No, not the great track by The Band, that stuff that clings to our middles and slows us down on the bike. I guess to say I struggle with my weight is a bit disingenuous, I've always been on the skinnier side compared to the general population. That said, for a cyclist, especially these days, i'm pretty big. 190cm and touching on 90kg it's not exactly a svelte climber's frame. Part of the reason is just age, when I was 17 I was about the same height I am now, but weighed in the low 70's. That was really rake like and at that time I'd have craved some of the muscle mass I have now..... It's just crept up pretty gradually since then, with a few fluctuations on the way.
Since getting more serious about my riding again, and I suppose also with the insidious creeping onset of middle age, I've been a bit more concerned about trying to keep a lid on the kg's. So I went through of a period of fad diets and other 'cheats' to get some weight off. To an extent these worked. I got down to the low 80's and looked pretty trim. Trouble was, I felt rubbish on the bike and off it. No energy and I wasn't really riding as much as I should have been. So it was back to the old ways of eating and it quickly came back - a not uncommon story... Now I'm back to where I was weight wise - just shy of 90kg at present. Still, I've got more miles in the legs over this winter than I've had for some years, and a decent amount of racing too - despite it being a bit haphazard.... Nevertheless, the middle-age spread remains a reality.
I recently read an interesting piece saying that you can't really focus on losing weight and getting faster at the same time. That kinda makes sense to me that you can't train effectively if you are always hungry and your body won't recover effectively if fuel to repair cells is limited. But I think we're talking about the elite level here - when Wiggo wanted to lose a large amount of weight (as it looks like TJVG has done over winter as well) it was on massive calorie restriction while still training. He won't have got faster in that period, but will have lost real muscle mass as well as fat. For me I just want to get the BF% down a bit lose the wheat/beer belly - I have to accept 17 year old Sam is long gone... Somewhere around 83-85kg I think is a good race weight.
So my approach now is to just cut out/down the refined and starchy carbs as well as refined sugar, and just get stuck into a solid training plan. I think that just some good solid consistent riding will get me to an acceptable weight for what I want to do - I don't need to get obsessive about counting calories or following silly restrictive diets.
So here we start - week 1, 89.8kg on the scales this morning!
Wednesday 24 February 2016
Sunday 21 February 2016
getting started
Over the past couple of years I've been getting more and more back in to racing, and somewhat sporadic training. This fits and starts aspect to the training is the main reason for starting this blog. To have somewhere to out some goals, a plan and record progress towards it. I think (hope) putting this out there will help me to have a bit more consistency in my training, and to keep moving forward even when inevitable setbacks occur.
I have a tendency, as I guess do many others, that I'll go through a burst of good regular training and healthy living. Then after a few weeks, or in the best case months, of progress something will happen to derail that - whether it's an injury, a bad result which wasn't up to expectations, or some external event/s which conspire to keep you off the bike for a chunk of time. Subsequently I struggle to get back into it for a period of weeks or even months - irregular riding, eating rubbish, drinking too much.... Then we are back where we started.
This pattern has been repeated over and over. Last year I hadn't done much over summer, had a bit of an injury in July then failed to get back into it until September, when some last minute training for masters track worlds began. That went OK with a good month of decent training meaning I actually finished in the bunch in the scratch race, which compared to the previous effort was a result of sorts. I was determined to keep it up and carry some good form in to winter track league. First two outings at track league in late November went really well, got top 5 placings in most races. In fact I was somewhat worried I may get put up in to A grade, I wanted to stay in the B's as I knew that would be more interesting racing. The first blow came when it was made apparent that the results from the first two nights would not count towards the overall league. The second came when it became clear there were way more people wanting to race track league than there were spaces for. So entries every week could by no means be relied upon, and on average I got a ride every 3-4 weeks from there.
I really need to keep racing regularly to keep my motivation up and maintain at the front of my mind why I'm doing this. It's hard for me to drag myself out of bed to go and train on those cold, dark, wet mornings when I've not got any certainty about races coming up. I guess there are people who love the training and that is sufficient motivation in itself. Or perhaps they are just better at maintaining a longer term view of what they are trying to achieve. I've come to the conclusion I really need to be racing every week to keep me going - get a view of where I am, get feedback on improvements, and to keep pushing me to get out there.
So I lurched from one occasional race to the next, getting a kicking which would stiffen my resolve in the short term, then I'd miss out on entries the next couple of weeks and the 'why do I bother' factor kicks in. In the end, from a season from mid-October to mid-February I raced 5 times in the league, and only 3 of those counted towards league points. The Christmas period and in to 2016 I was especially slack, barely riding for 2-3 weeks. Then I got a surge of enthusiasm and had a couple of good weeks at the end of January. Then things were happening in the business which made it hard to get a lot of riding, plus some unrelated personal crises. Anyhow, it's not been a good consistent pattern of training, so if I want to start getting some decent results I need to get a lot more regularity in to my riding and racing.
I have a tendency, as I guess do many others, that I'll go through a burst of good regular training and healthy living. Then after a few weeks, or in the best case months, of progress something will happen to derail that - whether it's an injury, a bad result which wasn't up to expectations, or some external event/s which conspire to keep you off the bike for a chunk of time. Subsequently I struggle to get back into it for a period of weeks or even months - irregular riding, eating rubbish, drinking too much.... Then we are back where we started.
This pattern has been repeated over and over. Last year I hadn't done much over summer, had a bit of an injury in July then failed to get back into it until September, when some last minute training for masters track worlds began. That went OK with a good month of decent training meaning I actually finished in the bunch in the scratch race, which compared to the previous effort was a result of sorts. I was determined to keep it up and carry some good form in to winter track league. First two outings at track league in late November went really well, got top 5 placings in most races. In fact I was somewhat worried I may get put up in to A grade, I wanted to stay in the B's as I knew that would be more interesting racing. The first blow came when it was made apparent that the results from the first two nights would not count towards the overall league. The second came when it became clear there were way more people wanting to race track league than there were spaces for. So entries every week could by no means be relied upon, and on average I got a ride every 3-4 weeks from there.
I really need to keep racing regularly to keep my motivation up and maintain at the front of my mind why I'm doing this. It's hard for me to drag myself out of bed to go and train on those cold, dark, wet mornings when I've not got any certainty about races coming up. I guess there are people who love the training and that is sufficient motivation in itself. Or perhaps they are just better at maintaining a longer term view of what they are trying to achieve. I've come to the conclusion I really need to be racing every week to keep me going - get a view of where I am, get feedback on improvements, and to keep pushing me to get out there.
So I lurched from one occasional race to the next, getting a kicking which would stiffen my resolve in the short term, then I'd miss out on entries the next couple of weeks and the 'why do I bother' factor kicks in. In the end, from a season from mid-October to mid-February I raced 5 times in the league, and only 3 of those counted towards league points. The Christmas period and in to 2016 I was especially slack, barely riding for 2-3 weeks. Then I got a surge of enthusiasm and had a couple of good weeks at the end of January. Then things were happening in the business which made it hard to get a lot of riding, plus some unrelated personal crises. Anyhow, it's not been a good consistent pattern of training, so if I want to start getting some decent results I need to get a lot more regularity in to my riding and racing.
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