nickcoyne.com

Its now been just over 3 months since I started training again, and my fitness has made a steady improvement since I decided to enter Cape Epic. Starting with a CTL of only 14 on 4 July, it has now climbed all the way to 83. I haven’t raced the Spring League season this year, and its helped a lot with planning a steady progression in my training load.

This chart shows my steady increase in TSS load per week. My last week hit a new high of 780TSS. This coming week will slack off a bit, then I’ll pick it up again, aiming to level out at around 700-800TSS per week until I have the time to give it a bit of a kick. That’ll probably start around the middle/end of December.

The result of the steady increase in load is this. A nice progression in CTL…

The blue line is CTL. Yellow line is TSB (training-stress balance). TSB is at a new low, so I’ll take today off, and either a short ride or another day off tomorrow.

My training rides have focussed on L3/L4 work, and while my threshold power is still down from where it was last year, I’m finding I can ride at high L3 for long periods. On yesterday’s 140km Double Century training ride, I managed a 20min L4 interval three and a half hours into our ride. Comparing my numbers to my bests, for the range around 30min duration, I’m only about 10w down. The gap widens on shorter durations, probably because of the lack of racing, and the gap is wider, but not too bad, for longer durations. For now I’ll continue to focus on L3/L4 work and in December I’ll start with L5 work in preparation for summer racing.

I’m very happy with how smoothly things have gone so far. Hopefully illness and work interruptions stay clear so that the trend can continue.

Finished my new bike build up (for now). New parts are
* Thomson Masterpiece seatpost to replace the USE Carbon. A little lighter, but more importantly a lot stronger.
* XTR cranks to replace the well worn XT cranks. A bit of a weight-saving, as well as making he bike look a lot nicer. Those XT cranks clashed a bit. They’ll move on to my Kona commuter bike project which I’ll hopefully build up this weekend.
* Eggbeater pedals are back on. I’ve installed the short-length Ti spindles. The main problem I’ve had with Eggbeaters is that the spindles are too long. These new spindles solve that problem, as well as losing some weight with the Ti versions

Total bike weight as you see it in the pic, is now 10.6kg. Future upgrade possibilities are:
* Hope blue seatpost collar
* Hope blue quick-releases
* KCNC blue pulley wheels
* KCNC SC Bone handlebars
* maybe a new saddle

More pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/nic.coyne/GiantAnthemX

My new Giant Anthem X1 arrived last week, so we got all the bits transferred from the Zen across to the new bike. With my American Classic wheels on she weighs in at 10.7kg, which is almost 400g lighter than the Zen.

All the Giant’s bits got moved to the Zen, which is now Nicole’s bike.

Nope, I’m not dead. Nor have I moved, been kidnapped by aliens or fallen into a long, deep sleep. No excuses, this blog has just been neglected and forgotten.

In the next few weeks I’ll be upgrading WordPress, creating a new design, and starting to post again.

Most posts will likely focus around my training for next year’s Cape Epic.

I’ve been rather quiet - work has been pretty busy, and I’ve been trying to do a lot of riding.

League races have gone relatively well, with Paul grabbing one win, and both Paul and myself with the front group over most of the climbs. We rode Sani2C together and managed 20th overall. We’re pretty chuffed with that, since neither of us are at peak fitness. In fact Paul was giving me a push up some of the climbs on the last day. Sani2C has by far the most spectacular course of any mountain bike race in South Africa. There was soooo much single-track. And mostly nice fast, flowing, non-technical stuff, which was a lot of fun.

Yesterday was funride world champs, and the VA group had a very smooth (and crash-free) ride to come in around 2:47. Not the fastest time, but I’m not complaining. I managed to sneak in with 17th place in the very long sprint.

Cycling will take a bit of a back seat now as I try to prepare for the 7-day hike we’re doing in Scotland in early April. The average day is over 20km, and I’m carrying the tent and everything. Looking forward to it!

Saw a thread on the wattage forum with everyone sharing their annual totals, so I worked mine out too…

Min CTL: 40 (after a week overseas, and being rather busy for the week before that)
Max CTL: 85 (just the other day, and increasing :))
Total TSS: 25,954
Total Kj: 266,504
Total Time: 430 hrs
Ave IF: 0.774

Very nice to see my CTL high for the year coming right at the end. I’m putting in a lot of training at the moment to try and lift it to ~100TSS before Sani2C at the end of Feb. I know work is likely to get in the way at some point before then, so I’ll need to take it up to 110TSS if I can, to give me some room to lose CTL to the interruptions. Last time I was up at those levels was before the 2004 Cape Epic, and if I can race Sani2C the way I raced that Epic I’ll be very happy.

We rode another Double Century yesterday, and managed to come in just inside 6 hours. 5:58 I think. My first time under 6 hours, after hitting 6:00 exactly in 2005.

It was a great team effort with 9 of our 10 starters finishing together. The only person to miss out was Frank who had an unfortunate incident involving a musette and his front wheel. Said musette stopped Frank’s front wheel from rotating causing Frank to go flying over the bars. Fortunately Frank wasn’t hurt, but his wheel lost a spoke and our support vehicle was not around to give him a replacement.

Comparing numbers with last year’s race, it seems I went harder despite being less fit. I certainly felt better after last year’s race. This year everybody was completely knackered, apart from Paul who looked like he was ready for another lap.

Still awaiting the results on the PPA site. Hopefully we made the top 10

Another great race today with Garron taking his first win to notch up 4 in a row for Team Vineyard BikeMaxPower.

I’ve been off the bike for 10 days, so I sat in as much as I could to save my legs. We were quite a big bunch going over Hels with Paul setting a very manageable tempo. About 15k’s from the end Team BMP still had 5 riders so we started attacking. First Peter, then Andreas, then Paul. Paul was marked very closely by Shaun and John, so we started again - Peter, Andreas, Paul. Nothing looked like it would stick, but we were tiring out the main sprint contenders while we still had Garron sitting comfortably in the bunch.

About 3k’s out I got away with Alister Arenson on the rise up to Paarl Main Rd. Surprisingly we got a good gap, but my lack of riding in the last few weeks saw me not recovering from the initial attack effort, and Alister did 75% of the work. When it came to crunch time, the final k, my legs were toast, and we were swallowed up with 50m to the line. My disappointment quickly changed though when I saw it was Garron flying past ahead of Shaun, taking a well-deserved win!

And that wraps up a great spring League campaign. 4 wins and 3rd overall for Paul.