I wish I knew then what I know now.

Blimey it's been a long time since my last post. There are a few reasons for this, but the biggest was that whenever I read through my previous posts I cringe at how naive, trite and twatlike I sound. So I'm going to try and sort that out from now on. I've looked at the stats and can see that there are a lot of people reading this so I'm going to clean up my act. I'll try and sort out the sloppy grammar mistakes too.

Another reason for the big gap is that I crashed (again) in a race which lead to two nights in hospital and 8 weeks of no riding. It was another unnecessary topple caused by some nervous braking by a rider in front of me. With training and racing off the agenda, I didn't want to write about it.

I'm now riding again and have made big improvements in little time, which is mostly what this post is about.

So here is a list of things I wish I knew when I got started with all this racing malarkey. It's part inspiration, part knowledge gleaned from others.  I'm sure there's nothing particularly groundbreaking or controversial  I'm also certain other people will have said all this before while others will think it's all nonsense. But I've made some big improvements lately (measured in the power I can dish out for an hour).

This is my take on training...

Riding at low intensity is a waste of time. I'm talking about the rule that says you have spend the winter riding for hours on end in the cold and rain at Zone 2 (<75% MHR, <60% FTP or LSD whatever you want to call it) in order to 'build a base'. This idea might work well if you have 30 hours a week to train, have friends to ride with and live nearer the equator, but for me it's a shortcut to riding slow followed by suicide. I think the key to building a base is to overload the body with aerobic stress. For me is riding anything up to 95% FTP as much as possible. Having tried both approaches I have seen bigger improvements in sustainable power riding 2x20 @95% FTP than a three hour zone 2 ride in the cold. With the benefit that I feel like training the next day. There's nothing wrong in riding for longer, especially if it's for fun but there's no need to ride for longer than the longest race.

Periodization is for the pro's Or people who don't crash, get ill, have families, don't puncture etc etc. The book (you know who you are Friel) says you must put all your eggs in one basket to be racing at your best. To me this is nonsense. I think the year can be broken down into just two periods - 1. Non-racing and 2. Racing. The non racing period is where I'll be riding as much as possible and as close a possible to 95% FTP. The idea is to build as much TSS (if you're into that sort of thing) and to arrive at the races with the biggest possible engine. When racing starts I'll race as much as I can and let that take care of it's self.

Train according to how you feel. My legs don't know what day of the week it is and they don't understand training plans. Sometimes they fell good and sometimes they don't. The training plan says you should rest on Monday, do intervals on Tuesday, do a 5 hour ride at the weekend and take every 4th week off. A plan like this is snake-oil sold by some coaches to justify their fee and make it appear that they've cracked the inexact science of training. In the non-racing period (that's now) I'm riding 4 or 5 times a week on a regular week and the intensity changes depending on how I feel. I'll often be aiming for intervals at 95% FTP. On Tuesday this might be 2x20 minutes in a two hour ride. After 20 minutes of steady warm-up (no real science behind the warm up or the length of it, it's just long enough to get to some decent roads) I start the interval and try to ride at what feels like the right power, but I don't look at the meter until a few minutes in. If after a few minutes I look and see it's on target, I carry on as planned. If the power is less than I was aiming for, say 88%, I don't worry that the power is lower than expected I just adapt the interval to suit. Depending on how I feel I might ride at 88% for 2 x 20 or an hour rather than try and push myself to do the full 95%. Sometimes when I'm feeling good I look at the numbers and see I'm doing much high wattage than expected. On these days I do an FTP test trying to get the highest power possible over 20 minutes. The next day if I can ride and feel like riding I'll follow the same principal. Maybe settling for 2x20 at 90%  or 90 minutes at 85% if that feels good.If I feel crap I don't ride. If I'm really keen I might do it again the following day, because...

There's nothing wrong in riding three hard days in a row. I think it's a great way to train and I often do Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday with some variation of long intervals based on how I feel. Then rest on Friday and Saturday. For example I might do 2x20 @95% on Tuesday, 90 @ 80% on Wednesday and 2x20 @ 90% on Thursday. The book says you should take a rest day after an interval day, but this seems like a missed opportunity written to err on the side of caution because that book has to fit everybody. Consequently it probably benefits nobody.

A little training most days is better than trying to kill yourself at the weekend. I very rarely ride to point I have to crawl home and die. I used to try and flog myself every ride thinking this is where the improvement would be made. But I now think it's much better to ride hard and be able to go again the next day than need to take days off to recover. For me this means avoiding going into the red in group rides (or doing intervals too near FTP). Going above FTP for very long is really toxic and takes longer to recover meaning you can't train properly again for a few days. Ultimately leading to slower progress. If there's only time to ride at the weekend however, training one degree from death is probably the way to go.

