Test Day

Today was Lactate Threshold Test day.

I met with Joe Wentzell at Breakaway Bikes at 10:00 AM for the test.

It was fun being back in the shop. I used to do their weekend RPM classes all the time. The classes I did were, in essence, structured group rides on a large clusters of Computrainers. They offer classes with more individualized programs during the week, but I had a harder time fitting them into my schedule. It's an awesome way for new cyclists to get into the sport or to stay fit in the winter without riding in the cold. They've made a number of improvements since I'd been there last. There's now an alcove to peel off outer layers and change your shoes, plus a set of cubes to keep all your stuff in.

The test itself looks for when lactic acid begins to accumulate in my bloodstream. When I cross 5.0 mmol, that's my threshold. We're also looking for other more subtle data, like how my heart rate reacts to increased exertion.

The test isn't all that bad. Joe set me up at 150 watts to start and would increase the resistance ever four minutes. Just before he increased the resistance, he would take a small blood sample from my finger (using something like the diabetic finger-stick pins) and put it in a scanner that showed my current level of lactic acid accumulation. It's not a maximal test, so the intensity never really gets that hard (if you're used to threshold work, anyway).

After I had obviously gone past threshold (not just from the lactic analyzer, you could almost see the deflection point in my heart rate and hear it in my breathing), Joe had me cool down while he started entering data in the computer. It's kind of neat cooling down while plugged into a computerized ergometer, since you can see your heart rate and power drift down.

Joe plugged in the data and showed me some interesting results. I had estimated my threshold to be 160 BPM and 232 watts. I was close on the heart rate, but WAY off on the power.

Joe showed me the graph and the data that my threshold was 157 BPM and 192 watts. It's 40 watts lower than I had expected.

I was stunned. In a couple exertion tests on the Computrainer, I turned in power number that should have put my power at threshold higher. But the blood test doesn't lie.

Joe explained that as someone who was coming back after a long training gap, my muscles remembered how to do this and could push pretty hard. He had not doubt that I could do a 20-minute time trial test at 230 watts or well above. The problem is that the cardiovascular system doesn't run off muscle memory. It runs off a bunch of processes at the cellular level, and it had lost a lot of development in the last two years. Basically, my muscles were fit and ready to go, but my heart and lungs didn't have the capacity to provide them with the resources they needed to go all out. That explained why I was seeing such high numbers in the gym (like a recent day where I did 6 reps each of 720 pounds on the leg press and 275 pounds on the squat) but had such a low threshold power.

If I had kept training at the power levels I saw in my exertion tests, I'd be pushing too hard. Like so many other athletes, I was training too hard for my own good and didn't even know it. Aerobic development is a strange thing. It actually gets better at lower intensities than it does at higher ones. I would have been training for speed and power without having the endurance to back them up. I'd be like a strong sprinter who can't keep up with the pack long enough to outsprint them.

So what does this mean for my training? If I were training just off heart rate, it probably would't mean much. Since I'm training with power, though, it means my training power levels will be a good bit lower than I had anticipated.

This will mean a few changes in my training plan. I'll be repeating my last 4 weeks of training on the bike with the new power levels. Looking ahead at my schedule, it probably means that instead of sprint & power training in September, I'll be just starting to do long Threshold work.

I highly recommend this kind of testing for athletes. It's so easy to incorrectly estimate your own performance. We all want to be better than we are and to train as hard as our bodies will tolerate. A test like this gives you some cold hard facts about where you are and how you might improve.

The Big Picture Plan

So, I want to be 168 pounds and 16% body fat by Oct 31, so I can hit winter training at a decent point, then get down to 159 pounds and 12% body fat over the winter.... how?

(Before I go any further.... yes, I keep making my goal weight lower!)

I started out by figuring out what I wanted the weight and fitness targets to be.

Starting at 197 pounds in early May and losing 5 pounds per month, that gave me 6 months to lose 30 pounds. Perfect.

The fitness was another story. I haven't been to the gym seriously since 2003 and haven't ridden my bike consistently since 2007. I knew I would have to go through some level of adaptation getting my body ready, then building as much strength and endurance as I could before October.

