Training block 1, #HauteRoute

Amazing how the prospect of seven days of suffering focuses the mind, isn't it? About three weeks ago I was bumbling around in a haze of indecision, riding a bit here, running a bit there and generally doing my best to devour the European chocolate mountain. Now with some real mountains looming up next year I'm dedicated, organised, dare I say motivated.

I've finished my first two week block of training - I'm now officialy old according to Training Peaks so I can only cope with two weeks of hard work before needing a recovery week. To be fair to TP, last year I was getting pretty wiped out in the third week of each training block so maybe it has a point.

This has been the first chunk of base training - so a reasonable amount of hours, some leg spinny stuff and the fun of single leg drills. I've also been pretending to be beefcake in the gym, lifting some heavy weights. Well, heavy for me. I'm still using the pink vinyl ones, hopefully I can progress to purple next week. They'll match my face then.

My one moment of gym based glory is the leg press machine - I can now do 3 x 6 reps using ALL the weights, a whole 190 somethings. I've never been able to do this in previous years so either my legs are stronger or I'm less worried about tendons snapping.

I've kept to my plan pretty well - TP turns the workouts on its calendar green if you complete them (or get close) - and I reckon I'm 85% green. I also did a threshold test - riding as hard as I could for 30 minutes after a decent warm up. I'm at about the 260w mark, so not bad but some room for improvement. 272w would put me at 4w per kilo of bodyweight (I'm 68kg at the moment). I'd like to get to around 280w+ at 65ish kg, 4.3w/kg. That's still nowhere near Jon in good condition (5w/kg!) but at least I'll be close enough to him up the hills that'll I'll see which way he goes at the top of the climb and don't have to spend the night in the woods with the wolves again.

I apologise. That was a bit geeky. Don't worry, normal service will be resumed next time.