Saturday, January 10, 2015

The Agony and the Ecstasy

This week was the start of life more or less back to normal: going back to the office after several weeks away, getting back into a morning riding routine, and going to the gym at lunch three days a week.

Being back into a routine, I can get my diet back on track more easly. It's hard to do when every day is different.

I've been riding as consistently as I could, so the riding was no big deal, but I haven't been lifting much at all since Thanksgiving. And of course, me being me, I didn't start out very easy.

I decided to start over with lighter weights for the first month, not wanting to risk aggravating my shoulder again and at least trying to give my body a chance to adjust to lifting again.

My first day back in the gym was Monday. On Tuesday, I could barely walk because my legs were so sore. By Wednesday, I was hurting even worse and by then my arms and shoulders were sore too. I still went to the gym and managed to get in something resembling a decent workout. I actually felt a little better afterwards. By Friday, most of the soreness was gone and I was able to get in a complete workout.

For the first month, I'm planning to do the same 8-lift routine that I was doing before that works pretty much my entire body. I'm not looking to gain muscle this month, just get some of my strength and durability back.

My weight is starting to drift back down. Right after Christmas, I was up to 175 pounds. I'm down to 174.2 now. I'm nowhere near the 165 that I wanted to be, but at least I'm moving in the right direction now.

Now that I'm riding more regularly, my power numbers are starting to improve. Not by a lot, just a few watts here and there, but at least I'm improving now.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Not Exactly at my Best

My fitness is kind of bottoming out right now.

My weight is up to 175 pounds and my body fat is at 18.5%. My goals set back in October were to be down to 165 pounds and 12% body fat, so I'm not even close.

I'll be honest: I did not eat well over the holidays. I ate every cookie and candy in sight.

My threshold power is at 245 watts on my road bike. Keeping in mind that my power output on the time trial bike is about 90% of what I can do on the road bike, my peak threshold on my TT bike last year was 260 watts (which equals about 285 on the road bike).  In order to hit my target goal for this year, I need to reach about 280 watts on the TT bike (equal to about 310 watts on the road bike). So I'm about 65 watts below where I need to be, pretty much requiring a 20% gain. Ouch.


My training has been pretty sporadic with lots of other things going on in life. I've been able to maintain the fitness that I had in mid-October, but in years past I've been making major gains this time of year. That's not the case this year.

The good news is that with the holidays over, I should be able to regain the consistency that's necessary to start improving, but I may have too far to go to reach my original goals. This may not be a big racing year for me.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

Scattered but focused

The last few months, my training has been a bit of a mess.

I was sick before we went on vacation, went on vacation, and got sick again when we got back. Shelli had major surgery a couple weeks ago and I spent several days afterwards taking care of her and not wanting to leave her alone.

In the coming weeks, we've got a wedding to go to and will be visiting family for Christmas.

I've also got a bit of an issue with an old injury, a torn rotator cuff in my right shoulder from a speedskating crash in 2003, that's stopped me from doing a lot of upper-body weight lifting.

Putting it all on a calendar, I will miss 35 days of training over three months.  Not exactly my best record.

As a result, I'm having to train in short, 8 to 10 day training blocks in between breaks. For those short time spans, I'm training very intensely, aiming to be really in need of a break by the end.

It's worked pretty well so far as a way to maintain some basic, but I'm definitely not in great racing shape. Last year at this time I was down about 5% from the year before. This year I'm down another 10% from that lower level. Not good.

I'm starting to think that some of the more ambitious goals that I had for next season might need to be put on hold (especially the 56:00 40K, which was really a stretch requiring an average of 27 mph for 24.8 miles). I won't be able to say for sure until January or February when I can really see where I'm at.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Blog about being sick as a dog on a log in the fog

Of course, just as I start getting into a good training rhythm, I get sick.

It came on gradually. It started Tuesday with a sore throat. Wednesday started the occasional cough. I kept hoping it was some kind of late-season allergy. Thursday I felt like I was being stabbed in the throat when I tried to talk. Today, I'm in full-on cold mode.

I've done a couple of light rides just to help me feel better mentally, but I haven't lifted since Monday and I have not done any serious interval work all week.

The timing could not be worse. With Shelli's surgery in just over a week, she cannot get sick right now. So I'm trying my best to keep my germs to myself.


Saturday, November 8, 2014

The More Something Changes....

So, yes, I've renamed the blog.

When I started this blog 5 years ago, the name Fat2Fast made sense. I was 200 pounds and 30% body fat and trying to get back into shape. After almost 2 years of near-zero training, my fitness was pretty low and I was not fast by any stretch of the imagination.

