Moments in Time

Back to basics for today's session on the VeloTron, some good steady sweet spot work at 88-94% of my FTP with a blood lactate test scheduled for the end of the second 20 minute period. The session went well and at the moment I do feel that I am recovering well from my training, the last 2 days have been far from easy and I felt fine today, maybe it's my altered recovery strategy.

These sessions are never actually easy as much of the time is spent up around 280W but I was pleased with my heart rate response and the session felt completely manageable throughout, I could have ridden at this load for an extended period, as one would expect when working below one's FTP.

I'm still pleased that I took a lighter week of training last week and my TSB is staying up nicely, I will post a copy of my performance management chart at the end of this week so that anyone who happens to be interested can see how my slow build up is going. I'm on target with this at present but am really hoping to be able to get my longer rides in at the weekend, ideally on Sunday as I have a potentially interesting indoor session planned for Saturday, more on that later in the week.

At the end of the second SST effort today I took a sample of blood (EEK!), and tested my blood lactate level and I was very pleased with the result which was 2.3mmol/l. Last time I took a reading after an identical session the reading was 2.6mmol/l so there certainly doesn't seem to have been a deterioration here and from this reading, supported of course by how I felt, I think things are moving in the right direction.

I'm pretty confident now that the training I have been doing has had the desired effects. My blood lactate levels for an absolute workload are now consistently lower than they used to be and this points very strongly to the suggestion that my metabolism is now more efficient and that I am relying less on carbohydrates to power higher intensity training and riding. I find it quite satisfying that my blood lactate measurement when working at around 275-285W is now at the upper limit of a normal average resting blood lactate reading. If anyone would like to read more about blood lactate and exercise, this is worth a read.

To review this session: click here.

ATL: 75.7 CTL: 72.4 TSB: -3.4

By way of a change and an experiment I skipped my ErgVideo session today and instead returned to one of my old standbys to see how things were being affected by the addition of the very different ErgVideo work. If I am going backwards I want to know about it sooner rather than later!

Used my standard .erg file for the session which sets the VeloTron loads to deliver 2x20 @ 88-94% of FTP which would give me a direct comparison with previous similar sessions, also did a blood lactate test at the end of the session.

This went very well, this is not easy training but once I was well into the session I found that I was turning the pedals really quite comfortably at 275-285W with no problem at all and my legs were far from fresh from the previous day's session. My HR for the session was lower than it's been for a sweet spot session, power and HR distributions are shown below. As you can see the HR distribution tells a very different story in terms of training zones and suggests that all is going well and according to plan.

So, all going pretty well indeed, the final piece of the jigsaw was the blood lactate test at the end of the 2nd effort and the recorded level was 2.6mmol/l which again is encouraging and suggests that my carbohydrate stores are being used sparingly when working at this sort of load. This is not an absolute confirmation of this as blood lactate can be influenced by a number of factors but it's a guide and the signs are positive.

Back to the ErgVideos tomorrow I expect, I shall continue to use them with even greater confidence, the signs are that their use may well be having a very +ve effect on my training. It's early days but I'm certainly not going backwards using them :-)

To review the session data: click here.

ATL: 69.7 CTL: 63.2 TSB: -5.9

Hi

VeloTron

The weather continues to be dreadful, snow again today so it's 45 minutes of power in lieu of a long ride. Based on Bill Black's "Hour of Power" this is never an easy session and trains me to work hard for long periods with no proper recovery periods. The majority of the session is ridden at around 265-275W with 30 second surges up to about 350W every 3 minutes.

By the end of the session you aren't really looking forward to the surges very much but they come and go, all 13 of them :-)

Continuing with the lactate studies and at the end of this session my blood lactate reading was 3.2mmol/l which I was very pleased with. This suggests strongly to me that after riding at this intensity, including 350W surges, I was still in a steady state in terms of blood lactate which is excellent.

To review this workout: click here.

Hi

VeloTron

Yes, I'm afraid it's that time of year and the session I know and love has returned to take it's toll, the 2x20 threshold session at 91-105% of FTP. It's not the 100% parts of the session that are the fun and games, it's the 100-105% sections and then having to "recover" from them whilst still riding at above 90%

Anyhow, the session went well and this is without doubt the result of all that has gone before in terms of L3 and SST work, I'm making steady progress. Things are pretty difficult on the training front at the moment as I'm afraid my Mum is still in hospital but I'm just hoping for the best and doing what I can to help.

I continued my blood lactate studies today and recorded a benchmark figure for this L4 session. At the end of the 2nd 20 minute 91-105% effort my blood lactate reading was 5.8mmol/l which is where I would expect it to be, a little lower if anything.

This does at least confirm that I am working at the correct intensity for this session. Given the stochastic nature of the 20 minute efforts I would think for an isopower 100% 20 minute effort the reading may well be significantly lower, which is encouraging.

