I want to post some of my training nonsense to this page…we’ll see how it goes. Basically, to start this off – I’m so unbelievably out of shape right now, it would be funny if it didn’t suck so bad. Anyhow, I don’t care, laugh at me, but I can assure you, it’ll get better as long as I keep riding. I’ll prove it too. I can promise one thing though – I’m not planning on riding long until I get to the warm weather world of Spain in February. I’m talking 1.5 to 3 hours TOPS. So I can assure you I won’t be messing around when I’m riding.

Tuesday, 18 November 2008
I did my longest ride in Innsbruck this ’season’ today – 2.5 hours. Yeah, that’s not much. I did two climbs of about 15 minutes apiece and averaged just over 300 watts for both of them.

Aldrans
15:28
4.1km – 16kph
303 watts
181 HR

Weerberg
15:56
3.4km – 13kph
305 watts
180 HR

It was cold – I think it was something around 36 degrees today. I wore enough clothes, but my hands were still pretty chilly when I got home. I rode a solid half hour of tempo to finish off the day.

Entire workout (224 watts):
Duration: 2:31:56 (2:35:23)
Work: 2037 kJ
TSS: 173.6 (intensity factor 0.828)
Norm Power: 248
Pw:HR: 5.92%
Distance: 71.81 km
Heart Rate: 0 248 155 bpm
Speed: 0 65.4 28.3 kph
Temperature: 1 21 3.0 Celsius

Week 1 Training Stats
10:01 hours
6950 kj
595.5 TSS
.768 IF
1:52 hours at threshold…I’m happy with that.

Saturday, 16 November 2008
I started super early and rode to Menton before riding up the Col de la Madone. Like everybody else in the world, the only reason I’d ever heard of the climb was cuz of Lance’s book. Sue me for being a bike dork. The climb was gorgeous, fun, and not too hard. It was a little long, and I got kinda bored, but I wasn’t riding hard or anything, though my HR was super high, whatever.

Madone:
Duration: 1:00:52 (1:05:11)
Work: 836 kJ
TSS: 63.1 (intensity factor 0.789)
Norm Power: 237
VI: 1.03
Pw:HR: 6.89%
Pa:HR: 9.27%
Distance: 14.296 km

Power: 0 380 229 watts
Heart Rate: 0 192 157 bpm
Cadence: 29 109 73 rpm
Speed: 0 34.2 14.1 kph
Temperature: 17 21 18.8 Celsius

In other news, my time up the Madone was exactly twice as long as Tom Danielson’s record of 30 minutes and some change. I’ve got that going for me.

The whole ride looked a little like this…

Entire workout (169 watts):
Duration: 3:47:46 (4:27:33)
Work: 2310 kJ
TSS: 178.9 (intensity factor 0.686)
Norm Power: 206
VI: 1.22
Pw:HR: 2.25%
Pa:HR: 1.38%
Distance: 90.026 km

Heart Rate: 0 198 137 bpm
Speed: 0 204 23.7 kph
Temperature: 11 22 18.0 Celsius

Friday, 15 November 2008
Rode from Alassio to about Monaco. I got tired about three hours in and Ashley was nearby in the car, so I hopped in the car and was done with the ride before it got really ugly. Oh and did I mention that I rode the final 50k of Milano-San Remo? Unbelievably cool ride. I had an awesome time and even got to ride with Michael Rogers on the Cipressa.

Entire workout (204 watts):
Duration: 3:03:54 (4:05:49)
Work: 2249 kJ
TSS: 191.7 (intensity factor 0.791)
Norm Power: 237
VI: 1.16
Pw:HR: 8.72%
Pa:HR: 4.58%
Distance: 92.266 km

Power: 0 710 204 watts
Heart Rate: 0 240 155 bpm
Cadence: 29 124 84 rpm
Speed: 0 58.6 30.1 kph
Temperature: 16 24 19.5 Celsius

Tuesday, 12 November 2008
I started late again, so I figured I’d just ride hard for awhile. I did the same loop-ish. I started out heading to Gnadenwald, but went harder to start (tempo) then hit the climb harder and from a bit further out. I then went down to Hall on a smaller back road and just started going up up up towards Halltal. I went a little ways up there but got scared cuz the climb averages something like 14% after the initial only semi-steep part, ha. I cracked kinda after that and didn’t feel very good anymore. I limped back to Innsbruck and managed a decent effort up Hungerburg, but I was spent after that. I’m so far from fit it’s not even funny.

Thaur – 5k
11 minutes
285 average
26.7kph
175 hr

Hall – 4.5k
17 minutes
290 average
15.7 kph
181 hr

Hungerburg – 2.8k
10 minutes
306 average
16.8kph
182 hr

I found my HRM strap today, so I got the distinct pleasure of watching my HR go absolutely nuts after about 45 minutes. Cardiac drift is an understatement. The new WKO+ has some new data from Friel – decoupling. It basically tracks cardiac drift in percentage form, or at least that’s what I’m going to say to make it easy. Anyhow, a fit athlete will usually see decoupling rates of 5% or less…mine today in 90 minutes? 22.4%! Ha. I’m extraordinary.

Monday, 11 November 2008
Today was my first real day of biking. I am not too keen on doing hot laps up and down the valley so my goal while I’m here is to do a lot of climbing and get my work done quickly. Yesterday was still on the short side, but 1:38 for my first day with 2500 feet of climbing was ok.

I did three climbs:

Thaur – 4k
10 minutes
286 average
24.6 kph

Hungerburg – 4k
15 minutes
292 average
15.4 kph

Hungerburg – 3.5k
13 minutes (started just past the trafficky first part)
297 average
16kph

I don’t feel like going too much higher than the lower shelf on the mountains, so I won’t be doing too many climbs over 20 minutes, and that’s perfectly fine by me. I just discovered the climb to Hungerburg yesterday – it’s fantastic – it starts not more than half a mile from our apartment and gains almost 1000 feet in about 2.5 miles…which is something like a 7.5% average. I like.