monday meeting

The season is approaching. "Season In" is the buzzword amongst Japanese cycling friends.

Another meeting with my coach on Monday. He is so generous with his time. Checking training files. Tweaking the annual training plan.

I've never prepared so meticulously. It gives me confidence. I feel fit. I feel rested. Ready to take the season on!

Here are the notes from the meeting:

modifying the ATP

The schedule for the early season races has been announced. We have had to make some minor changes to the ATP.

The biggest change is my first A race, Tokyo~Itoigawa, coming one week earlier than anticipated. We decided to remove one of the two "peak" weeks before the race to accommodate this change.

We also have three other races fixed into the calendar:

March 14: Tokyo enduro
April 18: JCRC Enduro, Gunma CSC
July 26: JCRC RR Gunma CSC

These three races are "B" races. I will train through these races, but the target hours have been reduced to accomodate the race in the week it falls.

We added hours to the race week for Tokyo~Itoigawa. The target hours are set at 16 h (of which 9 h will be the race).

strategy for group riding

We talked about strategies for group and pair riding when riders have different aims or strengths. I think the most important thing is to remain focused and to ride at my desired pace and intensity.

stages vs. power tap

I switched from powertap to stages recently for recording power. Power values for stages are markedly lower than power tap.

We feel that power tap is more accurate and the power zones we have determined correspond closely with the heart rate zones. When we switched from solely HR to HR and power (power tap) for recording data, the data (such as TSS) was consistent and as expected.

Lower values recorded by stages affected base 3, weeks 2's TSS value. By deleting the power data, we can use HR only as a means to generate a more comparative weekly TSS. We may decide to do this later (stages recording began Monday February 16th).

At this stage we can fall back on heart rate as we are not doing short intensive intervals. For this kind of training a real-time power response is desired. I hope the 4iiii power meter will be on the bike before we begin this kind of training.

ftp test no.3

I will perform a third FTP test on March 7th or 8th. I will use the same road as last time.

As a strategy I will start out at 5 watts higher than last time and try to build after 5, 10, 15 minutes.

In order to compare the test to previous FTP tests, I will record data with the power tap connected to my Garmin.

I will keep the stages on the bike and record the same exercise via stages' smartphone application. After the test we will be able compare the two power meters.

After 3 months of base training, I'm looking forward to the races ahead...