It's killing me but..........



I finished out an active rest week. Observation: I hate rest week :) My legs felt crappy all week like they were blocked up even at low wattage. I would rather feel like I am at the brink of being worn out. At least my legs feel much better at my prescribed power.

I am so looking forward to start ramping up new block of training and getting back into my structure. Of course it just so happens that my structure starts Monday with L1 Active Recovery, but that's what I gotta do so that tomorrow I can do 4 x 8's. The part that I am not sure is where to start. I've kind of plotted out what I would like to do for the next 9 weeks of this year (in green) for Monday's, but it may be too aggressive. The only way to tell is dig in and see what I can add each week across the board. As I put my main focus on the first couple of intervals on the Tuesday workout everything following also seemed to increase even with fatigue mounding up each consecutive day.

As far as I am concerned it is all just a fun little experiment. Since I generally train and cycle alone it is like a tree falling in the woods. Does it make a sound? Probably, but who really cares :) That is how cycling alone is since sprinting to the county sign or enduring a long course doesn't really matter when you are out by yourself most of the time. :) As long as I am enjoying it weekly that's all the matters.



I hope you guys are also having a good time whether you are dialed back for the winter or still hoping to improve FTP over the winter.
 
Felt, you must have beaten your body up for long enough that it gets confused when it stops :). How come after a rest week you dropped the power goals significantly? Shouldn't your legs be fresher / have had time to make improvements and you're able to come back stronger, with maybe 1-2 sessions to shake the cobwebs out?
 
jiberish, it was a good feeling building fitness even if I was starting to feel a little beat up. I guessed that I might not be able to keep up the training block for the remainder of the year so I threw in that rest week. I am glad I did not take it totally off because every time I have done that I really struggled in the comeback. I think being active with lower watts will help me, like you say, do a couple of workouts to clear the cobwebs this week and then be back on track. To answer your question that is part of why I put back down to 235 as my target power for the first couple of intervals tomorrow. It is not at my best but I think I can make it with some intense discomfort. I don't think I can hit 250 on my first day back. I will make the target adjustments based on how well everything comes back on line.

I think I just need to grit my teeth and clear out the legs tomorrow and hopefully I will be have the benefit of that rest last week to get me to the end of 2014.
 
Felt, same boat here with rolling the watts back. Hitting a new power for every workout was addictive, but it was more inching my way up the % FTP ladder than true improvement. Did 173 for 53 and 177 for 2x25, I think 177 was pretty much 100%. So rolling back to 160 today felt great, and I did 2x45. Hopefully with the lower number and higher volume I can improve quickly / burn some extra calories / still recover well.
 
jiberish, keep at it. It sounds like you are doing well by observing trends and finding what you can handle with the training stress load for consistency sake.

Tuesday for me was a good case of what you are talking about. I had planned (in the above chart) to start a little milder for my starting point in ramping up in the next block. The mistake I made was targeting 10 watts higher than my plan because I was feeling good. The result was good for that night, but not so good for last night. I believe if I had stuck with my planned starting point my training last night would have went better. IMO - consistency trumps hitting a single day personal record if by doing a PR type effort is disruptive to the prescribed training structure. Unless of course it is a planned event or test.

Oh well, nothing really lost by going a touch too hard on Tuesday because I will make the appropriate adjustments for next week and keep hammering away as well.
 
PR today :). I thought I understood my body but I really have no idea what it's doing, just that training hard reliably does what I want it to, even when the workouts suck / my numbers aren't there. Was feeling eh, hopped on the bike and had all the power in the world, pushed my HR 10-15 bpm higher than I usually can in an L4 and had an average power of 188 for 53 minutes. The first 30 was higher than that even. Training Peaks says my new FTP is 193 and I'm very happy with the improvement. So glad I found this forum and the great advice in this thread.
 
Nice work jiberish
What you experienced is why it is important to not get discouraged and stay consistent at the effort as best possible. For many of us progression will not be as linear as some and we ought not let what seems to be rapid progression by some discourage our own effort if we don't seem to progress as fast. I cannot tell you how many times over the years that I started off feeling like the training session was going to be horrible and ended up setting new PR's. On other days where I thought I was rested and expected a great day would end up having a down day.

This is part of why I often say, "Consistency is king" because typically I have observed in myself and others that if one keeps hammering away over a number of years things do seem to change for the positive.

Keep at it!
 
Thanks felt. There's a few reasons for my rate of improvement. Probably the biggest is the 3 years of hard triathlon training, until probably 200-220 watts I'm regaining lost ground instead of making totally new improvements. Second to that is I train near professionally because my work/school commitment is nowhere near the crazy hours you put in. If I tried to keep up your weekly training volume + life volume I'd burn out in a hurry or get sick or injured, so you deserve huge recognition for having that level of dedication. In an interview with Dorian Yates he talked about how when he started guys would be training for 3-4 hours a day and that they were breaking themselves down as much as building themselves up, and he only did 90 minutes which led to better results / eventual titles / a change in mindset for the bodybuilding community. Just something to consider.

