Weekly Catchup

More terrible weather, mainly horrible winds have put a bit of a crimp on riding over the week, though I did get to do a pretty serious ride on Sunday 2nd. Actually, the sun shone for the entire ride, and if it hadn’t been blowing a 20mph wind it’d actually been a really nice day. As it was, the last 25km was into the teeth of the wind, I met the man with the hammer with 10k to go, and by the time I got into the house I’d barely enough energy to hold my head in both hands.

I also did a bit of an experiment with the ride, filming most of it with an action-camera. Just for fun, I’ve uploaded ’em to Kinomap as well. See what you think…

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

As per usual, there’s also the ride details on Strava here

Monday was pretty much a recovery ride, Tuesday was a solid 30km Base ride, Wednesday I took a rest day (it was pissing down – well, I say down, more horizontally really.   Thursday I managed to step things up a little 43km of base riding.

Which brings us to Friday.   Friday was finally brighter again, though the ridiculous winds were still much in evidence.   Couldn’t face the roadbike, but didn’t want to waste a dry day, so jumped on the MTB instead.   Once again, I decided to give the ActionCamera a go.

(watch for the mudsplash round about 5:25 into the vid…  the water was a LITTLE deeper than expected – as in over the wheelhubs.   Soggy toes for the rest of the ride, as the only way to get through the lake was to carry on pedalling.)

And, so to today.   The winds were even worse today – a good 30mph with gusts of double that.  But, it was bright and dry, so walkies were the order of the day.

Also this week, we’ve had some Schwagg come in – 2 pairs of Planet-X Flanders Softshell Gloves (lovely stuff – brilliant spring and autumn gloves, which are also perfect for local walks in winter.) and, a pair of wierdies…  Planet-X 365 Winter Gloves.   Or as I affectionately call ’em  “the Spock Gloves”.

they may look a bit iffy, but they’re bloody warm…

Another 30km into the training plan

Week 2 ride 1, 30km Sub Z4 said the masterplan.   30.88km and an average of z3.2 said the Garmin.   Mission Accomplished – though it was 50/50 at one point when it started raining.   But when it stopped 2 minutes later, all was well again and I managed a half decent ride.   It all seems just a little gentle to be honest, but I’m sure it’ll ramp up a bit as the weeks progress…

Strav for todays ride is here.

I’ve also got back into the whole situp and pressups routine again over last couple of days.  Still such pathetically low numbers of each I’m not about to mention them in public, but the numbers are building, little by little.  200 and 100 respectively by easter ??   Who knows.

Training Program Day 7 workout 4

Active recovery it said on the tin.    Well – I got the active part of it, but I didn’t seem to be able to keep the intensity down on the hillier stuff – either I’m going to have to start doing these rides on the trainer, or I’m going to have to find somewhere less hilly to do them than the regular loop allows.

Ride stuff for this one is here

Training Program Day 6 workout 3

Long Steady Distance was called for today – 80km or more ideally.    Fortunately, the weather was fairly kind to me and I managed to knock in a good solid 88.9km worth.

What surprised me was just how tired I was by the end of it – obviously the Christmas seasonal excesses coupled with a month or two of shorter rides has taken it’s toll.   Not Good.

 

Training Program Day 2 workout 1

Yeah – strange I know, but the first day was a scheduled day off…  presumably to let you sit and read what you’re getting yourself into, then shit yourself.

Actually, it’s not THAT bad, it’s basically a fairly gentle Century Ride Builder program – the basic workouts are scheduled pretty “hard and fast” with the week commencing on a Tuesday (yes, I know,I know…) with a rest day, followed by a base session Wednesday, a gap on Thursday, and another base on Friday, gap Saturday, long ride Sunday and recovery ride Monday.   The distance and duration of these rides basically ramp up for the next 8 weeks.   Along with these static rides, there are a few “discretionary” sessions – once a month, there’s a FTP test to drop in, ideally on one of the “gap” days, and also a number of higher intensity sessions, again of rising training stress which are more specific to the Turbo – so, to make the most of outdoor riding, if it’s poor weather on a “base session” day, it’s okay to “nudge” the base onwards to the gap day, just making sure that there’s never more than 3 days consecutive of riding.    It sounds a bit messy, but it’s the only kind of plan that’ll work for me, a reactive one…

Here’s hoping the weather is relatively kind – doing some of the “base” sessions on the Turbo holds little appeal.

