Coach Roy, who you may recall I had commissioned to do a one-off review of where I was and make recommendations for going forward, has done his stuff. He confirmed some things I was doing like the ramp rate of my CTL but warned me not to overcook this rate.
He gave me 2 sets of progressive intervals to do in February. One was roughly 5 x 5 mins at 110-115% FTP with 5 min recoveries (“Turbo Threshold Building”); the second was Extended Aerobic Efforts which was 3 x 15 or 20 mins at around Threshold. The former I did on the turbo and the latter I took outside.
These must have made an impact because he asked me to do an outside 30 minute FTP test, which I did last Saturday and managed 260W. Roy equated this to an outside FTP of 260W and an indoor one of 250W. TrainingPeaks, intervals.icu, Xert and Strava gave 250, 254, 255 and 255W as their view of FTP. All of these beat the 245W target I had set myself for Feb so that is one tick.
My second target was to get my weight below 74.5kg. Weight loss has been steady and other than greatly reducing drinking, I haven’t had to focus much on this. I am at 73.8Kg currently although I have seen slightly less on the scales. So 2 out of 2.
The third target and one I failed in January was to podium in a C race. I achieved this early in the month in a Crit City race where I came 3rd. It wasn’t a highly ranked race, but I’ll take it. My Zwift racing is improving and my Ranking is getting better – although well behind some of the other C’s in Cyclechat like Andy, Alex and Carl although I am closing. So 3 out of 3.
My sprint has been rubbish and I set a target of getting my 15 second sprint to 710W (9.5 w/kg.) On Sunday, I did a 2 hour endurance ride outside and threw in two 15 second efforts at the end. These gave me a 15 second best of 755W (10.23 w/kg) which I was pleased with although I need to replicate this indoors. So that is 4 out of 4.
My final target was to implement the recommendations from Roy. I’ve done this so far – and plan to roll his follow up recommendations into my plan – and I’m considering re-signing up with him at least until the Tour of Cambridgeshire in June.
This leaves me a bit more optimistic than I was a month ago. My CTL is 63 against 58 at the end of January and I should be into the 70’s by April. In a mood of optimism I finally signed up to the 2023 Tour of Cambridgeshire Race on 4th June which is the qualifier for my season target of the Gran Fondo World Championships in August.
The graphs above show the progress towards my idealised target weight and FTP.
So, what shall I set myself as targets for March?:
- FTP above 260W (using intervals.com as the reference)
- Weight below 73kg
- Return to Zwift Cat B
- Get my 15 second sprint to 812W (11.0 w/kg)
- Improve my 2023 1, 3 and 5 min Power bests (447, 300, 291W)