I've been assessing the training I've done over the last several months, and I think I need much more recovery than I've been allowing myself.

The penny dropped after last Sunday's ride; at the end of a relatively easy week I felt much fresher than I have for a very long time, allowing me to perform at a higher level than usual on Sunday. But even then, I still didn't feel anywhere close to fresh.

So I've been revisiting my training plan and have made some quite extensive changes.

In particular, the weightlifting has been reduced across the board. I'll now be doing only one lower-body session per week during the In-Season, and two at other times. The three sessions I've been doing since the start of the year have given me big strength gains, but have certainly contributed a great deal of fatigue. Now I've got the base, a single weekly session will easily be enough to maintain my strength over the season, and two per week will allow me to make increases again starting in the off-season. In the meantime, I need to translate these strength gains into real-world performance improvements on the bike, and that should happen over time through my cycling training.

Some other changes I've made include having a genuine rest day each week, where I don't actually get on a bike at all. No more 'it's only 1 hour' excuses; this might also help with my saddle comfort. More frequent recovery weeks are also included. And above all, I'm no longer going to do intervals with sore legs!

As I said, most of the week was easy. The only exception was Saturday, when I travelled up to the Francis Marion National Forest, for the Swamp Fox Gravel Fondo. This was my first ever gravel ride, so a 100 mile race perhaps wasn't the best choice, but I made it through in one piece and a not-disgraceful 7th place (out of 13) in my age group.

I could have challenged for third if I hadn't started sulking after the first encounter with tricky terrain; once the bike started going sideways I lost my nerve somewhat. But although on some sections I had to proceed carefully, once through them I could have made far swifter progress when back on easier ground.

Sandtrap!

I think I've become a little fragile (euphemism) over the last few months. I had a crash in the wet a while back and since then have also had two or three close calls and a very unpleasant experience in the Cat 5 road race a few weeks ago. I've got to toughen up. As far as the gravel riding goes, I'll practice on the local trails, gradually building up my speed. This should have a positive effect on my bike handling in general, so will definitely be worthwhile.

Next week I've got extra free time, but I plan to keep things quite easy except for a long, tough group ride on Saturday. I'll also do another recovery week after that; I want to be as fresh as possible before I start the In-Season plan.

I want to be a Thoroughbred, not a Workhorse!

Designation: Pre-Season, Event Week Time: 17.5 hours | Distance: 455 km | Low:Medium:High Intensity: 85:13:2 Weight Training: 1x Lower Body, 0x Upper Body | Walking: 15 km

As ever, if you want more detail follow me on Strava, and see my full training plan.

#cycling #training #racing

I attempted my VO₂max intervals on Tuesday, but I abandoned them pretty early on. My legs weren't heavy or sore, but I definitely felt somewhat lacking in power about a minute into each of the first two intervals, which in the context of my performance over the past couple of weeks, combined with some other symptoms of fatigue, was enough to help me make the call.

From my experience towards the end of last year, I'm now very aware not only of what overreaching feels like, but also why it is bad.¹ No longer am I going to try to push through; this was supposed to be my final Pre-Season Build week, with a recovery week to follow, but if I'd continued I would have just ended up doing mediocre intervals and building up unnecessary extra fatigue.

Out of all the changes and improvements I've made to my training plan since I first started working on it last spring, probably the most important was adding an emphasis on flexibility. A pre-designated training block is just an ideal, based around specific goals, which you can stick to only if everything goes right; the real world has a habit of interfering with the best-laid plans, in all kinds of ways, and it tends to punish you if you ignore it.

So I bailed out of my intervals on Tuesday, took an extra day completely off the bike on Wednesday, and just did easy recovery rides on Thursday and Friday. I also cancelled my Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday weightlifting sessions. Recovery means recovery!

Near the end of the ride on Sunday; the fast riders have all gone home!

