The first four weeks - a review

So today is the 28th of December, the Christmas feasting over, and a good time for a bit of a review after 4 weeks of training. Some interesting things come out of undertaking someone else's program. For instance, Josh says "don't worry to much about the kms, it's more about how you do them than how many". Well, I've just finished the third consecutive biggest volume week since I first began cycling in the late '80s! My rolling 7 day total is consistently in the 410 to 420 km range, which is massive for a guy who is usually in the 190 to 230 km range! Add the intervals and power sessions and it's no wonder I feel knackered all the time. I'm hoping some adaptation starts to take place before the workload goes up again!

Some highlights and low lights of the first 4 weeks:

No better place to start than this morning! First up on the trainer I did 3 X 2'/4' big gear/low cadence strength/endurance intervals, followed by 4 X 1'/4' of the same. The rest is long (TQM!), although it should have been 5' but I was going to be short of time. I rode a heavier gear than ever before, with the 2' intervals on 53/15 on resistance 10 (max) on the trainer, and the 1' intervals on 53/14 and setting 10. After that it was out with the Point Lonsdale group, for the first time on the single speed. The goal was to do 65 km and completed this averaging about 32 km/h. The group split mid way through when three of us went back to pick a first timer who had been dropped. The pace picked up and we couldn't ride back to the group. The limitations of the single speed became obvious (riding 44 and 17), as I couldn't spin fast enough to do a turn as we tried to ride back. In the end I was dropped from the chase as we got the tail wind and I ran out of rpms!! All in all it was a sobering, 85 km, morning, and made me realise I need a 15 on the freewheel side of my single speed! I also still have to do my gym work today.

There is certainly a part of me wondering if this whole thing is a bit ridiculous. In the group this morning, after everyone had a laugh at me on my single speed, a guy asked what I was aiming for in South Africa. My response was to say the goal was to make the last selection and be in the group at the 100 km mark (11 km to go). He smiled and asked politely how much weight I was planning to lose - whack, I thought, right between the eyes!!

In the last post, I referred to measuring progress. There will no doubt be other measurements, but the Strava segments are showing my improvement consistently. I am riding PB's for segments, particularly climbs, when I am really worn down with training, which has to be a good thing. On Sunday there will be a good test too. I will ride Ocean Grove to Torquay and back with the Hendry's Cycles group which is very competitive on the return. It is only 12 months since I first rode with the "A" Grade group and stayed on all the way back. This week it will be interesting to see how I stand in that group. In the summer, lots of young fit holidayers ride in it, so the standard tends to go up a bit. I will blog the result on Sunday.

And then there was the training!

The first meeting with Josh went badly. I had written an overview of a program and had attempted the first 6 weeks in some detail. It was based on pretty fundamental principles of physiology and training (admittedly drawing from a rowing (5 1/2 to 7 min ) event, but I thought it was a good starting point. I confidently emailed it to Josh before the meeting and printed it off to bring and make notes on during the meeting. I turned up early, the keen mature athlete ready to engage in a dialogue with a like-minded adult with the goal of being coached according to principles I already knew and had used to coach hundreds of others - easy!

Josh's first words were encouraging - "I like what you've written; we'll basically follow it but I might make a few changes". Internally I rejoiced, I still had it! I could do this program thing, as I had done it in the past! But as the conversation went on, I became more and more confused. Josh idea of "a few changes" amounted to a complete 180 degree view of what I had planned! This was the first lesson of moving from the coach to the being coached role!

I had envisaged a huge (6 months or more) foundation phase of long slow distance training, with a gradual introduction of more intense training and racing in mid-2012. Josh turned that on its head with some of his fundamentals:

• At your age (you can imagine I loved that!), your strength is fading and this is the biggest immediate issue. This means lots of specific strength training (on the bike not in the gym).
• Kms are not a bad thing but don't focus on volume, focus on quality. This also extended to "it's not what you do that matters as much as how you do it. As much as I initially thought this was rubbish (how many ways are there to ride a bike, after all?), this became the theme describing how I thought about Josh's ideas - TQM or Total Quality Management.
• At your age (yep, loved it again!), you need lots of recovery. The hard part will be staying OFF the bike. My response to this was to feel like I needed to reach for my walking frame to head to the nearest nursing home.

We then had a period of me limping through the end of work for the year, Josh writing the first draft of the program, phone calls about what his labels meant, some readjustment for my routines, and we were away!!.

So, where are we now? Well, I am mid way through week 3 of Josh's program and there have been a LOT of changes.

