29/07/21
Cycle - Endurance
Nothing exciting, just 2.5 hours of zone 2 riding. It was very windy so had a few harder efforts into the headwind sometimes.
1 Like
30/07/21
Gym
Squat:
2x5x40
3x50
10x60
OHP:
5x30
5x35
5x40
3x45
Hammer upper-back row: 12, 7, 7x60
Decline crunch: 2x8xBW
Just a quick session since I didn’t have much time - got everything I wanted done though. Even though I’m loving cycling at the minute I’m finding myself thinking about lifting more and more and looking forward to pushing the food and weights hard come September. Hopefully that will translate to some good training.
2 Likes
Same here, though I’m just cutting
1 Like
02/07/21
Cycle - Threshold Intervals
2x:
20 mins at lactate threshold
7.5 mins Z2
Pushed the intensity hard for the threshold intervals but it was a lot easier than last week. It’s pretty crazy how quickly my body can adapt to that workload.
Straight afterwards I did a separate ride at Z2 for about half an hour just because I had more spare time than I thought - nothing exciting though.
2 Likes
03/08/21
Gym
RDL:
2x5x60
3x80
2x100
Drop set: 3x120 - 5x100 - 10x80 - 20x60
Bench press:
5x40
5x50
7x60
8x50
8x40
Lat pull-down: 6x64, 12x46
Cable laterals: 2 sets
Tricep push-downs: 2 sets
Good tough session. That deadlift drop set sapped my energy for the rest of the workout a bit but glad I got it done and my conditioning shone through. For reference 120kg is probably a 4 or 5RM for me right now. My strength for the benching and lat pull-down was way down - whether that was because of the deadlifts or something else, I don’t know.
2 Likes
04/08/21
Cycle - Hill Sprints
Seven actual sprints of about 60s-90s but also a lot of time spent at higher heart rates in between too. I hit my max HR on the second sprint and it emptied the tank a lot. That made the other sprints a bit tougher than they needed to be but was a good thing to experience.
2 Likes
05/08/21
Cycle - Endurance
Longer low intensity ride with a few harder surges. Saw a few signs that my fitness is really improving here, I’m hoping they can flourish into something impressive later.
3 Likes
06/08/21
Gym
Squat: 3x5x20, 2x3x40, 3x50, 3x60, 3x70, 3x80
OHP: 10x20, 5x30, 7x40, 7x35, 7x30
Pretty rubbish day both physically and mentally so just bare minimum here really. The top squat set was fairly tough, 80kg is probably like a 5RM right now. It’s probably the heaviest I’ve squatted this year with the gym closures and everything so I’ll take that even if my PR is 14x80 from like four years ago. The final three OHP sets were to probably around 1-2 reps from failure.
3 Likes
09/08/21
Cycle - Club Ride
This was one of my toughest rides yet. It’s split into two parts because I accidentally stopped recording the ride when I got to the halfway stop.
The weather was rubbish, loads of rain for the first half and a big headwind for second. For the first half we pushed the pace pretty hard and I spent about half of it at the front facing the wind. This would have been tough if kept up for the way back but not horrible, the second half was a lot worse though.
Of the 30 miles back, I was holding on for dear life for the first 15-20 - my bike felt slow and like something was grinding in my drivetrain but I thought it was just me struggling with the pace since we were pushing hard again.
Eventually though, someone else realised the rain had washed all the lube off my chain so it was bone dry and grinding. Thankfully they had some oil with them which saved the day and afterwards my HR was 15-25 bpm less for the same speed and road. This was the difference between a pace I could hold for about 10 minutes vs 90+ minutes. I couldn’t believe what a difference it made. Anyway, by the time it was sorted, the damage was done and I felt every metre of the last 10 miles. I’ve never gone that long before at the sort of effort I did and if you’d asked me before I wouldn’t have thought I could.
Part 1:
Part 2:
3 Likes
10/08/21
Gym
RDL:
2x5x60
3x80
5x100
5x110
Bench press:
5x40
5x50
5x60
5x70
10x50
Hammer upper-back row: 10x40, 15x60, 12x60
Bit of an easier session for two reasons - mainly it was late and I was lazy but I’m doing at cycling time trial this evening (11/08) so I didn’t want to be too fatigued.