Average power for each effort around 300W.

To review this workout: click here.

Hi

VeloTron

Time for one of the regular higher intensity sessions included in the winter plan. Today I had scheduled a mini interval session made up of 15 30 second efforts at 128% of FTP split into a block of 5 and then a block of 10. I had 5 minutes recovery between blocks and 30 second recoveries between individual efforts.

These sessions are never easy particularly as they begin with about 45 minutes at around 200W to take away the initial freshness. However, once I got into the meat of the session I felt I coped very nicely with the efforts and could definitely have continued. I'm pretty confident now that I could complete a session like this made up of 2 blocks of 10 and there is a .erg file for this purpose in the library, I'll have to dust it off :-)

So, all very satisfactory. I took another baseline blood lactate measurement at the end of the last of the efforts and the reading today was 4.9 mmol/l which I had expected to be higher and which was again very encouraging. I suspect that the training I've been doing has certainly improved my lactate clearance capability as at one time after a session like this the reading would have been well over 6mmol/l.

After today the rest of this week is not too taxing and I'm feeling good, certainly less tired than at the same time last year, not digging a deep TSB hole for myself at this time of year seems to be working well for me.

Onward to Paris.

To review this session: click here.

ATL: 60.2 CTL: 64 TSB: 4.6

[Uploaded 19/01/2010 15:19:39]

Hi

VeloTron

Another week of the VTWinterPlan comes to a close, a bit down on hours and mileage but with the weather the way it's been that is just unavoidable. Managed to compensate pretty well with some good sessions and still finished up with around 145 "miles".

Continued today with my blood lactate measurements and was again pleased with the outcome. The last test was done after a session @ 85% of FTP and gave me a reading of 1.7mmol/l and today's session @ 80% of FTP gave me a reading of 1.4mmol/l which is pretty much exactly what I would have expected.

These results may be what I would expect but I remain delighted with them because they are low readings when I'm actually riding at reasonably respectable wattages and they are a lot lower than they were some while back. It's just nice to have some sort of "evidence" that even though my peak wattages have not changed a great deal there is some physiological change going on. What matters is that this may be a number on a meter but it translates into me being able to go harder for longer without discomfort. My approach to training may not be that which is advocated in some quarters, but it is delivering the adaptations I require, and there is more to come when my Spring training kicks in.

Interesting to also note that the lower blood lactate today was recorded with a slightly lower TSB than for the previous test. Yesterday's exertions do not seem to have had an adverse effect on the readings even though fatigue is a known cause for elevated blood lactate levels, maybe this suggests that I'm recovering Ok, the human body is very complicated so who knows!

ATL: 66.7 CTL: 65.5 TSB: -1.8

[Uploaded 17/01/2010 22:17:59]

Hi

VeloTron

Rolling along with the VTWinterPlan and all seems to going pretty well at present, long may it continue! Today's session was a couple of 20 minute efforts at 85% of FTP, good bread and butter aerobic conditioning which I put great faith in. Planned to continue with my blood lactate data gathering to determine the current picture of this measure of the physiological strain, or otherwise, that is being applied by my training sessions.

The session again went well in spite of yesterday's exertions and the blood lactate data was very encouraging. It doesn't matter which way I look at it I am currently producing lower levels of blood lactate for a given level of exertion than used to be the case.

I did my blood test at the end of the second 20 minute effort and each effort was ridden at almost exactly 260W, so a solid L3 intensity. I was again very pleasantly surprised by the result of the test, my blood lactate concentration was 1.7mmol/l, so I was certainly riding, in lactate terms, in a steady state with lactate being removed from my blood stream at least as quickly as it was being produced, good news. Some while ago I recorded a blood lactate reading of 2.6mmol/l at the end of a 20 minute effort ridden at 245W, so I'm now producing less lactate at a higher wattage. My highest wattages may not have changed a great deal but there is no doubt that I can now ride harder for longer and it looks very much as if this shift is one of the reasons.

It is interesting to note that during yesterday's 45 minutes of power, in between the higher wattage surges, I was riding at only a slightly higher wattage than during this session but the wattage was variable. So, the variable wattage between the surges coupled with the 30 second surges themselves resulted in a blood lactate level by the end of the session which was exactly double the level at the end of today's second effort.

The above is quite a good illustration of the "damage" that constantly varying pace does in terms of performance potential simply by elevating blood lactate levels, a steady pace avoiding extremes of effort is much kinder to the physiology. Clearly in events and races pace changes are very much part of the territory but if the worst of the extremes can be avoided the overall performance is likely to be far better.

ATL: 64.2 CTL: 65 TSB: 1.3

Hi

VeloTron

Tonight's scheduled session was a 45 minutes of power session and I was really very pleasantly surprised how good I felt during the session. Even during the power surges (up to 350W) towards the end of the session I was able to just push through them and I never really developed significant leg fatigue throughout the session, which has not previously been the case.

