Back to proper training

After a great week away I was keen to get back on the turbo and back to proper training. I've managed 2 sessions so far this week. The first was on Monday morning when I did the short version of Shorter Harder.

It all seemed to go very well except my HR was way higher than I would have expected, peaking at 179bpm but I never really felt that bad. Normally 179 would be me on the limit, but I just plugged on and never really felt like I was over-doing it. Just goes to show how much HR can vary from day-to-day for the same effort.

I then had 2 days of driving around the country, eating more crappy food and sleeping in uncomfortable beds and I arrived home too late last night to do a turbo session. These are the 'wasted days' when I should be doing something but the time and then the motivation just drains away and then the day has gone.

Left work a little early so I could get a good session in tonight and I completed the longer version of Shorter Harder (the last workout I did before I got ill earlier this month). I was interested to see if my HR would be as high as it was on Monday, and it wasn't. It was much more normal, peaking at 174, which is a good.

I added 10W to 4 of the intervals and then went for a 500W surge at the end of the last one and felt quite good throughout so I don't think I've lost much, if any, fitness over the last 3 weeks of very little turbo training. I just probably haven't made any gains. Or maybe 2 weeks off and a week of skiing has actually done me some good. Time will tell.

About 20 minutes after the workout I spent a couple of minutes crouched down sorting out some clothes packing and then stood up a bit too quickly, had a dizzy spell, banged my head on a door frame and then thought I was going to pass out. After a couple of minutes sitting down I felt fine again. I'm putting it down to the crouching rather than the workout.

So that's my winter holiday and winter illness out of the way and I can get back to some proper training again and start to focus on getting ready for racing. This will do me the world of good and get rid of the frustration I get when I can't train.

Post-cold leg spinner

After 6 days of feeling too ill to train I was looking forward to getting back on the turbo tonight to give my legs a spin to make sure I'm over the cold and ready to train again. I am usually lucky with colds and don't normally suffer for more than a couple of days, so I was a bit concerned when I had to have a day off work because I didn't feel well enough to go in.

Today's session went quite well. Basically I just pedalled at a comfortable working level while I monitored my heart rate, keeping it below 165. As the 45 minutes passed I seemed to get stronger with power genty rising from around 250W to 290W and HR rising to 165. So, providing I feel OK tomorrow I'll be back into the groove with some intervals again.

It's a real shame to have lost a week of training, but as I'm not trying to peak for a specific race I suppose it doesn't really matter. After all, most other riders are just doing longer versions of what I did today as they build up their winter base fitness. Ah, the traditions of cycling!

While I was ill I ate everything and anything I saw. Loads of chocolate, carbs, fruit, cake. You name it, I shoved it in my gob. So I'm also back on my New Year healthy eating plan and trying to cut out the carbs and cheese and increase the protein.

The End of the World workout - Local Hero

Well, after hundreds of years of countdown I was getting ready for the Mayan prophecies to come true and for the World to end today. I thought that, if I was going to die, I may as well choose a hard workout to die to. Sufferfest's Local Hero seemed to fit the bill so I fired up the laptop, The Best of Thin Lizzie and set to work, expecting the World to end sometime during the 80 minute session. It didn't, so I had to complete the whole painful session.

During the second interval (around 25 minutes) I started to feel weak and I was starting to make excuses to give up, but I knuckled down knowing that this would be the last workout for 5 days so I really had to make it count. I didn't want to eat lots of mince pies over Christmas knowing I'd let myself down on a key workout. I did back off completely on the recovery intervals though to make sure I had enough in my legs for the work intervals and I really struggled to achieve the hardest part of the last 4 intervals; legs burning, sweat dripping, head drooping etc.

Recovery Day Musings

At the end of the third week I have achieved: Rides: 3 - all turbo sessions totalling 3 hrs 35 mins (last week 5 hrs 50 mins). This reduction is largely a result of having 3 days off at the start of the week due to other commitments.