When I stated my power goal of 1.5 to 1.6 watts / pound (252 to 268 watts at my target weight for October), I kind of pulled it out of thin air. I hadn't looked up any of my old training numbers yet or anything but I knew it would be hard. As it turns out, it's not such a bad target

I'm a huge fan of periodization. It's hard not to be when every major strength and cycling coach on Earth promotes it. For resistance training, Tudor Bompa is really the master. For cycling, Joe Friel and Chris Carmichael are major influences. I've actually been coached by someone one Carmichael's coaching company before (Josh Seldman, who I respect as an amazing coach more than he'll ever know) and studied Bompa's multiple books for years. I've also worked with Joe Wentzell from Breakaway Bikes, a local amazing coach and great guy. I'm a little too broke right now to pay for full coaching, so I developed my own plans.

A lot of this is built on 4-week cycles. Each cycle builds in volume and/or intensity (for both on-the-bike and in-the0-gym workouts) over the first 3 weeks, with the first two being tolerable (with the second being harder than the first) and the third being a true stretch of your ability to recover, bordering on overreaching. By the end of the third week, performance is often noticeably lower from fatigue and depletion of fuels in your body. The fourth week is a recovery week, with reduced volume of training and nothing over moderate intensity. This is when your body recovers from the torture of the last three weeks and adapts to a new higher level of performance. You learn to love the recovery week after a while, but they come with a price: the recovery week usually ends with some sort of performance test to see how you are progressing.

My resistance training starts off with 6 weeks of Anatomical Adaptation training, getting my body used to weight lifting again. After that, I'll go through four 4-week cycles with the following goals/focus points.

1. Develop strength in the muscle I've already got. I've still got the old speedskater thighs, so I've got some muscle that needs to get to work.
2. Build muscular endurance. Taking a weight of about 30 to 35% of my maximum, I'll be doing leg presses and squats for increasingly long times. The body builder idea of "endurance", about 20 to 30 reps, is not even a starting point. I'll be starting with 50 reps, and building to 5 minutes straight of exercise. That's one set, I'll be doing 3 or 4 sets.
   
3. Return to maximum strength. Squeezing a little more performance from the muscle I've already got.
4. Acceleration power development. Take the strength I've got and convert it into rapid acceleration on the bike.

At the same time as those, I'll be doing similar work on the bike, also in 4-week cycles:

1. Build power at Ventilatory and Lactate thresholds
2. Build power at Lactate threshold
3. Build power above Lactate threshold (approx 105%)
4. Build VO2Max power (major efforts, about 3 minutes in duration)

The fun part is that I get to take my time. I have 6 months to get in shape for foundation training. After all this, I don't have a Competition phase, like most people would. I'm doing all this just to get myself to a decent starting point for winter training.

I allowed myself an easy month of recovery and transition to let my mind and body relax (I'll still be training, just at a lower level) before I hit it hard again.

So where am I trying to go? I don't know exactly. I want to get my WRTT time (the 8.3 mile time trial) back down to under 20 minutes. I want to get my 42K time down under 1:05:00. I want to get my old sprint & recovery back. I love time trialing, but I love dropping people in a breakaway even more. Maybe that means I'll be doing a couple crits or maybe that means that I'll just be having fun dueling random cyclists on the road. As long as I'm back in the saddle and riding strong, I'll be happy.

Oh, and as of this morning, I'm 189 pounds and 26.4% body fat. Saturday is my Blood Lactate Test, so I'll find out exactly where my threshold is (I'm guessing 232 watts right now).

The Program

For the next 3 weeks, I'm on a program that looks like this (with definitions below):

Monday: Rest or Active Recovery

Tuesday AM: 1:00:00 to 1:15:00 Trainer ride, Pedal Speed intervals, 10 minutes of core/BOSU work
Tuesday PM: 15:00 Stair Mill warmup; Weight lifting, Anatomical Adaptation.

Wednesday AM: 1:00:00 - 1:15:00 Trainer ride, Heart Rate Ceiling of 140, 10 minutes of core/BOSU work
Wednesday PM: Some other aerobic exercise, spinning, elliptical, walking, etc.

Thursday AM: 1:00:00 to 1:15:00 Trainer ride, Pedal Speed intervals, 10 minutes of core/BOSU work
Thursday PM: 15:00 Stair Mill warmup; Weight lifting, Anatomical Adaptation.

Friday: Rest or Active Recovery

Saturday: 2 hour ride with Long Intervals (possibly one of them will be the West River Time Trial).

Sunday: 2 to 3 hours, "Ride as I feel". If I feel tired, take it easy (cut it short, if necessary). If I feel good, go harder, just avoid any structured interval. It's a great day for group rides, dueling with random riders on the road, or just a long scenic recovery ride.


