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Another meeting with my coach last night. I enjoy the build up. Rollers in the snow, jump in a hot bath, nice warm pajamas, load up skype!

Each time I feel like I'm understanding things more.　　I've always been good at the “doing” but now I’m starting to improve on the “thinking” too!

Here are my notes from last night’s meeting:

Base period

This week marks the start of the base period.

I will continue to work primarily on endurance / speed / strength.

For strength work, I will aim to increase the weights and reduce the reps. However, the real “muscular endurance” work will begin in base 2.

The allocated hours for this 4 week Base 1 are:

Base 1 wk 1 Dec 15 ~ 21 (13h 45)
Base 1 wk 2 Dec 22 ~ 29 (16h 30)
Base 1 wk 3 Dec 29 ~ Jan 4 (18h 45)
Base 1 rest Jan 5 ~ 11 (10h)

I should be able to hit the target hours for the first and last week.

UK trip

It will be difficult to hit these hours for weeks 2 and 3. I will be visiting family in the UK.

I will aim to train 6 days a week around 90 minutes a day. I will use the turbo trainer and do some cross training (running, swimming).

I envisage I will be able to do 8 to 9 hours per week. Strength work on alternate days may push this up to 10~11 hours.

How to compensate for reduced volume?

We agreed that time lost at this stage in the ATP is not so crucial. We can be flexible and not worry too much about losses in fitness.

Some ideas I had were:

Increase the intensity?

One idea I had was to increase the intensity a little on the turbo trainer. We agreed that as I have a big base relative to my peers, some work in zone 3 is okay. However, I will still focus primarily on zone 2 work.

Introduce strength work on the bike?

I suggested some “SFR” heavy gear work on the rollers. We are not sure how beneficial this work is or how well it actually translates to on the road riding.

I will experiment with this on the turbo trainer. During these exercises I will focus on maintaining a steady HR (zone 2 if possible) and a smooth pedal stroke

Offset endurance to the Base 2 phase?

Another idea I had was to focus mostly on speed and strength in UK. Once back in Japan for base 2, I could focus more on endurance efforts (this will also be relevant as I expect to put on a bit of weight with Christmas eating and a reduced training volume).

I will upload my body weight to Training Peaks every few days.

Speed drills

We talked about the speed drills I have been doing.

1 legged drills.

I will try to find the optimum gear / cadence that I can pedal smoothly at for the duration.

I will switch between legs (ex: L only 30s, both 30s, right only 30s)

The target in these exercises is to make the mental association with good pedalling stroke.

As I repeat the exercises, if the muscles fatigue, I will move up to an easier gear.

4 parts of the pedal stroke

With both legs clipped in I will practice on focussing on the 4 parts of the pedal stroke separately (ex: 30 s pushing over the top, 30 s on the downstroke etc)

High cadence

I will look to find the highest cadence I can maintain “smooth” before “bouncing” on the rollers.

I will try some drills of 110 rpm x 5 mins.

I will see how HR responds to this in a set gear. Also I will try to hold a set effort (HR) while changing gears as appropriate.

The ultimate goal is to try to find the “cut off” point, where a high cadence results in a higher metabolic cost (relative to power output).

The importance of pedal efficiency?

There are different schools of thought on this. We think that the importance will vary with the individual athlete.

I will try to look at how relevant pedal efficiency is to me.

On the rollers I will try 2 × 5 minute intervals at a fixed speed and cadence.

For the first interval I will pedal normally. For the 2nd interval I will focus on pedal efficiency.
We will analyse the metabolic cost (in terms of HR) for the 2 efforts.

Later on the road we will use power to look at the power vs. cadence vs. HR relationship more closely.

Swim

Intensity values for my swimming seemed to be a little high. We recalculated the swimming threshold. The new value seems more reasonable. I noted that a 1h 30 swim gives a similar TSS score to 3h in zone 2 on the bike, which is what I would perceive it to be.

Training intensity during the prep phase.

It was noted that my weekly training intensity stayed pretty constant during the prep phase. This was an objective in this stage. Prior to beginning a training program, there were big fluctuations in training intensity week by week.

I am really enjoying the athlete-coach relationship. I am lucky that our relationship is a very interactive one. We are both working towards the same goal.

Our next meeting will be Tuesday January 13th at 10pm.