You win some and you lose some...

So the Trainerroad 'Sustained Power' build plan is now complete. The final week was basically a rest week before I moved onto the next stage of the training program. For me, this is the 40km TT Specialty plan which should have me fully prepared for the spring Hardrider series. 

Tuesdays session kicked off with a rather painful set of 4 intervals for 10 mins each at FTP with 2 mins recovery. So basically 2/3rds of a 25 mile time trial at 4:00am... how I didn't vomit I have no idea. Somehow I not only managed to hold the vomit down, I managed to hit the required power output without any major issues.

Wednesday was a recovery day so incorporated accounted my normal commute.

Thursday was a different story... VO2 Max intervals at 115% of FTP, 4 min duration, 3 sets of 3, 3 mins recovery between intervals, 6 mins recovery between sets. This should have been my specialty. I have generally always been better at short high intensity intervals. I can do 380W for 8 mins and 290 for an hour. Holding 334W for 3 mins each should have been relatively achievable. For some reason... I failed miserably. I could barely hold the first set. Power was dropping off quickly. By the second set, I couldn't even hold FTP, let alone 115% of it! I cut the second set down to a weak 2 mins and missed the third set all together. I have never felt this rubbish before... 

I currently have great form following my rest week so it can't be down to lack of recovery or over reaching/over training. 

The psychological effect of this epic fail was brutal. Feeling lethargic and generally a bit low I failed to wake up in time for my Saturday workout. I snoozed the alarm a few times and even after waking, I continued to waste more time until I knew I had to get on with the DIY. Saturday turned into an unplanned rest day.

Delaying the inevitable... I started to really dread getting on the bike on Sunday morning. 

Rather than missing the Saturday workout (which is one of the key workouts in the week) I completed it on Sunday. Leaving Saturday as a rest day (instead of Monday) and pushing Sundays workout to Monday.

This workout was another killer of holding sustained power. I wasn't looking forward to it in the slightest. The failure of Thursday was playing on my mind and my motivation was low. Alarm went off... got up... had a coffee and got to work. 

4 x 12 mins intervals at 95-99% FTP... 

I'm not entirely sure how it happened... but I smashed it. As soon as I started I just felt strong. Rather than hitting 95% FTP I decided to up it to 100%... and for the final couple of mins of each interval I decided to add an extra level of pain and took it to 105% FTP.

So all in all, its been a bit of an odd week. An epic failure middle of the week and some great sustained power Tuesday and Sunday. The only thing I changed this week was my diet. Rather than eating carbs at lunch I have doubled my salad/vegetable intake. In an attempt to reduce calories but add valuable vitamins. I'm not going to blame the diet just yet as I am really enjoying it and really want it to work. I will keep it going through next week... if I have another repeat of it this week then I might have to re-think a few things.

This weeks training plan is going to be mixed up a bit at the end of the week. Sufferfest and holding the Tour of Sufferlandria. 9 days of workouts with double workouts on days of the weekend. Total Training Stress Score (TSS) of over 1100. My current training is approx 800 TSS. This is going to be a serious case of 'overreaching'. I will be keeping an eye on my Fitness/Freshness graph to ensure I taper/recover enough before hand and allow enough recovery time after. Its going to resemble something similar to a training camp. I will do a full write-up on it throughout the duration of the 'tour'. 

Sinner

Forgive me father... for I have sinned!

So I blabbed on quite a bit last year about how I was starting a strict diet regime and was going to lose weight to find out what my optimum 'race' weight was... I can't say that I have been progressing very well. A couple of reasons...

I was/am using My Fitness Pal to track my eating habits... To ensure I intake the right amount of Protein, Fat & Carbs... and to ensure I consume the right amount of calories to ensure I reduce my body weight by about 1lb a week. What I failed to realise is, the information on the App is only as good as the person who inputs it. Also when you scan barcodes, the App will assume the closest match in the database. Therefore, I was adding foods that were completely under estimated resulting in me consuming far too many calories. I also set my lifestyle as moderately active rather than sedentary. Thinking that my activities contributed to my lifestyle. This added about 1000 calories to my calorie intake.

I was unable to cut sugar from my diet. Coffee is a big part of my fluid consumption and sugar is a big part of my coffee (along with coffee creamer/evaporated milk). I was totaling 700 calories a day in coffee consumption alone!

So needless to say I didn't really lose much weight before xmas... fortunately I had realised the issue with My Fitness Fal before then so was able to monitor calorie consumption through the festive period without putting on any extra. I came into the new year with the drive to hit it hard... and hit it hard I did... maybe a little too hard.

I limited myself to 3 coffee's a day. Did fasted exercise in the mornings, no carbs after 12 and put myself into an excess of a 1000 calorie a day deficit (on top of the target deficit for 1lb a week). By the end of this first week I have lost 5lb. I wouldn't recommend it. God knows what muscle mass I have lost in the process.

Example of a typical days diet:
Goal Calories :1610
Calories burnt during exercise: 1800
Total consumption required: 3410
Actual Consumption: 2073
Calorie Deficit: 1337

Needless to say... I wont be doing this on a routine basis... I just wanted to catch up on lost time.

As a treat I finished the week off with a dirty treat... I went out for a long ride with the club and ended up soaked and cold. So cold I had to miss the coffee stop and just head straight home. So decided I would pop down Tesco to treat myself. 1 burger, 1 pizza and 4 triple chocolate chip cookies later and I feel very satisfied.... Although due to the 2000 calories burnt on the ride, i'm still finishing the day with a 500 calorie deficit.

Anyway... I now weigh in at 10st7lb (67kg) @ 11.4% body fat which puts my FTP/Kg to 4.3W/kg.

Based on my current FTP... if I lose another 7lb I will be at 4.5W/kg.
If hit 10st and I can increase my FTP by another 15% by September (hill climb season) I will be at 5.2W/kg.

Based on a 5 min effort (hill) being able to output an excess of 115% of FTP (estimated power output), it is may be possible to be hitting the 6+ W/kg.. This isn't going to be far off a podium positions on the WTTA Hill Climbs and maybe a top 20 at nationals... All hypothetical of course... There is a lot more to racing than power... We will have to wait and see :)