gothandy

Plan

Original target was only 3.5h. Rest week.

Review

Well I well and truly messed this up. After riding Saturday and Sunday, I decided it would be a good idea to carry on and ride to work. Don’t worry I told myself I’ll take it easy.

I thought 3 days in a row after 4 weeks with only 4 rides would be fine. Anyway needless to say I felt so bad I couldn’t cycle home,  and with sense finally returning I got the lovely wife (represented by the birds below) to pick me up (me being the whale).

Activities

14/02/2011 08:05:38 Training Commute: Bitton

3rd ride in as many days, very silly after 4 weeks off. Should have ignored the sunny start to the day and been sensible.

• Time 0:38:06
• Distance 9.12 mi
• Average Speed 14.4 mph
• Average Heart Rate 139 bpm
• Average Cadence 70 rpm
• TRIMP 51
• Temperature 3.8 °C

Plan

Going to take it easy at the beginning of the week, will have a big meeting on Tuesday, so will save riding for Wednesday and Thursday. Will try and do 4 x 1:15 sessions, to take me up to 5 hours then save a ride for Saturday/Sunday with Friday off.

Review

A cold hit me Monday, just about managed my meeting on Tuesday, then had Wednesday/Thursday off work. So no training activities at all this week. The whole family down with it which made for a pretty rubbish week all round.

Did make me wonder with two heavy colds in the space of two months, how much of this was due to over training. In an attempt to apply some science, I got the Training Load plugin up and running and analysed the period in question. In the graph the redline shows fatigue (or overtraining), the blue line is the fitness level, and the yellow bars show the intensity of training each day.

All I can really say is that it looks in both cases that while I may have been slightly overdoing it, nothing major and I’d probably have got ill anyway, just one of those things.

Thankfully next week is a recovery week anyway, so I’ll leave the training plan as it is.

Plan

Target this week is for 6 hours from 7 rides. Commuting Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. With final ride on either Saturday or Sunday.

Monday and Tuesday will be about keeping the endurance going from the ride on Sunday. Hopefully I won’t over train, and be ready for a few intervals of some sort on Thursday.

Review

Managed to get the miles in this week. With a solid 6:25 of riding, and 74 miles done. The 2 rides at the beginning of the week following the Sunday ride was a bit much. Will try and avoid triple days until much later in the year, and then only used with caution.

Weather was shocking, so pleased I kept at it. Found a good road route via Bath. I can see me using that until the Lansdown offroad option dries off a bit.

Activities

10/01/2011 07:55:34 Training Commute: Bitton

Early start, and pretty pleasant ride in.

• Time 0:35:16
• Distance 9.12 mi
• Average Speed 15.5 mph
• Average Heart Rate 137 bpm
• TRIMP 33
• Temperature 5.7 °C

10/01/2011 18:29:22 Training Commute: Bitton

Awful weather. Also feeling the effects of the Sunday work out. Took it very easy. But did do the last hill in a slightly higher gear and standing up, which was a bit different. Days like this I always think of as mental work out as it is just so horrid.

• Time 0:42:32
• Distance 9.12 mi
• Average Speed 12.9 mph
• Average Heart Rate 146 bpm
• TRIMP 62
• Temperature 7.3 °C

11/01/2011 08:20:42 Training Commute: Bitton

Uber slow ride in. Made a real attempt to stay in Zone 1, because I was feeling on the edge of over training. It felt good after and looks like I’ll need rides like this to get the training hours/miles up, at least to start with.

• Time 0:38:30
• Distance 9.12 mi
• Average Speed 14.2 mph
• Average Heart Rate 131 bpm
• TRIMP 17
• Temperature 7.1 °C

11/01/2011 18:31:44 Training Commute: Bitton

Again very slow ride home. With the climbing, it is hard to stay in Zone 1 but will try and cultivate these “fast slow” rides, and look to increase speed without making HR go up.

• Time 0:42:49
• Distance 9.13 mi
• Average Speed 12.8 mph
• Average Heart Rate 139 bpm
• TRIMP 44
• Temperature 4.6 °C

13/01/2011 08:42:21 Training Commute: West Littleton

It was raining and flooded everywhere. Ended up wading knee deep through a river that had burst it’s banks just before Doyton. Surprised how little my feet and legs suffered afterwards, the overshoes work well.