Funnily enough, when I woke up on Saturday my legs felt heavy, my HRV app said I needed a rest, and out on the bike I felt flat, rather than fresh. I'd felt full of energy earlier in the week, too! However, I decided to stick with my planned ride: 3 hours solo, with several 30-second anaerobic intervals and a few extra short sprints. About halfway through the ride I felt like things were improving, and I even ended up getting a couple of Strava KOMs. Not bad for my first anaerobic session since last autumn.

On Sunday I actually felt much fresher than I had on Saturday, despite the fairly intense ride I'd had the previous day. It was a group ride on the Island, a little foggy early, but no wind and mild temperatures. A few faster riders have started to awake from hibernation, and now that we're into March people are more willing to up the pace a little.

I did some solid efforts, including a fast 3-man break down the length of Marshland, halfway around the main ride loop. I bridged across to Gary, who (as he often does) had gone for a solo breakaway coming off the cross-island bridge. A third rider went with me, and the three of us managed to keep a good 100m gap in front of a hard-chasing larger group behind for the full 6 km (average speed 42.4 km/h, average HR 171). I skipped a few turns as I still wasn't feeling completely fresh, which provoked a minor controversy when I sprinted for the line!

My best anaerobic effort happened earlier, going down to the first sprint point of the ride. On the latter stages of the run-in I was second wheel, behind Paul who reliably cruises along at 40 km/h in these situations. I was optimistically imagining that I might get to sprint from the perfect position, but with 800m to go Nick went flying past, going for a long one. I took a second too long to realize that Paul wasn't going to follow him (which I should have known), so I had to do a 300m effort going up to 55 km/h to catch Nick. Another 300m later Nick, realizing I was sitting on his wheel, peeled off, but before I could accelerate again Gary, who'd been following me the whole way, went on the counterattack on his other side where I couldn't immediately follow, so there was another gap to close with only 200m to the line. I caught him, but lost the sprint by half a bike length.

This is what spring group rides are all about: repeatedly pushing yourself, getting fitter while having fun. My stats on that one: 60 seconds at 50.9 km/h, max speed 55.4 km/h, Strava-estimated average power 514 W, average cadence 111.

My strongest sprint was actually after the main loop, 3 hours in, when there were only a couple of other riders left. I did 20 seconds at an average speed of 52.8 km/h, max speed 57.2 km/h, Strava-estimated power 630 W, average cadence 125 rpm. I'm happy with those numbers (and the ones above) at this stage of the year. Most satisfyingly, I felt great all the way to the line both times.

I'm noting the stats here so I can follow my progression over the next few months. I want regularly to be hitting 60 km/h and averaging 55 km/h on a 30-second max effort. If I can do that, I won't be losing many group sprints when I get the tactics right.

I've adjusted my saddle downward about 6-8mm, and that seems to have helped a lot, in terms of both comfort and power.

I increased my medium-intensity riding this week, which I think has been something I've been neglecting recently (to my detriment).

Next Saturday is my first ever gravel race, so I thought why not sign up for the full 100 mile version! I'll be taking my steel Jamis that I normally use to commute on, although I'm upgrading the wheels, and putting on some 35mm tubeless off-road tyres.

I the meantime I want to do a few intervals during the upcoming week, but rein in the volume so that I can hopefully be fresh at the weekend.

Designation: Pre-Season, Build 6 Recovery Time: 15.2 hours | Distance: 420 km | Low:Medium:High Intensity: 77:18:5 Weight Training: 1 x Lower Body, 1 x Upper Body | Walking: 21 km

As ever, if you want more detail follow me on Strava, and see my full training plan.

1. Actually, functional overreaching is what we're aiming for with each Build block. Ideally it will happen right at the end of the block, allowing supercompensation to occur during the recovery week, after which we are stronger than we were previously. If this overreaching occurs earlier than planned, it's best to modify your training accordingly.

#cycling #training #racing

The intervals were okay. This week I moved from 5 to 6 reps per session, as planned. Just like last week, my performance on Tuesday was better than on Thursday, presumably due to the extra day's rest I get.

I do lower-body weightlifting and plyometrics on the same days as my hard rides (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday), with riding in the morning and lifting/plyometrics in the evening, so my legs get a pretty good hammering and thus need time to fully recover. The extra day makes a difference.

