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!