Things went well and I did manage to improve year on year but by mid 2019 I was wondering if I could keep it up. At this point I decided to bite the bullet and get a coach. I had been thinking about it for some time but never taken the plunge. I hoped it would be like power meters – I dilly-dallied for ages before buying one and then never looked back.
So in October 2019 I signed up with my first coach. Things started well but towards the end of November I did an FTP test that showed me going backwards and I was struggling to complete too many sessions. Looking back, I don’t think he took into account the fact that I was an ageing athlete and had piled too much training as well as heavy weights onto me. I decided to stop the arrangement although he had said he could scale things back as I just didn’t think it would work.
I had spotted a coach who specialised in Masters coaching and had a look at his articles and website. I had a chat with him and liked what I saw so in December I signed up with Tom Daly of Masters Coaching and started with him on 30th December.
Tom was a good guy and seemed much more attuned to the type of training I needed. He was keen on outside riding where possible and said he was going to focus on durability and repeatability rather than just the peak numbers (FTP etc.) He had a great palmares as well being Irish National Age Group champion and having written the Story of the Ras amongst other achievements. This progressed well until…. Covid-19 and Lockdown occurred. Tom wrote to all his athletes to see if they wanted a break from coaching as there were no target events to aim for and I think most did stop. I decided to as well, so stopped at the end of March 2020.
By August I was back thinking about what next and a series of serendipitous events happened. Some time previously I had looked at the results from the Tour of Cambridgeshire race so that I could determine what level I needed to get to in order to be competitive. (This was my Target Event for 2021 as it leads to the Gran Fondo World Championships). A guy called Roy Holmes had won the 60-65 Age Group so I put in a request to follow him on Strava. Nothing happened for a while but then in June/July he accepted me and I started looking at his rides.
After a bit I noticed his rides had a website on some of them and on checking I saw that he had started a coaching business. Incidentally, I also spotted that his son was Matty Holmes who rides for Lotto Soudal.
It seemed like fate was nudging me so I contacted Roy and arranged to sign up with him starting from 1st September. I told him that, and I quote from my email, “I guess my mandate would be for you to get me to the point that I could beat you!”
It was a bit of a wrench leaving Tom but it just felt like the right thing to do. It was a slightly disjointed start as Roy likes his athletes to have a month off each year, so October was mainly doing whatever I felt like, but we are now back on it and into base training. We are also doing prep work prior to starting strength work with weights.
Like Tom, Roy is more interested in extending my peaks (e.g. maintaining threshold for longer) rather than focusing on growing them although hopefully both will come about.
So where are we now? Below is an example of my week’s schedule on Training Peaks.
As you can see, it incorporates one Zwift race per week which I agreed with Roy. Unfortunately this week, I had a technical and missed the race so I have one extra workout added back in. So I have three workouts addressing Threshold and VO2 Max together with one longer endurance ride which is done outside.
I’m finding the sessions challenging but realistic. A good example is the session you can see for Thursday. It consists of a warmup ramping to just over threshold, followed by five sets of 5:30 at 290W with 5:00 minutes recovery. I’ve done this twice before and not managed all 5 sets at full power. Roy told me he was pleased because that meant he had set the target at the right point. Yesterday I was very close to completing them all but still have a bit to go. I decided to record this session on YouTube to give me that bit more motivation and accountability. It is below if you want to hear me suffering.
So that is where I am up to. I’ll periodically post a blog with updates as things progress.
Oh yes, back to the 60 Challenge. The spreadsheet is below with the figures being my peak watts in that calendar year..
As you can see, I am on track to achieve improvement every year – with one more year to go. I still hope to remove the red I have outstanding this year for my 60 minute power. I’ve not really had the right event to hit it so may need to plan an attempt separately. It is notable how coaching has really made my shorter (VO2) numbers much better. Of course, the table does not track durability or repeatability.
So that is it for now. Hopefully back in a couple of months with a positive update. Feel free to post any comments or observations below.