During the main season I'll drop the Thursday strength work altogether, just doing two lower-body sessions per week, but for now my lack of freshness isn't important (as long as I don't overreach, which I'm carefully avoiding).

high-visibility socks are a good idea when riding alone

Wednesday was the first day this year that I didn't ride at all (due to lack of time). It was awful; so bad that I briefly considered buying a set of rollers, before sanity reasserted itself.

The rest of my weekdays had the usual low-intensity extended commute rides, including my leg-speed work on Friday, which is now up to 20 minutes at 135 rpm. I'm a very enthusiastic convert to this type of training, and now also incorporate at least a few minutes to the warm-up of every training ride. If this isn't something you do, give it a try!

Saturday's ride wasn't a good one.

I went to Savannah for the group ride there. During the season it's the fastest ride in the area and thus offers both a good workout and a test to see how you're doing relative to everyone else.

This week, however, things didn't work out so well. Firstly, there was a criterium down in Jacksonville the next day, so several riders who'd normally be in the fast group were taking it easy further back, leaving the front group quite diminished. This wasn't really a problem, though, because the pace was still sufficiently brisk for February, averaging 40 km/h (25 mph) once it got up to speed.

The problem for me came about 20 minutes into the faster section, when I repeatedly had jolts of excruciating pain from my saddle. At that point there were only 3 of us left (riders had been regularly dropping off the back), so I was having to do quite a lot of work on the front, and had been low in the drops for much of this time.

As we approached a sprint point the pace increased even further, and that's when the pain started. It was enough to make me sit up and drop back, and then for much of the remainder of the ride I just couldn't get a comfortable position on the saddle.

I'm thinking I might want to try other saddles, but my bike shop guru said the problem is likely caused by my lack of time riding hard in the drops over the last few months. He suggested I train more frequently in my racing position, gradually building up the time and intensity. So I'll work on this for the next few weeks and see if that helps.

It's true that this was the first ride where that's happened for a long time, so it's probably no coincidence that it's also the first ride I've had such an extended high-intensity effort in the drops.

Possibly because I ended up sitting off one side of the saddle to alleviate the pain, some of my leg muscles felt a little tender later in the day, so I decided to skip the evening's scheduled weight lifting, and by Sunday my legs felt fine.

Sunday was a typical local recovery ride. I set off too early for the group ride so I had only myself for company again, but it was a nice, relaxing way to finish off the week.

As with my cycling, I'm now 18 months into my weight training, so I thought it would be useful to look at some strength standards. According to this website my squat is intermediate-advanced, my lunge is intermediate, my row is just above intermediate, my bench press is just below intermediate, my shoulder press is just below novice, and my bicep curl is novice-intermediate.

On this scale, a novice is at the 20th percentile (of active weight lifters) and has done 6 months training, an intermediate is at the 50th percentile and has 2 years training, and an advanced lifter is at the 80th percentile and has 5 years training.

So I'm way ahead of the curve on my lower body strength, a little ahead on my back strength, on target on my chest, and behind on my shoulders and arms. As a cyclist, I'll definitely take that, especially as this reflects the amount of training time I spend focusing on each of these groups.

I was a under on my medium-intensity time this week (my target is currently 15%); if this happens from now on I'll make up the difference with tempo riding on Sunday's recovery ride, although I'll try to make sure that's not necessary.

Designation: Pre-Season, Build 5 Time: 17 hours | Distance: 445 km | Low:Medium:High Intensity: 84:10:6 Weight Training: 2 x Lower Body, 2 x Upper Body | Walking: 12 km

As ever, if you want more detail follow me on Strava, and see my full training plan.

#cycling #training #racing

The VO₂max rides went pretty well. I was fresher for the Tuesday session than I was on Thursday, but did five decent reps on both days plus some extra medium-intensity work towards the end of each ride.

When I re-introduced intervals back into my training again for the first Pre-Season mesocycle, I started with 8-minute reps at super-threshold intensity. Now I've moved to these tougher 4-minute reps. In this way the Pre-Season acts as a bridge from the long, predominantly easy rides of the Off-Season to the much higher-intensity workouts of the In-Season.

