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

[Felt_Rider]

Quote: Originally Posted by Bigpikle .
sounds like a good hard session there Felt.

I got some miles in but not quite according to plan. The bearings on my PT have simply crumbled after the rain last weekend so the wheel is totally unusable until they are replaced. So single speed on Saturday and although I just span along for 2 hrs the legs felt surprisingly worked after I finished. Might well be the high workload this week? After 2 easy club rides the last 2 weekends I was actually looking forward to a long steady ride on Sunday. Poor weather reduced the turnout to only 6 again and the leader had planned an extra rolling route, so it turned out to be a leg ripping experience. Although I didnt have my PT on a clubmate with the same FTP rode with me and his data showed >28 mins at L5 and above across the 75 miles! No wonder it hurt...

Got home and immediately started to fel a sore throat and stuffy nose and today I've had a horrible head cold since I awoke. Hoped to at least get an easy hour done today but no hope and I had to get to the airport early as well, so 3 days off the bike now. Good news is I'm off work all next week so am hoping for 10 days of solid steady work. I've sorted out my routine for riding in totally sh*t weather now so hopefully nothing will get in the way!



It was an encouraging moment. I am typically self motivated and simply have a love for training even if I don't see gains. It has helped that I have had a long competitive career in a different sport to understand that gains, at least for me, don't happen in a linear fashion. But even with plodding along month after month being content with a regular training schedule it is encouraging to get those moments like Sunday.

As I give advice to people locally about strength training I paint this mental picture of a blacksmith pounding the heated metal with repeated blows of the hammer. How he just keeps on pounding until the metal relents and takes the form that the blacksmith intended. I see that to be the case with most of us despite genetic ability. Even those with world class genetics reach a point where the gains are little and the competition still stiff, but you just keep hammering away consistently and patiently waiting for the body to start taking form. I realized when I picked up cycling in 2004 that my gains in cycling would be minimal when compared to the average guy or gal racing bikes, but I still love the sport and enjoy structured training and love just pounding those legs and heart daily if possible.

______________

I almost felt like you did after my group ride on Saturday. I had a number of match burning moments, but not as many as you did. We actually took it pretty easy most of the time, but had a few sharp climbs that had no choice but to churn out some watts to get over. When I got home I felt run down and knew I had weakened my immune system, but the next day I felt okay and then had that exceptional Sunday ride. Sunday evening I was a little nervous that I went too deep by pushing hard, but so far the body is putting up with the load.

That was a lot of matches burned in your 75 mile group ride. Hopefully your body is recovering fast and you can overcome and fight off the illness.

 

[Bigpikle]

sadly, totally wrecked now... Sat here in Zurich and able to see the mountains that I cant get out and ride on, with a stuffed up nose and head and loads of empty pill packets from trying to fight the symptoms. If it wasnt important paid client work I'd have crawled under a duvet on Sunday afternoon and not come out since! Home tomorrow night so hopefully will have started to recover by then and can get back on it later in the week.

 

[Bigpikle]

Well last week ended up a total write off thanks to a stinking cold that literally came on in a couple of hours and still hasnt quite cleared, as well as 3 very long days overseas. After my CTL finally reached the heady heights of 75 it crashed back to 65 before I got on the bike again which is very frustrating. Luckily this week has a few days off work so I've been on the bike a lot and been logging a lot of steady L2 miles - almost 300km since Sunday - and the CTL is climbing back up again. I've been working really hard to keep the effort levels contained and try and stay in L2 as much as possible to allow for maximum recovery and hence more riding time while I have the time available. Its been working reasonably well although I need to get a little better at the pacing and avoid pushing the watts when the winds blow etc. It certainly does show up in the recovery though as its much easier to do back to back 100-130TSS L2 rides than similar TSS tempo sessions.

I'm running some indoor turbo nights for the club each week for the next few weeks, and the first is tomorrow, so that should be a good chance to get my session on intensity done and then a few easy sessions again. My calendar for the next 3 months also looks like its going to offer me loads of training time and I'm thinking this polarised high/low approach might be a very good way to make the most of it through to the end of January. If nothing else I cant see it hurting me if I'm logging a lot of miles given one of my A goals next year is Geneva to Nice for 6 days across the mountains. Once Jan ends then time will be a little more limited and I see a switch to more SST and L4 work as a general focus as a build towards the start of next season and TT time again!

