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!