I expect to be getting some PRs/KOMs by the third week of these VO₂max rides.

It's nearly Spring!

The weekend rides were good. Both days had occasional light rain/drizzle, and consequently damp roads, but I got two nice workouts in.

I did four hours on Saturday. I think this is an ideal ride length for a Saturday; there's plenty of time to do a high workload, but it's nowhere near as fatiguing as doing a century (something I got carried away with last year).

I did some decent, shortish intervals and a couple of relatively (for February) fast sprints. Again, I really felt like my leg speed work and improved strength are paying off, especially when it comes to these maximal efforts.

My greater base fitness also told in the latter stages of the ride. The first time down Marshland I did most of the work chasing down Gary who'd got himself about 100m up the road coming off the bridge. Unfortunately, although I halved the gap three times during my turns on the front, by the time I'd cycled through the 6-man chasing group and got back on the front, the gap had opened back up again. So we never actually caught Gary, but I did get some good work in.

I'd also tried a breakaway win of my own on the morning's first sprint, North Forest Beach, but went off way too quickly and was reeled in by Gary who'd had some help to get him to the halfway point. But again, the important thing was that this was a good long, anaerobic, interval; at this stage of the year my main focus is on ramping up my fitness.

As often happens, a few of us continued on an extra loop after the main ride, and this time on Marshland I was a lot more circumspect regarding the effort I put in when on the front of the group (partly because I was getting tired, but mainly because I wanted another shot at the sprint).

It was still a pretty fast approach though, so with a mile to go riders started dropping off the back, until by the last 800m it was just me on Gary's wheel. He put in a nice effort, gradually accelerating up from 40 to just under 50 km/h. I glanced back, saw it was just the two of us, and had one of the best feelings you can have in cycling: knowing I was easily going to win a competitive sprint. All I had to do was pick when I wanted to go past him.

I went with 250m left, quickly getting about three-quarters of a bike length lead, looking across at him the whole time to see if he'd try to kick again. Sure enough, he stood up and tried another acceleration, but of course he didn't have much left and once I responded he immediately sat up.

It was a big role reversal from what happened so frequently last summer. But this summer I'm going to be much fitter, faster and (I dare say) wiser as well. Now I recognize the importance of conserving energy and picking the correct moment to attack. It's all part of the challenge, and I can't wait for the fun to start in earnest once the rides get fully populated later in the spring.

Sunday was just another 80 km recovery ride. The roads were again a little wet, meaning the recreational group I often ride with were reluctant to venture out. So I rode on my own on the local roads, nice and easy to finish off a good training week.

Next week I'm planning on heading to Savannah for the Saturday slugfest. I'll do these rides once per month or so, as they're the toughest ride in the area and so are a good indicator of where I am with my fitness and speed.

Designation: Pre-Season, Build 4 Time: 17.3 hours | Distance: 465 km | Low:Medium:High Intensity: 82:13:5 Weight Training: 3 x Lower Body, 1 x Upper Body | Walking: 15 km

As ever, if you want more detail follow me on Strava, and see my full training plan.

#cycling #training #racing

You'll be able to read about what got all this cycling stuff started and why I love it so much in an upcoming article.

I rode my new bike back from the bike shop on 31st July 2017 (my heart, as yet unaccustomed to exercise, hitting 195 bpm in the summer heat despite the leisurely pace!).

For the first 8 weeks I followed the British Cycling Sofa to 50km Plan, which very gradually increased in volume and added just a little extra intensity towards the end. At first, the longer Saturday rides were a bit of a struggle, but looking back through my Strava history it's quite striking how quickly my fitness improved over the first few months.

All through this period I was rapidly losing weight, although it took ten months until I was down to something resembling reasonable.

I did my first metric century in mid-November (average heart rate 136, average speed 26.5 km/h). At this point I'd moved on to the Improver Plan, although after a few weeks I got bored with the gentle ramp up and switched to some of the more advanced plans. By the end of the year I was regularly doing threshold rides and had tentatively attempted one or two intervals sessions as well.

