40 Goals

Big time recovery from a nasty dose of flu after christmas and managed to sustain a CTL of about 80. My progress is a bit hampered by a lack of hilly outdoor riding for a variety of reasons, but largely work or weather. Happy with CTL but IF is dropping off as frequency is increasing in workouts. Not at all sure this is a good approach at all. You'll notice the 4 on 1 off went to 3 on 1 off. I like to get plenty of rest! Empty legs make for a junk workout anyway. To be fair, mostly it was enforced by life rather than me slacking :-)

Don't be too fooled by the charts - volume has been increasing over the 6 months so in real terms I am spending more time in AC this month than the chart suggests ... however ... High-intensity work in Jan has been low. This is largely due to spending so much time on the trainer because the weather has been so poor. Itching to hit the hills and stuck inside. Interestingly my weight has dropped after quite a plateau whilst gains in FTP and max power has levelled. To the hills tonto....... away!

I'll let it lie eventually.... Used same protocol as previous day 20 mins, 110 psi, 2.7lbs after warmup. Then did a 2 hour tempo ride and Computrainer gives AP of 209 whilst SRM gives an AP of 196. Not good enough. I have checked tire pressure after the workout and it was still 110 psi. I set the zero offset of the SRM at the start and end and they were almost identical. I will try again with a higher press-on pressure of 3lbs to see if that makes a difference... My dilema is which number to use and how much faith I have in previous CT numbers... annoying. Data files are here if you're interested.

A bit more conclusive this time, I was very careful to warm up the CT thoroughly, with 15 mins of effort from 100w through to 5 mins at 260w. Tire pressure was 110psi and cadence was maintained at around 94 and speed around 25mph. As you can see the SRM and CT tracked very closely indeed - the SRM gave average power for the hour at 221w whilst the CT had 217w. Thats pretty darned close and drivetrain power loss can account for the difference.  Trouble is the calibration I performed last time was 20 mins at 160w and should have been good enough. I'll be using the SRM from now on to capture power data whilst on the CT since it is not so sensitive to calibration. If you want them the data files are here .

I'm not going to pretend that I understand it all, but I've done a quadrant analysis of 3 recent 2 hour long spirited or hard tempo rides.    Outside Ergvideo and Highly Variable Power on Computrainer Constant Power on Computrainer You can draw your own conclusions, if any. I'mnot really sure why my cadence was so high with the ergvideo, maybe I'll work that out one day. Alex Simmons provides expert musings on this over on his blog , I just copied him :-)

I took the plunge and shelled out for some Ergvideos to go with my computrainer. They duly arrived about a week later, which is pretty good given they came all the way from Canada. I didn't even have to pay import duty ... which makes a change cause every other frickin cup or t-shirt I've ever ordered from overseas has usually cost me. I guess the fact that its a slim letter sized package helped to sneak it past the beady eyes of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise leeches. Anyhoo, since you licence them to a specific computer I chose to get the whole shebang setup on the media center PC we have in the main room. That way I get the oomph of the multi-core CPU and the wow factor of the surround sound and big TV. But I can't take it on the road, I can only ergvideo at home ... I concluded that was fair enough, www.cyclefilm.com DVDs and www.thesufferfest.com video podcasts are fine for sessions run from the laptop. Installation Since the HTPC is running Vista and I had bever...

As is common practice last season I had a rest day once a week - that's 6 days on 1 day off. I did find that when I was forced to take extra rest days (kids, work etc) I often got unexpected performance imrovements, but not always. This season I have long resolved to take more rest days and to eat more. Last time I was so obsessesed with weight loss I forgot to feed the adaptations. So, since August, I have taken a 50/50 split between workouts and rest days (not neccessarily 1 on 1 off, but consecutive workout days are followed more or less by the same number of rest days). I have also eaten whatver I fancied. I don't drink so that isn't a problem for me. As a result, over the last 4 months or so I have made great progress in most of my critical powers. I've only lost a modest amount of weight but have enjoyed being able to ride harder when I do train, and boy have I been riding hard! BUT As I get stronger the 50/50 split feels too much, I am often raring to go but with...

