Firstly I want to say I love Christmas a lot, always have and always will. I love seeing friends and talking to people and getting all excited about what is to come. I love the magic, buying presents and getting all festive. But thankfully we are through the festive period, I found the festivities this year great....until I actually realised just how bored they make me feel. I get restless and find sitting and doing nothing so boring and tiring, the lack of stimulation and the realisation that I dont really enjoy just sitting and filling my race for hours was a strange feeling. I couldnt quite understand why I wasn't enjoying the festive period and it as literally down to a lack of stimulation on quite a few occasions, it felt like days and days of just visiting and sitting.....zzzzzzzz.
I was able to train a lot over the festive period and I had a big focus on the bike, I was able to cycle alot and managed to dodge the weather a and keep mostly trouble free. But no one can stay trouble free during winter and I was caught out on Sunday the 4th! It was freezing and even my gloves froze it was literally the coldest I have ever been in my entire life!
Giving the extra time off over xmas I was able to bank around 700 miles worth of cycling, and 150 miles of running. All of this was structured and gain strength and endurance. I have also really started to train using wattage and started to follow a fantastic book written by Joe Friel called Power Meter (worth a read even if you don't train to wattage). I have been working hard to structure my cycling because at the moment I am really struggling to sustain and real flat line speed. I always have this probelm during the winter, and I feel that it is due to the lack TT races, switch in training to more endurance and strength in the hills. I am climbing very well, but as soon as I hit the flats I cant sustain or build speed.....with the plan I have in place I hope it will come.
One of my huge problems and always will be due to the fact I love to train, live to train and cant get enough of that amazing feeling of training and working hard. Everything is simple when you are working hard, just you and pain, the battle between you and the mentality to suffer and this is something I love and crave every day, and I hate it when I am fatigued or things get in the way of this! Suffering and improving is something I crave all the time! BUT my problem is represented by the graphs below.
I am someone who is most certainly taking on the lower graph sometimes, more than I would like, I do too much and some weeks end up feeling weaker without any sign of improvement. But when I get the balance right I improve a huge amount and find that I fly, but to get this balance right is such a fine are.
Although this is equates to the way I train....
Now here’s where things get really interesting. Below are the results of the run-to-exhaustion performance tests that each group performed at the end of 4 weeks which is that I do, 3 weeks hard and one week recovery......
As you can see, there are two sets of results one from a training group that didnt work into a fatigued state and another group worked hard and after three weeks were fatigued or over reaching as part of a training block. Both groups then took it back for a week. The results of the normal training group did not change too significantly, with only a slight boost after the taper. As expected, the performance of the overreaching group got steadily worse as the three weeks progressed – but then, after the taper, their fitness super compensated and they had by far the best results of the study. This section of the article is great.....really promotes the way we look to train, hard hard hard.....rest and improve!
Finding the balance is hard and we all want to keep improving, the above graph suits the way I like to train, I am currently on a easy week post some very hard training! I am excited about the year and cant wait for challenges ahead.
I have now officially qualified for the long distance European Championship which is a true honor. I cannot wait for the chance to go a little longer with races, I love the romantic element involved in stepping up in distance and racing time, more effort and exhaustion, training load and time. everything about taking on more distance fills me with excitement and I cannot wait to start the training build for the event. 10k first run - 60k bike and a final 10k run! http://www.powerman.nl/en/en
Soon enough things will start to get hard again, races have started again, cross country, crit races and local cycling reliability rides have all started for the new season. Duathlons soon begin, castle combe http://www.dbmax.co.uk/event-list/duathlon/item/the-9bar-chilly-duathlon-2.html being one iconic race to start the new season off. I just hope that I can stay injury and illness free to build to the best of my ability to do my best at HORST!
Soon enough things will start to get hard again, races have started again, cross country, crit races and local cycling reliability rides have all started for the new season. Duathlons soon begin, castle combe http://www.dbmax.co.uk/event-list/duathlon/item/the-9bar-chilly-duathlon-2.html being one iconic race to start the new season off. I just hope that I can stay injury and illness free to build to the best of my ability to do my best at HORST!
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