Well That's Christmas Done and Dusted

Absolutely cracking ride on Zwift, the Tuesday before last. Zone 2 it definitely was not! It was a full gas hill climb on the Epic KoM and I went for it. It was neigh on perfectly ridden if I say so myself. Almost perfectly consistent power for the 26 minutes of the climb and 90s quicker than I've ridden it before at an average of 11 more Watts - pardon. My power only started to drop very slightly in the last 2 to 3 minutes and that was more from looking for the finish and not concentrating rather than actually fading. The result was another FTP increase, of +6W to 238W. That's a 4.5% increase in under 3-weeks. The rest of that week was a mix of indoors and outdoors running and some more Zwift.

The near flat-line power pacing on the Epic KoM climb

Last Saturday, I was sent to the naughty step to marshal and record the runners atop the Skirrid. It was a bit blowy but at least the rain held off.

Training this week, has been a mix of zone 2, a solid treadmill interval session Wednesday, and a zone 3 ride (with a short, all out KoM segment PB and new 3min power numbers). Today's zone 2 was a good marker of my improving fitness. 90-minutes on the treadmill with no decoupling of pace vs heart rate. When I first started on Zone 2, my heart rate would start to creep up after 45-minutes, so I'd reduce the pace slowly to counteract. The time has been slowly improving, and today I there was no decoupling for the full 90-minutes.

Almost Time to Say Goodbye to Another Year

It's funny how things change. When I was at my running best, almost 20 years ago, I hated training and loved racing. I once ran 30 races in 3 months. Roll forward to today and I love pushing myself in training. Yes, I do the odd race here and there, maybe a half-dozen a year and yes, I do love the challenge of pushing to the limit but pushing myself to run a training loop just that little bit faster...

It's a fortnight of ups and downs. Last week I put in a decent set of 6 x 4min reps at faster than 5k pace off 90s. I also rode some solid bike sessions, mainly hill climbs - I bloody love hill climbing. The highlight was a new PB on the volcano climb and a surprise FTP increase of 5Watts. Of course, there were the usual zone 2 sessions to round things out.

This week hasn't gone so well. The first part of the week through to Thursday was marred by inner thigh muscle soreness. I managed a couple of very gentle sessions initially on the bike and then on the treadmill. I can only think I picked up the 'injury' clearing up and bagging all the leaves from the storm, where I was doing a lot of bending. I managed to get out for a decently paced 13.5k yesterday and some solid zone 2 today. Rest day tomorrow and then back on with some interval sessions.