Hope everyone is having a good autumn/fall....

 

[bgoetz]

Well I have been totally consumed with getting into the best form of my life for this weekend and by all accounts I think I am there. Which is good, because I will need it. I will be lining up with some super badass MTBrs, like Todd Wells, Jerimiah Bishop, Lucus Fluckinger, Stephen Ettinger, and many more. I am totally pumped and as ready as I am going to be! 1st task will be to sucessfully navigate the first few miles with 134 other strong dudes, which I am damn determined to do. From there all I can do is race hard!

 

[Felt_Rider]

bg, best wishes on this coming weekend's race. Keep us posted on the results.
My poor mt bike hasn't been out of the garage in over a year. Fun stuff though.

Bp, looks like you got in a nice ride yesterday. Got to love being able to get out in good fall weather and get in a good ride.

 

[Bigpikle]

Originally Posted by bgoetz

Well I have been totally consumed with getting into the best form of my life for this weekend and by all accounts I think I am there. Which is good, because I will need it. I will be lining up with some super badass MTBrs, like Todd Wells, Jerimiah Bishop, Lucus Fluckinger, Stephen Ettinger, and many more. I am totally pumped and as ready as I am going to be! 1st task will be to sucessfully navigate the first few miles with 134 other strong dudes, which I am damn determined to do. From there all I can do is race hard!

Good luck - let us know how it goes!

Felt - Yesterday was a great ride and I managed a good 3.5hrs as well today. Colder but slightly less windy and sunny all the way. Lovely.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Bp, like you I am looking at how to refine my weekly training load. I like the structure that I have with how the days are arranged and now the main objective is to stay consistent and attempt to improve the quality within each session. Improving either of these aspects is a hard task.

Consistency - governed by external issues that take precedence over training. Work, relationship, home chores, fatigue/injury, etc.
Quality - Governed by the arrangement of stress load to manage between fatigue/recovery/heat management and being progressive with the load.

Weekday indoor training: I consider this my best place for creating the best training environment with the exception being heat management. Though heat and humidity are an issue the rest is just about as perfect as it can get for me for quality.

Weekend outdoor training: Provides a break from being cooped up in an office all week and inside training. On Saturday I can take a break from various aspects of the week and do a nice long ride either solo or with friends depending on my mood and training goals. On Sunday I like to go out and do a 2x60 (40 mile out and back course) that sometimes is an easy ride or I push the pace a little depending on how hard Saturday's ride went and how many people are on the MUP. But all my weekend courses living in a metro area have multitudes of traffic stops that interrupt a sustained effort. I do have a route north of Atlanta (about a 40 minute commute) that I do on Saturday's for my long ride and it has a stretch or two that I can do a sustained 20 minute block with low to no traffic and no traffic stops.

Here is this past Sunday's ride that I attempted to raise the quality a little, but you can see each traffic stop that I had to make with the dip in data and what is hard to see the data where I had to slow down to navigate around slower cyclists or foot traffic.

http://thecyclingaddiction.blogspot.com/2013/10/comet-2-x-60.html

I've come to a place of contentment and reality that I am probably not going to improve much more in cycling with my genetics. However, I have such a love for training in general and have a passion for cycling as an activity that I am very driven to continue to training. In other words I am highly motivated regardless if I make any gains or not. I just love cycling.

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by Felt_Rider

Weekday indoor training: I consider this my best place for creating the best training environment with the exception being heat management. Though heat and humidity are an issue the rest is just about as perfect as it can get for me for quality.

Felt, do you use a fan while on the rollers? If not it may remove that exception.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Originally Posted by danfoz
Felt, do you use a fan while on the rollers? If not it may remove that exception.

Yep, I have two good fans and a dehumidifier.

Southeast US = tough heat index, but the weather is cooling off and the humidity has dropped some. Training inside and out is really prime for us right now.

