Sunday 15 February 2009

Sunday Training

Hi

Power-Tap

First time out on the road today for some time as the ice has finally gone though the day was still chilly and there was a stiff wind from the NE. Met up with a few friends and rode for about 44 miles in the lanes (filthy) of Northumberland which seem to be deteriorating at an alarming rate.

Quite an up and down route which included the climb from Belford over to Chatton which is quite a drag but the time on the VeloTron seems to have paid off and I had no problems at all with any of the route. There was of course the usual problem of road training with 20% of the time being spent with a cadence of zero, just free-wheeling, but there isn't much that can be done about that. I also spent 48% of the ride in my active recovery power zone (AR/Z1 below), effectively not training at all.


Today has confirmed for me that doing the majority of my training indoors over the Winter can result in a very satisfactory level of fitness at this time of year without all the miles done out in the cold, the wind, the rain and on slippery roads. I am 99% sure that in future years I will develop and refine my indoor Winter programme as I also find it much more time efficient than long outdoor rides.

So, a good little outing. I am confident that if I keep working away on my variable power sessions using the IRVCs on the VeloTron and increase my CTL as the weather warms up I'll be well set up for the season ahead.

Looking at my data I am also pleased to see that having adopted this approach even though my tested power is up over the full range my TSB is consistently higher, I am fitter and I'm less fatigued. So it's on with the consolidation period, I'll then be starting my CTL build looking to raise it by about 2-3 points per week over about 8 weeks to bring me up to a CTL of about 100 before tapering for the Tour of Ireland.

Rest day tomorrow :-)

[Uploaded 15/02/2009 17:54:52]

2 comments:

  1. Hi Quentin,
    You'll now have to learn to pedal downhill as well! My training partner used to curse me until he got a power meter and realised what was happening.

    I've been trying to add your blog to my Google Reader, but without success. I've even tried the Atom link at the bottom of your blog put I just keep getting an error. I've tried on 2 geographically different computers as well. Any ideas?

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  2. Hi

    Sorry, no idea why the link thingy doesn't work, must be in the inner workings of Blogger I guess :-( I can't see any settings I need to change so I'm a bit stuck really. I think folk have used the subscribe by email option and that seems to have worked Ok.

    Yes, I tend to pedal downhill myself but was out with some other folk on Sunday and that didn't seem to be on the agenda so I joined in the relaxation. I'm sure you understand ;-)

    Q

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