“I can make you a maa.a.a.a.an …” Rocky Horror Show.
Or you can join me in the Peaks Challenge Falls Creek. Cycle 235km with 4,600 meters of climbing. The legs had better be loaded by now. In a week you can do very little to get fitter but you can ramp up the fatigue trying.
My preparation can be summarised thus …
Turning that into weekly averages gives 344km, 2,292m of climbing in 15 hours on the bike.
Volume alone is a poor measure of training. Intensity has a key role. I have endeavoured to keep up the quality by doing some interval training, hill repeats and racing. Finding a group ride has also helped to sharpen the output. The guys and girls have also been great mentors, given me heaps of encouragement and support. All of which has been most appreciated.
Has it made me fitter? Yes it has.
I bought the road bike last May six months after I started riding. I added a power meter in July and was quick to do an FTP test. That involved 20 minutes going full gas, on the rivet, going for the doctor, blood sweat and tears, pain, suffering , you get the picture. The answer was 196 Watts.
I was in no hurry to do further FTP tests but as a Strava subscriber I have access to my critical power curve which gives me another way to estimate FTP. Using the first six weeks of power data Strava estimated my FTP at 190 Watts. The last six weeks provides an estimate of 237 Watts. (A Grand Tour rider would have an FTP of 400 plus.)
Back in the jogging boom when I ran the odd marathon the gold standard of endurance fitness was VO2max. In those days you had to head into the laboratory to find what that was. These days you just have to ask … your watch. My Garmin watch estimates mine to be 51 ml/kg/min – up from the low 40’s seven months ago. (Above average for an adult male but an elite athlete will be in the range 65 to 80).
The bike was serviced just a few weeks ago. It has a new chain and fresh tyres. The cassette has been replaced with an 11 – 32 giving me a slightly lower gear than I had. That will help on the hills. It goes for a final tweak in a couple of days. I will have to put a rear reflector on it before the big day – the organisers insist that bikes be road legal (I ride in the day with two flashing red lights to the rear, one of which is also a radar. There isn’t room for a reflector and safer to boot. Ours not to reason why.)
The week past has been a big one. It included a trip to the Grampians with a couple of rides up Mount William. The last couple of kilometers to the summit have an average gradient of 12%, there are spots where I struggled to keep the front wheel on the ground. This is steeper than the worst sections of the Peaks Challenge. The bonus though is that the climb offers the prettiest views of any ride in the state of Victoria.
It’s now time for the taper. Training too hard will find you fatigued at the starting line. If you don’t train at all you start to lose condition. How best to balance freshness and fitness? The right answer probably varies from person to person and is best sorted out by trial and error. I have no recent experience to draw on so it has to be generic. Having consulted the literature my intention is to maintain the intensity but halve the volume.
And what about some carbohydrate loading? My day to day diet is low carb but come Friday I’ll be enjoying some pasta, Saturday some rice. I’m sure my body will stack away glycogen like there’s no tomorrow.
bobmcgee 