Winter training
I had intended to write an end of season roundup back in September/October, but never got around to it.
In short, by the final race of the season – Q25/8 on September 20th – I was properly spent having raced 5 or 6 times in as many weeks. Any form I had was fading fast and I was cramming races in without giving it much thought. Classic end of season behaviour.
After the final race I took a few weeks unstructured, did a bit of running and started to count calories to shed some of the 85kg of ballast I was lugging around (spoiler: I lost 4kg!). I also bought Favero Assioma pedals so I could ride with power on the road bike.
I started structured training again in mid-October spending lots of time riding steady with the occasional tempo ride, but nothing too taxing. I did the vast majority outside and seemed to get at least a little bit wet on almost every ride.
Niggling injuries knocked running on its head in December and I signed up to Trainerroad.
Trainerroad's Sweet Spot Base program is 12 weeks of progressively longer intervals working in their sweetspot zone – 88-94% of FTP – made up of 5 weeks hard, 1 week easy, 5 weeks hard, 1 week easy. It's monotonous but effective.
("Monotonous but effective. Sign up today".)
The first workout was the ramp test. You start at ~50% of FTP, then it increases 6pp each minute until you fail. I managed 427 watts for the final minute which meant my FTP was 320 watts. This seemed a little on the high side, particularly as I had done 4x10' @ 310 the weekend before and that felt like threshold. So I decided to start with 310 and see how I went.
After two weeks of comfortably hitting the session's target powers + a bit more, I upped the FTP to 320. This obviously made the workouts a bit harder but still very manageable.
I tried to swap the Sunday sweetspot workout for a long steady ride, but the weather was often rubbish on the weekends, so on the Sunday of week 4, I did 1:45 @ 270 watts – not dissimilar to my 50m TT in August 2019 (276w, 1:54) – although I was sat up on a turbo, not in the TT position outside.
Regardless, that was a watershed moment in terms of my realising I could hold a high percentage of FTP for a long period of time indoors.
ROAD BIKE TEST 1
My legs felt really good going into the rest week and I wanted to try a longer outdoor effort. The stretch from the Cyclopark through Wrotham up to the top of Vigo Hill is often used as a 20 minute test, so I decided to give that a go.
I had tried to do something similar the previous week but ran out of road. That effort was 12-13' @ 350 towards the end of a 4 hour ride, but didn't feel like I was on my limit. So, I aimed to keep the 30s power 350+ and see what I could do.
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| 363 watts! |
Three days later I took my second ramp test, this time managing 439w for the final minute, giving me a 10 watt increase in FTP to 330. My legs felt rubbish and I really had to fight for the last few minutes. It was proper grim but I felt 330 was a fair reflection of my fitness, so set that as my FTP.
In the second six-week period of SSB, I managed to get out for a long ride every weekend, regularly hitting 4 hours. Incidentally, I realised I hardly did any long rides last season, so was determined to rectify that this year.
17/18 – 38 rides of 3+ hours, including 23 of 4+ hours
18/19 – 42 rides of 3+ hours, including 10 of 4+ hours
19/20 – 4 rides of 3+ hours, none above 4 hours.
20/21 – 13 rides of 3+ hours, including 7 of 4+ hours
It's a good job the 100 was cancelled last year!
There were a few standout efforts during the second part of SSB:
Sunday of week 8 – 1:45 @ 291w – same workout as 4 weeks earlier but 20 watts more.
Tuesday, week 9 – 1:15 @ 303w – this really pushed me physically, especially as it was ~48 hours after the effort above.
We moved on the Friday of week 10 and I did the rest of the rides outdoors mainly because the weather was so nice but also the turbo wasn't setup and I was spending most of my time doing house stuff.
ROAD BIKE TEST 2
For the final ride of the 12 week block, I decided to try a sub-maximal test. I planned to ride to Box Hill with Chris Lockwood, who I thought would be a good training partner for the ride given I'd noticed he had been doing some impressive longer rides and some very good power numbers for shorter intervals.
The majority of my long rides in Jan/Feb were 225-235 normalised for ~4 hours with my average HR ~70% of max.
5 hours @ 240 watts sounded like a good test as it's on the z2/z3 border. It's been a while I've blown up on a long ride, so I went started thinking/expecting that I'd end the ride crawling home.
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| 257 FOR 5 HOURS LOL |
There were a few steep hills where the power naturally rose, but otherwise I felt like I kept it in check quite well. I was amazed that my NP was so high for so long, and it wasn't until I left Chris on Pilgrims Way that I started to fade. Luckily, most of the ride home was downhill.
It's hard to compare a long road bike ride with a 100 mile TT, but if I can get anywhere near 257 watts for the 100 in June, I'll be ecstatic.
The 12-week period was a huge success – I think my FTP is ~340 right now. I don't see the need to test again as the next block will be mostly outdoor on the TT bike – so I'll do a test that better represents the riding that I am going to be doing.
Since we moved, I've got out a handful of times on the TT bike to get my body used to position again, with the view to doing a 'Time To Exhaustion' (TTE) test in position.
The WKO5 model estimates my FTP as 352w with my TTE as ~32 minutes meaning, in theory, I could hold 352 watts for 32 minutes until I reach exhaustion. This is useful to know, but the model is only as useful as the data you feed it and, as I've done no maximal efforts on the TT bike, it's not really applicable.
The plan, then, is for a maximal TT bike effort. TTE tests on the turbo are a lot easier – you just aim for a certain number and hold it for as long as possible. Outdoors, on the TT bike, it's a bit harder – not just pacing but also being aware of surroundings, potholes, the subtle changes in gradient/wind, essentially all the factors you have to deal with during a race.
I'm writing this on the day before the test. If I can manage average 320-330 watts for 30-35 minutes, I'll be very happy. But, if the power isn't as high as I hope, I'll use whatever number I manage to guide the next phase of training – a 4-week threshold block – leading up to Q10/19 on 10th April.
TT TEST
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| WEEKEND MORNINGS ON A DUAL CARRIAGEWAY ARE BACK |
I started the test on the East Peckham bypass around 9am. The plan was to go from end to end twice, which is 15.4 miles and would only require three U-turns at RABs along with riding "straight over" eight RABs.
As I wrote the day before, the plan was 320-330, but I quickly realised that was over ambitious and settled in around 315-320 – the purpose of the test is to work out what realistically my threshold on the TT bike is, so it made no sense trying to hold a power that was quite clearly above threshold, and probably more like current 10m TT power.
I carbed up the night before, had a coffee before leaving, 1 gel at the start, 1 at halfway and otherwise felt okay. I'm actually quite glad my legs weren't pinging and I purposefully didn't taper or try to do anything to artificially inflate the result – that's just going to produce a number that's unrealistic for me.
I came to a complete stop at the Hop Farm RAB ~9 miles in, then my Garmin inexplicably shutdown a few minutes later. Luckily, I managed to restart it okay and carried on.
When I reached the end, I felt like carrying on for a bit, so did a fourth U-turn and cracked on. Annoyingly, a tractor was backing up a dozen or so cars heading north, so I called it a day rather than attempt some outrageous overtaking manoeuvre!
As far as riding on that stretch of road goes on a weekend morning, it felt like a pretty clear run.
All in all, pretty happy with 315 for ~40 minutes. It feels about right for threshold and my HR data seems to agree.
Up next is a 4-week threshold block where I'll be aiming to extend the amount of time I spend at 315 watts through a progression that should look something like: 4x10, 3x15, 2x25, 3x18, 3x20, 2x30, 2x35, 2x40.
Thanks for reading.
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