Middle Ring All The Way

So, I went to the doctors for the first time in over two years last month to get some antibiotics for a sinus infection. Things were looking up and by the end of the following week – sinus infection gone and only the remains (so I thought) of a normal cold virus.

Six weeks later, the remains of my cold has turned into a cough that I haven’t been able to shift for over three weeks. Sure, being ill is no-one’s idea of fun, but this happens to coincide with a run of spectacular weather that will probably be hailed later in August, amidst steady rain, as having been our “summer”, which makes it somewhat annoying.

My plan was to ride SSEC this weekend, but I’d struggle to ride to the post box at the end of the road without coughing at the moment, never mind blast round lovely Forest of Dean singletrack with one gear. Which brings me round to the need for me to be doing something that resembles training, in advance of Mountain Mayhem in the middle of June.

On the up side, I’ve had my entry confirmed with the second Welsh Ride Thing at the end of next month, so at least I have something to look forward to.

Ten thousand kilometre’s came up on the Power Tap today*. Despite taking it easy this year, I’ve still made a habit of collecting data from my rides just out of curiosity. One thing I have noticed though is that because they are just rides, where a training goal is largely absent, there’s been a change in my physical capability. Fewer miles, reduced training load, more cake and a “just-out-for-the-fun-of-it” mentality has, by and large, lead to reduced fitness. But, because I’m struggling to hang on to the back wheel of Alan, Neil or whoever, the actual intensity of some rides can be quite high, the result of which is interesting, albeit perhaps unsurprising.

The graph above shows you how the riding I’ve done this year has affected my power curve. The yellow line is 2005-2007, where my training goals were focused towards 24 hour solos. The result was a pretty good power output for endurance at the expense of all-out power over short durations. While my long distance endurance has dropped this year (the dashed line), I can now put out 20% more power in a sprint. I might not be the first to the top of the climbs any more, but those fast-twitch muscle fibres that I’ve been quietly developing all year means I’m well up for the sprint back into town at the end of a ride.

I rode from Bala in North Wales to Brecon last weekend. It’s not often I get to do point to point road rides, but work sent me northwards so I blagged a lift off the boss and took my bike so I could ride back.

The goal was simple (besides getting home): ride 100 miles of Welsh hills. Despite all my years on a bike, and three 24 hour solo’s under my belt, I’d never actually done a ton on a road bike.

The wind down the valley was strong, and the ribbon of tarmac that wound up the valley in front of me seemed all the more steep in these conditions. As I leaned on the pedals and thought aerodynamic thoughts, I glanced down to see my power meter was reading 450 watts – well above my threshold. I’d only been riding for 6 miles. It was going to be a long day…

Eventually the gradiant relented (the wind had other ideas) and I tucked up for the fast descent down to Llyn Vyrnwy. The route round the lake was very pleasant and calm in comparison to the previous valley. I continued onwards to Welshpool and then to towards Newtown. Here I met up with my friend Alan who’d ridden from Brecon to meet me. This was halfway and I was grateful to be able to share the headwind a bit. We headed back through Newtown and began our climb up into the hills. The wind was persistent and for the next 30 odd miles it began to wear us both down.

Builth Wells represented the final brief stop. Here we had a choice. The hilly route over the ranges, or the valley route which was 5 miles longer. My legs were feeling truly empty, and I was probably a bit under fuelled – I’ve never been good at eating on the bike. Neither seemed very attractive.

A can of coke and a Torq gel we were back on the bikes and heading for the hilly route. The combination of simple and complex carbs did the trick by the second hill and before we knew it we reached the top and it was practically down hill to Brecon. With 6 hours 37 minutes on the clock and 100 miles ridden I surprised to find my normalised power as high as 190 watts. Not bad considering I’ve not really done very much riding over the winter.

Contrary to any assumptions you may have made from the title of this post, I was in fact clothed throughout. I’d just forgotten to take my helmet, so felt a little under-dressed…

In search of the root of my short-comings at Mayhem, I looked over my training for the earlier part of the year. The base had been good, and I was churning out the highest zone 2 wattage I’d ever managed by the middle of March. The build phase of late March and April produced a good result for the Nightrider 12, and everything seemed fine. Then I got ill. For over 2 weeks I didn’t ride, and then only had a short preparation period for Trans Scotland. Trans Scotland took quite a bit out of me I think. Besides the physical aspect of riding a bike hard for 7 consecutive days, there’s mental fatigue in there too. The result was me going into Mayhem a little more tired than I realised, and I lacked the mental commitment that helped drive me to 3rd place at SITS last year.