Such was my surprise that after the session I even ran the Accuwatt programme on the VeloTron to check it out, it was spot on, less that 0.5% out from factory calibration. I can't help but think that the Winter Plan has already delivered a small FTP increase which was not it's main purpose but which is a nice by-product. The main thing about this session was how I felt at the end, as I said yesterday what I'm keen on developing is my ability to go hard for long periods rather than very hard for short periods, that's what I need and that seems to be the direction I'm heading.

As planned I took a blood lactate measurement at the end of the 45 minute effort as a baseline for this session and to see how it compared with previous measurements, I was delighted with the outcome and very surprised.

At the end of the 45 minute effort, which included surges to 350W every 3 minutes, my blood lactate reading was 3.4 mmol/l which I was delighted with and which was far lower than I had anticipated. This strongly suggests, and this is supported by my RPE, that in terms of blood lactate I was exercising in a steady state and that my blood lactate was not steadily climbing at this exercise intensity.

I had expected the level to be higher as even though the average wattage for the 45 minute effort was just 275W I thought the 30 second surges up to 350W would have had the effect of further elevating my blood lactate level.

Anyway, the above suggests to me that this particular session is being done at the right sort of intensity for the purposes for which it is intended. However I need to do further tests on some of my "standard" sessions to ensure that the higher intensity sessions are in fact taking me above the 4.0mmol/l level which I believe is probably required if the types of adaptations I'm looking for are to be brought about.

All very interesting, certainly didn't expect the outcome of tonight to be along these lines!

To review this session: click here.

ATL: 63.6 CTL: 65.0 TSB: 2.8

[Uploaded 13/01/2010 22:25:48]

Hi

VeloTron

More tempo riding today, 76-90% of FTP and felt very comfortable, I just wonder if my FTP has risen just a few watts but it's not the time to be testing now and as long as I'm not going backwards that's just fine. I used to fall into the trap of always wanting to be elevating my wattages but I'm now of the view that the most important thing, for many riders, is not the wattage you can produce but how long you can produce it for that matters.

It's very like the situation where someone wants to be able to ride at 20mph which is actually very easy, for a short period of time. However, it's a whole lot more difficult to ride 20 miles in one hour, it's all down to sustainable power output. I'm concentrating not on producing big wattages but on producing decent wattages for long period of time, that's what will get me to Paris.

Instead of doing another FTP test at the moment I'm planning to do some blood lactate tests at the ends of some of my "standard" ergotrainer sessions. The idea behind this is to ensure that when I do say a sweet spot session that my blood lactate is indeed up around the 4mMol level by the end of the session, that way I can be pretty sure that I should be working hard enough to still be stimulating muscular adaptations. If the level was much below this I would need to be increasing the loads for these sessions.

Tomorrow's session looks as if it is the ideal place to start this process, I have a 45 minutes of power session scheduled which won't be much fun but will provide me with a good benchmark test. I'll be riding in my sweet spot for around 45 minutes with no recovery periods and a supra-threshold surge every 3 minutes. This session should put my blood lactate well above the 4mMol level and I'd be surprised if it was much below 6mMol to be honest judging by how my legs feel after these sessions! We shall see.

ATL: 61.8 CTL: 64.6 TSB: 3.3

[Uploaded 12/01/2010 16:14:28]

Hi

Computrainer
Another of the 2x20 L4 sessions we know and love! All went pretty well and I also repeated the blood lactate reading at the end of the session as I had done one of these a month ago after this session.

Interesting results as my blood lactate was slightly higher than it was when measured immediately after the same session a month ago. Last month it was 4.7mmol/l and today 5.2mmol/l. Blood lactate can be influenced by so many factors I'm not at all concerned about this reading but it does serve to suggest strongly that I'm still working at about the right load for these L4 sessions, certainly feels that way!

I must do a bit of reading as I'm not too certain which changes most with training, whether it's the level of lactate that is produced or the ability of the athlete to deal with higher levels whilst still exercising.

My gut feeling is that with training the level of lactate produced at a given load will be lower but that the greatest "benefit" of training will be an enhanced ability to continue to perform work at higher blood lactate levels. I have read somewhere that very high performers can continue to ride/run with very high blood lactate levels which suggests to me that it is the tolerance which improves probably more than the actual level itself, I'll report back if I find anything useful out.

One interesting comparison though is the change in my HR figures for this and the identical (in power/load terms) session I did a month ago, on 22.07.2008, the data are shown below. I've been observing generally and consistently lower HRs lately and I'm sure this is a result of my altered training approach, I think some improvements might be starting to filter through, let's hope so! One very good thing is that I do feel now that I can "do" these sessions consistently without digging a big hole for myself, which is half the battle, I've just got to keep plugging away with them.

Uploaded 21/08/2008 16:53:30]