steven lord’s training blog

Some Proper Time Off

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:49:07 +0100

No it’s not an Eddington Review but for lack of a picture for this entry I decided to display some of what I’ve spent my time doing these past four weeks. Only a small proportion of that time but it has meant all my Eddington numbers are now imperial and metric. In my head I think of this as “Training By Numbers” - just each day try and contribute to at least one Eddington Number.
It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged. Partly intentional. I’d planned a break after the ETU Long Course. I’d realised that it had been non stop since recovering from my injury and felt it was essential to just down tools for a period. A little luck and a little judgement meant that I completed the purchase of my new house in Taunton the Wednesday after the Europeans. There was an initial calm before we moved anything in and then it has been non stop.
Life has been so easy with everything in one bag. With all my stuff I suddenly couldn’t find things and I needed to get things sorted. I know what I’m like my mind just couldn’t focus on training until things are organised. Charity shops got probably 5 times the amount of clothing I’ve been living with these past 18 months and I just hadn’t realised how my cycling jerseys I’ve amassed. I would place money on me never ‘needing’ another cycling jersey in my life. I’ve even been DIYing ( not sure what my dad would have thought of that) - I’ve partially boarded the loft and have just got all the wood to finish the job - have to decide when to fit that in.
On the bike front news has been as good as it could be. Not only is it looking likely that my frame will be replaced under warranty but uncertainty prompted me to follow up on a discussion I’d had with the QR rep at Kona last year. He said “hassle me” to get a bike from him. Well I did and I should be getting a QR CD0.1 frameset in the next few weeks. Exactly the same colour as Jo’s much to her horror. I’ll try and sneak a photo of us both on them in EverydayTraining kit - it’ll look great.
The title says proper rest. What does that mean for me ? This is the first time I’ve really taken having a break seriously. Here are the stats:

Up until this point I’d never done less than 10 hours in a week and I had it as a little to go the whole year that way BUT I came to my senses and seriously downed tools. The first week was big riding purely because of social stuff - riding with European champions Roger and Roz immediately after the race and then a social ride with Rachel. The following two weeks found me only riding because of the pursuit of an Eddington Number - not divulging it until end of the year (assuming I manage it) though the astute amongst you may be able to work it out. This motivation to at least ride a little paid dividends when i got back in to training this week. I did zero running for two weeks - completely intentional. Give my foot a chance.
During this rest period I had a visit to Profeet to have pressure analysis done and insoles built for my cycling shoes. They did an excellent job and so far I’m pleased with the results.
I found this incredibly interesting. The left foot is the one that had the surgery. The most pressure is going through the big toe. My consultant’s comment was “the tendon is clearly working”. I wonder whether this pushing with my big toe is what put too much stress on the tendon in the first place. Hopefully these inserts will get me putting the pressure through the ball of my foot. Once I’ve done a decent amount of cycling with the inserts I’ll be back to see Jonny at Profeet for a reassessment. I fully recommend going and seeing these guys.
I’ve also been spending time thinking about the set up of the QR. I’m sorely tempted to go with integrated shifters rather than bar end ones. This bike will be my only bike for 5 months this winter and wonder whether the trade off in races verses training of this set up would be worth it. Answers on a postcard please.
This week I’ve got back in to training and I feel absolutely full of beans. It’s great. I’m motivated, I’m feeling good and I’ve loads of fantastic new roads to explore. The riding round here is truly awesome. If every direction there are tonnes of minor roads to explore. Hills - just a few - Quantocks (2 miles away) then there’s Exmoor, The Brendon Hills, The Blackdowns and further afield Dartmoor. There’s flat riding on the Somerset levels and then rolling terrain if you head into Dorset. Swimming appears to not regressed at all. The only downer here is no squad so I’m in a public pool each morning. It means a lot of steady state. A 1:11 plus seconds 5k including warm up confirmed to me I’m still strong. The odd set of 200s off 3 minutes coming in sub 2:50 (33.333m pool) comfortably also helped my confidence. As for running, it was a struggle initially but it’s coming back quick.
I managed to enter Ironman Austria so my coming year is pretty mapped out: Kona, Busselton, Wanaka, New Zealand, break, Austria. For now the focus is on really building up my base. Depending on how that goes I’m may just continue with that sort of training right through to Kona. I feel I’m back in the saddle now so more regular blog posts should become the norm again.