Total Bikescore (TSS): 274 (last week 456)

kCals burned (incl warm-ups and cooldowns): 3277 (5391)

I didn't have a planned TSS for this week, but I woke up this morning feeling a little throaty so I feel I have achieved as much as I wanted to in the last 3 days. We have a 'house cold' which I'm trying to avoid so I don't want to overdo things and get ill. I have been looking at the various ways I can compare workouts since I started to lose confidence in TSS/Bikescore as a useful metric. Below is a graph comparing my work done (in kJ), Bikescore and TSS. As you can see, and as I would expect, they are all pretty much the same across the last 4 weeks.

This week's times in various Zones show how easy I've had it compared to my 'big week' last week.

 

Total time in Zone 3: 0:33:37 (last week 57:10)

Total time in Zone 4: 1:32:36 (last week 2:17:34)
Total time in Zone 5: 0:16:50 (last week 0:38:23)
Total time in Zone 6: 0:01:20 (last week 0:03:37)
Total time in Zone 7: 0 (last week 8 seconds)

 

The last 4 weeks' Zones 3-5 durations are shown in the table below:

On every measure I have had an easy week. I have had 2 hard workouts and an easier one but I've  compressed all my work into 3 days and I'm now feeling a bit lethargic as a result and I feel I need a recovery day. I'm due (and dreading) a 20 minute power test soon to see what benefit the preceeding 4 weeks of turbo work has given me. I'll probably aim to do this next weekend so I'm planning turbo sessions on Mon, Tue, Wed, Fri (probably with a hangover after the office Xmas party on Thurs evening) and then the test.

Looking back at the same period last year I was doing a lot more riding on the road and racing CX too so I was getting a lot more time on the bike than this year. This year the Yorkshire roads are terrible to the point of being dangerous, with massive puddles and potholes. It will be interesting to see whether the turbo work has been sufficient to maintain my 20 min power output without the longer road rides I usually do.

Sufferfest: Local Hero

When I last did Local Hero it was after a rest period and I thought it was relatively easy, so I was interested in repeating it following 2 days on the turbo to see if it was still achievable. I felt fine for the first 30 minutes or so and then I started to get the quits after 50 minutes and I was trying to convince myself that stopping at 60 minutes would be fine and that I had done all that I needed to. In my head I was doing worse than the last attempt and I was happily making excuses to stop and hating myself for making them.

I then took the rest of the session an interval at a time and each interval minute-by-minute until I got to the end at 80 minutes. But, I got to the end and that's what really matters. The 400W peaks in the last 4 intervals really started to hurt but were short enough to endure the lactic fire and hang on for the recovery.

The stats are very similar to the last attempt and any variation is probably down to the recovery intervals rather than the work intervals.

The Hell of the North: revisited

I thought I'd revisit my The Hell of the North workout today but with a few minor tweeks to make it a bit more fun. Rather than 3 different intensities I did it with just 2. If Boonen was on screen I went for 307W (100% FTP) and if he wasn't I got a nice rest at 275W (90% FTP). This means there is less gear changing and a higher average power.

After a 10 minute warm-up I got started on the session. The first 30 minutes of the session was quite enjoyable but 30-40 minutes got a bit challenging (you can see the power output start to drop off in the graph above), so I had a 5 minute rest at 50% FTP before a 5 minute interval, then another 5 minute rest at 50% FTP and another 5 interval, then a 2 minute rest, then 2 minutes flat out coinciding with Boonen crossing the line. This was much better than the first attempt at the session and I felt quite happy that I had achieved a good workout at the end of it. Most importantly, there was a large pool of sweat under the bike so I must have been doing something right.

In 75 minutes I used 1140 kCals and achieved a Bikescore (TSS) of 97.

Sufferfest: Hell Hath No Fury

I had a recovery day yesterday because I went to bed on 30 Nov with a headache and I woke up yesterday with a bit of a sniffle; nothing too serious but my body wasn't happy. I can't get on the turbo for the next 3 days so I thought I'd beast myself with Sufferfest's Hell Hath No Fury. Looking at the profile on Golden Cheetah I thought it would be a challenge, but an achievable one.

The warm-up went well (small victory) and then the first 20 minute variable intensity interval got going; easy at first then ramping up. I was hanging in until about 13 mins but I was unable to complete the interval as planned so I dropped into 'recovery mode'. Rather than stopping I back off a little and try to let my body recover, slowly picking up power or maintaining power until the end of the interval. I think this is much better than stopping. Below is a plot of the first interval, Red = HR, Black = power and Blue = speed.

