40 Goals

Weigh-In Sunday Weight: 81.2kg Body fat/LBM: 19.3%/65.5kg TBW: 54.2 Riding: 135km. Social rides and a short week have reduced the kilometers, not to mention the almost constant rain for the last 3 days. Why does the sun only come out on a work day? I've managed to lose the 2 kilos (!) that I put on over Christmas in a concerted drive of porridge for breakfast and then 2 high-protein meals and only eating at mealtimes. Still 2kg loss is a bit of a freak week, no idea how it really works, but then who does? Only another 6kg to lose before July and 1kg before Lanzarote!

Compact Crankset == Clean Frame I bought a Shimano R700 compact crankset today. Fitted it to my bike and gave it a good test. Blimey, I suspect I'll end up saving them for the Alps and go back to my 53/39 after a couple of weeks. The ratios are nice and I can really kick out a high cadence on some of the steeper climbs around the Surrey Hills. But most of the time they feel a little over-geared. I'm going to keep them on and see if they help me in my quest for a natural 95rpm cadence, which quite frankly feels way too fast to me right now. I figure spending all my time at high cadences will make it 'feel' more natural and I'll get used to it. For £3 you too can clean the other side of your chainrings! As a result of swapping cranks I've discovered that the £3 tool for removing the cranks means I could get my frame really clean behind the chainrings and the bottom bracket cups. And taking off the cranks is no harder than taking the pedals off, in some ways it...

Weigh-In Boxing Day Weight: 83 kg (Ouch!). Body fat: 19.5% (Phew!) TBW: 54.2% Riding: 215km. Thought I'd track kilometers too from know on. Hopefully the easy pounds I've put on in the last 2 days (!!) will drop off as fast. Too much stuff to feast on and the more you eat the more you want to eat. Oh well, a whole week of riding between Christmas an New Year should help. I REALLY need to stop eating so much garbage. I didn't get any substantial Christmas pressies related to cycling apart from a stack load of Clif bars to sustain those long winter rides (which was a nice touch from the missus). That's great cause I really hate power bars and can't undertand how anyone can eat a whole one. I'll be looking for a Powertap and iMagic upgrade in the New Year sales ... Oh yeah, almost forgot - Merry Christmas!

Less than 2,128 calories per day leads to 80kg in Lanzarote (!?) As time ticks by the average weekly weight loss needed to hit 75kg on July 3rd is going up. I think the long term targets are making me complacent so I’m setting myself an aggressive and short-term target – I’m going to get to 80kg before the training week in Lanzarote on January 18th . So thats 4.18lbs in exactly 1 month of 31 days, since its the 18th today. That makes a total calorie deficit of 14,630 or 472 calories a day. Since my training is mostly Zone 3 in January I need to be very careful with fatty food - I’m going to be burning carbohydrate for the month. yeah, I know about increased heart rate and fat burning, but in my experience eating less fat to begin with is a better approach. According to this my basal metabolic rate is about 1850 calories per day (not including exercise) which takes care of my calorie intake on a rest day. If we throw in 750 calories for a typical daily turbo session (the rowing machine...

Weigh-In Monday Weight: 81.9 Body fat: 19.5% TBW: 54.2. Not the best week this week, total weight went up by 0.7kg, which is a whole pound. Perhaps this is the kick up the backside I needed to take the weight loss part seriously. For sure I'm putting in the miles on the turbo and burning the calories but unfortunately I'm also loading the fuel. Gorging myself is probably nearer the point - but then it is Christmas so I'm not going to kill myself over it.

My Turbo Is My Friend! A beautiful sunny day today and went out for a couple of hours into the Surrey Hills. Shere, White Downs, Holmbury St Mary etc. Sitting at 155-160bpm and spinning up the climbs I ran out of hill before I ran out of lungs or legs. Wow! My turbo is my new best friend.

Normative Power Data I've been hankering after this for a while and finally got it from the friendly guys over at the cycling plus forums . The table helps to grade your power output per kilogram of weight either as peak power over a given period or as Functional Threshold Power . Anyway, here's the table, snaffled up from here . The chart below summarises a poll from the cyclingforums.com users, most of whom are obviously keen cyclists, albeit amateurs. There is an obvious sweetspot at 300w/75kg that correlates with the table above. I think this is a reasonable FTP target to aim for.

250 watts at 155 BPM I followed the same protocol as yesterday, warmed up with 20 minutes at fat bump and then did 20 minutes at 250 watts (yesterday I did 30 minutes of 200 watts). I saw lots of cardiac drift but the average was 155. I suspect that 250 is a real limit since as I was finishing the 20 minutes my heart rate was climbing faster and heading off to 160. I know I said I'd do 220 but heck that was too easy. Tomorrow I'll take a crack at 15 minutes at 300 watts, hopefully I'll make it under my miserably low max heartrate of 181. Then I can look forward to doing this all again in Jan then Feb then March then ... you get the picture ...

200 Watts at 138 BPM Over this week I'm going to do 30 minute tests at different wattages to measure heart rate to power output. Today I sustained 200 watts for 30 minutes at an average heart rate of 138. My cadence varied from 88 to 95 as I lost concentration. Interestingly the higher cadence also brought the higher heart rate. When I focussed on pedalling efficiency or 'circles' my heart rate went down. Tomorrow I'll increase by 10% to 220 to and see what my heart rate does. I'm still putting in the miles at my 'fat bump' of 136 too, so this is just a side-show. These tests are just to baseline my heartrate to power output so I can track progress over the course of my programme. It was triggered by this which intrigued me, especially the idea that from 200w at peak heart rate over the course of 6 months you could progreess to being able to knock out 300w plus and stay aerobic (!) - if I could do that, well ... Anyone got a cheap set of SRM cranks ? ;-)

The 1 hour Power Plan Getting back to the power output, not that I'm obsessed with numbers or anything, I've done an analysis of the ascent by kilometer looking at the power output I need to sustain using this calculator. The table below is based upon my forecast stats for July 3rd; Height 73 inches, Weight 165lbs, Bicycle weight 20.9lbs (I have no idea but this seems reasonable for my Madone 5.9 SSL), Air temp 68F. I took the profile from here . So that equates to an hour workout which rather handily incorporates a warm-up and a cool down at the beginning and end. Heck, the AdH is a pretty good training ride (!). The hour long work out is basically (ok so its 1 hour and 5 minutes, I've rounded up): 5 minutes at 130 watts 10 minutes at 380 watts 30 minutes at 310 watts 10 minutes at 340 watts 10 minutes at 170 watts Obviously the 380 watts for 10 minutes is tricky given my max output is 334 (!). I'll be seeing what I can accomplish over the next week or so and post som...

Weigh-In Monday Weight: 81.2kg Body fat: 19.3% TBW: 54.7%. No movement, which isn't so bad - it's been a good week for intensity since this has been a 'High' week for heart-rate zones but a bad week for diet, with lots of christmas parties. Hooked up with my brother on Saturday and suffered with the Guiness the next day, in truth I'm still a bit ropey.