The name really doesn't make sense for me anymore. Like any cyclist, I'm always obsessed with my weight, but it's really not my big concern now. I hope to not gain that much weight back in the future and, let's be honest, most of my stories are more focused on training or racing, not on diet or weight loss tactics.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm currently working on changing my body composition by lowering my body fat a few percentage points, but I'm not anywhere near fat anymore and I'm already pretty fast, even when I'm "out of shape".

So, I renamed the blog. It will break everyone's favorites/bookmarks, but most of my traffic was from Facebook when I posted a new link anyway, so I don't think it will cause many problems.

Welcome, everyone, to Adventures in Training and Racing!

Saturday, October 4, 2014

Tuning the results

When I started the new training program, I had expected to lose weight for the first few weeks before I started working on muscle gain. Against my expectations, I was very slightly gaining weight. Granted, it appeared to be mostly muscle but I was supposed to be losing, not gaining. I knew I was over a little bit on my intake, but not by this much.

So I went all the way back to the beginning and recalculated everything. It turns out I was way off.

I had calculated my calorie intake for maintaining weight. Oops.

So, I reran the calculations to lose a little bit of weight and adjusted my diet to match. My weight started dropping almost immediately.

This week was also the third week of the training cycle, making it the most intense week when I am already showing signs of fatigue. Happily, I met every power and weight target I had this week.

As part of the third-week plan, I did one workout at the gym that matches what I will be doing next month. It's partially so I can see how it feels and partially so I have a better idea of how much weight I can handle so. I hit a few shockingly high numbers considering that I've only been back in the gym for a month or so: 6 reps of 225 pounds on the squat and 12 reps of 630 pounds on the incline leg press. I can only imagine what I'll be able to do next month when I'm actually focusing on heavier weights to start gaining muscle.

But first, I get a really easy training week because we're on vacation!!

This week's numbers: (in comparison to last week)
Weight: 171 (down 1.0 pounds from last week)
Body fat: 17.7% (same as last week)

Upper Arm: 12 3/4" (no change, but looking more defined)
Chest: 35 3/4" (down 1/4")
Waist: 34 (down 1/4" from last week, down 1 1/4" since Sept 1)
Thigh: 24 1/2" (same)


Sunday, September 28, 2014

Settling In

It's week #2 of foundation training and I'm starting to get used to the new routine a bit.

My legs are still sore more often than not, but I'm still hitting my power targets in my riding workouts and I'm able to finish the lifting workouts with a slightly higher total each time.

One thing I love about lifting is that it's a pretty clear and numerical thing that's really easy to tell if I lifted just a little more, maybe an extra 5 pounds in a lift or an extra rep in a set. It's a very different kind of work than cycling is. An intense cycling workout leaves you breathing hard and sweating. An intense lifting workout leaves you slightly shaky and not entirely able to move right.

I have one more week of training before my first recovery week, which I'm already excited for. After that, I start focusing my training on gaining muscle mass.

Since my body weight is climbing slightly at the same time as my body fat is going down, it seems that's already happening a bit, so I can't wait to see what I can do when that's my real focus.

I'm still struggling with my diet. I'm logging everything and I'm just eating a little too much. I think I've got a plan to fix that, so we'll see how it goes this week.

This week's numbers: (in comparison to last week)
Weight: 172.0 (up 0.2 pounds)
Body fat:17.7% (down 0.1%)
Lean Mass:  141.5 pounds (up 0.3 pounds)
Fat Mass: 30.5 pounds (down 0.1 pounds)

Upper Arm: 12 3/4" (no change)
Chest: 36 (down 1/2")
Waist: 34 1/4" (down 1/4")
Thigh: 24 1/2" (no change)

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Foundation 1-1

I can happily say that I've survived the first week of the first cycle of the foundation phase, putting Hunter's plans into action.

It's an interesting mix of 3 days of lifting plus 5 days of riding (on days I'm lifting, the riding is pretty light). 

I'm really happy that I started weight training a few weeks ago so that I am past all the muscle soreness and can focus just on training, not limping around in agony. For the first cycle, I'm doing relatively light weights so that my tendons and ligaments can toughen up a bit for the heavier loads to come later. I'm doing 4 sets of primary lifts (legs) and 3 sets of secondary lifts (everything else), with 12 to 15 reps of 8 different lifts that cover pretty much the whole body with both push and pull multi-joint movements, preferring free weights and avoiding single-joint machines as much as I can.

I'm really enjoying being back in the gym. It's something different that, like cycling, allows me to measure progress pretty easily.

The riding is easier than I'm used to during racing season, but it's not exactly easy. My major goal is to retain as much fitness as I can (maybe even gain a tiny bit) while I'm working on changing my body composition. That means doing a little cadence work, a little tempo/sweet spot, and a little VO2 and anaerobic capacity work. I used to think of foundation training as just a bunch of zone 2 work... that's certainly not the case this year! It reminds me more of what I was doing in the fall of 2012, when I was doing one of Hunter's off-the-shelf plans... and that led to a pretty great season in 2013.