Well, training is in full swing and thoroughly enjoying it. Not so much New Year Resolutions but some basic rules for making the training work ... No more than 2 consecutive rest days - noodle on an AR ride if motivation is low Eat no more and no less than 3 meals a day Bed before 10.30pm if you can Got a whole host of other crap about nutrition and workout plan but frankly I know I can't keep to that for the long term.  HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Man the flu knocked me out for two weeks and I'm only just getting back to the form I had - thats cost me an entire month of training. My CTL is almost 80 and I'm looking to maintain 80-90 through to the start of February when build starts.

Merry Christmas one and all.  Its absolutely gorgeous here today and with the offspring mucking about with xboxes and playmobil I'm gonna sneak in 1 or 2 hours of active recovery in the wintry sunshine (After commuting in and back yesterday I'm pretty whacked, 2x2h sweet spot sessions!). And I'm only riding to justify the second helping of pudding I'll be consuming today. I'm cycling down to the In-Laws on the south coast tomorrow too which should make for a nice hilly 30 miler over the south downs. Gotta keep rolling ... only 174 training days till La Marmotte !

Not a hugely scientific test, I rode an hour tempo with a bit of monkeying around with cadence and resistance in erg mode. Calibrated CT and SRM after 20 minutes warm up at 150-170w. Outcome? The SRM was consistently less than the Computrainer, but only by about 3%. Average watts for the workout from CT was 206 vs 200 from SRM.  The complete dataset is available here (edge 705 download into wko vs CT CDF import into wko then both exported as PT CSV and spliced together using the zero watt markers I placed in the workout when stretching etc). And here is a chart.... ( hi resolution version here ) I'm planning on a more scientific comparison tomorrow since the forecast is for rain and I may end up indoors :-( The geek in me wants to look at the peak power and high/low cadence variances ...

810g compared to 768g for the R700s (yes I did weight them without pedals to check, sad I know). But do they look cool or what?

Been hit over the head by something evil. Elevated RHR of almost 90 (!) chesty cough, blocked nose, high temperature, the shivers followed by chucking out more BTUs than a 3kw electric fire. Needless to say riding hasn't been happening, watching my CTL plummet is as demoralising  as it is motivational when watching it rise. But I got a message from Bob - my SRM cranks turn up on Monday woohoo!!!

Admittedly its kinda false since I haven't explicitly tested my FTP with an hour test, but its always nice to not be classified as untrained. As it happens my FTP is around 260 now, must do a test soon, but the NP from recent hard SST rides and hilly tempo sessions suggest 260. Anyways, celebrate a little milestone hit today... w/kg for FT is no longer untrained! yay!

Poor man's erg video (they're free). Totally class especially since new vids come out all the time keeping it fresh and interesting. You'll need an flv player. www.thesufferfest.com

1,720km since restarted riding in August.

For your consideration ...

The human body really is quite amazing. On the 14th August I started to exercise again. My weight had ballooned to 92kg, I was smoking and was plain out of shape. Yet, 2 months later here I am almost unrecognisable. 2" off the waist and with 30,000 calories burned, and 1,300 km cycled in just 31 workouts. Will be having a pop at the ToSH tomorrow ... don't expect to complete it but will be good to see how I get on. 

Ferrari international assistance strikes again. So Massa fails to yield to Bourdais re-joining the race, despite the Frenchman staying within the white line, they collide and OF COURSE Bourdais picks up the penalty not the Ferrari man. FORMULA ONE IS A CORRUPT AND DISGRACED FARCE

I got round to doing my FTP test today on the Computrainer, following the protocol from Training and Racing with a Power Meter. CP5 came in at 280w compared to 283 as experienced on the road and CP20 came in at 242w. Which means my FTP is about 230w. Data point 1 collected, just need to keep doing these tests. Man, they really hurt!!