Running on Fumes

As I've said, I really cranked up the intensity over the last few weeks.

Since June 25, I've had one thought on my mind: Deep Blue 20K time trial. I've been training like a lunatic for it non-stop.

As of yesterday, I've lost 5 pounds in those 8 weeks, putting me at 189.4. It's not a lot of weight to lose for that time frame, but I had to eat a lot just to keep my performance up.

My plan was to train up until today, then start to taper for the race, which is in 10 days. That plan worked out perfectly. This morning on the trainer, on my last interval, my body just stopped. My legs were exhausted, I could barely turn the pedals, and I was ready to call it a day. Just in time.

For the next 10 days, I'll be alternating very easy days with some moderately intense days, trying to let my body rest without losing any of the hard-won fitness.

For the power.data guys, this is my performance chart from the last month:


I'm ready for some rest and a great race day!!

Turning up the Heat

Last month, I dramatically increased my training volume, going from about 4 hours a week on the bike to 9 to 10 hours a week. This month, I've stayed around 9 hours a week, but I'm riding much more intensely.

Before, I was doing a lot of moderate intensity. I'd finish a ride and just tired from sitting in the saddle, but not really from the workout. Now, I'm structuring my workouts so that they are hard enough that I need an easy day or a day off after each major workout. I'm doing intense threshold and VO2 intervals two days a week and a time trial each week, plus a group ride that is intense enough to make me work but no so intense that I'm worried about getting dropped in the middle of nowhere.

For the power geeks, since June 15, I've increased my CTL from 45 to 78. 

My weight has finally started to drop. I was up to 194. I've only lost a couple pounds (down to 191.4 this morning), but at least it's moving in the right direction now. With just three weeks until the Deep Blue Time Trial, I am aiming to be 190 pounds at the start.

My biggest goal is to keep my momentum going into the winter. I've got a few ideas for things to do this winter to keep me on track and finally break the 1 hour 40K mark next year.

The Rapid Climb

As I've mentioned, I've struggled this year with my motivation. I have not been racing and I just started getting back onto the bike and training for real.

Over the last four weeks, I've increased my weekly training volume from 4 hours a week to 11 hours a week. For the power geeks, that mean increasing my CTL (chronic training load) from 45 to 65. It's been a lot of work and I'm completely exhausted, but I'm starting to see signs of fitness again.

Now that I'm surviving higher volume, I'm going to start increasing the intensity of my workouts so I can build up some speed.

I'm looking to do all this for two reasons:

• to lose weight
• to do well in a time trial

Basically, the two goals I started out with at the beginning of the year. I'm not quite at the performance level that I'd hoped, but I'm still going to pursue them.

I'm looking at a couple of races that I did last year, the Deep Blue Time Trial (11 miles, Sept 2) and the Ernie Simpson Memorial Time Trial (12.4 miles, Sept 9). I figure at least that way I can say that I raced this year.

I'm already starting to think about what I can do for next year. The fact is, no matter how much I train, I'm better as a sprinter than a time trialist. I can't change my genetics. At the same time, I don't like the insanity of crit races. I'm trying to figure out what type of racing might be good for me that is a little less crazy but still puts my sprint tendencies to work.

How Does That Make You Feel?

I use a few different ways to judge my current fitness level.

The first is the obvious one: my power numbers. I have all of my power numbers back to 2009 and I can easily compare my best power numbers for the last 30 days against numbers from any month since.

The second one is how well I recover from a ride. For example, yesterday I went on a 2:15 ride covering 42 miles, with an hour at a tempo pace (204 watts avg, 19.8 mph avg; not my best numbers, but they are gradually improving). I got home, my legs were a bit tired, but I didn't feel too awful.

Today I went out for a three hour ride. The hardest part about a ride that long is the discipline to keep your pace down. Let people pass me, don't chase down every group I see, take it easy up the hills. About an hour and a half into the ride, my legs were complaining a bit and I was really tender from being in the saddle so much, but I noticed something: neither sensation was getting any worse. They were annoying, but they were not becoming more painful.

