Training Camp

After a winter on the turbo I was grateful to ba able to have a week off work to run a training camp in the wonderful Yorkshire countryside. Fortunately, while much of the rest of the country suffered from blizzards, we only had occasional snow showers despite the strong easterly winds and near-rfreezing temperatures.

I split the riders into 3 groups according to ability (and training objectives) and planned routes accordingly.

In the week I rode 368 miles (86 on the longest day) in 22 hours and climbed 15,200ft (5,750 on the same long day).

I'm hoping to have gained some endurance by riding further and longer in a week than I previously covered in 3 weeks of turbo work. Average intensity was only 0.699, so it wasn't a constant beasting, and riding in a group of 8-9 means there's a lot of time off the front in relatively easy power zones.

This was my third camps and again I noticed that the first day seemed to weaken my legs, the second day really hurt them and on day 3 I was quite weak. After a recovery day (due to weather) on day 4, I felt quite strong for the rest of the week.

Hopefully a couple of days of recovery will allow my body to convery the effort into fitness and I'll feel some real benefit. Maybe I need another 20 minute power test to see if it made a difference.

20 min power test on the road

After my painful 20 minute power test last week, I wondered how an outdoor 20 min test would compare to an indoor one, and I took the chance to find out today. By taking the 2 tests so close to each other I have hopefully minimised the effects of increasing or decreasing fitness between tests, and I also felt well-rested for both.

The headline is that I averaged 340W for the 20 minutes, compared to 335W for the indoor test, BUT the following things were different between tests:

Bike - I was using my stiffer race bike
Effort - I was too exhausted to stand up at the end of the last test, today I was just exhausted
HR - My peak HR today was 171, on the indoor test it was 178. 178 is very high for me, 171 is quite common.
Warm-up - for the indoor ride I did a proper warm-up. Today I just went for it from the front door.
Backing-off - due to poor pacing indoors I was unable to maintain my power output and had to back off. Today the pacing was better.
Cooling - outdoors was very cool today and I had the equivalent of a 20mph fan. Indoors I didn't use a fan (see previous post about me being tight).

The plot from today starts off with the 20 min power test. Compared to the indoor test there is no collapse in he second half so I'm pleased that the pacing was better today and that the 2 sets of traffic lights I caught (at 4 and 14 mins) didn't affect me too much. My HR rode quite steadily too and never maxed-out, which is quite surprising.

I think that if I could do an outdoor power test without traffic, potholes and lights I could probably stretch to 342 or 343W.So, it appears that outdoors I had more power available and I didn't suffer so much. I expected this to be the case, so it was nice to see. But, even if I had achieved 342W this would equate to a mere 2% improvement over my indoor figure which I find quite surprising.

After a 4 min rest I then did 50 mins of tempo riding to get some miles into my legs. At the end I tried a Strava segment that continues to annoy me. There are 3 sets of traffic lights on it and I hit EVERY SINGLE ONE and I always do. To get the KOM I'd need to time the lights and work out the best time to start to make sure I hit them all on green, but I'm not that sad. Yet.

20 minute power test

It's been a long long while since I last did a 20 minutes power test and I really really hated it. I needed to do one, and as I have been lazy and done nothing for the last 2 days I felt like today was the day!

Considering I have recently set a 1 hour PB I was expecting to do at least as well as the 331W I achieved last time, so I set myself a target of 335W. Things started off rather well, I felt in control and had averaged 340W for the first 10 minutes, HR slowly rising to 172 bpm. At this point I started to feel quite powerful and I forgot the most important rule of a successful test; pacing. Between 10 and 13 minutes I averaged 345W and like an idiot, I knew what was going to happen and did nothing about it. I purposely wasn't looking at my HR so I didn't notice it creep up to 175 bpm, but I did start to feel the effect and my power started to drop off after 13 minutes.

HR=Red, Power=Black

By 15 minutes I was in a world of hurt (point A) and by 17 I was seriously considering stopping, sweating profusely and breathing very heavily. At 18 mins (C) I was in tatters and had to shift gear to be able to keep any power so I took 30 seconds to recover and prepare for the final push. HR dropped a little and the clock ticked down, at 19 mins signalling the final push to the finish, averaging 400W for the last 30 secs.

At the end I was completely spent and had to climb off the bike and kneel on the floor, breathing heavily for a full 2 minutes before I was recovered enough to stand up again.

