Time for my monthly progress report. These seem to come round really quickly!
Overall I am very pleased with my progress this month even though I haven’t hit all my targets for March but we’ll come on to that.
After asking Roy to do a one-off review for me, I have now re-signed with him as my coach with the Gran Fondo World Championships in August being the main target.
My training load is continuing to build nicely and at a sensible rate – my CTL was 63 at the end of Feb and now sits at 72. I reckon I can get it to about 85-90 by race time.
Let’s look at my March Targets:
The first one was to get my FTP above 260W. Following my recent 30 minute outdoor FTP test, Intevals.icu has me at 269W which is very pleasing and better than I’d expected.
My weight is 72.6Kg against my target of 73kg. Again, just eating sensibly and training increasingly seems to be sorting this for me. I assume it will settle soon. My overall target was 72kg but I’ve now reduced this to 71kg.
My next target was to return to Cat B in Zwift. I’ve not achieved this but I’m not too concerned. Zwift have also just changed the criteria so we’ll just wait and see on this one.
I’ve not expressly trained for the next one, getting my 15 sec sprint to 812W (11 w/kg) but I am a bit disappointed this hasn’t improved. I will start targeted training for it soon.
The final target was to Improve my 2023 1, 3 and 5 min Power bests (447, 300, 291W.) I did improve 1 and 3 min power to 495 and 345W but failed to improve the 5 min power.
So things are going in the right direction. Roy is shifting the focus from building my base / ftp to getting me race-ready. This means working on durability and repeatability especially at the shorter (race-winning) durations.
I have a week in Calpe in a fortnight’s time which I intend to use to give my fitness a bump, before getting into hardcore race training and racing. My first race is May 20th.
So, targets for April:
- Do a 1,000 TSS week in Calpe
- Weight below 72kg
- Get my 15 second sprint to 812W (11.0 w/kg)
- Improve my 1 min repeat intervals from 400W to 450W.
- Get 5 min max power to 350W.