My real goal for the day was to reach 50 miles. Instead, I rode 60 miles, for a total of 3 hours and 20 minutes. After a pretty hard yesterday, I was still able to exceed my goals for today.

I'm pretty happy about that.

My third consideration is how well I function for the rest of the day. If I do a hard ride and then I'm a blob on the couch the rest of the day, I know that I could not really handle the ride. If I'm functional and manage to, say, go grocery shopping, a little house work, and go for a walk later in the day, then I know that my body can actually handle the training efforts that I'm putting in.

I felt fine after yesterday's ride and I'm planning on going out today as well.

On the Road Again

Yesterday, for the first time in three months, I went for a long ride. Most of my rides have been an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Yesterday, I did 2 hours.

It was a simple ride, just to the Art Museum in Philly and back home for 37 miles. I pushed the pace a few times, usually just up a hill or to chase down someone on the horizon.

I felt great mentally. That kind of ride always feels good to complete. The rest of the day, my legs were killing me, though. Dong a two hour ride after not doing one for a while can be a little more punishing. Over the coming weeks, I really need to get more of them!

You can always tell...

When things are going great, I post a lot. When things are not, I don't post as much.

I've been under huge amounts of pressure at work and fighting one minor illness after another, so I have not been riding nearly as much as I'd like to be. My motivation to race is really not there right now and I'm basically riding enough to keep my weight from going up any more than it has already.

I've tried setting a few goals, but I'm finding that when I don't care about the goals, I don't work very hard toward them.

Hopefully I can get it together soon :-)

The Annual Goal Post

Last year, I had 8 goals. I met 3 of them. That's an awful track record.

This year, as I've mentioned before, I only have two.

1. Complete a 40K time trial in less than an hour (avg speed, 24.9 mph or faster).
2. Get my weight down to the lower 170's.

These two goals are relatively simple, but they both take a lot of work and planning.

My best 40K last year was about 1:03. I "only" have to take 3 minutes off that time, but it's going to take a lot of training to get there. I need to increase my threshold power, I need to be able to stay in the aerodynamic position for an hour, and I need the mental focus to be able to keep the intensity up the whole time. I decided that I am not buying any new bike equipment to help in that goal. I'm going to do this on training and skill development alone.

I've got 4 races on the schedule that are 40K, so I've got a few shots at it. And no, doing a 20K in thirty minutes does not count :-)

My weight is currently 184.6 (down from 186 at Jan 1). I realize that wherever my weight is in April is probably where it will stay for most of the racing season. It's very difficult to stay in top racing form while trying to lose weight at the same time. Your body needs to be fully fueled in order to repair after heavy training sessions and that's not conducive to weight loss at all. If I can lose 1 pound a week, which is not a lot but it's not easy to stay consistent, I should be around 172 by the end of April. 

Time to go get on the CompuTrainer :-)

Test Day

OK, it's been a month since my last blog post and I've not posted any of my "staying on track" reports. Oops. Besides, reports about riding the trainer are usually not all that exciting. Usually.

Still, I've been pretty disciplined with my training. I've been riding 7 to 9 hours a week, including some lunch time rides with the guys from work, so it's a nice mix of the trainer and outdoors. I find it a lot easier to be motivated on the trainer when I get to ride outdoors and remind myself of why I'm doing all this.

My only regret in my training is that I'm not getting a lot of long rides. It's hard to ride 2 or 3 hours when the temperature is in the mid 30's and it's sure as hell hard to ride the trainer that long.

Today was a test day for me. I've been focusing mostly on endurance and threshold work so I can improve my time trials next year. Today was a 20K (12.4 mile) time trial on the CompuTrainer. It does not account for aerodynamics or position, so time was not my biggest concern. It was power. My goal for the day was to match or beat my best 30:00 power from the last 3 months: 255 watts.

I treated it like a race. I warmed up well and paced myself so that I could go harder in the second half than the first. I am surprised at just how well it went.