Anyhoo – to todays ride…     Strava for it is here – basically, just a 30km ride, trying as hard as possible to keep power at Z4 or under for the duration.    Didn’t QUITE manage it, frankly, it’s a wee bit hilly around here to be able to do that for a big lad – but less than 11 minutes of the 1h33m ride were over the cut-off point, basically just the odd short sharp rise that given how much I weigh, I simply CAN’T get over even in bottom gear without pushing more torque through the cranks than i’m allowed!.

 

Excellent Weekend

Saturday just had to be a day off the bike – for the simple reason that I’d ridden 5 days on the bounce.   Annoyingly it coincided with what was probably the best weather conditions of the week…   Seemed a crying shame to waste it, so strapped on my walking boots intending to go for a walk for a hour or so…   then I came over all Forrest Gump, and at every point where I could turn back towards home, I sort of carried on.   3 Hours and 8.5 miles later I decided it was a little cold and getting dark, so I really aught to go home and have a brew…

Sunday dawned cold and Icy.  So cold that I actually held off setting out for my ride until 10am hoping it’d warm up a bit.   If anything, the temperature dropped.    As I left the house the Garmin Read 21°c (ambient in the house).   For the next mile and a half, the temperature readout dropped like a stone, eventually settling at around -1°c, where it remained for the next hour or so.   In order to try and keep on the bike, I decided to ride my usual route in reverse, hoping that the shaded/backroad traffic free bit that is usually the outward leg would have had chance to thaw out a little before I got there.   No such luck, everywhere where the road was in shade was still covered in frost.   I don’t think I’ve gone so gentle around corners for such a long distance in my life…   Probably accounts for the slightly high IF rating of the ride, as I was so slow in the corners I had been pretty much sprinting back out of them to get some semblance of speed back into the ride, and some warmth into my body!.    The last 5 miles or so of the ride was probably the easiest, as I picked up the back of a local “clubrun”, was welcomed aboard for a bit of a rest (must have looked rough by then for them to offer) and spent 5 miles dodging the wind and trying to remember not to touch the brakes as I was on something with working disks, and the rest of the lads were riding their winter hacks and rim brakes.    Still – it was nice to actually ride in company for a while, and also to realise that I probably could hold my own with that clubrun for the full duration of a ride (the power figures courtesy of the Stages Powermeter  for that section are not dissimilar to what I’d done for the rest of the ride, riding solo.

Strava for this ride is here, and if any of the lads from the Calder Clarion who put up with the fat wheelsucker in Black are reading this…   thanks for the wheel gents – I was in dire need.

Feeling Much Better…

Wind Dropped a bit, my Breathing improved, It didn’t rain – life is good, and the “moving speed average” is back up a little.

All things considered, I’ve had worse days.

Strava for the ride available here

Short one again…

Partly due to still not being 100% after the headcold, and partly because it was blowing 15mph winds gusting to double that…   went out for the simple reason it wasn’t raining, because at this time of year, frankly – that’s a good enough reason.

Strava for the ride is here.

The power figures pretty much explain what the weather was like – 24% of the ride in Threshold or above… and still only getting barely above 20kph as an overall average…

Here’s hoping the more frequent riding has a positive effect on the scales tomorrow….

Outside, Wind in my Hair…

… snot rockets flying all around.   Actually felt up to riding outside today, and I’m glad I did.   Was still pretty windy – just concentrated on keeping the HR under check and not getting too far out of breath on things.   Surprisingly, the power figures came out pretty well – maybe the rest over christmas has given me a chance to regroup a bit, and if I can just shake the dreaded lurgie before that takes the edge off things again I may be coming into the early season on a bit of an up…

In other news, I also got a bit of training related Schwagg from the UPS man today…

Should be …  Interesting, trying to match cadence with “das panzerwagen”…

Finally…

… the rain stopped and I could get out today.   Nothing spectacular, but I think that the cabin fever from yesterday resulted in me going a little Banzai…    turned into a pretty hard tempo to threshold session, as borne out by the figures fron the Garmin…   TSS 118.7 IF 0.923 VI 1.105 – Tough ride, hope they’re not ALL going to hurt this much in 2014!

Strava for this one is here