The good news is that I increased my 20 minute power from 331W to 335W since the last test, using the same equipment and conditions. The bad news is that this could just be variations between the 2 tests. I am also very amazed at my ability to do stupid things (go off too hard) and hard things voluntarily (work so hard I can't stand up). If I was being chased by a bear I don't think I could have tried any harder.

Mike's Guide to Turbo Training

The aim of this post is to provide guidance on the use of Turbo Trainers for those that haven’t used them before or have recently started. It’s based on my personal experience; other views are available and might be more sensible.

warning: if you're really fat, pregnant, stupid, diabetic or have a history of heart attacks, please consult a medical expert before attempting anything written below or it may kill you.

In fact, just close the browser now and walk away, these are not the tips you're looking for.

The Real Basics

A turbo Trainer allows you to use your bike to exercise by producing a resistance to counter your pedalling force. There are many types of resistance units (wind, gel, magnetic, nuclear fission) and a huge range of prices, so I won’t discuss which is the best as there are lots of reviews on the internet. But remember that a turbo is for life, not just for the first 3 weeks of a new year so think about getting a good one. There are lots of good quality second hand ones being sold by people who didn’t follow the kind of golden advice below and have given up on their dreams, so the classifieds may be a good place to get a lightly worn uber-trainer for little money.

What you’ll need. Other than the bare minimum of a bike and a turbo, there are various additions you may wish to consider to make your turbo session more enjoyable, or less horrible, depending on how you feel about turbo training. Some of these are physical things, some are mental things…

Physical things you need

The right environment. You will sweat on a turbo so make sure you have an area where you can work without worrying about sweating on your new carpet. Your bike will probably shed a small amount of chain oil too and can be quite noticeable on a cream Wilton. It’s good to have a surface nearby to put your‘ gubbins’ on so you don’t have to dismount. Kitchens, garages or even outside are good places to do a workout. Your mum’s living room is a bad place. Plan for success.

A drink. Particularly for longer sessions, you’ll be glad you prepared a cool refreshing drink to sip between the intervals. The most obvious side-effect of a good turbo session is the pool of sweat under the bike when you finish so staying hydrated is very important.

A towel. I like to have a towel draped across my handlebars to remove the sweat from my face. While it’s a great feeling to know you’re working hard enough to leak like a sieve, it’s also very nice to not have the rivulets of salty sweat running into your eyes. Riders who want to look more‘continental’ may consider a headband as well.

Entertainment/distraction. 60 minutes on the turbo sounds great when you’re sitting surfing the internet buying the thing. Once you’re through the first few sessions you’ll very quickly start to tire of the whirring noise, and the sweating, and the burning in your thighs. I use a complicated series of distraction techniques to make my turbo time less horrible including loud dance music and YouTube clips of the Tour De France or the European Spring Classics. If you’re using a laptop it’s best to use a mouse rather than a touchpad (due to the sweat) and have everything ready to go before you start. The entertainment should not distract you from your planned session (more on that in a bit), but it should enhance the experience. You will not be able to read a book or magazine on the turbo. If you can read on the turbo, you’re doing it wrong.

A big fan. I’m not talking about getting your loved-one to cheer you on, I’m talking about a remote controlled 30+ inch industrial fan to blow refreshing cooling air over you to reduce the sweatiness and keep your temperature under control. I’m too tight to spend money on a fan, but lots of people swear by them. I tend to open as many windows as possible to make sure there is some airflow across my sweaty back.

Loved-ones. If you’re turboing correctly you won’t want to spend your precious time discussing ‘trivia’ with somebody. Explain to likely distractors that you need some ‘turbo time’ and would prefer to not be disturbed. While your husband/wife/girlfriend etc is being considerate by trying to tell you about what that bitch Julie said to her at work or wanting to discuss what you want for dinner, you’re unlikely to be able or willing to properly engage in the discussion while you’re turning yourself inside-out on the fifth interval of a set of six. You’re likely to swear at him/her. If you find you are regularly disturbed during your turbo time you could return the favour and ruin something they enjoy.

Clingfilm. As a cheapskate I use clingfilm on my bars to stop them getting sweat-soaked and smelling bad for the rest of the year. If you turbo with a bike computer it’s also nice to stop the sweat dripping off your nose and into the delicate electronics of your so-called waterproof electronic device. Clingfilm works on touch-screens and laptop keyboards too.

