Week 18

This week was a recovery week, only one session on the 27^th which was 80 minutes of recovery/lower endurance. Still felt under the weather with a sore throat, HRV readings reflected the lower energy levels. We did a 100 mile sportive on the weekend 1^st May (forgot to take my reading). Still, the rest worked well as I felt good, 43% of the ride time was in heart rate zone 2 and 51% in zone 3

With the 300 ride looming at the end of the month, it will be about trying to build up some fatigue over the next two weeks with a view for a recovery/taper week leading up to it.

Week 19

Back onto the training plan, first session on the 2^nd was 75 mins endurance that included 3 x sets of 4 min FTP intervals, starting with a 30 second 200% effort. 4^th was 100 mins of endurance with 2 x 20 min FTP intervals. On the 6^th was a longer training ride, 2 hrs 30 mins that included various intensities on the rolling course. Then on the 7^th a group ride of 2 hours 30 mins (not a good reading but took a chance), followed by a recovery ride on the 8^th of 90 minutes. As you can see my readings are mostly clustered down towards the lower energy area, which is hopefully an indication of the build up of fatigue I am aiming for, as I mentioned last week

Week 20

Continuing with build phase 2, following on from last weeks readings, this weeks readings started low energy then veered towards over-reaching, so thought I would have to revise the weeks plan, but they bounced back quite well. The intention was to get 3 fairly hard days in back to back at the end of the week to build fatigue and then taper next week for the Charity ride (see link below) and hopefully bounce back that bit stronger. So I was surprised to see the ‘Go for it’ reading on the 16^th.

10^th – 1 hour of endurance- this was supposed to be FTP work but my knees were sore

11^th – 90 mins, which included 2 x 20 min FTP ints, remainder at endurance and tempo

13^th – 120 mins ride endurance and tempo

14^th – hard group ride 180 mins

15^th – tempo/sweet spot session 100 mins

Next week will be tapering in preparation for the weekend event.

Week 21 – The Big Ride!

So this is the big charity ride for Breast Friends (link below), 300 miles in 24 hours. This will be a taper leading up to it. However the hard 3 days of riding at the end of last week have left me sore, so, it was just the one session on the 19^th for 30 mins which was simply to try the new aero position out.

But some re-assuring readings all the same for this week. We arrived in Barmouth on Friday the 20^th, the reading on this morning was a ‘Go for it’. However a poor night of around 2 hours sleep gave me an amber reading on the morning of the ride, Saturday 21^st, we set off at 8am. As the ride was a straight through ride of 24 hours, I didn’t get to take my reading on the 22^nd, (we arrived in Great Yarmouth at around 6;30 am), but the 23^rd (Monday) was similar again. The reading on the 24^th is clearly showing the affects of the fatigue.

We completed the ride in 18 hours and 51 minutes of ride time; with the food stops added on, amounted to 22.75 hours. We had a target av speed of 16mph to achieve the time we wanted to complete it in, in order to stay within our aerobic capacity. We were a group of 12 riders, with 6 brilliant support crew in cars and vans. So far we have raised £16k for the charity Breast Friends with donations still coming in. You can check out more on the JustGiving page.

The general HRV trend from the 14^th May was upwards; just leading up to the ride the HRV and RHR were diverging more;

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I am a recreational athlete, who has around 5 to 8 hours a week to train (season dependant). I have a family with 2 young children and run a business. Therefore the ethos of my training is to use training principles that elicit the best results in minimal time.