Adapt training for indoors. If the weather's bad or I have little time, I get on the turbo. In years gone by I've done three hour Zone 2 rides on the turbo because that's what I had been told to do outside. That is madness and a shortcut to burnout. An hour on the turbo is enough to get some quality training done. For some reason I find it hard to hit the same power on the turbo that I can on the road so I let the power be a few per cent lower if that's what feels right. I do this a lot: warm up, 10 @ 95%, 5 @ 70 % and repeat x 4. That probably does as much to build the engine as 3 hours spinning but without the risk of going nuts.

Keep it in perspective and maintain balance. No one except me and maybe one or two sympathetic (pitying?) others give a shit about how I've increased my FTP by x% in six weeks! Or how I was flying on that last ride! I'm not getting paid to ride and nothing changes if I ride well or stink. More importantly I realise I can't prioritize this hobby over real life. I'm taking it all a bit less seriously and enjoying it more as a result. I notice people aren't quite so quick to glaze over in my company too.

And in general...

Group rides are fun. As well as the bloodbath that is Beauval I've been riding with the guys from Walvis-Vedett. I've been really enjoying the long rides into Flanders, advocaat and coffee on the Bosberg and the realisation that I'll never be first on a 2 minute berg. I'm slowly learning to deal with the cobbles too.

SRAM is tip top. I fitted SRAM Force to my bike after totalling another another pair of Ultegra shifters. I really like it. It's cheaper, lighter and works as well as anything else. I could probably get away with the cheaper Rival and not notice any difference.

Belgian bike shops never fail to surprise. That is, if you take a bike in for a one problem you will leave with three new problems. That's value! In this, the cycling homeland, I expected quality bike shops in every town, but no luck so far.


And that's it. I'll probably add to the list, but those are the important bits. I now realise that training is simple. I guess they wouldn't sell many books or training plans if they said...

"1. Get stronger by riding and pushing yourself aerobically as much you can/like/want. 2. Race."

But really that's all it is. The upshot is that I'm training fewer hours, enjoying it more, feeling less wasted and putting out more power than before.

Have a good 2012.

Beauval

This is not a race, but with an average speed of over 40kph, echelons across the road and the breakaways, it feels like one.

No one seems to know why it's called Beauval but it's been running for more many years, with Eddy Merckx and Lucien Van Impe apparently being former patrons. It's a ride for racers and there are often pros from Quickstep and Omega Pharma Lotto turning up to ensure that it's never easy.

I've done a couple of these rides now. I'm using them to do things I wouldn't normally do in races, like attack when the pace is high, take long pulls on the front, sprint longer out of the corners (not onto, but past the wheel in front) and generally make things difficult for myself.

It's been really good for me to identify weaknesses and the odd strength. There's some guys that could probably ride me of their wheel on the flat. I'm quite light at 67Kg so it might just be there's not much I can do about it. I have to work really hard to pull at 40+kph, I don't really watch the power meter during the ride, but I'd guess I'm 110-130% FTP. Some can pull at that speed for much longer than me, and maybe under FTP.

I've always known that I'm not so good at sprinting out of corners, going anaerobic, then holding race pace on the straight. I don't seem to recover very well after the sprint. There's plenty of opportunity to improve that here though. I'm going into the corners as 6th or so wheel, sprinting out of corners and then trying to go straight to the front to do a pull.

On the plus side, the longer the ride goes on the stronger I feel, at least relative to others. In training I don't have a big peak power sprint, but I seem to be able deliver it at the end of a hard ride. I imagine this is the payoff of the long L2 rides. I somehow managed to get fifth in the hotly contested final sprint, without really being sure where the finish was! No points, no applause, but there's big kudos in doing well here.

The problem I have now is, that this ride seems to cover all the demands of racing to the point that I'm not really sure what I should be doing with the rest of my training time. Hills are missing, so I know I need to address that in training. Another issue is that I enjoy this ride so much that the enthusiasm is masking some of the fatigue. I write this the day after beasting myself without any feeling of tiredness or soreness at all. I'm taking an easy day today regardless.

Still base training, I suppose.

I have no right to feel as good as I do now. I meant every word of the previous post, but most of it is no longer true. I'm doing many more hours than I said I would, but I'm still only riding when I feel good and really motivated.

Since mid February I've been training really well and putting in more hours than I had planned. I think the key to this has been that I'm recovering really well and feeling fresh for every ride. My easy rides have been done on my tourer with a tiny gear, that means I'm barely pushing the pedals. The last 6 weeks have looked alot like this:

Monday - 1 hour easy/off
Tuesday - 3 hours Zone 2 with 2x20 @ Threshold
Wednesday - 1 hour easy
Thursday - 3 hours Zones 1 and 2 with short sprints
Friday - 1 hour easy
Saturday - 4-5 hours with a 2-3 hour fast group ride in the middle.
Sunday - whatever I feel like - or can get away with.