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by Felt_Rider
Yep, I have two good fans and a dehumidifier.

Southeast US = tough heat index, but the weather is cooling off and the humidity has dropped some. Training inside and out is really prime for us right now.

I see, sol in other words. At least winter's on the way

 

[bgoetz]

Ok, race recap for Iceman. Hands down the coolest experience I have had on a bike. I lined up a couple rows back from Wells, Ettinger, Bishop, Kabush, and the other big names (they didn't let those guys line up in the back), it would be as close as I would get to the front of the race all day. The start was just pure insanity, full gas all the way to the first section of single track, periodic sounds of MTB tires rubbing and bodies hitting the ground. Then the inevitable pile up and full brakes, guys wondering out of the woods carying their bikes. At that point the top 30-40 were gone and it was a mad scramble of people trying to save their race. In a panic someone clipped my bars from behind and sent me into the woods, not a bad crash, but enough for lots of guys to get around me. Within the first 10min I was redlined and blown up, once I recovered and settled into a rhythm with a group of guys I had no perspective where I was in the field. I felt faster than the guys I was with on the flat sections and even rode away at one point only to crash on a nasty downhill single track and have my chain tangle around my crank. I managed to chase back to the group though. Then came the cramping legs, bad cramps, at one point I had to dismount after slipping a wheel and I almost could not get back on the bike. Again, I chased back to the ever dwindling group, but now I felt like I needed to conserve in fear of more hills at the finish. You could hear the finish from over a mile out and as we got closer the amount of crazy awesome spectators increased until we hit the finish area which was packed! Along the way we passed a couple people still on course from the morning waves of 5000 people, for these people finishing would be a victory, I slowed to give them words of encouragement. At this point there were 3 of us. We would do a quick loop and then back out for a 1k climb then back to the finish. I think it was a combination of the energy of the crowd and having feared the last climb to much, but I dropped the two guys I was with, finishing 73/135,16min off of the race winner Geoff Kabush. In all had things gone different at the start and I had gotten in with a faster group, I want to say I could have gone a bit faster. But really I had what I would consider a great ride, and can't illegitimize just how hard the guys who finished in front of me rode. My take away from the past couple MTB races at the elite level is, there is a reason elite MTBrs make good road cyclists, because it is harder. Unlike a road race there is no chance to recover, it is full gas the whole time. And as opposed to a road race that starts easy and is all about conservation of energy for a hard finish, MTB races start hard (in lots of cases just as hard as the last few laps of a hard crit) and really come down to who can suffer the most till the end. The later is what I struggle with in terms of power output as it does not feel physically or mentally natural to be blown up in the first 5minutes. I am not sure how I will train for it other than doing more races, but I am going to having to get better at going deep into the red both in terms of just doing it and recovering better off of it.

 

[Bigpikle]

Sounds awesome BG. Congrats on what looks like a good result in that field. I suspect cyclocross might also be good training as its exactly like you described - red line at the front to get position and then suffer as long as you can for your hour of hell!

 

[Bigpikle]

Not much going on I guess at this time of the year....

I've been persevering with the 'polarised' approach for a few weeks now. I've had more training time so have been spending a lot of time on 2.5-4hr L2 rides and throwing in occasional L4-5 turbo sessions. This has worked quite well for me practically as I can do longer rides on days when I'm at home and then indoor turbo sessions on days when I only have 1 hour or so. I've been doing about 15 hours per week, except last week, but the major opportunity for me is coming up though as I have about 6-7 weeks from early'ish Dec to mid Jan when I will be off work and able to train as much as the weather allows.