ETU Race Analysis

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 17:05:03 +0100

Apologies if some of my entries have been difficult to read. I’ve only just found out that the cool reflections look pretty poor in Internet Explorer. Typical microsoft not to follow the standards so rather than a reflection it just repeated the image. It’s rather embarrassing seeing how bad it looks on Explorer. So if any of you see stuff that looks dodgy please emailme ideally with a screenshot showing what it’s like and what web browser you use. Get Firefox and it won’t be an issue !
Here’s the piccie of my bike pre race. I normally do this ahead of the race but I forgot my card reader. This is perhaps the last piccie of that particular bike as it is cracked and being sent back to Cervelo hopefully to get a warranty replacement.
Thought I’d do a little race analysis.
OVERALL
Totally chuffed with how I raced. It’s the hardest I’ve raced in a long long time. I was in the race and knew it. This was so much fun. Racing to win was a pleasure even though I failed.
SWIM
I was pretty relaxed going in to this race and given the small field I was pretty sure I’d be one of the fastest. The aim was to either sit in the front group or break clear on my own. I had a lucky break at the start to be swimming on my own about 10m to one side of the main group. I could establish I was going faster before we merged and at that point chose to push on to ensure they didn’t get on my feet. It worked well and I managed to relax from there. At an early turn I was able to look back and see some of my wave fairly close - this was enough to keep me pushing. I was able to swim bilaterally and ended the swim not out of breath. For me thats sure signs of a well paced swim.
BIKE
Though I had a power meter I was just tracking data not using it to decide pace. I did look down at it a few times as I pushed on over rises to see figures in the 500s. I pulled back knowing I couldn’t do that too often.

This shows altitude plus heart rate (blue) and power (red). The lines are smoothed over 2 minutes. I’m happy that I produced a reasonably steady ride. My average heart rate was higher than I’d thought it would be (149) but having never raced with a HRM I just took it that my association of ‘effort’ with HR is skewed. I had aerobic decoupling of -1.63%. If my understanding of this is correct it means I was getting marginally more power per Heart beat in the second half. Sounds good to me ;o)

This shows my power with no smoothing. Though my average of 245 and normalised of 253 are about where I’d expect the spikes above aren’t great. I think I would have been served better not having any of those spikes above 400 possibly even 350 would be a better cap. That probably cost me a little on the run.
RUN
I raced this. It felt great. I was leading the race and headed off at the pace I felt was required to win the race.

These are my run splits. There’s definitely a trend. Probably went off a little quick but at least it was a concious decision to do it. Mainly to try and make the chasers believe they couldn’t catch me. My pace through to halfway was definitely enough to not be caught. If I’d ran the second half at the same pace I did 10-15 km I would have been right there with a shout. I am satisfied with this. I tried to win and blew up. I could have probably got a faster time with going out slower but I certainly couldn’t have won the race doing that.
I do wish I had heart rate data for this run and am planning to find a watch for this. Looking for something that will pick up my Garmin ANT+ HR strap. Anyway - during the first half of the run I was breathing hard and working hard. After 15k it was like my legs just would not function fully. My breathing dropped. It felt like the legs just couldn’t handle all the oxygen my aerobic system could supply. Pretty clear run strength is still my limiter and I need to work on my run muscular endurance.
This fills me with enthusiasm for Kona. Perhaps I can finally perform better than my first time there. I’m now got a couple of weeks down time whilst I move house then I’m planning to start my build for Kona.

ETU Long Course

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 10:02:31 +0100

My race report is here.
Firstly I must say how beautiful the course is here. The lake for the swim is gorgeous. The ride was on closed roads through lovely villages and twisty turny roads. The run is 3 x 10k lap with lots of turns and different terrain to keep it interesting. The logistics need improving before the World Long Course is here in 2012 but assuming they sort this that will be a fantastic race to do.
Two days before the race I got bad news - the mechanic here spotted a crack in my frame. He told me to race this weekend then put the frame on the wall. Pretty gutting as I’ve grown very attached to this bike. Also, he was so adamant that I don’t ride it after this weekend that it made me question whether he really thought it was OK to ride it in the race. So ... I put my number over the crack and didn’t worry about it.
The field here was pretty small which made for a lovely relaxed race. It was so nice to race where there wasn’t much aggro. I did the whole race more or less on my own. Next year doing the ETU Long Course again is a definite possibility.
The most pleasing thing about this race is that I really RACED. There’s no knowing whether different pacing would have produced a medal (ie not going so hard on the run at the start) but given the strategy I’d decided on I raced my heart out and felt I executed that plan as best I could. My swim was great. There was a certain level of luck that meant I gapped the others in my age group so I didn’t pull any of them along. My ride was fast but conservative then the start of the run was really satisfying - I felt good running at that pace and at the time was visualising this being the pace I run the whole marathon at at Kona ! It felt like I was in a good place to start building up my running after a little down time.
On reflection it’s rather disappointing that I missed the medals. I was the fastest Brit and I was 4th fastest age grouper. It just feels rather harsh that that didn’t result in a medal. I guess being in such a competitive age group will make winning all the sweeter when it happens.