Active Recovery: VERY easy riding, meant to loosen up the muscles and promote blood flow to them. Heart rate ceiling is 120 BPM, though below 115 is better.
Anatomical Adaptation lifting: 3 sets of 12 to 15 reps. Once I can do 3x15 of a certain weight, increase the weight and go back to 3x12. Normal progression is often 12-12-12, 15-12-12, 15-15-12, then 15-15-15. Lifts cover the whole body, alternating between upper and lower body and recovery times of 60 to 90 seconds between sets to achieve full recovery between exercises and include:
Squats
Chest Press (bench press with dumbbells)
Leg Press
Fly
Leg Curl
Shoulder Press
Calf Raise
Lat Pull Down
One-arm row

For all upper body exercises, remember to keep core tight!

Goal of this phase is to toughen tendons and connecting tissue and to "remind" muscles how to lift correctly and generate more force. Done properly, this phase will help in preventing future injuries, a sort of "prehabilitation". No exercise is done to failure or exhaustion. Proper form and technique must be maintained at all times.

To help me out when I travel for work, I have a membership with LA Fitness, which has branches in most major cities. As a backup plan, I've worked out a dumbbell only routine that could be done in most hotel gyms.

The lifting/strength work is based on Tudor Bompa's books on Periodization, which I cannot recommend strongly enough for anyone interesting in increasing performance.

Pedal Speed Intervals: intervals of 6 to 10 minutes (start at 6:00 an increase 2 minutes per week) of 110 to 120 RPM, keeping below a heart rate ceiling of 150 BPM.

Long Intervals: Progression from Ventilatory Threshold to Lactate Threshold, always with recovery equal to time of one interval. Start at 2x15:00 at Ventilatory Threshold. Build to 2x20:00, 3x20:00. 2x30:00, then, if successful on all previous intervals, attempt 1x60:00. Restart with Lactate Threshold intervals, 3x8:00, then 3x10:00, 4x8:00, 3x12:00, 4x12:00. 3x15:00, and so on.

After this, I move to on a combined Adaptation and Max Strength Phase, while continuing a Long Interval riding routine (more on that program when it starts).

A New Beginning, a Glimmer of Hope

This morning, I did one of my favorite training races: The West River Time Trial in Philadelphia.

It's an out-and-back course on mostly flat roads. It follows a bend in the river, giving it a boomerang shape on a map, and the winds are always a little odd. The course is about 8.3 miles round trip.

This is my first time doing it in two years. Heck, it was the first time I was on my time trial bike in two years.

Warming up, I was a little wobbly. Not being on aero bars for a long time can have that effect. I felt strong, though. I was surprised to see numbers like "23 mph" while warming up at my intended heart rates.

At the start, it was good to see my old teammates and meet some new ones. Guys like Ted Slack and Rob Brothers gave me a warm welcome back. To be honest, it felt really good that someone noticed I was back riding. Dave Harwi kindly noted that I'd "bulked up." Thanks, Dave ;-)

When I stepped up the the starting line, Rob was timing. His words echoed in my head. "It's a new beginning. You know how to do this, man!" He counted me down. 5...4...3...2...1...

For those of you not familiar with it, a time trial is a bike race where one rider starts every 30 seconds. You ride the distance as fast as you can, not really knowing how anyone else is doing. 30 seconds is a LONG way, considering most cyclists are riding at 20 to 25 mph. If the riders are evenly matched, you barely see anyone the whole race, except people going the other direction. It's all a matter of discipline to keep the pace high, self-knowledge of your thresholds so you don't go too hard and burn yourself out, and tolerance for pain as the lactic acid accumulates in your muscles. I, being the sick person that I am, love them. The other draw, is that as you lie on the aero bars, it almost feels like you're flying.

I barely remember the time trial itself. I remember the start, the turnaround, catching the guy who started 30 seconds ahead of me, and getting passed by two other guys who started behind me. I had two goals: keep my heart rate near threshold (about 160 BPM) and my cadence 90 - 93 RPM. I have a bad habit of pushing too big a gear at a lower cadence.

For my first day back, I can't complain. I covered 8.3 miles in 22:34, about 21.9 mph average.

Waking up at 191 pounds and 26.6% this morning, I still have 26 pounds to lose before I hit my target weight. I can only imagine how much faster I'll be able to cover that course carrying less weight.

The Diet

Almost any expert out there will tell you that losing weight is part what you eat and part exercise.