Total time: 33:19 (22.4 mph) (kind of irrelevant, but useful for future comparison)
Avg Power: 260
1st Half Average: 252 watts (I almost wonder if I held back too much)
2nf Half Average: 268 watts

Mentally, I was focused on keeping my power where I wanted it while remembering to look up (practicing watching the power without staring at it), keeping my cadence where it should be (I kept it around 85 RPM), and watching how much distance I had left to go. Mental focus has been a problem for me, so this was a huge improvement for me.

I'd say my training season is off to a great start. I'm thrilled to see numbers this good.

If Football Was Like Cycling...

Every once in a while, I hear some football fan say that cycling's not a real sport because there's no defense or because there's no score or some other lame reason that amounts to "I don't understand anything beyond people beating each other up for money".

It's got me wondering what football would be like if it were more like cycling:

• If you're the closest to the goal line, you "have the ball."
• You can call a time outs whenever you want, but the other team can keep playing without you 
• The same guys play offense and defense.
• The defense does not get a head start in order to get between the offense and the goal.
• The game is played on concrete, asphalt, and/or dirt roads.
• The only pads you are allowed to have are a helmet and gloves.
• There are no mid-game substitutions. If someone gets hurt, you play without them.
• If you get hurt, the game continues without you. Someone will be along to help... eventually. And it might be a 4 hour drive to the hospital.
• The season lasts from January through October and runs on multiple continents.
• The games are a minimum of 5 hours of actual playing time.
• The game does not stop for commercials.
• The goal line is 110 miles from where you start. Good luck kicking a field goal.
• You play 3 to 4 games a week unless it's grand tour season, when you race every day for three weeks straight.
• If you win too much (i.e., enough that they have even heard of you), people just assume you are taking some kind of performance enhancing drug.
• The fans are close enough to trip you. Sometimes they do.
• The average professional player makes $70,000 a year (compared to $1.9 million for the NFL) and spends half his game fetching water and food from a moving car so that someone else try to win.
• You need to be one of the best in your home country just to get a job. Cycling's top level, the UCI Protour, only has 18 teams with 30 riders each (540 riders total, from any country in the world) compared to the 32 NFL teams with 53 players each (1696 players total, mostly from the US).
• The best defense truly is a good offense. The only way to win is to get to the finish line first.

Staying on Track

How many people do you know who, at some point in their lives, said they were going to lose weight? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Out of them, how many succeeded in losing their goal amount? 5% 10%? Out of them how many managed to keep that weight off for a year or more?

My point here is that most people have a hard time losing weight at all, an even harder time losing as much as they want, and yet even more difficulty in staying at that lower weight.

Despite the difficulty, I intend to be one of them.

Like most successful projects, it's about having a decent plan followed by solid execution (and perhaps a few adjustments along the way). For me, accountability is also a big factor. I need to have someone who I tell about my successes and failures. Having to tell someone that I knew what I needed to do but didn't do it goes a long way.

This blog has helped at that. My friends on Traineo.com have been a huge help too. Now, I've come up with a way to track everything I'm doing and be able to report on it.

As I've written before, my major goal for next year is to get my 40K (24.8 mile) time trial time under an hour (59:59 is just fine). I also want to get my weight down about 15 pounds over the next 6 months (which is well under a pound a week).

In order to meet these goals, I came up with a list of daily and weekly tasks that I need to do. I broke those tasks into weight-loss related and fitness-related. Let's face it: it's totally possible that I could increase my threshold power by 10% but not lose a pound. Or I could lose all the weight but gain no power at all.

I then weighted them so that ones that are more important get a little more emphasis. While I want to spend at least 1 of my trainer days each week on the time trial bike, it's more important that I at least got on the trainer to begin with. I also added bonus and penalty items that might help (or hurt) on a given target. Taken together, they will give me a score for the week.

I'm not off to a great start this week, partially since I did not plan to start this seriously for another couple weeks. Still, my weight loss has been on target. I'm down to 185.0 now (from 187.0 two weeks ago).

This is the chart that I came up with and the first week's results (click on it to enlarge it enough to read):

It's not perfect, but I'm sure I'll improve it with time!