Exactly like riding a bike

After some thought, this is what I'd like to get done:

1) Increase in distance travelled solo
2) Lose more weight
3) Another year of racing and more structured racing training.

I don't have a yearly distance goal in mind, it'll be whatever it is. I would, however, like to do some longer endurance spins. Up to now the furthest I've gone solo is 250km. I would like to get up to at least 322km(200 miles) this year and take it from there. This would be towards the latter end of the year, but while there is still a bit of daylight.

The weight drop so far has been ok but I'd like to get it down further. The aim would be to get to 75kg from my current weight of 81kg. It will require a hell of a lot more discipline than I've displayed to date. I'm hopeful, time will tell.

I had been mulling over the racing for the last month or so and trying to decide whether I would do it in 2015 or lean more towards the endurance stuff. I have decided to race for another year anyway and see how it goes. I really need to be a lot stronger than I am. I'm a long way off A4 level still, going on last year's performances, first year or not. I will train more specifically. I'd hope to feature a bit more in the league races.

Short and sweet. Easy bit done.

Wow, nearly 5 years......where the hell did that go.....

No sense starting a new thread, so I'll just picka upto where I left off.

And certainly no point going through was happened since, so quick snap shot.....

Racing, more racing, A3, training, injuries, more racing, work ****, family ****, diets and nutrition.......and here I am.

So im back to where it all began.....riding my bike and getting back to enjoying it. The more I raced, the less I rode my bike, well at least the long, long spins. So thats where im going......endurance. Probably where I should have always gone, but hey. I still did a bit shortly after I left off last time.....350km being the longest I ever did.

There are thoughts in my head and long term goals, but I'll get to those in time, hopefully.

The week got away on me with work, so it ended in cramming all the training at the weekend.....far from ideal, but ive learned now that that is sometimes the way of it.

It is what it is.....my go to saying.

1.5 hours of turbo on saturday, a mixed session with some efforts. I like to give it a lash at least once a week in the winter build. Base miles are good, but base fitness overall is the last to diminish, so I think getting some top end stuff on the turbo is no harm.

Sunday was just under 5 hours on the road and just under 130km. Not a bad day for it and the company was good, so all in all a good day.

Hopefully next week will allow more training during the week.

Honestly have no idea where those 3 weeks went.

Last 3 weeks have seen 5 sessions, 4 sessions and 4 sessions respectively.

All turbo and again a mixture of steady sustained sessions and some higher intensity, including 2 online races. I say races, but more using them for motivation to get sessions done. I aint very competitive at all but the fitness is starting to come back, so that at least is a start.

Nutrition is good and so things are moving in the right direction I think. Like I say, ticking over for now

upthe19th wrote: »

Up next is the 500km week goal, the solo 200km & solo 250km.

Pretty happy with how things have gone in last week or so. Again you'll have to bear with me as this is all still building and there aint much to see here yet but its a good start.

Got the 200km done at the end of last week. I had a day to do it and i didnt want it to be part of the 500km weekly goal, as the 250km was going to part of that already. Got 204km done in under 7.5hrs and it wasn't exactly flat with just over 1800m of elevation.

Took a day rest and then hit the 250km. Got the 256km done in just under 9hrs 15mins. I was a full hour faster than the last time I attempted this distance and again it was a 'lumpy' route with just over 2000m of elevation. Job done.

With the 250km spin, a 70km spin and a 100km spin, on top of the 170km+ spin this morning, the weekly total ended up just a shade over 600km, the 500km weekly goal is done now too.

I had a goal to do 300km in 2 days, so thats done too as i did the 70km the day after i did the 250km. Technically i also got 450km done in 3 days, which was another goal, but I'm not counting it cos there was a rest day in between and the days were not consecutive.

The little 'event' I was planning for myself has been put on hold until such time as I think I can do it justice with better fitness and endurance.

It's great to be out on the bike for sure, getting great pleasure from it.

The weekly goals are done at least for now, as it's about condensing the same distances in less days now. Next up is the 300km solo and the 450km in 3 days.

Training continues steadily. Fitness is coming good steadily too. It was such a pity that Covid hit me so hard and put me back 10 odd weeks.

The week previous to last post, I had completed a high load week, the last 2 weeks were lighter, less than half the workload. This week will be something similar.

The first provisional date I have planned to do my next 24 hour is next week, but something has come up. It may or may not scupper the plan, in which case, it's only another 3 weeks after that to the second provisional date.

So next week will either be a recovery week to be ready or another high load week to build. I'll build the sessions for the recovery early in the week and if it looks like it won't happen I'll ramp up on friday/saturday/Sunday.

24 hour solo TT

This would be my 3rd attempt at one. The first was unsuccessful due to a mechanical and the second was completed with 561km.

The plan was to try to push the distance up to 600km or at the very least with more distance.