Lastly as you've mentioned a few times that 80 CTL number is magic. I think it produces an epigenetic response and activates most of the genes responsible for endurance + recovery. Hitting 80-120 TSS 6-7x a week is challenging but really is worth it.
 
Originally Posted by jiberish2014
If I tried to keep up your weekly training volume + life volume I'd burn out in a hurry or get sick or injured, so you deserve huge recognition for having that level of dedication. In an interview with Dorian Yates he talked about how when he started guys would be training for 3-4 hours a day and that they were breaking themselves down as much as building themselves up, and he only did 90 minutes which led to better results / eventual titles / a change in mindset for the bodybuilding community. Just something to consider.
:) It is about as balanced out as I can get I suppose. I may have started lifting well before Dorian and learned the lesson he spoke about many years ago. When I rearranged my lifting I started to progress as well and won virtually everything I entered up to the national level. That was about as far as my genetics would allow me to go and was happy to retire from competition. Grateful to retire actually.

I am pretty sure that my overall training load is nowhere near as taxing as a competitive cyclist doing 15+ hours a week. The cool thing for me as far as the lifting goes is that I am a long time veteran so I know exactly how to train to get the results that I want without guess work.

Whereas, with cycling and endurance training I am still learning and have a lot more to learn in order to remove the guesswork and make training more efficient as it lines up with the daily and weekly life schedule. For example this year that contrast between threshold training and polarized training has really flared up on many cycling discussions and I along with many onlookers are getting confused in the discussion as they (coaches, sports scientists and higher level competitors) are debating this topic. I would say a long time successful cycling competitor will look at those discussions and just go about doing what they find to be their successful path to training.

I am getting better now since I have a few years watching trends and keeping track of the cycling training. I am starting to get a feel for what works and when that happens you all may see less of me on these forums. :) I don't hang out on strength or bodybuilding forums because I already know what works and doesn't work for me and I don't care to get caught up debating the topics with other bodybuilders.

Until then I am enjoying talking with you guys and actually enjoying the journey learning with you all. I am also grateful there have been veterans willing to hang out and steer some of us in what they found to be successful in their own training.
 
Great picture felt, that looks like a nice ride. Also that all black paint job is way different from around here, we just have the standard black and white squad cars. That must be a nightmare on the freeway.

Had a great ride today. Did 30 minutes in the AM and felt sore + fatigued. Spent the day eating the usual thanksgiving feast and started to stiffen up, so I decided to go for another ride. I started off meaning to go easy, but my legs warmed up in a hurry and soon enough I was maxing out my gears. Managed to do 230 average power / 240 NP for 28 minutes, and got some excellent 1000 watt+ sprints in. Training peaks says my new FTP is 225, and I can probably do a hair more than that.

This is quite a bit better than what I can normally do, and I attribute it to the extra calories + fast burning carbs. Eating for cycling is an area that I could use a lot of advice on. How much do you guys eat? What is the fat/prot/carb break out? Complex or simple carbs?

Right now I get 1400-1700 cals a day, close to an even 33/33/33 breakout, mostly complex carbs, all organic. A lot of days it feels like I'm not getting enough calories / low on food energy to burn in my workouts. But if my intake increases I gain weight quickly, so how do you guys balance the extra cals for good work outs with not gaining weight?

Happy thanksgiving.
 
Nice progression jiberish!

I will refrain about the calorie question :)

Since I juggle between two types of training I eat quite a bit of calories to fuel two training sessions on most days of the week. My weight stays about the same all the time and I generally tend to be well fueled to hit my training targets. But at times I have tried to slim down and can certainly empathize with your question. Progressive training is tough when well fueled, but then to start limiting calories just seems sadistic :)
 
Can you tell me more about your diet? Our workloads sound similar, as I've added pilates+weights and do 2 a days frequently now.
 
If you are trying to lose weight and/or understand better how your diet affects your training I personally can't say enough about LoseIt. A few years ago I returned to cycling after a ~3 year hiatus and I used it to manage my calorie intake while I was building my aerobic fitness. Its definitely geared towards people who eat a lot of processed foods which I am not and so you have to work around that. By essentially logging everything I ate or drank and how much I exercised I learned a ton of things about my diet and how it affects my weight and energy level. I was able to lose ~1 lb/week and still maintain a 5 day/week training schedule with 2-3 of those days at L4 or higher. Its a pain to log everything and it takes time but its worth it IMO. There are also other services out there like it.
 
I would do as Brian suggests since we are all so individual in genetics and goals. I use Myfitnesspal since it brings in my cycling data from (Strava I think is where I have it pulling the data).

