I'm still fighting a minor cold, same sort of annoying thing where I run out of gas at about 85% -- which is why Sunday's ride was short, and indoors, even though it was really nice outside...
I put together a spreadsheet restwise clone, mostly to track my awareness of where I am in terms of fatigue.
Started swimming again this week, very casually, but with my new Garmin Swim. It's not bad, maybe 99 accurate, so that means that over the two workouts I had this week, it miscounted a couple laps. As it turns out, the fancy graphics (which are actually not that useful) only show up if you import through ANT Agent, if you just upload the .fit file, you only get the default time vs. pace chart.
Anyways, Traininpeaks gives you the part that is useful anyways, so no worries.
I stayed indoors on Tuesday for my ride (HHNF) instead of going to the WCC ride, totally killed myself. I then had three nights in a row of moderate drinking, and now am coming down with a cold. Healthy #fail. I could feel myself hitting the aerobic wall coming home from my 80k this morning (as I was being chased up a hill by a boisterous Mennonite bugger driver).
There are now three weeks until Tour de Hans, then some sweet, sweet rest.
Rest week complete! Except I felt less rested than maybe I should. I need to sleep more -- the typical nighttime routine goes: boy into bed between 9:00 and 9:30, then I always seem to find something to do until at least 10:00, and then I'm up next morning before 6... 7.whatever hours later. That's not enough.
Next thing I'm trying to address is getting enough nutrition in after a workout. For example, this morning I burned 1500 calories, trying to replace that in a single meal is pretty tough ... so this morning, I'm trying out the smoothy approach: 4 x 25g scoops of maltodextrin, 2 cups frozen fruit, 2 tbps whey protein, one banana, should be 700-750 calories.
Now I'm trying to figure out what my focus should be for the first few months of the winter ... Build [123], etc of Friel, or filling in whatever time I have available with quality work. hmm.
Continued the Tuesday double, which was probably an error -- cracked on the last hill on the group ride that night. I was also feeling like I had a minor head cold, I could blame that as well, I suppose. I felt a bit run-down all week, so I'm going to take some extra rest this week; Monday is a rest day, I slept in, and tomorrow I'm just going to do the regular group ride, i.e., no extra morning workout, so more sleep.
Sunday's long ride was good, but my increased fatigue is reflected in the scores for the ride, down 10 from last week, the rest of the week was similar, legs felt more sore.
I've started stretching, 3 x sun salutations each morning, either after getting off the trainer, or just waking up. I can touch the floor again!
I've been putting some thought into what I'm doing after this season end (coming up quickly with the Tour de Hans on Sept 30), the first item will be 4 weeks of unstructured exercise (aka "2x swim, occasional running with the dog"). After that, it's pretty fuzzy, but will definitely feature a winter run focus (a la BarryP/Desert Dude challenge). Other considerations are ramping up for a "serious" shot at the Iron distance in 2014 ("serious" being sub-10), and the Canadian 226 late next year.
Cleaned the bike after a very messy Tuesday night ride with WCC, made for a very nice quiet ride on Sunday.
622TSS in 9 hours of cycling. Need to get a few more 100+km rides in before the end of Sept in time for Tour de Hans, but so far I'm very happy where things are.
Started initial draft of 2013 season: Going to take October off from structured training -- occasional run with Dog, Tues night bikes maybe, though SAMS will be back in full swing, so twice weekly attendance there will keep the swim in maintenance mode.
November will see the start of Epic Run Focus 2013(tm), which will be my attempt to complete Brian Stover's (aka Desert Dude on Slowtwitch) winter run challenge: My challenge is for you to run 200 miles per month, every month for the next four months. You must run at least 200 per month and you must get your long run up to 2hrs by the end of month 2 and 2:30 by the end of month 4. You must run at least one other run every week at least 60min in length and your average duration can not be below 25min run. You must swim and ride a total of 4X per week and the length of these is not really important. (in other words don't be a dummy and go ride 2x100mile per week or swim 2x9000 (tigerchik this is really for you ;-)) shelling yourself for your running.) The goal is to raise your running to a new fitness level.
This will run through to the end of March, when I unleash my new-found power on the 30km Around the Bay race. The implementation of this plan falls largely under the BarryP 3:2:1 approach (weekly volume/10 = Easy, run 3x, 2 times that run twice, and long run is 3 times that), so 6 days running a week.
Squad training
Good for going fast, I'd like to just do this without paying lots of money for a coach as well. Tuesday morning seems to be a good time for a track session, maybe other people can be convinced.
This was a lighter week, about 7 hours, as Tour de Terra Cotta was on the holiday Monday.
Tour de Terra Cotta
You can see Phil (another rider from Brauns.com) and myself on the far right of the shot here.
This race had the best start ever, as we were doing our neutral roll-out, I hear from behind and to the left "Riding on this side of the road makes me feel so Pro."
The course was about a 9k loop, we did 6 loops. The only difficult portion of the course was a steep hill, probably only a minute long. I managed to stay within my limits on it, the last climb I really had to work to catch the field again, but it was very much like my first race this year, work hard up the hill, recover on the rest of the course.
The course was great, in that it was closed, so you could use up the whole road. That was a good thing, the roads were pretty narrow and that field would have really gotten clogged up. I was on my brakes a lot as it was. The weather was fantastic.
There was a crash in the bunch sprint at the end, and I got caught in it, so I finished about a minute back of the field. It was sort of anti-climatic, actually (just a small cut and sore calf from the crash).
I feel disappointed, like I had the fitness to do more, but couldn't get anything to come together during the race. I seem to be able to keep up to the main field without putting myself into the red too often, most of my focus is on watching out for people doing dumb things like braking hard or swerving.
This was the first week of my all-bike training, so 602TSS on 8hr of riding. Legs are sore like they haven't been in a while, and I spent today with a case of the hangrys (hungry + angry). Fuelling is working out well, I'm using just gel, and have been experimenting with replicating Skratch Lab's Hydrate formula, which is a minimal amount of carbs (about 80kcal), sodium, a bunch of other trace elements I don't care about, and the awesomeness of their flavouring. That's really the hard part to duplicate, right now I'm using lemon/lime KoolAid, but it's not acidic enough, and tastes sort of blah. Maybe some more actual fruit would help.
Anyways, the ride this morning was gorgeous, perfect weather and worked hard on the hills, as per instructions.
Had a good TT on Thursday, CP20 = 263, which puts my FTP around 250, which is up from 238 at the end of last year. I would like to get my FTP up to 260 for the end of the year, then next year 280.
Tour de Terra Cotta is next week, which will be hard(?), according to other people in WCC. May just have been a characteristic of the group they were in. I had a good ride this Tuesday where I wasn't stupid and managed to stay in on the end after two loops until the last four riders. Staying out of the red is the key, which is also a sign I need more training in the red.
I put together a spreadsheet restwise clone, mostly to track my awareness of where I am in terms of fatigue.
Started swimming again this week, very casually, but with my new Garmin Swim. It's not bad, maybe 99 accurate, so that means that over the two workouts I had this week, it miscounted a couple laps. As it turns out, the fancy graphics (which are actually not that useful) only show up if you import through ANT Agent, if you just upload the .fit file, you only get the default time vs. pace chart.
Continued the Tuesday double, which was probably an error -- cracked on the last hill on the group ride that night. I was also feeling like I had a minor head cold, I could blame that as well, I suppose. I felt a bit run-down all week, so I'm going to take some extra rest this week; Monday is a rest day, I slept in, and tomorrow I'm just going to do the regular group ride, i.e., no extra morning workout, so more sleep.