I rounded out 2017 with my first 5-hour ride. The rain began a few minutes in, getting progressively heavier throughout the ride. But perseverance (at least in cycling) has never been a problem for me, and I covered well over 140 km at the 5-hour mark (average heart rate 135, average speed 27.7 km/h).

My 2017 summary, courtesy of VeloViewer

For the early part of 2018 I was averaging about 10 hours per week, doing intervals rides here and there, getting my first Strava KOMs, and participating in a few group rides with a couple of recreational-level clubs.

It wasn't until the spring that I really started to step things up. In mid-March I settled into a proper routine of two midweek medium- or high-intensity rides, plus a serious group ride on Saturday. My first Perry Rubber ride was followed by my first Hilton Head ride a couple of weeks later.

I got the bug.

I was amazed by what a difference riding in a decent paceline makes to your speed, by how exhilarating this is, and by how much fitter and faster than me many of the cyclists on those rides were. But I wanted not just to match them; I wanted to be better than them. Like I said, I'd got the bug.

Over the next few months my fitness increased dramatically, KOMs were tumbling all over the place (although admittedly not particularly competitive ones), and my cycling training research was in full swing.

In May, taking advantage of everything I'd learned, I abandoned the British Cycling plans, developing my own custom training plan. By this point I was averaging around 17 hours cycling per week. In April I'd entered my first Fondo ride and had a lot of fun, but the next month I set my sights on a much more challenging ride.

The Assault on Marion, at 119 km with over 1500 m climbing was by far my toughest ride to date. I did fine (average heart rate 143, average speed 31.7 km/h). I'd added a few reps over the Talmadge bridge in Savannah as training, something which I utilized much more systematically over the summer to prepare for my next big ride, the Gran Fondo Asheville (late July).

The nine weeks in between saw me continue to ramp up the volume, now averaging around 500 km per week, and continue to make big fitness gains from my semi-weekly intervals and regular weekend group ride. By June I was no longer satisfied with one group ride per week, so at the weekends I began doing them back-to-back. This pattern of excessive training continued for several months, until finally catching up with me in the autumn.

The Gran Fondo Asheville (average heart rate 135, average speed 24.7 km/h) was a birthday present meant to celebrate my one year cycling anniversary. It was a big ride – 159 km and 2,700 m climbing – and in preparation I rode a few centuries and a couple of dozen circuits over the Talmadge bridge.

It was a bad day.

I was in great shape physically, but approached the ride, and especially the big climbs, all wrong. I'm writing about it in a separate article, but the main point to make here is that it was the first time that I was really disappointed in myself after a ride. But I learned a lot from it.

An uphill struggle

Soon after I was in my first proper cycling race, the Rumble at Roebling (average heart rate 166, average speed 35.2 km/h, average temperature 34°C), another big learning experience.

The heat was awful, but tactically I was even worse, attempting to catch solo a 4-man breakaway that was 400 m up the road. I blew up, of course. I did the best 90 second effort I'd ever done up to that point, then blew up. Then struggled on with no opportunity to recover, yo-yo'd off the back of the main group a few times, then lost them as well.

I spent the rest of the race slogging around in the heat, on my own, thinking about how one bad decision can really ruin your day.

Immediately following this was a 14-week period when I averaged 540 km per week, completing 19 metric centuries (5 in one week) plus another 9 imperial ones (4 of them in two weekends). I started winning a few competitive group sprints, picked up a few competitive KOMs, got very fast, threw away a potential win in a criterium by screwing up tactically (again), then got slower and slower.

I was flying in September, and crawling by late October. And the funny thing was, the harder I tried not to get slower, the slower I got!

Eventually, it sunk in that I was overdoing it. I thought that taking it easy for a few days would fix things, but each time I tried to come back from one of these brief recovery periods I'd have one or two decent rides before fatiguing once more. Eventually, it dawned on me that I really was genuinely overreached and that it would take weeks, rather than days, to fully recover.