After a 5 minute rest I was ready for the second interval, but I'd backed the intensity off to 95% to give me a chance of completing it; or so I thought. Again, about 13 minutes I got a bad dose of 'the weakness' and I had to back off into recovery mode, getting my HR down and then slowly building my power until the end of the session. I was able to finsh with a flourish and beat the final power peak, but it was a hollow victory after all the recovering I'd done prior to it.

I didn't enjoy it and I don't think I'll be doing it again too soon. If I do it again I'll drop the intensity down to make sure I can get to the end. Considering I can achieve 2x20 at 307W, I'm slightly confused why I only achieved 1x299W then 1x290W on the 20 min intervals today. It is probably the peakiness of the intervals demonstrating the effect that variable pacing has on an interval.

The Hell of the North - completed

After a day at work looking forward to an hour on the turbo, I snuck off early and got the torture chamber set up and ready for The Hell of the North (set up here). YouTube loaded, Golden Cheetah running, Garmin recording, Go!!!

The first 5 minutes is a fairly relaxed warm-up before the fun starts as Boonen attacks and the intervals start. I won't ruin it for you and let you know what happens, but here's the plot of the first 65 minutes with lots of Zone 4 work mixed with short rest intervals in Zone 2. I liked that you never knew what was coming next or how long the current interval or rest would last; it made it much more interesting and less of a chore than a normal interval session. The film is also really good and helps to take your mind off any pain you're suffering.

The power plot looks like this showing that it's mainly a Zone 4 workout. Black line = power. Red line = HR. Green line = Cadence.

Stats for the hour:

Average power: 272W
xPower: 274W - my FTP is 307 therefore it's roughly 89%
Average HR: 156
Max HR: 169 (my LTHR is 174)
kCals: 970
IF: 0.89
Bikescore (TSS): 79

If you run it with Golden Cheetah (or Trainer Road) and overlay YouTube it looks something like this (the video is actually better but the screenshot makes it look worse that it is):



Next time I'll do a longer warm-up (15 minutes) and then I'll be able to do the whole workout to the end and I'll hold back earlier on. I found I was letting my power creep up above the 307W or 270W targets which may have impacted later on in the workout. Today's hour went very very quickly.

The Hell of the North (workout)

AMENDMENT on 7 Dec 12. See additional info in red at the bottom of this post for a slightly dfferent version.

While slogging away on the turbo yesterday my mind wandered and I started to think about how I could make my own workout videos, and then it hit me. Use existing videos of cycling events and add my own intensities based on what's on the screen.

Welcome to the first, The Hell of the North (named after the iconic Paris-Roubaix race used as the backdrop). Basically, load this YouTube video, press play and follow the rules below.....

The rules: Use mine or make up your own rules.

First 5 minutes is a warm-up - ride at Intensity 3
Whenever Boonen is on screen (including helicopter shot) - ride at Intensity 1
Whenever somebody else is on the screen - ride at Intensity 2
Whenever it's a helicopter shot (non-Boonen) - ride at Intensity 3

Intensities: These are based on my power figures with relative figures shown in brackets.

Intensity 1 - FTP: 307W (100% of whatever your FTP is)
Intensity 2 - 88% FTP: 270W (88% of whatever your FTP is)
Intensity 3 - 62% FTP: 190W (62% of whatever your FTP is)

At these powers the first 20 minutes after the warm-up averages 260W (85% of my FTP which is a good sweetspot session). If you do the whole race it's a 75 minute workout.

If you don't like these intensities, make your own up! If you haven't got power, come up with some speed-related intensities.

Here's a graph of what this looks like, well, the first 25 minutes anyway....

I know that this can be overlaid on top of Golden Cheetah, and I assume it can be laid over the top of Trainer Road. And it's free.

Postscript 7 Dec 2012: I varied the workout to reduce the number of intensities from 3 to 2 to make it simpler and a bit harder. If Boonen is on the screen I work at 100% FTP and if he's not I work at 90% FTP.

Wind the video forward to 10 minutes, press play and start your 10 minute warm-up then and settle in for 60 sweaty horrible minutes of Hell of the North.