It's still base triaining I suppose, but funnerTM. I'm aware of the risk of overtraining, but even with the current training load I feel could be doing more. I'm taking 4-6 days really easy every 4 weeks and doing no specific high intensity stuff yet. So while I feel good and have the time I'm making the most of it.

The threshold rides have become much more enjoyable since a new road was openned that allows me to do a flat a 10 minute circuit uninterrupted . I'm able to regularly reach power that I just can't sustain on the turbo.

I'm doing the short sprints because I think it's that kind of power that is my biggest weakness. I'm doing about 12 x 12-15 seconds all out, and I'll do longer sprints in a month or so.

The group rides are either with some friends who know no fear on the cobbles, or with the 'Beauval' chain gang that tears through Flanders at 40kph. Both allow me to get some fast miles in and have fun.
Yesterday I did 140k around Oudenaarde/Waregem averaging 3.1 watts/kilo and still felt far too good at the finish.

I'm going to carry on with this training until mid April when I'm going to start looking at more race specific training and do a few Belgian races to work on the top end speed. I was racing this time last year, but I'm in no rush to get in to it this year.

A long winter

The snow and ice have gone (for now) but the thermometre still says zero degrees.

I've still been training and maybe I'm a little fresher for the enforced confinement that the bad weather has brought with it. For most of the winter I've been doing my long zone 2 rides on a fat tyred steel touring bike. The heavy duty seals on the hubs mean you have to pedal to go downhill so it's an efficient workout. I 've done at least on long ride a week of around 4-5.5 hours just spinning and going a little further from home to keep it interesting. With the touring bike and fat tyres I can go anywhere so if a road turns into mud/cobble/field I can keep going.

This has meant I've been able to keep the road bike and powertap on the turbo for more focused workouts. I've set it up int the garage with a TV and fan, so I can just get on and ride with no fuss. I've done shorter intervals at threshold and longer ones just below. I've also mixed it up with some workouts focusing on pushing a really big gear at a low cadence. When things were really bad outside I 've done 3 hours in zone 2 while watching a DVD boxset. I also did some 2 hour rides with some long L3 intervals when I realised that I really don't enjoy watching '24' that much.

Recently I've been doing two interval workouts and two longer rides of between 3-4 hours when the weather is ok. One long ride might start on the turbo with some long intervals below threshold before heading out to finish the ride in zone 2. The other long ride is usually a group ride.

I reckon I'm not going to start racing until mid May at the earliest and maybe not really go at it full bore until  June. I'm in no rush to bring in the real intensity, but there's a chaingang type ride about 20k from my house that ridden by a lot of the pro's that I'll use to build speed. Kevin Seeldreyers is a regular apparently. It's a flat 60k at race speed and I plan to do that once or twice a week from April. When I can hack that I know I'll be ready to pin a number on.

And to top it all I'm going to Mallorca (isn't everybody) for a week of climbing and sun in early April.

Whatever I'm doing I'm going to back off if I'm tired. I'm happy to ride easy or not at all if I'm sore or tired and I've been doing much better when I'm doing intervals as a result. Some weeks I've done as little as 8 hours and rarely over 12. I'm longer a slave to graphs or the though that others might be training more. This is paying off already as I did a FTP test a few weeks ago and it's up to 4.07 w/kg.

No news is not good news

I haven't updated this blog in a while, because I couldn't be bothered. I had enough of bike racing sometime in mid-July but mananged to push on until August becoming more and more tired, stressed and frankly a bit shit.

I became a slave to a training plan that I grew to have little faith in. I started working with coach who works with the Belgian Team and who I hoped would help make the most of the season. After a couple of months of 16-20 hours a week of Zone 2 riding I got quite tired and started fantasizing that I would crash and be able to take some time off. It went against everything I felt was right. Lots of long slow rides in the weeks leading up to my target races. Nothing near race intensity at all. I questioned the plan a few times, but was convinced to stick with it. The advice following any problem (such as feeling like I couldn't react to changes of pace like I could earlier in the year) were met with with advice that I should increase my mileage! I turned up to my big races feeling wiped out and hating it. I got some ok results, but nothing like I know I could have had I done my own thing. I'm not sure why I stuck with it so long. Lesson learned.

I took a few weeks off. I went out on the bike when I fel like it, which wasn't that often. I ran and rowed a bit and ate pastries. In October I felt like I wanted to train again and I've been out regularly doing the kind of rides tha the coach would have approved of: Long rides in mostly HR zone 2, but I go out for a fast group ride once in a while to stick it to the locals on the hills. I want to do better in the Belgian races next year and race a bit in the UK too.

So a naff season in all, but I did get some sexy wheels.

