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.

Sticking to the plan (Motvation)

Thanks to Red Bike for your comment about sticking to the plan. This has prompted me to bring forward a post I was going to do about my own motivations. I am certainly not claiming to be some guru or master of this, its just my own thoughts based on my experience of what does (and lets be honest here, what doesn't) work for me. If someone else can learn something from my cock ups, then that's great.

I created my training plan for 2009 by listing every weekend in the year up to the etape, putting in some other goals along the way (Fred Whitton / Dave Lloyd Mega) and simply working backwards from where I had to end up, allowing a gradual build up. I didn't take this from a magazine or anything like that, in truth I just made it up and it looked good. In addition to the "plan" I kept a track of my actual weekly progress against it.

Taking May as an example (and I just checked the numbers to be sure) I rode 539 road miles (including a successful Fred Whitton) and did 21 spin classes (or 15.75 hours). Not a bad month hey? Problem was that it was (for whatever reason) 5.5 miles less than the "plan" target for that month. So it went down as a big red cell, a failure. And so many of the following weeks followed the same pattern, although I was cycling a hell of a lot and improving all the time, some small differences in miles meant those weeks were "failures". I found the whole thing was actually have a very strong de-motivating effect. After all here I was busting my gut (literally, hurrah), doing things most of my friends thought was madness but here was my own plan telling me I was failing. Hmmm, that's just too harsh, too black and white (even for me). This is based on a plan that I made up after all.

So, while 2010 certainly has a plan, the goals are much less specific. As I put in my Training post earlier my main targets are distances for rides by the end of each month, increasing as they go. Now if I don't match that number but I'm very close, then I'm following the main idea behind the plan and I'm going to be happy and count that as a success. Don't get me wrong though its not an excuse to start slacking, if I'm way off the planned distance then something will need to be done. Slacking off won't get me up Alpe d'Huez after 100 miles of mountains.

Like I said, this is just my view on what works for me. But I do find it an interesting subject (I admit I over analyse the sh*t out of everything) and hence this post.