My season so far - part one

My last blog post, back in March, summarised my 2021/22 Winter base period. In this post, I'll run through how my season has gone so far.

April

I kicked off my season a bit earlier this year with a 10 on the A3. I got sick two weeks before the race, didn't take enough time off and subsequently went into this race not 100%. 

Not an ideal start but, as I wrote back in April, pretty good power-to-speed ratio which would bode well for the 50 on the same course in July.

Next up was a 25 in Kent just two days later. I went out on the day between the races and felt good. I did a 5 minute supra-threshold effort which felt pretty snappy, so decided to race.

Power was a bit down (308 average, 312 normalised) but I was fairly happy with this ride. I was 1:46 behind Nic Fennell and 2:44 behind his brother Chris. Possibly an off day for one or both of them, but it gave me a boost to be relatively close behind.

A couple of weeks later I kicked off the Interclub with a good ride on a sluggish morning.

Power much closer to where I expected it to be at the start of the season. Cold, high pressure and unfavourable wind made for tough conditions. I was pretty happy to get so close to doing a 19 on this ride.

May

Next up was my first target race of the season - the F2A/25 in Cambourne, near Cambridge.

TrainingPeaks notes: 

Mixed feelings about this race. 

I have been trying to get out of my head recently but for some reason I am struggling to do so. 

Last season I enjoyed myself and raced well because I didn’t put myself under any pressure.

I just turned up, rode as hard as I could and said ‘what will be, will be’. 

This season I haven’t been able to switch off mentally and just let it happen. 

This ride wasn’t helped by my skinsuit pocket ripping before the start. My number fell out somewhere along the course. (Liam reckons 5-10W so 20-40 seconds, which would make this a PB.)

My HR was outrageously high which threw me off a bit despite RPE and breathing being under control. 

I raced better when I switched to a lower cadence, and finished strong. The last 10-12 minutes was around 330-340W, so I know the power is there. 

At the end my left hamstring/glute felt very tight and knotty. Did spiky ball rolling before bed.

Overall, pretty happy with this race. If my pocket hadn’t ripped I probably would have got a PB. 

I must avoid expecting/thinking about what times I may/may not do and just enjoy racing. The times will come if I race happy.

Up next was a 10 on probably my favourite not-fast course - Q10/27 on the A20.

I'm trying to remember why I decided to pin a number on this skinsuit rather than using my Nopinz one. Possibly because of the fit? I'm not sure. Either way, I probably should've used the skinsuit in good working order... Decent ride and finally some decent power in the legs.

Brands always throws up some good power numbers because I sit up during the Gorse Hill climb and the way back is 8-9 minutes of 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off.

A week later was the first race on East Peckham.

After the A21, this course is my favourite. But it's also very frustrating as the conditions are essentially a lottery. In similar conditions, using the same kit, I've done the same time on certain sections of the course despite power being wildly different, like dozens of watts. So, you never really know what you're going to get.

Legs were okay during this race, but again got a bit in my head before the start.

I also wasn't quite sure about my position, so raised the stack 10mm and moved the bars 20mm back before my first ever 30 mile TT the following Sunday.

I would race on these roads every week if I was allowed. Fantastic surface, gently undulating terrain and often decent conditions. Perfect.

Endura asked me to send my malfunctioning skinsuit back, so I raced this in the Nopinz suit. It's can't be that much (if at all) slower...

Next Thursday was one of the sketchiest courses in Kent: QS/30 Cudham.

349NP off average legs. Didn't quite have the legs to beat last year's time, or hold 400W up Cudham, but I finished feeling like I had emptied the tank, which was a mini victory in itself.

June

The following Tuesday was another stab at East Peckham - this time riding the Southborough club event.

Possibly the slowest conditions I've ever raced this course in. Neil did 20 minutes on the nose off 370something watts. I reckon these conditions were 30-40 seconds slower than an average night. Complete enigma this course.

I reverted to previous bike fit (10mm down, 20mm forward) after this.

Next was my first 50 of the season on the Uckfield bypass course G50/89.

Last season my best 50 power was 308W. But, given that my 25s were only 5-10W more than in the months prior to this race, I wasn't sure what to expect for a 50. The narrowest range I could be confident it would fall in was 280-310W.

I've ridden the course a few times but there are so many roundabouts that I chose to ride with the map on. This only gave me two data fields - 3s Power and Current Speed. Although I kept an eye on the power, I rode largely on feel. I probably rode the first 37 miles a bit too conservatively - the first 80 minutes was at 288W.

Once I was on the homeward leg, I rode really aggressively knowing I had plenty left and with around half an hour left. The last 30 minutes I averaged 321W and 326W normalised.

I was happy with the ride but knew I could push harder earlier on. With a series of more important 50s coming up, this was a good lesson to learn.

Next up was another trip to the local lottery that is East Peckham.

Objectively very good conditions. Looking back a couple of months later, perhaps I was a bit hard on myself here. It was very hot and I didn't feel 100%. Who knows.

Training shift

The day after that race on East Peckham I made some changes to my training. I had planned to start focusing on the 100 in August but the race in Norfolk got cancelled and I felt like something wasn't quite right anyway.

I can't remember when it was but early in the season Neil mentioned he thought I trained too hard. I think it was when I was doing a vo2 max block. At the time I thought everything was fine, but that was before I started racing so it was hard to say.

Fast forward to June and I was looking into LT1 training, reading various blog posts and Trainerroad forum posts. It seemed an interesting way to train and was apparently what Pogacar's coach had him doing. Again, who knows. Around this same time, I spoke with Neil again and he mentioned something about riding at the top end of zone 2. I remember saying that was too hard, and that's when the penny dropped for me.

My hard rides were so hard that I was struggling to ride at 70% FTP. It seems obvious writing this now, but at the time I didn't think anything of it. Thanks to Neil for the advice which I (eventually) took!

So, onto the training change. I still wanted to do a 100, just didn't know which one. One mistake I wanted to avoid repeating was letting my volume drop as this is why I faded towards the end of last season (I think).

Those seven consecutive weeks below the average dotted line immediately follow the 100. Not good.

Now, compare the above to the same period of time this season:

The last seven-and-a-bit weeks have been the most volume I've ever managed. Ironically, I haven't needed or wanted a rest/recovery week. In that time I've averaged 12,000kJ/week. I don't really understand what's going on inside my body, but whatever it is, it's working!

This is last week's training leading up to the 100 (separate race report coming soon).

As I had two races planned and a commute, I didn't schedule any hard efforts. And actually as I've been racing quite a lot recently, I haven't done much by way of structured workouts.

Whereas before I was focused predominantly on the hard rides and filling the gaps with easier rides, my focus now is to ride as much around the 245-265W mark, and top up with the occasional workout as and when I'm a bit light on intensity.

I did the Joe Friel aerobic threshold test (essentially ride 30 beats below your lactate threshold HR for an hour and note power) to give me a surrogate for where my first lactate turnpoint is. That test came out at 266W, which seems about right.

Obviously, I have no idea how much lactate I'm producing because I've never measured it, but I think this is a reasonable way of training in a similar vein and, I suppose it doesn't really matter if the race results are good.

The '<LT1' rides are always done on feel around 4/10 RPE cross referenced with power and HR. Even in wildly different conditions, it doesn't vary too much.

This post is already pretty long so I'll wrap up now and save the second part for another day, maybe later this week.

Thanks for reading.