Finished a week of night shift and managed to get some sleep. I'd gotten tiny symptoms of a cold on Wednesday that still weren't great on Thursday. When I woke on the friday afternoon are nights, I had a pretty bad headache and a felt a bit under the weather but still not enough to pul the plug on starting.

Was on the bike for just after 4pm. Got caught in a heavy rain shower about 90 minutes in but that wouldn't bother me. That's par for the course, it's ireland, you dress appropriately and push on. However, I'd broken my first rule......dress for the weather you expect and not the current weather. So I got a good wetting. But I was also feeling negative, which is unlike me when I'm on the bike. I was fixating on the speed and the 600km, so I just pushed all that aside and concentrated on completing it. My mood immediately changed. But I was feeling it, and by 110km I was feeling pretty crappy.

First pitstop and full gear change for the night riding. Legs were coming around and headache was easing but still feeling crappy. So I broke it down into pieces and just told myself to keep riding the 4ish hour stints and play it by ear.

220km rolled by and another pitstop for fluids and food. Legs were in the zone now and rolling but I was still feeling kinda rubbish.

At about 290km, I noticed my HR fall out of the sky and breathing was shallow and tight. At 300km, the road surface I was on felt really rough but it made no sense as I'd ridden it earlier. Then I realised I was shaking kinda hard and it wasn't the road at all. It was time to call it off. Last 20km were torture and fell in the door at home. Passed out in bed, woke in bits, coughing and shaky.

I'm disappointed, it feels like a failure but maybe its all just failure until its success, just like what I learned from the first attempt and put in to practice on the second successful one.

So what's new that I've learned?

I can ride through pain and I can ride through tiredness to a point and I can work with bad legs......but sickness is a different story. The level of oxidative stress is enough in itself without underlying weakness in the body. I stuck it out in spite of feeling crappy and gave it my all, but I also then made the right decision to pull the plug otherwise I would have just dug a bigger hole and probably still wouldn't have finished.

Lessons learned. Push on now with a solid winter of training and make the plans and goals for 2023.

Good start to training so far, at least for past week. A mixed bag of sessions. Hopefully we get somewhat dry weather for the rest of October and November. Failing that, I'll get some character-building sessions in to the bargain.

Nutrition will also be in focus obviously. On a side note, I'm helping a co-worker on his weight-loss journey too. Just little bits that I've learned over the years. Very simple stuff, but simple doesn't equal easy. They are doing great so far and its all very balanced. It's helping keep me honest too, which is a bonus.

FTP Testing

I hadn't done an FTP test in over 12months, so this was just to set a marker for now. I was genuinely intrigued as to how it might go. I didn't have any idea of what numbers would be generated, but I reckoned maybe 250W, maybe even 260W.

I was well hydrated and reasonably well rested. A light breakfast taken on board and some coffee and then headed for the turbo trainer. A comfortable warm up and there could be no complaints as the legs felt good and relaxed. Did the 20min test and a cool down.

So the numbers looked like this:

Average power: 306W

Normalised power: 310W

Body Weight: 81.4kg

W/Kg: 3.5

So I'm happy out for now. I really didn't expect that, but then I didn't have a clue how it would go either.

At the end of June I was 88.6kg so the reduction in body weight has been steady over time and pretty much exactly where I thought it would be by now. Very sustainable and measured over the time. I will continue in this way and as the weight hopefully goes a little lower, the time allowed to achieve each weight milestone will extend also, making it a long term thing.

I will put the sessions in place now each week to aid an improvement in my FTP but within the overall plan for a strong base.

I will update on body weight maybe every month or so but I will also comment on mood and condition. No point in being lighter and weaker. But the approach thus far should prevent anything like that happening for the most part.

Ah it's not really C. It's about average at best. We'll call it a start.....and say no more.

Mostly dietary. IMO exercise is a woefully inefficient way of losing weight. Don't get me wrong, it goes hand in hand with the training but on its own it ain't gonna get it done.

What you can burn on a bike in a hour, you can eat in under 10minutes.

I made up my own acronym for the food side.....maybe I'll post and discuss sometime.....or maybe I'll leave that end to the educated.

Not as much training last week, only 3 sessions completed. I had a blood donation, a session of sports massage and a critically overdue session of needling but getting them all done in the same week was a bonus. Not as tired either and I had started an Iron supplement too.

Weather being brutal has thwarted attempts to get out on the road, so its turbo still for now. This week will be 4-5 training sessions. The aerobic decoupling values on the Zone 2 power are good, but then hard to really tell from 60-90min turbo sessions without seeing what's what on longer road spins.

I might return to using RGT again just to keep things interesting, I'll see.

My co-worker is doing really well on the weight loss and I will soon be helping a second person, which I am looking forward to.

Virtual cycling app. It was taken over by Wahoo since i think I used it last, so must see what it is like now. It just makes a little bit of the turbo a bit more interesting and if it still has some race type events I can substitute them in for the higher intensity sessions, potentially.

You might get a better response if you set up as a separate thread....my log wouldn't be very busy that way