Good Friday

The goal of this blog was to encourage greater consistency in my training, and already that's had its challenges. I was pleased a few weeks ago when I found out my entry to the Good Friday Meeting was accepted. This was some good motivation to get stuck into some solid training so as not to make a complete fool of myself in front of a crowd and amongst some elite riders.

Unfortunately it worked out that I was to be in Berlin for the weekend prior at the Berlin Bike Show. Well, unfortunately with respect to my training and preparation for the track meeting, but it was definitely a beneficial thing for the business - which ultimately is my real job! Plus the Berlin Show was also hosting the European Singlespeed Cyclocross Championships - so I'd get a little riding in.

More beneficially though, as I was making my preparations for the Berlin trip I got wind of some friends having organised a track training weekend in Alkmaar, Netherlands. A quick check of the map and I realised it was on the way, more or less.... So a quick clearance with the boss and I had the makings of a nice road trip.

I already posted in some more detail about the weekend, which really was great. Sadly then I had to get in the car for another two days' driving to Berlin, then three days on my feet at the show, then another two days driving back home. So it was not exactly ideal prep to be well rested with fast legs for among the toughest racing I've done.

The Good Friday Meeting is iconic, one of the longest running cycle events in the world. The last few years have seen it move indoors to Lee Valley after long having been held at Herne Hill. That's fine by me as I much prefer racing indoors. Well, I shouldn't say that, I much prefer 250 tracks I think, but I've never ridden an outdoor one. Would love to have a go on the wooden outdoor 250 that my friends in Minnesota ride, some day...

Anyhow, the main event for the endurance guys is the Golden Wheel 10 mile scratch. Qualification for this is via two heats for the amateurs, with 10 pro/elite guys going through automatically. So 9 of 28 in each heat would go through. With such competition for spots in the final I was expecting it to be crazy fast from the gun, so I put a massive 98" gear on in the hope this would help me hang in there to the end. This was not a good idea. It was crazy fast from the gun, then it eased up, then it was super fast again... All the accelerations on that big gear and my flat feeling legs meant I was pretty cooked. I did a turn with about 10 to go, went too far to the back, let a gap open and couldn't close it. So I was a DNF in the qualifier, pretty embarrassing....

Once the selection was made for the final everyone who didn't make it was thrown in to group 2 who got another elimination and a consolation final scratch in the Ron Beckett Memorial 5 mile.

The elimination was a bit odd as it was two out every second lap so the field dwindled pretty rapidly. I was feeling better (and also changed to a smaller gear - 94") and managed to position myself reasonably well, right up until the point I was eliminated.... I wasn't on the limit physically though, just made the silly mistake of getting caught inside at the wrong moment. I think I finished 8th. So that was an improvement. The final scratch was again a battle of survival, very stop-start but still averaged 48kph, so some periods were blazingly fast.

Overall a great experience and a lot of fun to race in front of a crowd amongst proper elite guys. Another kick in the bum to get cracking on with the training on a more consistent basis! That said, I've now got a three week trip to Australia to celebrate my 40th, so am not going to be out regularly on the bike during that. My intention is to do a good amount of running and some good core and flexibility work. Then when I get back the summer race season kicks off!

A common sight on the day, me at the back. This was the elimination, I think two rounds before I went out. 

Track camp

I've just had a great long weekend in the Netherlands at a track training camp organised by the Finsbury Park Cycling Club. A real mix of ages and abilities but a great bunch of folks.

I'd heard about this a couple of months back and was very jealous then I realised I would be driving over to Berlin for the Bike Show anyhow so I could just leave a few days earlier and include this as well. We  had the Alkmaar track to ourselves for two days which is a lovely 250 indoor wooden track plus we could use the derny and start gate.

The first day was mostly derny sessions, starting off with some familiarisation of riding behind the derny, then we did some simulated point racing experimenting with different Gear selection it was a good hard day with some fast riding.

Day two primarily we were working on starts, something I'd never done before having never raced a timed event on the track. It took some getting used to, mostly managing the timing was the difficult part. Really hard work though, repeated accelerations from stopped, after a few my back was getting a bit tweaked so I took it easy. Then the derny came out again for a final fling. As a good chunk of our party had already left due to having trains and ferries to catch, I thought I'd take a long shot and ask our great coach Carolien if I could have a go at riding the derny. To my amazement she agreed and I got her up to speed and whizzed around the blue a few times - what a blast! As a last fun thing to do we tried riding the wrong way around the track, something I'd never done before. Such an odd feeling, though I got used to it pretty quickly. I think it was the life-long trackies who had a harder time adapting than us newbies.