After Mayhem I rested a bit. When I got back on the bike I just felt empty, and quickly realised that I wasn’t going to be able to turn things around for Sleepless in the Saddle.

To try and improve on the successes of last season has taken a massive amount of commitment which, sadly, has left me a little broken. So, here endeth two and half years of hard training. While there’s still some summer left, I can retreat to the Welsh Hills with Beth and chill out a bit – something that I’ve not done enough of for a long time.

If I’m honest, my performance on Tuesday’s club time trial was a bit ropey. First time back on the bike after being ill, everything felt hard work. My legs went up and down ok, but my HR was high and the power ouput some 15w lower than it should have been. I was more than a little worried that 2 weeks off had done more damage than I reliased. That was two days ago.

Tonight, in total contrast I turned the cranks for over 2 hours at a strong tempo pace and felt great. The cobwebs well and truely blown away as 62km blustery and undulating kilometers were dispatched in just under 2 hours.
Feels good to be back into the groove

I managed to negociate most of the winter without getting ill. Somehow I steered a course between people with a variety of ailments for the past 6 months without getting so much as a slight sniffle. Until a week last Monday that is. The toll of the Nightrider 12 was evident the very next day with a sore throat, followed later that week with a proper cold. It threatened to turn into a cough by the weekend before changing its mind, but lingered through most of last week. I don’t actually recall suffering with something for that long, and certainly can’t recall not riding my bike for 2 weeks. I was consequently disappointed to miss out on round 2 of the Trek Marathon champs at Sherwood

Still, looking on the bright side I didn’t miss any decent riding weather last week, and I’m now fully rested for a packed week of training that I’m properly rested for.

Roll on TransScotland…

I appear to have opened a bit of a can of worms with my Performance Manager (PM) graph. So, for those of you (Guy in particular) who want some more info, here’s an explanation of each of the graph elements and what they signify.

The PM attempts to provide you with an indication of Form by looking at the cumulative effects of your training stress (TSS). Form (according to Andy Coggan) can be regarded as Fitness + Freshness. You need both to perform at your best. Here’s how the elements of the PM help define your Form:

ATL – Acute Training Load represents your current degree of freshness, being an exponentially weighted average of your training over a period of 5-10 days. This period is referred to as a time constant (TC). The formula for ATL looks like this:

Where = yesterdays ATL, = current Training Stress Score and = your ATL Time Constant

CTL – Chronic Training Load represents your current degree of fitness as an exponentially weighted average of you training over a 42 day period. Building your CTL is a bit like putting money in your savings account. If you don’t put much in you won’t be able to draw much out at a later date. The formula for CTL looks like this:

Where = yesterdays CTL, = current Training Stress Score and = your CTL Time Constant

TSB – Training Stress Balance. This is simply the difference between your CTL and ATL, and represents your form.

A negative TSB is indicative of a high training load, i.e. high ATL relative to CTL, such as would occur in a high load training week. Alternatively, a period of taper leading up to an event should correspond with an increasing TSB where ATL is reduced relative to the current CTL.

Where TSB is positive, there is a strong indication of good performance following a consistent period of training. To help me define instances of good performance, the black line on the graph shows my ten best 20 minute mean maximal power efforts. My best three correspond to a decreased ATL following a rest week, where TSB is recovering from -20 to +5. For the time being, as I’m still in a base/build phase, I’m looking to steadily increase my CTL in preparation for TransScotland and especially Mountain Mayhem.

More (and better) articles on this subject are available from the Cyclingpeaks website. The formulas for ATL and CTL are adapted from the LW Coaching website.

Edit (15/03/07): I’ve discovered to my suprise (and horror) that a search in Google for the the above terms brings you here before places like the Cyclingpeaks website. This short article doesn’t attempt to take anything away from the guys that designed all these clever fitness metrics, so if you’ve come to this page without having visiting Cyclingpeaks then click here. The text above gives my (abridged) interpretation to the system, and there’s no substitute for hearing it from the horses mouth