Well-Rested Performance

After last week's recovery week, my body was ready to show off what it was capable of. And show off it did.

In the last week, I achieved several personal bests for the year:

• Max power: 1181 watts, best since Sept 2012 (best ever was 1330w)
• 5:00 avg: 370 watts, tied for best ever, last set in Aug 2013
• 8:00 avg: 323 watts, best since June 2014 (best ever was 338w)
• 20:00 avg: 267 watts, best since July 2014 (best ever was 309w)
• 1 hr NP: 278 watts, best since Sept 2013 (best ever was 298w)
• 1 hr avg: 245 watts, best since July 2014 (best ever was 261w)

So yeah, I'm definitely seeing signs of progress. I can't sit back and relax because I still have a ton of progress left to make. Not to mention, these are all still on the road bike. I haven't started training on my TT bike yet.

A few particular targets that I am aiming for by next June:

• 5-minute power of 400 watts.
• 20-minute power of 340 watts (about 320 on the TT bike)
• 1-hour power of 320 watts (about 300 on the TT bike).

Seeing this kind of performance gain is encouraging, but I've still got a long way to go!!

The Hardest Week

This week has probably been the most difficult that I've done in a while, but not in the way you might think. My daily workout schedule said more or less the same thing every day:

Go easy. Yes, EASY. That means no sprints, no intervals, and no monster climbs.

One problem: like most cyclists, I really don't know how to do that!

I took Monday off the bike completely and then rode an hour or so at a low to moderate pace every day.

On the trainer, it's pretty boring. You just pedal along without much resistance. It's days like that where I pay more attention to what I'm watching and have faster music on the iPod to keep me going.  On Thursday and Friday, I did a couple of short opener efforts to start getting my plasma volume back up. Decrease in plasma volume is why you feel so terrible after several days off the bike and a little intensity helps maintain it.

I also did a couple lunch-time rides this week and it took everything I had to let the other guys attack on climbs and pull away from me on flat roads when they decided to up the pace.

In terms of training, last Sunday I reached a monstrous CTL of 111.5 and an ATL of 136.3, giving me a TSB of -24.8, and I'd been seeing numbers like that most of the previous week. In less technical terms, my body really needed a break.

Recovery weeks are also hard because of how my body reacts. When training hard, the body releases endorphins to suppress the pain. After a few easy days, the endorphins are gone and you feel every bit of how tired you actually are. Small climbs that I usually rocket over had me getting out of the saddle and wincing at the feeling in my legs.

Psychologically, it was really hard to take the break. Aside from not chasing my friends, it also means that every day I'm worried about losing fitness and gaining weight. I had to watch everything I ate so that I wouldn't balloon in size. Most weeks, I burn between 7500 and 8000 calories on the bike. This week, I burned about 5000.

As of this morning, my Performance Manager values are CTL 103.1, ATL  87.8, and TSB  +5.5. Much better.

My weight went up just a hair, from 174.6 to 174.7. Not bad.

Now that my body is better rested, it's time to get back to training!

The Ragged Edge

I'm just coming to the end of a slightly different training cycle, and I'm beat to hell.

My current cycle is 5 weeks instead of the usual 4, which works out a little better with my upcoming plans for vacation and the winter holidays. The downside of that is that I'm that much more beat up.

Most of my structured workouts are done at 5:30 in the morning on a CompuTrainer, so it's indoors, in the dark, and without much scenery. It takes a lot of motivation just to get up and do it. Add to that the compounding fatigue of several weeks of progressively harder training and it's downright miraculous that I can do it.

Amazingly, even though I feel terrible, I am still able to hit all my power targets.

Any day that has intervals scheduled (such as 2x20:00, 4x15:00, 4x8:00, etc.) has a 5-watt power range that goes with them. For example, the 2x20:00 workout I did on Tuesday was supposed to be between 235 and 240 watt average. I was able to do 236 and 246 for them.

Any time I'm doing intervals, I have a habit of going absolutely as hard as I can on the last one, regardless of the target. With something like a 20-minute interval, I'll usually aim for the original target for the first 15 minutes or so and then light it up the last 5 minutes.

Going into my first recovery week in my training campaign for next year, I'm more or less on-target. My weight is down to 174.6 and my 20-minute power is up to 260. Just 10.6 pounds and 70 watts in 9 more months :-)

I've got a hard day today and a long day tomorrow, and then it's 5 days easy. I can't wait!!

Not as specific as you might think

I've been talking a lot about watts/kilogram lately and thought I'd define it a bit better.

Watts/kilogram is really most important when you're dealing with climbing on the bike It's what makes riders like Nairo Quintana so strong in the mountains: tiny little guys with large power outputs relative to their body weight. Since the State TT has a fair amount of climbing, it's a concern for someone like me who will never be that small. I need to be able to climb pretty quickly.

Wattage is the amount of force that I can put into the pedals for any given period of time (in my case, the goal is 58 minutes). Most of my training is focused on increasing the amount of power that I can sustain for an hour (it's an hour race, so it seemed like the way to go!)

As I mentioned last week, I'm trying to lose just a little weight. There is such a thing as losing too much weight. If I dropped from my current 175 pounds to 140 pounds (which many of my competitors are), I would have to lose significant muscle mass, which would probably cause my power output to drop (assuming that I could do it at all). I was 164 pounds in my highly successful 2013 season and I'm trying to get back to that.

To go fast on flat roads, I need a high wattage. To go fast on climbs, I need both a high wattage and a low body weight.

Both numbers have time limits on them. You can only get so much fitter and only lose so much weight in any given amount of time (especially if you're trying not to lose performance).

So I set this target of 4 watts/kilogram, but there are lots of ways to get there. Below is a chart with various weights, their kilogram conversions, and how many watts I would need to maintain to get 4 watts/kilogram. You'll see right away that "4 w/kg" is not a very specific target on its own:

Pounds	KGs	watts
175	79.5	319
174	79.1	317
173	78.6	315
172	78.2	314
171	77.7	312
170	77.3	310
169	76.8	308
168	76.4	306
167	75.9	304
166	75.5	303
165	75.0	301
164	74.5	299
163	74.1	297
162	73.6	295
161	73.2	293
160	72.7	292
159	72.3	290
158	71.8	288

So I have some choices. I was aiming for 164 pounds and 300 watts. I could also aim to gain more wattage (not very likely) and not lose as much weight or lose more weight so I don't have to put out as much power (which could be a possibility if I'm behind schedule on gaining power).

Like many things in training, there's more than one way to get there.

Of course, watts/kg isn't the only aspect of time trailing, but this far out it's the one that I'm most focused on.