Well, it’s been over a year since my last post. After the last one I decided this blog had served it’s purpose - it publicly shamed me into training properly again! However, it’s quite useful to reflect on how training and racing is going so I’m now treating this site as a personal training diary. I will be making plans and reviewing performances. If others find it interesting then that’s great!
So, what’s happened in the last year. Here’s the TL;DR…
Fred Whitton. Ouch! I had to walk up most of the steep climbs - I had plenty of energy and a reasonable number of watts but 86kg was way too heavy!
Sunday club bashes, a sub-6 hour century, FTP up to 279W, weight down to 83kg.
Cake! I was ill a few times and my FTP dropped to 260W. I also ate too much and ballooned to 91kg. I decide to stop being such a fatty and sort myself out! I entered the Tour of the Peak - 185km around the Peak District with 3,300m of climbing - and made a plan.
Training was going great - my FTP was up to 285W and I was down to 82kg - then the world went to s**t and my race was postponed. #firstworldproblems
My heart goes out to all those affected by the ongoing pandemic. It’s a terrible situation and has been poorly handled by many countries around the world. However, lockdown has actually been pretty good to me, all things considered. Nobody I know has been sick and since I work remotely anyway my day-to-day life hasn’t changed an awful lot. Training wise, I put my head down and addressed some weaknesses. My FTP has plateaued at 294W - more on this in a later post - but my weight has dropped dramatically to just under 75kg. I’m now only one big poo away from the magical 4W/kg!
Well, now I’ve finally finished rebuilding my time trial bike I’ll be doing a fair bit of time trialling once racing starts up again, which will hopefully be some time in July. I’ve stopped trying to lose weight and have been eating more (not cookies!), which will hopefully get me over the plateau and my FTP back above 300W for the first time in years. My next FTP test is next week so we’ll see whether that has worked!