Monday I had to head down to Amersfoort to pick up my Berlin show bikes from Jelle at Just Pedal. Carolien had mentioned she had a derny session organised at the Amsterdam track for just herself and another friend and I could come along if I liked. I liked! The opportunity to ride such a classic track at speed behind a derny was not to be missed. We did a good warm up and my legs were feeling pretty tired after the weekend and I'd been out on the road for a couple of hours in the morning. First run up behind the derny I was solo and did 40 laps taking a lap every 10 with the bike doing about 47. Then the next couple of runs I was just trying to hang on to Axel (multiple world master's medallist) while he was in his pursuit position running over 50. I was pretty cooled after that and warming down on the rollers when Carolien said 'Sam you do one more' I couldn't really say no given the opportunity. After the first few laps on the track I wished I had, I was starting to break... Kristian said we'd just do 40 laps fast, meaning 52-53kph for me. So I started out trying to count off laps but quickly lost track of it just became a blur of slightly easier in the bends, pushing on the straights and just burying myself. Thankfully Kristian signalled 10 to go, the next 5 seemed an age. Then finally 3, 2, and off the derny on to the black for final 'sprint'. I was completelt spent by that point, legs and lungs just searing. Wish I could do that every week :-)

Overall a great few days riding some different tracks with some fantastic people. Thanks to everyone, especially Chris for the organising and Carolien for the coaching. Hopefully it will have whipped enough track speed into my legs to not completely embarass myself a the Good Friday meeting.

Testing, testing....

I haven't done any sort of structured test on a bike (or anywhere else for that matter) since about 1999 when I did some ramp tests during a study at the AIS investigating the optimal period of altitude chamber use. That was pretty brutal, and part of the reason I haven't done any since.... However if I'm to be taking a more structured approach to my training I thought it would make sense to at least try to establish some sort of baseline level of fitness. Power measurement being the thing these days I thought I would crack on and do an FTP test.

As your FTP (Functional Threshold Power) should be the max you can hold for roughly an hour, in theory this is most accurately established by doing a maximal on hour effort. However that is pretty hard to do sitting in the laundry on the trainer... Not impossible, but given my propensity for the mind to wander and lack of a huge amount of experience pacing a TT type effort getting a realistic measure via that method seemed unlikely. Other protocols for measuring FTP are shorter steady state effort/s, either one 20 minute effort then subtract 5%, or two 8 minute efforts, averaged and subtract 10%. Now there are lengthy online discussions about which test is 'best' and I only began to scratch the surface of these before I realised that for my purpose it didn't really matter. All I wanted was a figure which would better guide interval sessions and also one to act as a baseline against which to compare future tests. My intention will be to test monthly, at least for the next 3-4 months. The focus after that will be more on building intensity and ability to recover from hard efforts rather than specifically trying to increase steady state FTP.

So to the test itself, I didn't really know what to expect and without the motivation of the Sufferfest videos as a background (my usual spur to doing intervals on the trainer) I wasn't sure how well I'd keep it going. So I stuck the youtube clip on of the Madison from the 2013 Worlds which ran in the background, while the Trainerroad program was in minimal format at the bottom of the screen - I like how this works. Somehow watching other people burying themselves makes it somewhat easier to make yourself do it. I was on my regular road bike, the Al Singular Falcon, with a Powertap hub taking care of measurement duties and old faithful Cyclops Wind trainer which makes a hell of a racket and makes headphones mandatory for me as well as anyone in the vicinity, but does the job.

The Trainerroad test is structured so that you do a few hard efforts during a fairly long warm up so that the juices are really flowing by the time you do your first effort. The first one I started off a little tentatively and built it up a bit over the course of the effort. Was definitely working pretty hard by the end but didn't want to leave myself completely broken as there was another one coming up in 10 minutes time. The average power for that first effort was 324W. Max power was 392 which occurred towards the end and I guess indicates I could have started a bit harder. Heart rate rose steadily throughout, peaking at 177, some way off a max of 193, I suppose again indicating I could have gone harder. Still there was a second one to come so I wanted to still have something left.

The ten minutes between efforts went quickly, rather too quickly and before I knew it the countdown to the second effort began. I wanted to try and push a bit harder on this one. I started out quite enthusiastically, maybe overly so for the first 30s. Then backed off a bit too much, then changed gear (as you can see where cadence drops for 45s or so), then changed back and finally settled in to a good rhythm after a couple of minutes. It felt like a good hard tempo but reasonably manageable. This effort averaged 334W, so a notable increase on the first one, but again I was able to lift it in the last minute, so could possibly have gone a bit harder overall. Max heart rate within the effort got to 180, still some ways off my max - I don't know if you should be hitting max on these tests? I suspect that may be more a ramp test, which is really painful....

Anyhow, final result was an extrapolated FTP of 296W. Whether I could really sustain an average of 296W for an hour I don't know, does it really matter? They say if you can't do that then it's a good indication that you need to work on endurance, which is probably true in my case. For me though this is just a good, repeatable test and gives me a strong basis for doing intervals from, and hopefully will also see some improvement over time. 

Of course once we start looking at W/Kg FTP this comes out at a fairly paltry 3.4 at my current weight - when you consider most pros are around 5 and top climbers are 6 and over. However I have a good 7-8kg I hope to lose over the next 6 months or so, and I reckon a 10% increase in FTP is feasible through both consistent training and a better crack at the test itself, which would put it over 4 W/Kg - which is not bad for a 40 year old cycling dilettante...  In any case, the proof as they say, will be in the racing pudding - and improving ability to do repeated efforts well above threshold will be way more important than 'just' increasing FTP, and certainly the weight is not so much of a concern for my primary aim of doing better on the track. 

The Weight

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!

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.