great. I have actually been very good and reigned my ego in. I have two rules. No runs on consecutive days and all my runs are on grass. I have got up to four miles and I have done more laps of my local recreation ground than I care to count, but it's been a real toni and so far there has been no grumbling from my feet.  I also did a couple of parkruns at Bushy. Nothing spectcular but just used them as a harder run instead of the plodding around the rec.

So I have a couple of 25m tts left. It will be interesting to see if I can get under the hour. I think I will be there or thereabouts and I have tried to get some Trainerroad miles under my belt to claw some fitness back, but it's not a given. I'm just trying to grow my ftp a little ready to hit some big base miles at the start of November.

A steady decline

So I have been on a steady decline since June. July has seen me become unfocused and much more ad-hoc with my training and as a result my speed and power on the bike have taken a hit. The summer holidays are always a hard time for me to remain consistent. In theory, I should have ample spare time but actually the focus is on my family and therefore camping holidays, lazy days and wall to wall Olympics watching are the order of the day as regular routine goes out the window. Yes, early mornings are there but as I am a bit of a night owl,  a 5am alarm call becomes impossibly difficult. I have also far exceeded my expectations for this season over 10 and 25 miles which has dented my motivation somewhat.

But I have another go on the F11/10 in three weeks' time so while I completed a thoroughly dreadful ftp test last night which has seen a 10watt reduction, I've got a short space of time to get some focus back and see if I can better my 21:58. On top of that, I am flirting with purchasing a cyclocross bike and having a go at some cyclocross racing this winter for a few giggles and bants. They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. They are probably right but at least I'll have a soft landing when falling off.