Minimal clothing. On the turbo I wear shoes, socks, a heart rate monitor and tiny shorts. With a headband I look like a 1970’s German fitness instructor, so I save that for special days. It’s nice to have a t-shirt to hand for the warm-up and cool-down, but I wouldn’t plan to be wearing it when you’re putting down the power.

Shoes. Cycling shoes are best for transferring your power through the pedals as their solid soles will stop your foot flexing which may become uncomfortable after a while. Clipless pedals or toe clips allow you to use more of the pedal stroke to transfer power. Flat pedals will do if you don’t have anything better. Oh yeah, and your shoes will get sweaty and may start to smell.

A method of recording your efforts. Whether it’s an expensive powermeter or a cheap cycle computer, being able to record your efforts and improvements is essential. If you feel like you’re getting fitter it’s great to have evidence to back it up. If you’re not improving, it’s time to change your workouts so that you do improve.

 

Mental things you need

A target. Setting targets will allow you to have a proper plan and give you the determination to complete it. Want to lose weight? Want to win races? Want to get away from ‘The Antique’s Roadshow’? Whatever, have a target and record your progress towards it and make sure your targets are specific, realistic and achievable. At 45 you’re not going to shed 40 kilos and win the British Road Race Champs next year, so don’t demoralise yourself by thinking you can then realising you can’t. A good example of a target is something like: By 1 June I will be able to ride for 60 minutes on the turbo at an average speed of 18 mph. This allows you to progress towards the target and monitor your progress. A bad example of a target is something like: I want to get fitter. After 2 days you’ll have achieved your target.

A session plan. This is probably the most important aspect of turboing. Without a plan you’re just mucking about and turning food and drink into sweat and noise. With a plan you’re turning your dreams into reality (providing you have a decent plan). The internet is full of great workouts and some rubbish ones too, so be careful who you listen to. Trainer Road (nothing to do with me) is getting increasingly popular as a source of training plans and individual workouts. I haven’t used it, but a lot of people think it’s great for motivation and there are several threads about it on the internet. Having a public record of what you’re doing is a good way to improve your determination to complete your plan.
 

A power test (optional). To properly determine your ideal workout load you should complete a power test to see what you're capable of. This is the pinnacle of suffering and any woman who says childbirth is painful hasn't completed a 20 minute power test. Basically, once you have warmed up you go as hard as you can for 20 minutes and then use the result as a guide for how hard you should be working for different workouts. If you average Xmph for 20 mins, you'd take 95% of this speed to give you an estimate of what you could achieve for 60 minutes (effectively your FTP), and scale workouts based on this figure. There are other ways of testing yourself and, using speed rather than power, there are lots of issues regarding repeatability, but if these are controlled you have a pretty effective cheap system. Add Trainer Road for a more expensive system, add a power meter for a really expensive system.

Determination. Once you have your plan you need to have the determination to complete it. However, just getting the turbo out and attaching the bike to it is usually the hardest part of any workout; that takes real determination. You know the feeling: your favourite soap is just about to start, you’ve had a very hard day at work sitting down in front of the computer, you deserve some ‘down time’, right? Wrong. You need some determination to get up, get nearly naked with a roll of clingfilm and give that turbo a seeing to. Think of it like this, your body is full of the physical energy as well as the mental ‘innergy’you need to turn your potential into success. Is that cheesy enough for you?

Bail-out plan. There will be times when you can't complete your chosen workout either because you're feeling weak or you've planned to do something beyond your capability. This is not a problem and everybody has bad days. Rather than just stopping and sulking, it's a good idea to have a bail-out plan so that you still get a decent session out of your time. For example, if I'm struggling I may decide to back my power off to a certain level until I recover, or let my HR come down to a certain level. Don't give up, give less, but make sure you give something.

Recovery. This is the period when your body turns your effort into fitness. If you plan to do 7 days of hard workouts a week you’ll end up doing 7 days of mediocre workouts and you’ll stop getting fitter. Bradley Wiggins has recovery days. You need recovery days. Some days you won’t be able to train due to other commitments; maybe you’re going to court or you’re confessing your sins on the Oprah show. If so, plan these days as recovery days and train around them.

December's 20 minute power test - weighed and measured!

After 4 weeks of turbo time it was eventually time to complete another 20 minute power test to see if I had made any improvement. I tried to control as many variables as possible; so I used the same bike and powertap on the same turbo, with the same pre-ride calibration and I even used the same kitchen.

Before I started I didn't feel very motivated but I know that it's pointless doing interval sessions to improve power unless I test myself regularly to see if they're actually working. If they aren't I need to know so that I can change my routine.