2 Likes
11/08/21
Cycle - 10 Mile Time Trial
I came last out of about 10 men with a time of 32:22 and an average speed of 18.54mph. I’m pretty disappointed with this and was expecting and aiming to do it in under 30 minutes for a 20+mph average. I paced myself well and it wasn’t particularly windy so I only have my fitness to blame. On the plus side though, it was as fun as 30 mins at your limit can be and I think I’m going to do the next one again in a fortnight.
I was thinking about my performance a lot last night and it occurred to me that the riding and training I’ve been doing so far has gotten me good at going longer distances but not much faster over shorter ones. That’s ok and I need to remember my goal for the end of September was to do a 100 mile ride, which is around six hours of riding and a totally different ball game to a 10 mile time trial. I rode 100 miles twice in three days a few weeks ago and absolutely smashed that goal. However, up until a couple of weeks ago I’d done basically no training at intensities I could hold for less than an hour so it kind of makes sense I might not be great at a 30 minute max effort. I guess it’s like doing sets of 20 reps in the gym vs going for a 1RM.
As I said, I’m going to do the time trial again in a fortnight, the week after that there’s a 100 mile event I’m doing and then there’s another time trial after that which is the last of the year. My plan is to increase the intensity and decrease the volume leading up to the 100 mile ride to taper and come in as fresh as possible. I’ll be doing a lot of sub 10 minute intervals and only one long ride a week since I don’t really need to get any better at that right now. The first time trial fits into this plan anyway as it’s basically just a 30 minute interval session and the second one is four days after the 100 mile ride so I’m hoping I can hold peak form until then and finish the season on a high.
My goal now is a sub 30 minute 10 mile on that last race of the season.
2 Likes
12/08/21
Cycle - Endurance/Tempo and Sprints
Instead of my usual 3-4 hour low intensity endurance ride I rode for about 1hr 45 today at a sort of medium intensity with a few short sprints thrown in there too. I did this at about midday and the time trial last night at 7:15pm so I didn’t have much time to recover in between. As a result, the last few miles my legs felt very heavy and I had pretty much emptied the tank completely by the time I got home. My legs have been aching non stop since I got home last night and today didn’t help.
Now I need to do all I can to recover in time for Sunday’s club ride. There’s a couple of very fast riders that have said they’re going to come along and when that happens the pace often ends up a lot higher than it should which means I’m going to suffer. I’m sure they’d slow down if I asked but I’m quite excited to try and keep up with much faster riders, at worst it’ll be a good workout. I have to get through squats tomorrow first though and right now the thought of that really isn’t a nice one - I’ll keep the volume low and intensity higher to at least give myself a chance.
1 Like
13/08/21
Gym
Squat: 2x5x40, 5x50, 5x60, 5x70, 10x60
OHP: 5x30, 2x5x35, 8x35
Lat pull-down: 10x36, 10x46, 10x55, 7x55
Hammer chest press: 15x40, 7x60, 7x50
Fallen way behind with logging, just haven’t been on the site much for some reason. Anyway, not much to report about this particular session. The top sets of the OHP and squat were tough but not to failure. I’m keeping the volume down a but over the next few weeks while I ramp up the cycling intensity.
2 Likes
15/08/21
Cycle - Club Ride
My usual Sunday club ride although this was an especially fast one. I don’t know if it was just a one of amazing day or I’m getting fitter very quickly but this was noticeably easier than previous weeks while being faster. I think I could even do the fastest ride the club does now which is crazy because in April even this ride seemed like it would be out of reach this year.
One other big thing here - previously my max HR was 190bpm and I’d only reached it twice ever but on this ride I hit 198bpm. At the end I did a half mile sprint to get some high effort work in and my HR just kept going up. I’m not even sure 198 was my max on the day because when I hit 190 before I was completely done and that didn’t happen here, I feel like it could have gone up another one or two bpm. It could be an error with the monitor but it rose steadily rather than a step up like I’d expect if it was fault. All the stuff I’ve read says your max HR never really increases so an 8bpm increase would be pretty weird but I guess it would be good news performance wise. Something to keep an eye on.