I'm already seeing small changes in my body measurements.

This week's numbers:
Weight: 171.6 pounds
Body fat: 17.8%
Chest: 36 1/2"
Upper Arm: 12 3/4"
Waist: 34 1/2"
Thigh: 24 1/2"

Note: The weight and body fat are averages from the entire week to reduce the impact of outliers.

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Early Goals

It's that time of year again to look ahead for next year, pick some goals, and start training towards them.

I think the big lessons that I learned this year are that I prefer to pick my own races (no series-type goals) and that I need numerical performance goals to train towards and use those performances to get results, not to aim directly for the results. You can train towards a power-at-duration goal much more easily than you can train towards "win this race" because you never know who will be there and what their fitness level will be. I did that much better in 2013 than I did this year.

In previous posts I've mentioned that I plan to rework my body composition, aiming to change my current 171 at 17.5% into 164 at 12% by getting into the gym. Of course, I am looking at more cycling-specific goals as well. Here are a few possibilities for next year:

Church Creek Time Trial
This 40K (24.8 mile) race on a pan-flat course was my primary goal for 2013.

My goal that year was simple: finish in under an hour. I far exceeded that goal, finishing in 57:42, a averaging 25.8 mph and a power of 260 watts.

For 2015, I'm aiming for about a 10% increase in power to 285 watts. That should let me finish just under 56:00 (55:54 to be exact), a speed of 26.6 mph. Looking at results from recent years, that would put me in 3rd or 4th place.

That gives me definite numbers to aim for throughout the winter. If I achieve them, I will have a great a fitness level that will help with other goals.

I also like that this race is held twice: once in June and once in August, so I have two chances to try it. The second one is a bit more competitive because it is the Mid-Atlantic Bike Racing time trial championship, a multi-state championship that covers Maryland, Delaware, DC, and eastern Virginia.


Philly Time Trial
This 8.1 mile, mostly flat race on West River Drive in early June has been one of my favorites for almost as long as I've been riding and I've ridden the course more times than I could count. My best result in this race was in 2013, when I was in 4th place with a time of 18:09 with an average 26.7 mph at 284 watts. 

If I can improve that power by the same 10% as my 40K, I would be at a blazing 312 watts, which should put me around 17:35 (assuming the winds aren't too crazy), an average of 27.6 mph. In most of the recent years, that would be a winning time.

PA State Time Trial
While neither the course nor the date has been definitely picked for next year yet, it will most likely be roughly 25 miles over rolling hills (since that's the terrain for most of PA) in June or July.

The rolling course will work against me. Even with the weight loss, I'll be a good bit heavier than other riders that I'll be competing against, most of whom will be in the 140 to 150 pound range. Still, the power output increase that I'm working towards should help me get a decent result.

I'd love to see a Top 3 finish this year,  but it will depend on the course. Hopefully that will be a stepping stone to win it in 2016.

Other Test Races
I'll want to do a few races just to make sure that I'm making the progress I need in order to reach my primary goals. That will probably mean doing some of the NJ time trials that were primary goals for me this year. Races like Allamuchy (8.1 miles) and the NJ State TT (25 miles) could be good races for me to see just where I'm at. I'll probably do a few others just for fun, but I'll be picking them based on what the weather is like and whether I feel like driving that weekend.

You might notice that I'm looking at three state championship events. It's not entirely by accident... I'm doing them to get information. As a long-term dream goal, I'm looking at what it will take to finish on the podium of (or win) all three races in the future.

I'm pretty comfortable with these goals for 2015. I have specific numbers to hit for my weight, body fat percentage, 20-minute power and 60-minute power. Taken together, they should lead to solid racing results.

Now I just have to do the work to reach them!

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Sampler Platter

With the season over, I'm taking a bit of a break from structured training. That doesn't mean that I'm not training, though.

The best way I can describe my training right now is like a sampler platter: it's a little bit of everything, just seeing what I really like and what I don't want to do if I can avoid it.

I'm doing a tempo ride here and there, a VO2 interval or two, and a few long, easy rides in no real order or with no real goals. Just doing what I feel like.

I'm also getting back into the gym and lifting a bit. It's nothing major yet. I'm just trying to get my body used to lifting again and get past the major muscle soreness. So far, I like my new gym and I'm getting a feel for which exercises I'm better to do with free weights (and inside those, dumbbells or barbells) and which ones I prefer to just do on a machine.

Overall, it's nice to just take some pressure off before I start building for next year.