I'm hesitant to call it "diet", since most people associate the term with something short term to lose weight or some latest fad. I'm trying to do more than that. I'm trying to adjust my eating in a way that I can maintain the rest of my life. That means keeping in a few things that are bad for me, because I just won't give up chocolate forever. Sorry.

I started by figuring out how many calories I needed to eat. To get that, first I needed my basal (or resting) metabolic rate to figure out how many calories I needed just to stay alive and healthy. Using my weight and lean body mass, I used the formulas at http://www.shapefit.com/basal-metabolic-rate.html to come up with 1754 calories.

I'll write more about my training regiment in a later post. For now, let's just say it's a little more than "moderate." ;-) Based on that, using the same site, I used a multiplier of 1.9
1754 * 1.9 = 3332 calories per day.

Assuming a target of losing 5 pounds per month and 3500 calories per pound of fat, I need to consume 17,500 calories less per month than I'm burning. Dividing that over 30 days, I need to eat 583 calories less per day. 3332 - 583 = 2749 calories per day

Now I have a target. Shockingly, that's more than I was eating when I gained all this weight. The difference is that I'm training again. With that in mind, I don't want to put my body in starvation mode and I'm training hard enough to worry about replenishing muscle and liver glycogen between workouts. Of course, I'm keeping an eye on this and will make adjustments as necessary.

I started off working on portion control. No more classic three meals per day. I'm now eating 4 to 5 meals a day, never going more than 4 hours without eating. Instead of going from "stuffed to capacity" to "hungry enough to eat my desk", now I go from "just satisfied" to "just thinking about food."

Each meal will be 550 to 680 calories per day (depending on how many I eat, 4 or 5, plus some will be larger and some will be smaller). Trust me, that's not a big meal.

Eating such small meals, I'm now eating more from the grocery store and less from the restaurants. Sometimes a meal is just a bagel with peanut butter or jam and a glass of apple juice.

As far as what I'm eating, it's all just normal foods. I love Golden Grahams for breakfast. I eat a lot of bagels (usually with strawberry jam), English muffins (usually with peanut butter), oranges, carrots, rye toast, yogurt, turkey sandwiches, and canned tuna (usually on the toasted rye, with relish). When I'm riding, sometimes I'll have a PowerBar (the good old kind that you can leave in your car for a month and it's still fine) and, like most cyclists, I'm addicted to Cytomax.

I still have a Coke once in a while or a Hershey bar. As long as they fit within the day's calorie intake, why not? I'm planning on eating like this for the foreseeable future and I want to have something good once in a while. I'm not going to cut out everything I like. Part of being thinner is a better lifestyle, which includes a candy bar once in a while!

Let me mention, none of those are "low fat" or "low cal" versions of something else.If I'm eating yogurt, it's the real deal. I'm not getting "light" bagels or anything like that. My Coke is the bright red labeled Coca Cola, with lots of empty sugar calories. At least I can burn the sugar on the bike!

I picked these things because I like them. Everything on the list I like. I'd never stick with it if I were eating a bunch of things I hated.

That said, I am eating less soda, cheese, and candy than I was. Kicking the soda habit was hard. I had a caffeine headache for about two weeks. I'm eating less often at fast food and casual "junk on the wall" restaurants.

I've almost completely cut out mayo, butter, and potato chips. I could have them in moderation, but I'm not a moderation kind of guy. I figured off I was better off just ruling them out.

As far as supplements, I'm not taking any. The closest I come is Cytomax (a sports drink) while riding and a daily multivitamin (the kind you get the store brand of for about $8 for a 6 month supply). I've long believed that any supplements that really work are banned in sport anyway. No point in using them to get ready to ride again.

That's probably enough on diet for now, though it's really a huge topic!

Just as an update, as of this morning, I'm down to 192, a loss of 5 pounds in 4 weeks, so I'm on target so far!

Opening Thoughts

I thought this was an experience I might want to record.

Right now, I'm pretty fat I have been for the last year, with my weight mostly fluctuating between 190 and 198. I never crossed 200, but I've come pretty close.

Why? There's a number of reasons. I was sliding for a while, but I think the real killer came when I did the double-whammy: took a new job near Princeton and moved to New Jersey. Suddenly, I went from walking 2 1/2 miles a day and living right next to some great cycling areas to not walking at all and living in a place with terrible roads for cycling. Making matters worse, I was traveling for work a lot and eating with a group of people a lot, so I was more likely to eat huge portions of restaurant food instead of a sandwich.