1 Like
16/08/21
Cycle - Threshold Intervals
2x20 mins at threshold (Z4)
Pushed this a bit hard so most of the time my HR was actually a bit above threshold and into Z5. Then, on the way home, I had a nice tailwind and had to take advantage of it so I ended up pushing again for another 10 or so minutes around Z5. All in all, a lot of volume at that intensity.
The next 10 or so days are going to be very tough cycling wise as I build up as much fatigue as possible before starting to taper off for my 100 mile event. My next full rest day is a week on Saturday and the only days I’m not cycling are when I’m going to the gym. It’s all hands on deck to try and recover as much as possible.
2 Likes
Congratulations on this one! It’s great to see that it went well, especially since you seemed a little apprehensive on Thursday about riding with the fast riders in the group. Great progress!
Sorry I only just got round to replying but thank you! I am on my way to becoming one of my those fast riders I was worrying about.
1 Like
17/08/21
Gym
RDL: 5x60, 3x80, 2x5x100
Bench press: 2x5x40, 3x5x60
Hammer upper back row: 10x40, 12x70 (PR), 8x70
Seated dumbbell OHP: 20x9s, 15x15s
Lateral raises: 12x6s
Concentration curl: RP: 10-5x10
Fallen a bit behind on logging again. This was an alright session. I have taken a step back effort wise with the compound lifts to help recover a bit more from the cycling. The plan is to maintain what strength I have for now:
2 Likes
18/08/21
Cycle - Intervals
Was supposed to be 6x3 minutes but one was a bit short so added another shorter one too. Anyway, lots of high intensity efforts.
19/08/21
Cycle - More Intervals
4x6 minutes this time plus an extra unplanned effort at the end. These were supposed to be a little lower intensity than the previous day but I actually ended up with similar average heart rates during the intervals for both.
20/08/21
Gym
Squat: 2x5x40, 5x60, 2x5x70
OHP: 5x30, 3x5x35
Lat pull-down: 10x36, 13x55, 8x55, 10x46, 10x36
Hammer chest press: 10x30, Dropset: 10x60-10x30
Another average session, just checking the box with these gym sessions. Squat technique is feeling good at the moment and I feel like I’ll be in a good position to start pushing it in a month or so.
In general, I’m not feeling too bad this week. My legs ached a lot Monday and Tuesday night and I couldn’t get comfortable but that’s over now. My glutes and adductors were a little bit tender and sore yesterday during the bike ride but again that seems to be over now. The ride yesterday in particular was very fast for me and if that’s a sign of things to come I’ll be very happy.
Tomorrow I am planning a 2-3hr ride at basically 90% effort with a few 30ish second sprints thrown in randomly and I’m expecting it to take a lot out of me. Sunday I am planning a 4-5hr ride at more of an endurance pace but I suspect it’ll be tough after the week of cycling I’ve had. Then next week volume will taper off a little bit but intensity will be kept high.
I might keep logging like this where I update on several days at once with a general update at the end. For whatever reason I just don’t find myself coming on the site much at the moment - maybe because I’ve put lifting on the back burner.
2 Likes
21/08/21
Cycle - Tempo
2.75 hours of pushing it hard and I definitely felt this afterwards. The average speed on my rides keeps going up - Thursday’s one hour ride was a PR and on this ride I was only 0.1mph slower despite it being nearly three times as long. You cannot always compare speeds because so much can effect them but for these the routes and weather were pretty similar and every ride recently has been fast not just a couple. I’d like to think it’s the cycling equivalent of getting 1RM PR then doing it for three reps two days later.
22/08/21
Cycle - Endurance
This one was quite a long ride (~68 miles) and still fairly fast. After Saturday my legs were shot and I felt like I had weights tied to my ankles. There were lots of little hills which weren’t very hard to get over but meant lots of little efforts and they added up in my legs by the end. My heart and lungs felt fine but the slightest effort had my legs on fire.
Based on the time I’ve ridden and HR data etc, this has was my hardest week of cycling ever and my most intense by quite a bit which is exactly what I wanted. Now I’m going to decrease the volume while trying to keep the intensity similar to taper towards my big event.
3 Likes