Nutrition

As I have mentioned before I was worried about nutrition this year. Last year I got my weight and fat down, but as the regular long rides increased so did the calories and so did my weight.

This year though I think I've sussed it, and its very much related to the new style of training I have from my coach. Where last year I just blanketly increased my calories I now only do it on the days when I know (from experience, ahem) I will need it. I can do one week's hard training on a small calorie increase, but if another hard week is coming (or more specifically a week with some very hard days) then for a few of those days I will really have to pile in the food. Not crap mind you, but calories all the same. So I take more food with me to work so that if I do need more then its there and I don't have to worry about it being junk from the machine. This week has been very easy (was due an easy week and the Fred is coming) so I have been able to drop the calories back to normal levels and literally a couple of kilos have come off. Not complaining about that :-)

Last year I increased my eating a lot because every other weekend was a "big" ride, so a hilly century or more. I ate the week after to recover, and I ate the following week to prepare. The training this year though has worked a lot on my base endurance and aerobic fitness, and getting my body more used to using fat as a fuel. This means I know now I don't need as much before big rides, 1/2 days of eating more before is fine and any more is just going to stack the weight back on.

Hindsight is a great thing and I can see the improvements in what I'm doing now. But I still understand why I ate like I did last year, and I don't think I can turn around and just say it was stupid. Maybe a little mis-guided, but we live and learn.

So now my weight is lower than ever (77.5kg) and my body fat is its lowest ever too (10.1%). I hope this theory holds or I'll be eating humble pie soon (except I can't eat the pastry, so that ruins that idea, doh).

New Toys

Retail therapy does not only apply (in my opinion) to women and clothes. In order to cheer myself up a while ago at work I may have persuaded myself that some new wheels were in order :-) Lightweight Ventoux 240's to be precise. And they are tubulars.

Now I'd never ridden tubs before. My clinchers are HED Ardennes which claim to ride more like tubs due to their wider rims (which allow the tyre to sit flatter and less "pinched"). The reviews agree with this claim and I can say that are more comfortable than other clinchers I've ridden. But here is the thing - they are not even in the same ballpark for comfort, feel, handling etc as the tubs I now have. I obviously cannot say whether this is because of the wheel themselves or the tubs, but the difference has really surprised me. And I don't mean "oh, these are nice, glad I spent that cash after all" kind of difference, I mean a "bloody hell, really, are you kidding, this is unbelievable" kind of difference.

Now its well known that tubs have some reasonably sized draw backs and I'm not ignoring them. But I do have some plans. Geax Pit Stop being one of them, which is a compressed air + latex glue canister that will fix (fill) up to 1mm punctures (so a "normal" size puncture). Maybe this isn't as guaranteed as having many spare inner tubes and reduces the ability to use the wheels a little, but believe me the ride quality makes it so so tempting, and worth the effort to find ways around the usual tub related problems. They will certainly be going to la Marmotte where I am trusting that the smooth French roads won't cause me a problem.

On a side note I have had to take off one of the tubs already due to a 5mm long tear straight through the tyre. While this was rather annoying (and will be quite costly) I am fairly certain it would have ended a ride on clinchers too, as a new inner tube would have just burst through the rip - and I've never carried a spare tyre with me. But having gone through the process of removing a tub, and experiencing the valve being stuck in the rim from the glue, I'm really not convinced that I could change one of these at the side of the road even with a spare tub in my pocket. So there are some drawbacks, and the tubs will NOT being going to the Fred Whitton as I'm still feeling my way with them and have not sussed out all the issues.

But having done a little climbing on the new wheels (see picture, they really are "lightweight") and my God they're quick :-)

Power

One of the reasons for it being harder to measure the progress could be because of a lack of numbers. Heart rate is fine but power output is the real indication of how things are going, and also making sure that (for example) easy days really are easy.

Timing yourself over a set distance does work, but it doesn't take account for things like windy days. You might be slower over the same distance as the week before, but you could be putting out more power to compensate. Match that with your heart rate at the time and then you have a real idea of how you're doing, because if you can put out a higher power but keep the same heart rate, then wey-hey.