More than anything, I didn't have any motivation to get on the bike and I was completely outside the culture where I was influenced to get back on.

I slowly grew over about six months. By the time of my wedding and honeymoon, I had topped off at about 199 pounds. I stayed in that same realm for about a year, but never crossed 200 lbs.

When I started my MBA in September 2008, my amount free time got even smaller. When I got back into firearms in December and started going to the range, I had a hobby to keep my busy.

In February 2009, I got a membership at a local gym. It was small, but at least it had weight equipment and a couple elliptical machines. I started workout out there a couple times a week. Within a couple months, the gym moved into the same building as the bike shop owned by the same guy. The new location made it REALLY small, with just a couple cardio machines, a few weight machines, and a dumbbell rack. The gym was not a great fit for me, but at least it got me moving. I found one elliptical machine that I liked, and rode it about four times a week.

A couple weeks ago, I finally decided that to lose the weight I had gained (about 30 pounds from where I'd really like to be), I'd have to plan it like I used to do with my training. I based my plans off the local gym, thinking that using dumbbells would give me more of a workout than machines anyway. I also figured that I could find dumbbells at most hotel gyms. I was thinking that I could ride the trainer 3 mornings a week, ride outdoors on the weekends, and lift 2 or 3 nights a week.

My first week, while great in the training log, was brutal. I rode 7.7 hours and lifted twice. The first night lifting was mostly upper body and left me so sore that I was sure both my arms were broken. It really was excruciating.

That night left me thinking that I didn't have the right gym. I realized that any time I had been there to workout, if anyone else was around, the room felt crowded. I knew that I would need a little more space. So, I went and found a new gym.

There is a branch just up the road, so I went to check it out. As soon as I walked in, I knew it was for me. They had a squat cage, an incline leg press, a spinning studio, and stationary bikes with fans built into them. I knew it was time to make a change.

Last weekend had me thinking about racing again. I got in 2-hour rides on both days, and even though I'm a lot heavier, I was still able to hold 20 mph or so at Tempo intensity and 17 mph at a cruising pace. When I lifted for the first time at the new gym on Friday, I was doing squats and leg presses, not at the mega weights that I used to, but still not bad (12x135 lbs on the squat and 15x270 on the leg press). I'm nowhere near the performance I had before, but I hadn't lost as much as I had expected to.

What do I really want to do? First off, I want to get rid of the gut, slim my face back down, and get back into pants with a 32-inch waist. I'd like to at least tone up my arms and build some core strength, which I was always bad about. I'd like to get my body fat percentage below 15% (I really want 12%, but we'll see about that).

Performance-wise, I'd love to get some racing speed back. Ideally, long-term, I want to get back into doing the 8.3 mile West River Time Trials with a time of less than 20 minutes (less than 19 would be better ;-) ).

While I love the sensation of crushing people on the road, I know I'm not nervy enough to do criteriums all the time. I like my skin reasonably intact. Crits tend to have a lot more crashes than I'm ready for.

The 2010 racing season is a long way off, but it helps to have goals. One closer performance goal is that I want to do the Breakaway RPM classes this fall (starting in October) and I want to be able to hold my own in there, not get killed with a high body weight and low power output. I'd like have a threshold power of 1.5 to 1.6 watts per pound by winter, then maybe up to 1.8 by spring.

I'm also looking for rewards for myself if I can get down to 165 pounds again. I've kicked around a few ideas, but I know I don't really need (and can't really afford it anyway!). I'd love to get my right leg tattooed like my left one is, but that's expensive too. Maybe something like a new suit for work?

I've been loading myself with motivators. I just renewed my membership to QCW/Breakawaybikes.com, bought myself a new team uniform, I'm blogging about weight loss, I'm telling everyone I know that I'm doing it, I've joined Traineo, and I'm reading up on fitness again (including renewing my membership to NSCA).

So, yes, I'm diving in with both feet. I'm still trying to figure out how to fit in all the workouts I want each week. I've modified my diet, eating five small meals a day and not going more than four hours without eating. I'm eating less cheese and fewer potato chips cheese, cut out mayo, and a lot more English muffins and tuna.

As a start, as of May 17, when I decided to do this:
197 pounds
28.2% body fat
38 inch waist

I plan to get about a month of training in before doing any testing. I don't want to set too low of a bar for myself.