1. I spend a lot of time feeling REALLY tired! The difference between being coached and coaching yourself. This might not be the same for everyone but it is certainly how it is for me.
2. I do three different types of strength intervals either three or four times each week on the bike.
3. In between interval sessions, I loaf around at 25 km per hour!
4. My strength work in the gym is no longer predominately lower body development-focussed. It is entirely different and based almost totally around core strength for power transmission.
5. There is no focus on getting kms done but I have never ridden so many!! I have just completed two consecutive "never done this many kms in a week before" weeks.
6. I now train bigger gears ALL the time, with a lower cadence.
7. I now think about how I pedal the bike very differently - more on this later, I suspect.
8. Sometimes I go to bed a bit anxious about the work I have to do in the morning. Strangely enough, this never happened when I wrote my own program!!

BUT, the biggest thing has been the absolute, measureable, effects of the training. While I have dropped a bit of the weight (goal weight loss is 7 to 10 kg and have lost the first 1 only), my power output has already increased noticeably. I can climb better and sustain efforts for much longer - amazing in such a short period!

In the next post I will give some detail on how this is measured, together with some of the training. ciao!

And so the lunacy started - Part II

OK, so we need to fast forward a bit. Just to explain, I had intended to start to blog on December 1, when my training program began, figuring that I would then have time to weave in the journey from where the last post ended to there. As with lots of things in life, it didn't work out that way as work and things took over for two weeks - c'est la vie, I suppose!

So, Readers Digest version, to save you having to wade through the events. Club racing carrying 6 to 10 kilos last winter went surprisingly well, with a win, and placing consistently in the top 5 or 6 in handicaps. I found I could ride with the scratch group when my groups were rounded up in handicaps and more than anything, I was revelling in the competitive outlet! Racing in the Eureka Open (all vets eligible to race, for those not in the know!), I found I could compete with the scratch group relatively well. I then rode the Amy Gillett Gran Fondo, a qualifier for the Masters' Worlds. With two punctures, I qualified in the necessary percentage of my age group, and the idea was born! When I said I had qualified for the Worlds, my wife said "that's great, you ought to go" - so 'nuff said!

The first step was working out if it was feasible (leave from work at a difficult time, finances, trying to tie it to something else to make the investment of time and money more meaningful etc. etc.). Then looking at what the realistic race goal was, and how to best achieve that. The end result was the following:

Race the Masters' World Championships (or more correctly now, "The UCI World Cycling Tour Final", as it has been re-badged!), then go to Spain to ride the iconic 5 day Raid de Pyreneen (link http://www.velopeloton.com/raid-pyrenees ), a mouth-watering prospect! If you follow the link, you will see why the Raid is a terrific ride, but for me the Worlds race became the fixation.

So, from December 1, I had 9 months to prepare. On the basis of my rowing coaching experience, this was a luxurious preparation; 9 months to peak once! I felt I could write a good training program but wanted someone to bounce ideas off (how little I knew!). I cast around my cycling friends to find a suitable coach/program writer willing to take me on for a price I could afford. I was very fortunate to stumble on Josh through Ballarat connections. Josh has placed in the Melbourne to Warrnambool, raced and won in Europe and is putting himself through medical school as a mature-aged student. He came highly recommended as someone who could get results without having to devote 20 or 30 hours each week to training (good for me!!) but for the first 10 days of December he was doing his medical finals, so was unavailable (bad for me!). So I started without him but with a promise from him to meet after exams.

And so the lunacy started - Part 1

It all started with a bike ride - and look what's happened now. In four short weeks I've gone from a keen recreational cyclist who raced a bit this winter for the first time in 20 years or so, to a coached, directed, weight-losing single-minded narcissist heading to the Masters World Championships with designs on a result.

So let me explain how the addiction began.When we moved to Ballarat, about 5 years ago, for some reason I decided I needed to return to road riding. For 6 or 7 months I occasionally rode around the lake and quite enjoyed it. I was then introduced to a group of mature-aged, good-natured twits called "The Ballarat Yabbie Divers". Since then I have steadily progressed to riding more often, further and further (and further and further afield). The group organises some largish scale rides and I have taken part in more and more of these.

All in all this is a pretty familiar story for 40+-aged men who have gained some kilos but not lost the urge to be with their friends. With kids golf is too long, we can't play football or cricket any more and booze buses and family responsibilities mean we don't go to the pub much any more!  Some reading this might have been here but I would urge yo to consider carefully before you go the next step!

Returning to racing was what what tipped me over the edge! There's no greater fool than an old (washed-up, ex bike racing who still believes he can do it even if he wasn't much the first time round) fool!

One Masters 'try it once for free' race at the end of 2010 reeled me back in like a trout to a fly. Able to compete on no training, I instantly had delusions of grandeur!