I'm still pondering over this one (and asking coach) but a power tap could be on the way soon…

Progress

When I started this blog I had my plan of increasing ride distance over the weeks the same as I did last year. Now its not like this is "wrong" given that it got me through the etape, but since I got my coach that idea completely vanished (and it seems generally accepted to not be the most efficient use of time). What that also means is I am finding it pretty hard to measure progress.

In turn this makes it pretty difficult for me to blog! I initially thought I'd say things like "compared to this time last year on a similar ride I feel better/worse" but that's not the case. The training is so completely different I have no benchmark for comparison. Sure I feel some differences when riding / climbing and I have described some of those here, but it all feels a bit wishy-washy to be honest. I am a person who likes clear numbers and data, and right now I don't really have any.

That may change soon though because the brilliant Fred Whitton ride is next weekend. I don't have any time goals for this, after all its really all about being able to get up Hardknott after 100 miles (and me being me I'd much rather say I didn't have to stop than say I got around 20 minutes quicker), but suffice to say I will NOT be attacking it like I have done on shorter rides this year! Also (and this I do feel strange about) it will be my first century of the year, in fact it will be the first time I've got close to that distance. Again this is so different to last year it is making me feel a little odd about things. This year I will be very pleased (and a lot quicker) if I can just avoid the mechanical problems (and near death) of last year.

Health

My breathing still isn't ideal to be honest. Recently found out I should add black (i.e. normal) tea to my intolerances list, which explains quite a lot.

It feels more like my throat is the problem now though, it often feels like there is a lot there and I have been coughing up a lot on rides. Have seen an ENT specialist (ear, nose, throat) and may ask him to shove a camera down there to see if it all looks ok. That may sound desperate, but something it still wrong, and no-one else has any better suggestions.

Nutrition

The week after the Burgess Hill Classic my coach gave me a very tough week. It left me absolutely f****d. I tried to eat some more to get my energy levels back up but it wasn't enough. So eventually I just stuffed my face for 3 days straight so I could function as a human being again.

I really want to be able to get a handle on this properly. For 2 weeks recently the scales showed I had got down to 10.1% body fat, but it has gone up since. Last year from a similar weight I then put on about half a stone by the etape and I really don't want to do that again. I need to find a balance of eating enough to sustain the training while not taking in too much. I think this time I may be more flexible on how much I eat on a weekly basis, I guess some weeks will be more demanding than others, so I won't need as much - although I will still need to make sure I recover properly...

Anyone have any good suggestions about this?

Training Progress

I have recently blown, sorry, spent rather a lot of cash on some new kit. Without doubt though the best money I've spent this year (and possibly at all re. cycling) is on my coach.

The first evidence of this came on the Burgess Hill Classive sportive *. Up to that point I had done NO hill training outside at all, and only 1 or 2 real hill like classes in spinning (i.e. nothing but hills). Yet on this ride I found I could attack right from the start and found I was so much better on the hills than this time last year. On the longer ones I was spinning up them much quicker and on the steeper ones I could stand for far longer than I ever used to be able to. I've also stopped zig-zagging (although I reserve the right to bring this back for the Fred). I was 5 minutes off a gold time having lost the use of the big ring before half distance (which meant a 2-3 minute stop at a food stop to see if they had a mechanic). Without that I could well have managed gold. I didn't and am happy with silver but even to be considering what might have been without the bike playing up is a big step.

Away from sportives I'm also feeling the progress on my usual training roads. On a local (ish) hill where I first found my maximum heart rate I am now going up there 13-16 beats lower. On a longer steep hill I can now stand all the way (comfortably). And a week ago I knocked nearly 4 minutes off my 10 mile tempo time trial time.

So its all going well so far. My coach is obviously playing a huge part in this and I'm really grateful to have his time.

* I had a text when I finished the ride from my friend Simon calling me an "antisocial git". He was without question quite right as I sodded off right from the start. Given that he's training for an ironman and I only cycle I guess this is how it should be. But he put in a great time just 10 minutes behind me. Show off.

Tardy

Well I admit it's been a little while since I've updated this. I never planned to update it all the time with every little detail, just when I felt there were significant / interesting enough things to mention.

So rather than lump it all in one big post here come a few smaller ones to break it up a bit and help categorise things a little better...