New Years Eve - Time to Reflect

Dec 31. Good time to reflect on my efforts to date.

Racked up 3145 km for the year. Keep in mind I was sitting at 990 km of July 24. 2155 km in the last 5 months. 

Loads more vertical as well. 1900 m at the end of July. 16000 m at the end of the year.

I'm also 4 kilos lighter. 103 to 99 kegs.

All of this sounds good, but I really now need to go harder. Want to have 5000 km in the legs by Tour of the North. That's around 200 km/week.

Up until the  end of Feb that'll hafta be on Zwift, but I'll try convert to road once the weather starts to cool down (and dry out). From then on it will be a lot of bunch rides, a lot of hills.

Now if I'm doing that the weight should follow. I'm sitting between 8500-9000 kJ per day in terms of diet, so that piece is under control.

Am I on track? I'd say kinda. I'd prefer to have ridden more and further, I'd prefer to be skinnier and lighter. I think I'm still in the window. But I do need to lift.

Kicking the Cat

So in my last post I talked about my (kinda) completion of the FTP builder program in Zwift, and that I soon would retest my FTP to see how much it had improved.

Retest completed. Before FTP builder I tested my FTP at 214W. My FTP after FTP builder. 214W.

Fucken' &#)&^#^%$^%*&^&$&%#$@#@^%$#$. &#$#$%*&^(*&&^^(*^&%^$%^$%$%#$@$E. Was not happy.  5 weeks of slogging it out, for a 0.0% change in my FTP. Fucken fantastic. Now I did also jump on the scales, and I had lost a kilo over the 5 weeks. So if I look at Watts/Kg, it went from 2.14 to 2.16. Woo fucking hoo. 

I wasn't sure what I was hoping for, but it was something. This was nothing.

Then on reflection over the next few days, I released I'd basically done the FTP builder program minus the really hard bits. Completing the really hard bits was probably the key to improving. But that was still annoying. The training was all meant to be customized to my FTP, and when I stopped short on sessions, I'd ridden to a standstill. I gave 100% out there.

Then I read this article on Rouleur. For those who can't be arsed clicking, it basically makes the case that training indoor is harder than outdoor. And they put that down to a combination of inferior cooling indoors and a lack of mental stimulation and variety indoors. 

But I hear you cry "but you tested your FTP indoors". Well that's true, but cooling and mental stimulation aren't likely to me massive issues on a one off 15 minute ramp FTP test as opposed to the regular 90 minute sessions.

So Rouleur actually recommend you dropping your FTP by 20 for indoor training. So that's what I've done.

I also signed on for the Gran Fondo training plan on Zwift. The plan is largely based around improving your endurance (which I also need to improve). I've signed up for the 8 week plan.

So far I'm 2 weeks in. The sessions are hard but finishable. I think that's better. Here's a comparison of rides before and after the FTP change:

Here's what a session looked like with the FTP set at 215:  https://www.strava.com/activities/6412400779

Same session with the FTP set at 195: https://www.strava.com/activities/6426994163

 (keep in mind they were over two very different courses, so you can't really compare distance, average speed, etc)

With the FTP set lower, I went 37% longer on the bike, and my total work went from 358 to 445 kJ. Both good things. My average FTP admittedly went from to 175 W to 158 W. I guess it comes down to what is better - a crazy hard 30 minute ride, or a hard 50 minute ride. If the races I was targeting were a 30 minute epic blast, maybe the short hard sessions would be better. I'm hoping though it's longer more enduro stuff that helps me more.

End of November - FTP builder completed (nearly, kinda anyway)

 So still spinning away here. November has been almost exclusively Zwift rides. Racked up 18 rides, and 379km for the month.

The FTP builder program has been interesting. The rides are all about hitting a certain wattages at a certain cadence for various intervals. So for example the next 8 minutes will be 190 watts at 95 RPM. The times, the candences, the watts they all vary interval to interval. So my FTP tested at 215 watts pre-training program. Most of the time I was sitting at wattages of either 115, 155, 190 or 215. 115 was recovery. Cadences varied from 60 thru to 105. 85 was regarded as standard.

So gradually thru program the the intervals would get longer, the recoveries shorter. The idea being to steadily overload me, and I'd adjust.  Well that was the theory.

I've done all the sessions, but I haven't completed all the sessions. About week 4 the sessions started getting really bloody hard. And I'd ride to a standstill after 50, 45 minutes (the sessions were typically scheduled to run for 70 odd minutes). And I'd be well stuffed when I slid off the bike. 

Annoyingly the session would be deemed as incomplete (though to be fair, I guess it's accurate). I've got one more session to do to complete the FTP builder program, though I'm not sure exactly what that means at this point (given I've already failed to complete quite a few sessions).

What i can confidently say is I've ridden 4 hard sessions every week for the last 6 weeks. I'll test my FTP soon to see if that's improved, and will also check the scales.