Anyway here is a screen shot of today plugged into MFP. All of my meals are prepared in advance so I know this is what today will be (unless someone were to talk me into going out for lunch, but even then my calories and macro nutrients will be similar. What most of these apps will not do is break down my meals into numbered meals as I see them so some of these are lumped into the snacks category. Tonight's cycling is not shown in this screen shot obviously, but it will be somewhere between 700 to 1000 calories burned.



My typical work week day is something like this

4:30 head to the gym to lift and sip a 24 oz bottle mixed with BCAA's, Glutamine and Emergen-C with a single flavor packet to cover the taste
6:00 Arrive at the office and the first meal of cereal mix and whey protein drink
9:00 cereal mix and whey protein drink
12:00 lunch (similar to what is shown in the image)
3:00 same meal as lunch and similar portion
6:00 begin cycling training and sip a 24 oz bottle mixed with BCAA's, Glutamine with a single flavor packet to cover the taste
7:20 dinner (varies and I share cooking chores with my wife. I usually cook on Sunday evening that will go several nights)
9:00 pre bed snack typically a low carb yogurt

My goals are to stay somewhat heavier so that I can lift heavier. Also the leaner I get the more my joints ache so it is beneficial to me to stay to the heavier side for lifting. Also being well fueled helps me have a better chance at hitting my daily training targets in lifting and cycling. All in all my weight stays about the same. If I were specifically training for strength I would prefer to be heavier and if I were specifically training for endurance I would certainly want to be a whole lot lighter.

Among my cycling friends that are similar to my frame and height probably weigh 15 to 20 pounds less than me and it really shows up when we get to the hills. So if I were to really focus on cycling I would start dropping my daily carbohydrate intake down. Even when I had to lean up for bodybuilding competition it was always carbohydrates that were the variable. I found that for a hard training athlete they typically need a touch more protein daily than the sedentary, but how much is also individual. When I competed in BB I was close to 2 grams/kg. I keep my protein and fat intake about the same everyday and adjust the carbohydrates based on what I feel I need to fuel my training or reduce in order to lean up. So carbohydrates are the variable in my diet. I personally feel like people make a mistake by making all the macro nutrients a variable in weight control or loss. When I helped others in BB I would see them really struggle to progress / recover when they attempted to lower their protein. But I know a lot of people get all torqued up about this subject so as a disclaimer: Just my personal opinion.

I also do not hesitate to use supplements. I've been eating chicken for just about 30 years nearly daily so to chug down a whey protein drink is far more pleasant and convenient when having to juggle around work meetings, traveling and such.

If you haven't already, I would do as Brian suggested and get one of the apps like Loseit or MFP or others and get a feel for your daily intake.
Sounds like you have it near dialed in already if you are progressing and are able to recover.
 
For me the trick to using those apps was to set the daily calorie budget (net of exercise) to the level that caused me to lose weight without feeling hungry. That takes a bit of experimentation. The other thing it taught me was to identify "budget busters" and either do them in extreme moderation or cut them out entirely. For me rice was a killer. I stopped eating it almost entirely. I found little ways to save 50-100 calories here and there and those add up pretty quickly. I carefully scripted my breakfasts, lunches and snacks and left a lot of room for dinners.
 
Thanks for the excellent information. I started using myfitnesspal, and the problem area just jumped right out. Brian you were right about those budget busters, for me it was fruit. A strong glass of green tea works wonders for being hungry, so I'm running an 800-1000 calorie deficit. It'll fluctuate on lighter days + weekends. Felt have you ever tried vega sport protein? It tastes good, has 5G of BCAA, added glutamine, and is a plant based protein which is easier for the body to work with.

Breakfast is now chia seeds + unsweetened cacao powder ~300 cals, lunch and snacks are something I need to find a staple food for similar to your chicken and rice. That's a good suggestion to leave a lot of calories for dinner, because it's a meal I don't usually control.

Supplements are a super interesting area. Most people know the majority of supplements are garbage, but the truth is more grim. For general health the only things worth buying are DHA/EPA (fish oil), because the type of fat molecule is used as the backbone for a whole bunch of important signalling molecules in the body, and green tea extract. The green tea extract has a long list of awesome stuff, the areas where it really stands out is in cancer prevention, with reductions of up to 90% among extremely heavy tea drinkers, as well as a mayo clinic study showing that taking a ton of it can halt or reverse the progress of leukaemia.

Multivitamins are largely inaccessible to the body. Nanoparticles can pass into cells (but do other nasty things) but straight vitamin/mineral X have no transport channels. Instead the vit/mineral of interest such as magnesium needs to be part of a usable molecule, like a carbohydrate, which can be transported into the cell. That said, juicing some swiss chard (and going easy on the fruit to sweeten it) is basically the worlds best multivitamin, anti inflammatory, and immune system booster.

