First winter training week over!

I have got the first week of winter training over with and a good mixture of structured bike training and a couple of runs under my belt.

As with any training plan, you have to adapt and move sessions around to fit in around life, Thursday for became my rest day (usually a run day and with the club...) and had to break up the cycling with runs, so jiggled the week up.

This is a breeze in TrainingPeaks as you just drag and drop sessions to fit, I wish I could overlay my iCloud calendar (which you can do the otherway round) 

On Monday run I went for a run 

It was pleasing to keep the pace up and a nice mixture of flat and climbing

On Tuesday I started the TrainingPeaks sessions and this one is called Lionel: The Generous

The text says:

"This workout is what Lionel Vujasin uses as a moderate interval session. So we call it "The Generous":

First, 4x4min Sweetspot at 90% with just 1min rest followed by 3x3min at 115%, where you will have to push your limits at the end!

Lionel's tip: Make sure that you don*t exceed target intensity during the Sweetspot efforts to have enough left in the for the hard stuff!

Let us know how generous you think he is at the end!"

The plan comes from Rhys Howell - Canyon eSports and takes sessions from well known Zwift racers and runs over 6 weeks, I will take these sessions and incorporate them into next years training plan.

There are Zwift plans and apparently, they can sync back up to TrainingPeaks in the same fashion iI sync it down! so will look at that over Christmas

On Wednesday I went for a run, my legs didn't feel too good so rather than a long loop I did several small loops, so if it all went bad I had a short walk home!

I did manage to move to 5th on my local "Oddies to the Haggate" segment, so not a bad session 

I was very welcome to the rest on Thursday, this allowed for recovery, cycling being my main way of keeping fit and not over doing it when running, but with the turbo trainer sessions coming in, they are more taxing than I am used to.

Friday night saw me back on the turbo and did this session:

James & Steve: The Killer Sprints

"Sprinting is hard.... and it gets even harder if you have to keep going afterwards.

Our sprint specialists James Philips and Steve Young aren't only dangerous when a race is comes down to a bunch sprint but they also compete in intermediate sprints along the way.

Unlike with a final sprint intermediates offer you no respite afterwards. If you aren't conditioned for such an effort, your body will collapse. Here is how they train to survive the repeated punishment.

3 Sets:

Two with 20s at 200% right into a 6min40s-Tempo-Threshold effort at 85-100%.

One with 1min at 140% right into a 6min-Tempo-Threshold effort at 80-98%.

And then we do the final sprint: 15s at 225% of FTP! Make sure that you anticipate the efforts: ramp up cadence before they begin and mental prepare yourself to keep pushing once the sprint is over. Do not stop pedalling - just breath and try to regather your composure. This is an essential skill for racing on Zwift.

It was a hard session but it is well structured with recovery, as you can see sometimes it builds sprint up and up and up.

There is an issue with the Power readings, I can be happily constant with cadence and it drops from 170w to 120w for a couple of seconds and then straight back up, this cannot be me doing that and have logged a support call with Wahoo. Out of 31 "stages" I lost 10 due to not keeping at the withing the required power zone

Saturday morning I went out to do 10K and instead did around 8 miles in the last couple of miles is the big hill of Rochdale Road, my legs felt super heavy and tried to keep my HR at 161 on the flats and downhill, no more than 170 on the uphill. It felt good to do a longer run and a good session.

I have now taken the Local Legend status for "Oddies to the Haggate" segment

Rather than do the prescribed Sunday session from TrainingPeaks, I opted to do a few laps of Watopias "Tempus Fugit" course, it is nice and flat and has two segments to challenge you, the first is a sprint and managed to knock some time of it, down to 41 seconds. The other is an endurence that last week I did in 11 minutes, my best today jusy over 12 minutes

So a nice easy 5k tomorrow!

I have to confess I have not run since I did a half marathon some weeks back, nor blogged!

Running has taken a back seat and the Kickr been my only training regime, I have got used to the setup and thought for this post talk about what I have found useful and how to structure my training now in the winter.

First of all, how to set up the bike in the room, it is mandatory to have a fan blowing at you, it is sweaty enough. I have bought a cradle for the iPad and have a phone holder on order, that will use the Garmin cradle (phone is for the Zwift companion app, more on that later).

I have subscribed to Zwift which makes the whole drudgery of turbo training actually fun, it was easy to setup to sync with TrainingPeaks, Garmin and Strava, annoyingly it doesn't just go into Garmin and then out to the other two like the Garmin gear does.

Zwift itself has a great interface and with the iPhone the "companion app" which is supposed to give a better view at your current speed, cadence, power and HR, however, it very rarely connects and I am not sure if it is a WIFI, Bluetooth or service issue, I do see other users complain from time to time so assume it is not me!

So after a trial ride on Friday 6th November (the day the Kickr arrived), I got to work trying the features out.

Zwift fundamentally is a game and virtual world, you ride in realtime with other users of smart trainers. There are events, training sessions and gear to unlock, the more you ride or complete certain segments/routes.

Strava shows you all the usual readings, now I have Power which is the best way to train on the bike, these power meters cost a small fortune to fit on bikes so never bothered. Now my bike training will be centred around power and the first job is to work out your Full Threshold Potential (FTP), happily, there is a training session to do this!

I chose to do the shorter version, FTP's are worked out using your best effort over 20 minutes (over more brutal ways are done by professionals) this one takes around 45 minutes, has a warm-up and down segments and the 20 minutes bit, slap in the middle.

It worked out my FTP was 191W which I then enter into TrainingPeaks so that planned sessions use this for %Max FTP and Strava so it knows how well I am performing, in 6-8 weeks I will perform the same FTP test and hopefully it will go up!

I have purchased ($9.99) a basic plan in TrainingPeaks and this automatically puts the sessions into Zwift on the day I am doing the workout. During the workout, it uses ERG mode which means you can still enjoy the scenery and company of other riders, but the trainer will disregard the hills etc and set the resistance on the trainer to ensure you are cycling whatever Wattage you are supposed to be training at. Whist you are riding, the game will give you a heads up to what is coming and encouragement to stick to the mission i.e. cadence and wattage which is super helpful.

So next week I start training in earnest and promise to get back running!

Laters

Mark