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. 

 

My October (and September) on the bike

Numbers from Sept & Oct

358 km in Sept, 380 km in October

14 rides in Sept /15 rides in Oct

2 ascents of Castle Hill in Sept/0 in Oct

53.3 km my longest ride

Now on the surface, these don't look fantastic given I did 525 km in August, but I am still feeling very positive about things. For a few reasons:

*I'm now up to over 2500 km this year

*I've started the FTP builder program on Zwift. That's about building strength & the ability to maintain it for 60 mins. It's not about doing massive kms. And I can tell you the sessions hurt.

*By switching to Zwifting in air conditioning, I've swapped across to something that you can actually do during the heat & humidity of an NQ summer.

*My weight is now below the century. (99.6kg)

*I've also started swimming on Saturdays. A bit of cross training is a good thing. Admittedly my swimming isn't great either, but again its something I can keep up over summer

FTP Test

 214W, as measured on Zwift.

I've started an FTP builder training program, so it will be be interesting to see how that changes. FTP stands for Functional Threshold Power. FTP is the average number of watts that a rider can sustain in an hour, and acts as a measure of fitness.

With a change of seasons, comes a change in training

 The heat has arrived early here in North Queensland. Given the winters here are so damn warm (I think I wore arm warmers on one ride over "winter"), and no-one locally is excited by the arrival of hot water. 

What actually does hot mean? Well this week ahead is forecast as a solid week of 32 & 32 °C maximum temperatures (that's 90 fahrenheit for you metric challenged types). The real killers though are the minimum temperatures and the humidity. It's only dropping to 24 °C at night. And the humidity is bloody high.  The upshot being an hour after dawn it can be close to 30 °C with 80% humidity. Ugh.

You do get a break from the heat & humidity when it rains, but when it rains it tends to be biblical rather than the odd splash of rain.

Not exactly conducive to riding long & hard. Which is what I need.

The good news I have a cunning plan. 

Well to be fair it's not overly cunning - I'm planning to use Zwift lots over summer. I've got a smart trainer, and it's set up in a nicely air conditioned room. 

 

 

Now if those two sentences made no sense, Zwift is an app you run on your laptop or table which is designed to give you a fun virtual riding experience (it looks a bit like you are riding through a video game). Zwift then connects with your smart trainer to which you attached your bike. The Smart Trainer and the Zwift app not only record your riding metrics, but the two also combine to give you a real world riding experience. So if you're going uphill on Zwift, the resistance on the smart trainer gets harder, and it feels just like you are going uphill. Same goes for downhill. And the system is rather clever - it not only adjusts the resistance according to how steep the road is, but it also changes very quickly. Here's a good intro vid if you'd like to learn more. 

There's all sorts of rides & routes that have been set up in the Zwift world, ranging from easy flat rides through to brutal climbs like the Alpe Du Swift (a clone of the iconic Alpe D'Huez climb). Here's actually a vid comparing how good a job Zwift does of matching the real world experience (based around said climb).

I really like riding outdoor with mates, but there's a lot to love about Zwift:

• It's weather proof
• You can ride exactly the terrain you want as hard as you want whenever you want
• Because I'm riding at home, it fits in with life of the family better
• No flats 
• You can sleep in a bit longer
  

There's even a number of training programs you can follow that are part of the app. And I think I'm going to start off with one of the plans.

Now it's not like Zwift is only known to people who know the secret handshake - it's widely known as used in the cycling community. Hardly uber-cunning. I do though think many people use it as a way to compliment their outdoor riding rather than their training foudation. Let's see how it works out.

Something different: Mountain Biking

 So on Saturday I gave mountain biking a crack.

There's a pretty big mountain biking scene here in Townsville, but up until Saturday I'd stuck to the road. Not really sure why I've only been a roadie up until now. I did fall in love with cycling watching the Tour de France, so maybe that flavored my cycling efforts.

I had two good friends, Sue and Lee, who were keen to take me out and show me the trails. So I blagged a hardtail MTB off another mate, and set sail to Pallaranda, a semi-isolated suburb of Townsville wedged between the ocean, the mangroves, the wetlands and the bush. Pallaranda is fertile mountain biking country - a web of trails has been established across the local escarpments, and there's everything from beginners trails through to quite technical terrain. 

Sue and Lee are regulars on the trails, but they took it easy on me and we kept to the beginner friendly terrain. That said, there was no shortage of rocks, gravel and sand, so I got something of a feel for what mountain biking is about.

 

The bike was pretty easy to come to terms with. It was running 3x8 Shimano XT  gearing. It had a set of decent shocks on the fork.  I was running 2 inch tyres, 26 inch wheels. Old school MTB though.

Newer bikes, like Lee and Sue's duel suspension bikes, run larger wheels and much wider tyres (2.4 inch width, Lee's 27.5 inch diameter, Sue's 29 inch). New school gives you a more comfy, smooth and grippy setup. The duel suspension also means you soak up the lumps a bit more nicely.

 Even so, I was quite amazed at what my old school MTB coped and coped well with. There were a couple of gravely bits and rocky patches that I was quite nervous pedalling into, but the MTB just sailed thru. I was still riding like I was on a roadie.  

Lee & Sue also ran 1x12 gearing, which makes loads of sense. When you're dealing with rough terrain, you need your shifts to be crisp and smooth. Not exactly the strength of the front derailleur. I spend the whole trip in the middle ring as I had zero confidence in front derailleur shifting. It just screamed dropped chain.