Other supplements work to a lesser extent or for specific purposes, for instance glucosamine+chondroiton+MSM+hyaluronic acid (only works if the first 3 are combined, works way better with number 4) for joint aches.
 
...time to get back in it! Happy New Year everyone :D

Been a total write off since about October with work and travel just killing my cycling in Q4 last year :( CTL dropped <30 by Xmas and my fitness pretty much vanished and even club rides where I would usually be able to drop most people for 70+ miles became a challenge just to survive. So much for a 300w FTP at 73kg :( Dont even get me started about my weight....

So, time to get my mojo back and get back to my peak fitness from Sept last year. Not sure what my goals are for 2015 except my week trip to the Picos in October. No idea if I'll TT or not this year but will be doing our annual club 200 miler in June.

Managed to string 3 easy rides together over the weekend and my CTL just hit 40 again. I think I'm going to spend January just doing classic easy base miles and perhaps a club ride or two later in the month and then once the legs are used to turning for reasonable distances again. Then its going to be time to crack out the Kickr for some intensity and build the FTP again. Not sure whether I should start with SST or L4 work or a more polarised approach again and some supra-threshold work? Leaning towards starting with 2 sessions of L4 p/w for a while with lots of endurance miles and ramping it up in the spring when my base is rebuilt?

Looking forward to getting caught up here.
 
BP, good to see you back in action. I wondered what was going on since I had not seen ride data posted in a while over at Strava. I know you will probably ramp up fast once you get back into it.

I am looking at starting my ramp up again as well and get back into my structure. December I went to just L2 type of efforts and did one very frustrating group ride, but it was a blessing to remind me why I started training solo. :)

I also gained about 5 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas break. It was a time to just enjoy and do a little less stressful training, but it also plays another role for me. Do enough of it and I get sick of the unstructured lifestyle and diet and yearn to get back to structure and clean eating. I am now ready to get back into the flow of the weekly structure. I will probably continue on with the somewhat polarized type training since it seemed to fit my work week and I really like hitting those shorter intense intervals indoors. I will start by setting the bar a little lower since my currently CTL has dropped down to 68 with the L2 training and then increase the sessions using the % button in TrainerRoad each week until I begin to struggle. When I get to that point I know the real training starts.

I am using the following workouts from TR. (the intensity levels will be dropped down a bit these first few weeks until I see how my body reacts)

Monday - Active recovery - aimed to help in DOMS from lifting
Tuesday - Jacks (customized) - 4 x 8's at 110% of FTP with the rest time increase to 3 minutes at 60% of FTP between
Wednesday - Gray - 2 x 20's at 95% FTP with the rest time at ~ 60% of FTP between
Thursday - Goethe (customized) - 4 x 8's at 110% of FTP with the rest time increase to 3 minutes at 60% of FTP between
Friday - Off day to spend with my wife
Saturday - longer endurance ride mostly in L2 weather permitting or 90 to 120 minutes inside (I really need to get back to 5 hour rides as I can tell my endurance and attitude has dropped)
Sunday - longer endurance ride mostly in L2 weather permitting or 90 to 120 minutes inside

I will use the training results to adjust FTP in TrainerRoad and I bought a new Quarq ELSA to keep my power true on the Kickr since it about 15 watts too high. I think you are doing the same. I will use the Quarq to record the training data on a Garmin Edge to upload and track in WKO and I have set my FTP up 16 watts higher in TrainerRoad so that the Kickr is controlling the ERG mode closer to my true FTP. So if you see my data on Strava it will be data from the Kickr and will be roughly about 15 watts inflated. Hopefully the data in WKO will be good. Since I don't race or have any planned events I am still in experimentation mode. I do hope, if life allows, that I get in some solo longer distance rides this year (130+ mile rides). At the moment I have a nice new saddle sore from riding in the wet yesterday so I am not too motivated to talk long miles. :)

Look forward to seeing your ride data again.
 
Quarq is exactly what I do - record data on the Garmin from the PM and just use TR to control the Kickr. That way the different numbers dont screw things up too much. Good luck with the plan.

My work was a nightmare for 3 months and I was in a different country every week, and sometimes 2-3 a week. It just knocked seven bells out of my training and the few days I was home I was so tired that riding was sporadic at best. The good news is the schedule is much quieter for the next couple of months so my plan s just to start riding as much as I can again and put up with the cold weather. The challenge for me is taking it easy and respecting the fact my CTL crashed from 110 to about 20 and only just broke through 40 after todays ride.

Plan for Jan is 2-2.5hr L2 rides most days and gradually add in some longer rides and get back to weekend club rides to add some stretch. I suspect it wont take too long for things to come back together. I think I'll try and follow the TR base plan for a couple of months - probably focus on the key workouts from the low volume plan and then add in extra L2 sessions on all the other days. Hopefully that should help me get my CTL up to 80'ish and build some fitness for spring....fingers crossed!