Easton EC90 Aero, with Vittoria Corsa EVO CX tubs. The only reason I'll be training this winter is to ride these next year.

The Ardennes

This weekend I was in the Ardennes. This is the south-east area of Belgium that is where the Belgian pros go to get their hill fix. Whereas the north is mostly flat or rolling, this part of the country has lumps in abundance.
I started my ride in Spa, which is the destination of the second stage of this year's Tour de France.

My ride took in some parts of that stage, aswell as parts of the Fleche Wallonne, and Liege-Bastogne-Liege routes. The plan was to do 2 rides: a 4-5 hour ride in zone 2, hitting all the climbs at just below FTP, and a 3 hour ride the next day mostly in zone 2.

Since the move to Belgium I've had to re-think my plan for the year. I'm not able to compete regularly, but I have lot's of time to train. The revised plan sees me trying to hit a peak towards the end of July when I return to the UK for 3 weeks of racing. In order to hit that peak maximizing my potential I've just finished a block of aerobic development. The last 6 weeks have been full of 3-5 hours rides in zone 2 on consecutive days with a cadence of 90-105 RPM, many 1-2 hour rides in zone 1 and the odd race to keep it interesting. Averaging around 16 hours/week. In the last couple of weeks I've been doing some work at FTP with some nifty intervals designed to push FTP higher. Typically I'd do a 3 hour zone 2 ride with a block of intervals like this:

1 Minute @ 107% FTP
1 Minute @ 85%   FTP
6 Minute @ 100% FTP
4 Minute recovery, and repeat x 6

The first minute gets the heart rate into the zone quicker and encourages the body to recover while working at threshold for the last part of the interval. The ride in the Ardennes was a continuation of this threshold developement.

It was great to be in a different part of the country and ride through the towns featured in some of the races named above. Spa, Stavelot, Trois Ponts, Cote de Stockeu, Cote de Wanne and Mont Theux. On route I could see names painted on the road offering encouragement to local hero 'PHiL' (Gilbert) and 'ALLEZ FABiAN' (Cancellara). The ride was 120k and took 4.5 hours. In all it was 3000m of climbing, but I felt good throughout and arrived home with all the food I'd taken still uneaten.

The next day I went out before breakfast. It was a cold, wet and windy start, and the ride took alot more balls to finish that the one the previous day. The bad weather had come as a suprise and it was hard to enjoy this ride with numb hands and feet. Over three hours later I got back for breakfast and ate my body weight in the world's best pastries. An indulgence I'd promised myself an hour into the morning's ride.

It was a great weekend that has continued my aerobic conditioning nicely. This week will be more of the same, with a recovery ride Monday, 4.5 hours in zone 2 on Tuesday, 3 hours with intervals at Threshold on Wednesday. After that I'll have a couple of easy days to recover for a week of racing in the UK. Originally I'd planned to do the Ras de Cymru, a 5 day stage race in Wales. But I'm no longer doing that so I'll just have fun racing whenever I feel like it for that week, with recovery rides inbetween.

Sterrebeek

This race was a short ride from my home. I'd been training well, putting in between 16-18 hours a week so felt a little tired, but I also felt good.

The race start was typically jovial, with loud music, a bbq and plenty of beer. I had a good warm up on the way out and was looking forward to the race. Even I looked happy...

It started fast, but I felt good. On the flats I felt ok, on the hills I made up places while recovering. Great! I'd been a bit coy in previous races, probably because of a lack of confidence. In this race I'd decided to be a more agressive. I was ruthlessly holding my place in the bunch, and I think it was a change in mindset that had me in the top third of the bunch.

There's alot of sprinting in Belgian races. Every corner, hill or attack means an all out sprint to respond and stay with in the mix. It's more intense than most of the 1 hour crits back in the UK, with the added bonus that it's at least 100k! The bunch rides single file most of the time, each rider clinging on to the wheel in front. It makes staying near the front more important than ever. Within minutes I was passing riders who were struggling and the first split happened. I was elated to be in the front group. I felt good and settled into the race. Then I got a puncture at 50km/h and dropped out of the front group with the second coming by shortly after. With the race so stretched out, the support vehicles were a long time coming and the race had long since gone.

I had an unattractive and petulant few seconds.

I was gutted, but rode home thinking that I'm making progress. When I got home I heard the news that some friends had suffered a nasty crash in the Etape de la Defonce, in Wales. It put my bad luck into perspective as news that the team time trial had prematurely ended with two riders going down - one being knock unconcious and another dislocating a shoulder. Nasty stuff. I'm hoping they recover quickly and they're back riding soon.

The day after the race I went back to Sterrebeek and rode 8 laps of the course at race pace. I went all out on the climbs, held FTP on the flats and recovered on the descents. I even faked a winning dash for the line on every lap.