Anyway, the headline is that my 20 minute power is 331W today compared to 322W 4 weeks ago. This 9W equates to a rise of roughly 2.8% which is well above what I had expected. I was hoping for a 1% improvement per month which would get me to my 345W target by May 2013. This equates to a 14 sec improvement over a 10 mile TT.

Here's the plot from today's power test (Red = HR, Black = power):

After a decent warm-up including a 320W power test to make sure everything was OK, I had a poor start and went off too hard and had to wind myself back, but I was settled in after a minute or so. I noticed that I was continually nudging above my 325W target and after 10 minutes I had averaged 328W. The last 10 minutes were hard and sweaty with a couple of weak periods but not the big crash I had previously experienced around 17 minutes.

Below is a comparison of the 2 power tests showing December's test (Red line) compared to November's (Blue). The obvious differences are the stronger start and the improved performance towards the end when I didn't crash in the Dec version. Dec looks much more under control.

Comparing HR across the 2 sessions looks like this:

The difference between HRs at the start of the session is due to slightly different warm-ups and is maintained until around 12 minutes, but at the end the HR traces are almost identical. This is interesting because I use power to pace myself during 20 minute tests but my limit seems to be HR-related. Without a powermeter I'd certainly start too hard and achieve a lower average power over the 20 min test. Average cadence for the 2 sessions is very similar too at 84 rpm for Nov and 86 rpm for Dec.

So what have I learned?

• At the moment I haven't learned anything. 2 data points are not conclusive but I did feel a lot better on today's test so I'm assuming that the power improvement is genuine; I just need more data to prove it. I have seen how my performance can vary from day to day so it may just be that I was weak on the last test and strong today but that I haven't made any actual improvement. Time will tell.
• My work-outs over the last 4 weeks have targetted power Zones 4 and 5 so I would expect to see some improvement in a Zone 5 power test (which is what a 20 minute test is) and I have purposely avoided harder intervals. However, this doesn't mean that these were the best intervals; I may have showed a higher 20 minute power increase just riding for an hour at 90%FTP for 2 hours a day.
• I will need to increase my work-outs to reflect the increased FTP and to continue to provide an impetus for my body to adapt to the increased stress. Again, this is the reason regular testing is essential.

Start the experiment...

I have decided to record my attempts to improve my power over the next 5-ish months. While I have taken cycling and training semi-seriously over the last year I don't seem to have improved much so I think I need to be a bit more methodical about it.

After 5 weeks off the bike I went on a training ride yesterday and was very disappointed at my performance on the White Horse Climb (aka Low Town Bank climb on Strava) , which I usually love. For some reason I was struggling up in the granny gear and on each of my 3 climbs I got slower and felt weaker. At the top on the last climb I could barely breathe and my throat felt very constricted so I'm hoping it's not fatal.

Anyway, here's a section of the power and HR trace from the 3 climbs. Black line = power. Red line = HR.

When I got home I analysed the data (on the fantastic Golden Cheetah 3 software) and noticed that on each attempt my power was lower than the last and my HR was lower too, even though I felt like I was trying as hard on each climb. While my best time on the climb is 7mins 10 secs, my fastest on this day was a terrible 8:57 and my slowest an embarrassing 10:04!

So, time to do things properly and train with a method and a plan. While I've had the excellent Training and Racing with a Power Meter for a while, I haven't taken it too seriously, but now I think it's time to as well as inputs from other sources to develop a plan aimed at improving my power.

The first step was to complete a 20 minute power test. Having done several before I knew the importance of pacing myself and not going too hard too soon. I was hoping I could achieve 320W for the 20 mins so I started off just below this and let my power build through the test. With 1 minute to go I dug hard to use every last ounce of energy but quickly went into deficit and had to back off, then managed to surge for the last 30 seconds to achieve 322W. Incidentally, this is exactly the same result as a 20 min test I completed last November so I hadn't lost anything, which is good. By the end of the test I had given it my all, I was unable to speak and just slumped over the bike. I don't like doing these all-out tests because they are painful and relentless and on the very limit of what your body can achieve (at least they should be to be an accurate test).

So here's the power and HR trace from today's 20 min power test. Black line = power. Red line = HR.

Note how the power trace is quite smooth for the first 12 minutes or so, then starts to wobble a lot, before going manic for the last 2 minutes. In the last 2 minutes I go from feeling exhausted to OK and back again as my body loses then finds new reserves of energy.