Its taken a little time but I've settled into steady L2 riding now, primarily using HR/RPE to guide me as I dont have a PM on my winter bike right now. My PT bearings have disintegrated and I havent yet been able to get it in for repair. I'm not too worried about precision here as long as I'm not going hard. While I certainly feel like I've been for a ride by the end of 3 hours its amazing how easy it is to recover and go and do it again day after day. I just couldnt do that with longer tempo sessions. Its even possible to then do a hard Sufferfest or 40/20 sec L5 session after several days back to back, and still see really good numbers. I've been focused on doing the hard sessions 'really hard' which for me means either some L5 work or 100-110% FTP. I'm hopeful that doing 1-2 sessions every 7-10 days will be enough of the hard work to ensure my FTP at least doesnt drop. Its a bit of an experiment but so far my numbers on the hard sessions are improving week to week, although some of that might be just getting used to training indoors again. At the very worst I guess I'll simply be racking up a lot of base mileage and be in good shape to start building next year.

Another advantage is that I've started to acclimatise to more poor weather riding and in particular in the rain. Its funny how 3 hours of wet riding isnt really that bad as long as you are dressed for it. In fact yesterday I headed out in the rain and planned a 2hr session 'just to get it done' and wondered if I'd even do that, but got in the groove and actually started to enjoy the horrible rain and wind and took the long route to give myself a 2.5 hr soaking instead. Knowing this approach needs lots of volume to be effective it keeps me focused on getting out every possible day. I just hope the freezing weather and ice stay away until after my Xmas break.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Bp, my only question. Does your company have any more job openings like you have? How do you get that much time off? I have worked enough years at my company to get 3 weeks (15 days) of time off (sick or vacation) and yet my boss hates it when we take time off. There is always pressure and I will have some of my PTO time roll over to next year.

But besides my jealousy for your time off and your opportunity to load up on training volume that seems like a nice plan for this time of year. Finding that nice balance between duration and intensity so that consistency is the pathway is what I am shooting for as well. I guess I have fallen into some pretty simple training constraints rather than go deep into finite details of sports science. For now my legs just need lots and lots of hours applied to them. I then base my intensity on how much time I have available with an understanding of how that will impact consistency. The word understanding is a loose term though because like last week I went a bit hard Saturday and Sunday on the bike, Monday I trained my legs and the rest of the week my legs were toast and I failed on every indoor session and really struggled on my Saturday endurance ride. That happens now and then since I my goals are crossfit oriented, but for the most part the structure works out and even with last week's struggle the PMC chart within WKO is still trending upward.

Kudos on your outdoor rainy weather ride.

 

[Bigpikle]

Felt - I work as a consultant so effectively am only working when on the clock with a client - sometimes thats 2 days a week and sometimes 4 or 5. I have a lot of freedom the rest of the time and as long as I keep on top of everything that needs doing I can use my time as I wish. Its the flipside of being away from home for 100-120 nights a year. Sometimes there is loads of stuff to do and my 'off' time still gets fairly busy but right now its quieter. Of course not many clients want to do stuff over the Xmas break so it means once the rush to get everything finished before Xmas is over, it goes completely quiet until it ramps up in January. This year I actually finish a little earlier than most years as its a little quiet right now.

I have no idea if I'm doing enough volume to get any significant results but I did another 3hrs this morning and as I was contemplating the plan it just seemed to make sense that day after day of gentle fatigue and occasional hard efforts has to lead to some benefits, even if it is just 'base' fitness that will act as a foundation for next year. The challenge might be creating increased workload as frankly I dont see me doing much more than 3hr rides several days a week as the weather worsens. I think I'll need to add some intensity into a few rides perhaps with a few more hill efforts or some short sweetspot intervals along the way, or perhaps substitute an easy session for another L3 then L4 session as the weeks progress?

As much as anything I am looking to mix it up and do something very different to the last couple of years. I feel I've stagnated slightly this year so am going to try a different approach and see what it yields? Cant see it really hurting anyway!

 

[jsirabella]

hey all...Good to see everyone is getting into the winter regimen (it is about 28 degrees here and a few degrees higher in this leaky factory) which means lots of L3 for some. I am a big fan of the 3 hour rides on the trainer. I am a big fan of the 3 hour stints on the trainer, if you have the time, energy and will power this time of the year.
For myself I survived the procedure in fact that was the easy part, Japan was a bit tougher but I did pretty damn well on that front also. Really no need for the wife and as the doc said in 2 mos I will see if I can make any more additional gains and I believe I have seen atleast 20-30% so far. Still a bit too early to tell cause the Japan trip especially the getting back with the jetlag and the aches and pains that go along with it have gone now.