About halfway through the ride I stopped being quite so worried about the gravely bits and rocky patches, trusted the bike and started enjoying where I was riding. We went from beaches to mangrove swamps to wetlands. Bird life was plentiful. It was, in a word, beautiful. Sue was able to pick out a rather cool Frogmouth when we were rolling through a lightly wooded area toward the end of the ride. All very cool. 

I'd racked up about 22km when we got back to the cars. Mountain Biking (IMO) isn't though about epic kilometers or building your FTP. For me is was about transplanting something I really love into a super enjoyable setting. In this case with two great friends. 

I see more mountain biking in my future.

Benchmarking: Castle Hill

Following on from the last post, it make sense that I benchmark myself against the other individual stage of the Tour of the North (v2021). This one an ascent of Castle Hill.

 

Castle Hill sits on the fringe of the Townsville CBD and the Townsville beachfront. It's bloody close to being a mountain - just a few feet short. 

There's a road that goes to the top - it winds its way around the hill. 2.5 Km long. It's popular with the tourists and locals. You get great views of the city, Magnetic Island and surrounding area, and it's a solid 60 minute walk up and down, so it's a good exercise spot. The road surface is pretty good and the car traffic very light.

 

It's also popular with the local cyclists. The rest of Townsville is largely flat, so it's pretty much the only decent climb in town. 

It's not though what I'd call an easy climb.

Here's the segment for the climb on Strava. 2.55 Km, 7.5% average gradient. It's far though from a consistent 7.5%. The first half of the climb is a series of short ramps (of up to 11%) with a number of flatter sections to provide some relief. After the last flatter section (which is known as the saddle) the remaining 900 m of the hill is a constant 10% apart from the final 100 m which jumps to 14%. 

It's that last 900 m that makes Castle hard work. Double digit gradients are never easy. It also limits how hard to can afford to go on the bottom section of the hill. Push too hard in the bottom, and you'll pay for it bigtime up the top.

So how did the D-graders go in the Tour of the North? Well again focusing on Knight-Hanson-Mort: Knight crushed out a 10.15, Hanson 12.01, Mort 12.41 (as a reminder Knight won the tour, Mort 2nd, Hanson 3rd). 

And me? Well today I punched out 18.15. 

That's the sort of gap that make you suck your teeth a bit. 8 minutes? That's an eye watering amount of time to make up. Well there is some good news on this front:

• This was only my 5th Castle Hill since embarking on my cunning plan to win the Tour of the North next year. My first climb was 21.03. So I've already found nearly 3 minutes.
• The time when your weight hurts your cycling most is when you are climbing. And as of last weigh in I'm still over the century. Using the rather clever Bike Calculator website, if I can drop from 100 kilos to 90 by raceday, I'll be almost 90 seconds faster up the climb 
• Segment misalignment. The actual climb used in the Tour of the North isn't actually perfectly matched to the Strava segment (the start-finishes might be out by 30-50 m at either end). And that make a big difference when you're sitting on 10 km/h. Thru comparisons of race times (across a number of grades) and a few of Strava segments, I'm confident in saying that's about another 15 seconds in my favour.
  

So if I bank the weight loss and the segment misalignment I'm back to a 16.30. The rest though will have to come from hard graft on the bike.

 

Benchmarking: the Prologue

So as discussed below, the Tour of the North (v2021) ran an opening prologue. A prologue is the cycling equivalent of an appetiser. It's almost always done as a time trial - that's a solo race against the clock. Riders start at one minute intervals. It's less a tactical event, rather one of measuring raw horsepower.

That said, it was a 7 Km ride. Far from massive, but that's a 9 minute effort even for the hitters in A-grade. It would be very easy to go too hard, blow up, record a crap time, and stuff your legs for the rest of the weekend. My feeling is most would have gone at 90% not full gas.

Here's the start finish point. It's out on the fringes of suburbia in Townsville.

The course is pretty much flat. It gently drags ever so slightly uphill on the way out to the turnaround. Always pushing into a headwind on the way out as well. The road surface is good, though a fairly coarse chip.

Here's the Strava segment. 

D Grade was won by Mario Romeo in 11.30. Probably more relevant are the times of Mort (11.36), Knight (11.55) and Hansen (12.15). These guys ended up filling the podium at the end of the Tour, and were there or abouts in all the stages.

So my time this morning? 13.33. 

I was pretty happy with that. I think I've got a lot of improving to do in my fitness. I actually had to stop pedalling at a few points and just coast, to gather myself up, recover a bit and go again. That will have cost me time.

I also wasn't able to sit in the drops the whole way. That's the most aerodynamic position on the bike. But it's also the least comfortable place to sit. I did quite well on this front (I did around two thirds of the way out in the drops), but if I can go the whole way out come Tour of the North 2022, that'll save me another 15 seconds (you're about 2 kph faster in the drops). Admittedly that's less critical downwind but it still helps. So if I can do the full journey in the drops, I'd be about 40 seconds faster.

Take off 10 kilos and that finds me another 15 seconds

 (It's bloody interesting to play with variables around weight, where you sit on the handlebars, etc with Bike Calculator)

So just through weight loss and improvements in my flexibility, I'm already back to a 12.38. The rest would need to come thru improved fitness, strength & endurance, but I reckon that's achievable over 10 months.