furiousferret

Two hours of z2 suffering. Sickness protocol for me is to get out and be active the moment my body feels it can tolerate it. Still had some symptoms, but definitely improved from yesterday.

aaronmcd

3.5 hours, 5200 feet, only 170 TSS for all that.

JohnKScott

Did a mostly tempo ride last night with a few digs on hills. Felt good to power up a little bit. 1:10 98 TSS

furiousferret

Rode the TT bike, forgot how fun it can be with a tailwind to just tuck in and fly. The return trip wasn't very enjoyable though.

mattm

Training. It has begun for the 2015 season.

Actually just the ramp up to training, which starts for real next week. But I'm looking forward to starting.

Been lazy/off the bike for a week+, felt good to get out and spin. Even sprinted, and my shoulder didn't explode!

Gramercy

How many hours are you planning on putting in before racing season? What is your plan for training this fall/winter? With the cold and lack of light on the east coast I was thinking of doing less road biking and more gym work, upper body, squats, dead lifts, wall sits, and some sort of spin bike routine in the gym.

hack

According to the 41, things only asplode at 400w, so watch that sprint power.

hack

Last Thursday Night River Ride in the books. I've been getting one day a week on the bike for the past 5 weeks or so and I felt it tonight. Got in a little break, couldn't make it stick. Attacked a few times, couldn't make it stick. My fitness is just poop right now. Sat in near the front for the last few miles to try to do something in the sprint. Jumped hard at 200m, came around the group, and was watching the guy on my right to make sure he didn't come up. Failed to watch the left and got pipped at the line. Oh well, was fun and I felt like puking. Rode on @caloso 's wheel quite a bit.

caloso

Hack is being modest. He was killing it.

JohnKScott

1:05 of mixed endurance & tempo last night enjoying the nice weather and finishing in the dark 60 something TSS and a lot of fun.

mattm

Number of hours is highly dependent on your goals/category/fitness/etc. I play to do more or less what I did last year (10-15 hours/week, mostly z2) during the winter, but also adding some weight stuff, and plyometrics.

If I was you I'd leave out the upper-body stuff.

Whatever you do, one of the keys seems to be consistency. Without that, no training is worth much.

misterwaterfall

I'm similar, and I think we have similar goals as far as races that we want to excel at. One difference though is that I plan to put on 5-10 pounds of weight over the winter, and at least half of that will be upper body muscle. I'll race at 185-190 next year which at 6'2" is about right for my body and if my racing suffers slightly so be it, at least I'll have the biggest arms in the race.

hack

Interesting...I'm 6'3" and raced 195-200 this past year. Flats were fine, but any extended hills were a no go for me. I have considered dropping down to 180-185, but worry about losing some of the power. Granted a decent chunk of that 195-200 is fat that didn't contribute to much other than keeping me warm on chilly rides. So, a winter of eating better should be more helpful than not (at times I can eat like an unsupervised child [ok, most of the time]).

hubcyclist

home with a sick kid today, so used nap time to ride on the trainer for the first time this season for an hour. accidentally set up the trainer in such a way that the tire was also getting resistance from the basement carpet, so no wonder the lower gearing seemed harder than it should have been

mike868y

i'm so sorry you're stuck home on the first nice day we've had all week.

you going to be at providence spectating?

waterrockets 

I'm a touch taller than you and dropped weigh from 183 to 167 one year, just to see what would happen. This was my high school sedentary weight. I did lose some top end power (1' went from ~820W to ~770W, for instance). My threshold went up though, from 340W to 360W. As you might expect, you just don't need 770W in the final kilo if you're running a high W/kg FTP -- BUT my final kilo power was actually up from my heavier weight. Even though I had less 1' power in testing, my threshold allowed me to bring more of it into the last lap.

So yeah, I won my first race that season with nobody else in the finish photo. Upgraded to Cat 2, then fubared my training. I kept the weight under 175 for about 18 months, but finally tired of the discipline needed to keep it there.

In summary, if you lose the weight while building a strong base, and lose it through dieting, there's a good chance you can bump fitness and come out with the W/kg looking really nice.

hubcyclist

I'll actually be riding 75 miles from Westport to Falmouth on Sunday (charity ride). There's a gran fondo going on in PVD as well, apparently

misterwaterfall

In the 3s I didn't get dropped and would be able to kill the bunch sprint. In the 1/2s I'm sticking to crits and track which I enjoy more and can race at a higher weight. I would need to get to at least 170 or lower to compete in rrs which I don't want to do.

mattm

I trained. hot out!

jsutkeepspining

I rode kind of hard today and had a big power number. It felt cool

TMonk

I'm about to head out for my first ever FTP test. So excite.

I had originally meant to go out this morning after a good night's rest, which is the protocol that I will follow for future tests, and also when I will execute most of my training. The problem was, I had a good friend/ex-coworker in town last night, and had a little too much to drink.

Still, I'm not too worried about the accuracy of this first number, given that I am only a month in after ~6 weeks off due to injury. It's very likely that my next test will be higher on the order of 10%. I'm just looking to find a ballpark number, and familiarize myself with the effort.

Out the door we go!

TMonk

Also, time to acquire some better software, now that I plan on really utilizing my PM. The PowerAgent software sucks balls. Question is: Do I fork out the cash for WKO+ or just use Golden Cheetah?

mattm

u can try wko two weeks for free. I think it's worth the price!

gc was too hard to use/I was already used to wko.

TMonk

lol, what a *****show that was! I started out near 300w for the first few min (yeah right), which was my personal estimate of my FTP in the middle of the year when I was still kickin', pre-back injury. By the end, I had only averaged 277w for the entire 20min interval

Those last 5 minutes were truly miserable. I was fightin' down puke.

Again, I'm not too worried about accuracy here. I can tell that as I continue to test, and regularly ride with the PM, my intuition will dictate what my pacing/wattage should be to get settled in to the effort.


Great, I'll try out WKO+. Thanks for the tip.

Ygduf

cyclinganalytics.com is cheap relative to wko, and provides all the benefits. GC sort of sucks now. It used to be better.