Halloween is not good for me cause I eat lots and I put back on the 10 lbs as I did not try to control intake. With everything going on I did not want add another layer of stress and this is pie season which I love but this week I started again. I am basically just turning it on and going for atleast 90 minutes and raise the watts. I will start to try and work on the 2 hour average after this week. This week is simply a week of getting back on the bike. My CTL is like a 45 I think. I did not even look.

My only issue now is sleep is tough at times and I always feel a cold coming on once I get on the bike. My wife caught a nasty one that she has had for over a week now. Without enough sleep and a bit up on the food intake I always catch a cold or feel like cold symptoms this time of the year.

Well off into the frozen tundra even though I saw of group of three riders entering CP on my way in. Nuts!! They had lots of gear on but I have ridden in this weather and you are done in less than an hour. The face and extremes do not hold unless you have electric heated garments. The face is the worst.

Anyway here is to a good off season and hoping to hear some good reports!! More important...lowered the seat yesterday and was ok today! All good signs.

-john

 

[danfoz]

Originally Posted by jsirabella

The face is the worst.

What, you don't like not feeling your chin? I was going to go get some coffee and a blueberry oatmeal scone, let it digest and head out for a couple hours but now your post has me thinking maybe I'll break out the rollers instead. Now what was that mantra again,... I am a big fan of 3 hour rides on the trainer, I am a big fan of 3 hour rides on the trainer...

 

[jsirabella]

Originally Posted by danfoz

What, you don't like not feeling your chin? I was going to go get some coffee and a blueberry oatmeal scone, let it digest and head out for a couple hours but now your post has me thinking maybe I'll break out the rollers instead. Now what was that mantra again,... I am a big fan of 3 hour rides on the trainer, I am a big fan of 3 hour rides on the trainer...

lawl...Yeah, you would think by now I get a grip on that copy and past and read them before I hit post. By honestly those 3 hour rides really kicked my butt on the trainer. Couple hours of L3 in there.

Do not go out and ride...I had for layers on above the waste and 2 below and with a winter down coast and still froze. At that point it is not training. It is just punishment for no pay off really IMHO.

-js

 

[swampy1970]

Sounds like everyone is having fun on the bike.

Despite being a fair bit overweight in the middle of the year, I decided *cough* that I needed to add at least another 25lbs by combining a 'diet' of way too much work, excessive beer drinking, working on the old Camaro and not sleeping anywhere near enough... That 185 became 210 and I think that's more than enough to make the 'qualifying' rides I need to do next year to have a shot of getting in the Furnace Creek in 2015 more than tricky enough. Last years riding was more miss than hit but the new Ridley Dean RS frame and the Bontrager saddle were the highlights. I got a frame one size bigger for the longer top tube and it handles really well (not Cannondale SuperSix nut job descending good) but as well as most road frame whilst having a steeper seat angle for many comfy hours in the tri-bars ticking off the miles. The aero tubes should be supplemented by some HED wheels next year too.

The 'plan' next year is to ride 4 double centuries( the Death Valley spring and fall rides, Davis Double, Alta Alpina Challenge) , a 24 hr (probably the one near Salton Sea, east of LA next Nov), a full brevet series (200, 300, 400 and 600km) and maybe a 500 miler of some description. The ones on the west coast like the ride across Oregon are pretty damned brutal and clash with some rides that I like to do... so, we'll see on that one. There is a 1200km brevet organized by a club in Santa Cruz that take in the California coast between SF and LA and back... That's longer than I intend to ride but it sounds like fun. I didn't think I'd like the brevet series so much when I did the 200 to 600km rides in 2012 but maybe the same will be true on the 1,200km.

So, with a CTL of 9.3 and a power to weight ratio that probably doesn't even register in the Power Profile, I think it's about time to start training.

 

[Felt_Rider]

Swampy, Great to see your post and your plans for next season.
js, also great to see your back in action and always amazing to me for the epic indoor sessions.