A couple of I owe ya's: Pwickman--I'll post a response to your comment from a couple of posts ago shortly. Also, I still need to post my 2011 recap/2012 plan. Life has been busy as of late and it's been eating into my blogging time!
I thought it might be of interest to comment on how I'm thinking about my bike training as it doesn't get much focus on this blog in January when the swim and the run are the stars.
Like last year, I have three Meso cycles to my training year: Jan 1-Mar 31 (where the principal focus is on building speed and getting in frequent swims and runs); Apr 1-June 30 (where I top up my speed and add enough endurance work to ensure I'm ready to train for an IM--this is where the bike moves to center stage); July 1-Nov 18 (IM specific training for Kona and Zona).
However, from the biking perspective--my training approach is less 3 distinct Meso cycles and more a gradually building symphony that moves from one stage to the other. Using the music analogy, I consider the first Meso cycle to be the first Movement of my bike symphony. The purpose of this Movement is to get my bike FTP up to within 5-10 watts of my 2012 peak. There are a number of parts in each Movement and I moved from Movement 1 Part I to Movement 1 Part II this week.
Part I took place over the first three weeks. Here, the key workouts each week were 2-3 one hour rides on my computrainer at a "cruise speed" (this worked out to be 180-195 watts). My rule was that I could not do them two days in a row and that I'd fit them in as best as I could given my life schedule and my focus on The Conservation of Motivation. I did 7 of these rides and decided this weekend that I was getting bored with them (ie--they weren't as motivating to me and I thought it time to move on).
Today i started Part II. This movement will consist of an one hour workout (10 min warm-up, 2X (20min @80-90% of FTP), with 5 min easy spin after each 20). This is a more challenging workout but since it's my H-IM race pace it's still comfortably uncomfortable. My rule is that I have to have either 3 or 4 days rest between each key workout. I'll do these for a while until I feel the need to move to Part III (which will of-course climb up the intensity scale).
Now, I didn't test my FTP because I find that I use up a lot of motivation when i do so since it essentially requires an A level bike effort. However, I've trained on a computrainer now for 10 years and I have a good sense of where I'm at. Everytime I've tested my FTP over the last 5 years it's been between 260 and 310 watts. I'm in pretty good shape right now and would guess my FTP is around 280 watts so I decided to do today's key workout targeting 2X20 @225 watts. I did 225 and 227 watts quite comfortably. This indicates that i guessed pretty well--if I can't deliver the 2nd interval at higher watts than the first then I have a problem. I'll do it again Friday and probably just look to repeat today's effort. I'll look to raise my output up to perhaps 2X20 @240 watts before I move on to Part III some time over the next few weeks....
I love good music!
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