Guilt

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 23:13:55 +0100

On Monday I found myself in a common situation for me. Feeling guilty about not doing something I’d planned. I felt guilty despite my logical side knowing it would have been stupid doing what I’d planned based on how I’d felt.
What had I planned ?
Riding home from Taunton. This would have involved getting up at 5am and riding pretty much non stop for 10 hours to get back to London before rush hour traffic.
How did I feel ?
My alarm went off at 4:30am and I felt so dead to the world it didn’t even cross my mind to get up immediately. My mind mulled it over and prevented sleep. An dialogue went on till I’d kinda passed the time where the goal was really achievable. It probably still was but this was sufficient to allow me to fall back to sleep. I slept a fair while longer and woke refreshed to a beautiful day and MASSIVE guilt that I was missing it and was going to have to spend thirty five quid on getting a train home.
Why logical not to do the session ?
To start with I’ve got the European Long Course championships this coming Saturday (more on that later). That alone would not completely rule this out. Well it wouldn’t rule it out in my books but probably it would in most. So lets just ignore that for now ;o). The previous few days training leading to this Monday morning impasse had been:
Thursday - mid summer madness - 100 miles at pace. Serious watts which caused a few discussions with friends. Seems my 269 average may be a little high and getting it calculated from a more reliable source gave 259. Anyway thats a tangent. It was a pretty tiring event and it also meant I went 48 hours with only 3 hours sleep.
Friday - REST - sensible ! Did stay up watching the World Cup though
Saturday - up at the crack of dawn and rode 168 miles to Taunton in 9.5 hrs ride time, 10.5 elapsed. I felt very strong
Sunday - nearly 50 hilly miles split by supporting Jo at UK IM 70.3
I think thats probably enough effort so close to a pretty big race. But I still felt guilty.
Why Blog About it ?
Part of the purpose of this blog was to share my experience of training for big endurance events. Hopefully some of what I go through will ring true with readers and perhaps seeing that I go through doubts and guilt may make you feel not so bad if you feel the same. Also, writing out here makes me see I made the right choice. Though it would have been monster and I’d have buzzed after. I did manage my planned 100+ miler today which also helped decide against Mondays ride. Since I felt on fire today perhaps the decision was right.
Since recovery from Lanza it’s been an interesting few weeks of training. I’ve got into a nice groove largely ride focussed and a large part of me wishes I wasn’t racing this weekend as I could see this nicely building towards Kona but a big race will result in my losing this rhythm I’ve found.
I’m definitely feeling fit again and feeling relaxed which is a great sign. However, my preparation for this is far from ideal. I’m overweight for sure - 4-5kgs heavier than at Lanza. That will cost on the run.
The three weeks training I did through to this last Sunday were as follows:
WEEK1 Swim: 4 km, Bike: 460 miles, Run: 6 miles
WEEK2 Swim: 8 km, Bike: 427 miles, Run: 24 miles
WEEK3 Swim: 5 km, Bike: 447 miles, Run: 17 miles
You don’t need to be Einstein to work out thats far from balanced. So, hows it looking ?
Swim: despite the small amount of swimming there’s been some quality in there. 1:11 100ms and a 5:15 400m with paddles (historically I’m 5+s per 100 slower with paddles). These are good signs. I’m swimming tomorrow to see how I feel but I reckon I can swim well. However, I’m living on borrowed time with this lack of swimming and I KNOW when I start back on my Kona build I need to up my swimming significantly. I don’t want to face the Kona swim start in less than toptastic swim shape
Bike: what can I say it is going like a dream. I’ve been doing generally long aerobic riding but the speed this has been at has been very pleasing. I’ve been enjoying some ripping off of legs and some real fun ‘races’ up hills and the like. I’m thoroughly enjoying it at the moment. I’m confident about this at the weekend
Run: completely lacking. Following my Lanza run I was super keen to go so it’s a little disappointing whats actually happened. In fact, not only is the running low but most of it has been running to get somewhere - so none has really been a focussed session. This on top of my weight gain could mean Saturday being far from pretty.
There is a reason for this lack of running though. I will come clean - my foot was hurting a little more than I’d have liked post Lanza. I had sensations in the ball of my foot I wasn’t 100% happy with. I wondered whether the riding may be the problem but felt that it was running that put the stress on the foot and as such there was enough doubt in my mind that I held back running. For about a week now the foot has settled down completely and I’m feeling far more comfortable about it. This weekend will be a test of it and if it feels OK I will steadily build my running again over the summer.