• Time 0:54:25
• Distance 12.25 mi
• Average Speed 13.5 mph
• Average Heart Rate 140 bpm
• TRIMP 57
• Temperature 11.2 °C

13/01/2011 17:54:47 Training Commute: Northend

This was a new route, I was looking for some extra distance without the excesive number of hills I get by going over Lansdown. Also the Bristol Bath cycle path is good for low intensity cruising or more control intervals. This is also the route I’ll be taking for the new house so just wanted to check out how the new commute will feel.

• Time 1:17:16
• Distance 16.74 mi
• Average Speed 13.0 mph
• Average Heart Rate 140 bpm
• TRIMP 80
• Temperature 11.8 °C

16/01/2011 11:39:53 Training Wales: Cwmcarn

It took some will power to get out today. Mostly due to the weather but some of it was me feeling a little off colour too.

Couldn’t believe how busy the car park was given the weather. Didn’t take me long to realise my seat post had seized up on the Prophet. So had to do the route in saddle down mode, guess that’s better than the alternative. Had a silly off on the last technical bit of climbing, which was made worse by my foot staying in the cleat. I did notice the advantage of the 26” wheels on some of the turns, interesting riding the 29’’ has improved my skills in this area.

Really enjoyed the free-ride berms (still can’t do much with the table-tops) and all the downhill sections. Need to use the Prophet more this year, especially for low intensity skills sessions.I did decide I need to get some low profile flats and decent shoes for the Prophet, not only because of the silly fall but also I’m hitting the chunky mallets a lot.

Had trouble getting the layering right, always seem to boil on the climb, so had a couple of short stops. Also need to watch going to crazy on the climbs. Bit of a bonus ride, I’m glad I made the effort.

Now to fix the saddle!

• Time 1:14:00
• Distance 8.15 mi
• Average Speed 6.6 mph
• Average Heart Rate 158 bpm
• TRIMP 159
• Temperature 10.9 °C

Review

Not the best start to 2011, I really let things slip on the planning, and this meant I was playing catch up. I just about figured out that for my target of 300h for the year, I needed to do at least 5 hours this week, once I’d done a bit more work on the plan it turned out the figure was 6, too late then to make up the difference.

Anyway lesson learnt. I need to plan my weeks ahead and in general this year be commuting 3 days a week if possible for everything except rest/recovery weeks.

Activities

05/01/2011 07:55:07 Training Commute: Bitton

Still doing planning. So needed to get out on the bike today to hit the weeks target of 5h. Did my best to stay in Zone 1, and pretty much managed it. Felt better for it.

• Time 0:36:16
• Distance 9.12 mi
• Average Speed 15.1 mph
• Average Heart Rate 138 bpm
• TRIMP 45
• Temperature 5.2 °C

05/01/2011 18:03:04 Training Commute: Bitton

Slow ride home, try hard to keep in Zone 1. The hills are hard, best I can do on the Zaskar with the road set up is Zone 3. But does confirm the final hill will make a great point for doing Z3/4 intervals, might try some later in the week.

• Time 0:40:20
• Distance 9.14 mi
• Average Speed 13.6 mph
• Average Heart Rate 148 bpm
• TRIMP 63
• Temperature 5.1 °C

07/01/2011 08:27:25 Training Commute: Bitton

Didn’t manage to keep in Zone 1 as planned, rode more on instinct than by watching the HR. Probably because weather was wet and rainy.

• Time 0:33:47
• Distance 9.13 mi
• Average Speed 16.2 mph
• Average Heart Rate 144 bpm
• TRIMP 42
• Temperature 3.0 °C

07/01/2011 18:10:18 Training Commute: Bitton

Managed to get in 3 x 2.5 min hill climbs (Zone 4) with 1.5min rest. Felt good on all the efforts and the graph looks pretty.

• Time 0:50:44
• Distance 10.31 mi
• Average Speed 12.2 mph
• Average Heart Rate 147 bpm
• TRIMP 73
• Temperature 8.9 °C

09/01/2011 12:25:16 Training Local: Road Loop

I had the grand parents over so needed to keep this session short and sweet. I used my now favourite road loop but added in some hill repeats on the two decent hill sections. The longer hill between Slaughterford and Thickwood makes a great interval, 6 minutes to climb in Zone 3. Unfortunately my final interval was spoilt by some horses going slow down the hill. I did feel strong at the beginning of the ride, the days recovery must help.

• Time 1:40:59
• Distance 21.66 mi
• Average Speed 12.9 mph
• Average Heart Rate 143 bpm
• TRIMP 128
• Temperature 5.7 °C

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