But before this I did get two of my proudest moments of my cycling career so far, one an epic ride (254 km, average heart rate 134, average speed 29.9 km/h), the other an epic KOM (510 m, average heart rate 186, average speed 56.5 km/h, max speed 63 km/h).

I had plenty of time to reflect on such triumphs as the year ended with a large, enforced, taper. But by mid-December I'd recovered enough to switch to my off-season endurance rides, and soon began building up the volume again.

My 2018 summary, courtesy of VeloViewer

I'd averaged 16 hours per week in 2018, got my weight down (almost) to where I wanted it, and had a great base on which to build in 2019. This year, my plan is to increase the volume to 900 hours, and to continue my emphasis on anaerobic power, but with an additional focus on pure sprinting. I can't wait for the summer!

In January I covered a lot of long, slow distance, before transitioning into the pre-season plan where I began the gradual introduction of increased intensity.

Very recently, I had another bad experience with racing, this time down in Florida in a Cat 5 road race. I realized that riding at high speed in close proximity to 40 other largely very young, very inexperienced and in many cases very reckless riders wasn't my idea of fun.

So my next race will be a 100-mile gravel fondo in early March; a very different sort of challenge, and hopefully one I'll take to. Fourth time lucky, right?

So, here we are. All caught up. I'll be continuing to publish weekly training updates, which in addition to the mundane details of intervals, sprints and segments will hopefully also contain the odd nugget of insight.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

#cycling #training #racing

This was quite long for a recovery week, but as indicated below, the vast majority was low-intensity and so contributed relatively little fatigue. My overall fitness is now high enough that this volume presents no problems.

For the last few weeks I've been incorporating a dedicated leg-speed workout (now up to 20 minutes at 130 rpm) on my Friday commute ride, to improve my core stability and neuromuscular efficiency. I've extended this by also adding 5 minutes leg speed work to the warmup on each intervals ride. This seems already to be translating into improved acceleration, as these examples show:

• following a pretty awful weekend, I decided just to do my own thing on Tuesday's ride. After a few intervals, I beat my own KOM on Seburn Sprint. This was quite impressive considering an almost complete lack of anaerobic work over the past few months and the fact that going for a fast time was an afterthought; I didn't even get up to speed until a third of the way along the segment.

• on the final group sprint on Saturday's ride I rapidly got my cadence up into the mid-130s, where I held it easily to the line. I was second in line and went with 250m to go. My acceleration was good enough to stop Billy, who'd positioned himself right behind me, from even getting on my wheel.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the big guns arrive on the group ride later in the year.

Last summer I had good anaerobic power, but was lacking a true sprinter's 'jump'. This summer I plan to remedy this via leg-speed work (year-round), heavy weight lifting (off- and pre-season) and specific sprint training (in-season). My goal is to be clearly the best on the Island at any effort below 60 seconds, becoming my team's designated sprinter in the Nestor Cup Master's races.

My Thursday Threshold Test wasn't great; I think the pace was a little too easy, plus I only did 20 minutes, rather than 30 (it's been a while since I last tested).

The problem is that in my focus on low- and high-intensity work, I've been neglecting medium intensity on training rides (and making excuses to skip Threshold Tests). So I've decided to incorporate a sweet-spot/threshold block at the end of every intervals ride where I do fewer than the maximum number of sets/reps, and add much more medium intensity work into the Saturday group rides (this should be easy to do, as these rides have now started speeding up).

You can see how much I love this!

After a disappointing experience in the road race last weekend, I've signed up for a gravel ride in the Francis Marion National Forest, just north of Charleston, four weeks from now. The timing works out well, as I'll complete my final pre-season mesocycle, including recovery week, going into the race. It's 100 miles on mixed off-road surfaces, self-supported. This clearly presents a very different challenge than dodging kids at high speed on asphalt.

Designation: Hybrid Recovery Week Time: 20 hours | Distance: 525 km | Low:Medium:High Intensity: 88:10:2 Weight Training: 2 x Lower Body, 1 x Upper Body | Walking: 15 km

#cycling #training #racing