Even More Midsummer Madness

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:50:46 +0100

It all started 3 years ago when, having gotten up ever earlier to get more miles in before work on a Thursday morning, Jo and wondered what it would take to get 100 miles in. Post wednesday night swimming we were drinking hot chocolate and it must have been around 10:30pm. We concluded it would involved just heading out around midnight and riding through till the morning. So we put our cycle kit on and headed out the door at midnight. We cycled 2.8 mile laps in the dark, headed to Brick Lane for a bagel and coffee and were pretty anti social when the others arrived at 6ish. At the time I can’t have thought much of it as I don’t appear to have mentioned it here.
We made a bonkers repeat that winter on the shortest day of the year before Gabriel and I repeated it in 2008. This was the scene of my biggest ever detonation. Last year we went back to do it properly and we hammered out a pretty decent time. This year we were planning on nailing it. Full aero setup and a 2:30am start time which not only gave us a little extra sleep but committed us to a fast time. We were hoping for sub 4:30.
The graph above shows the lap splits together with my average heart rate and power for each lap. On the second lap my right elbow pad sheers off which requires a stop and hunt in the dark for it. Now I’m not able to really hold the aero position. I try alsorts but I can only stay aero for short periods which I use for when I’m on the front. When on Gabriels wheels it’s definitely easier to stay aero but it’s too uncomfortable.
After 5 laps riding side by side to warm up we get organised and down to it by allternating laps. We couldn’t see our computers for the first 90 minutes so do it on feel. In hindsight I’m chuffed to bits with how evenly we shared the work and paced the ride. It gave some very interesting data from the powertap.
Here are power and heart rate data for a pretty typical lap. The top two graphs are me on the front the second two Gabriel on the front.
If you look carefully there’s an initial surge of power as we accelerate out of the right angle turn onto the main road at the start of each lap. I feel we over did the effort there every-time. When on the wheel you can see my fluctuating power as I ease off then speed up to maintain on the wheel. My heart rate steadily declines throughout the lap. The big drop in power at the end of Gabriels laps i the downhill where when on the wheel you get close to freewheeling.
So ... we ended up completing 36 laps, 100.47 miles in 4:19 with an average power of 269 watts. Very pleased with it though I’ve been resting today in preparation for riding to Taunton tomorrow.
Got some solid power data so I’ll end with my first Critical Power graph.

A New Chapter

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:23:54 +0100

This week I got my new Zipp 404 Powertap rear wheel. Here it is looking sweet on my P3C. I now also have a funky computer to capture tonnes of data. Now I can head out and collect ride data including power, heart rate and cadence. The wheel itself is beautiful - it’s real nice to look at and feels great to ride. Will be able to fully report on how I find it in a couple of weeks after the European Long Course. The plan is to race on it and to certain training sessions with it. Don’t really want to train all the time on such an expensive wheel. My first ride out on this new wheel made me feel like I was starting a new chapter in my training.
On Tuesday I headed out to meet Russell riding this new setup. My plan was to ride as I normally would and just see what the data showed. It was pretty clear just from looking at the power that I am pushing a lot more than a few years a go when I last used a power meter regularly. I did a 6.5 hr ride and had a straight average power of 192 watts for an average hr of 105. I was pretty pleased with this. Also there’s been a clear change in my cadence - it used to be I was never below 90 but this time the average was 74. I did a period of riding a bigger gear on my fixed to try and get me pushing a bigger gear. I don’t know whether this was an influence but I now feel much more comfortable on the bike pushing at a lower cadence. My riding is noticeably stronger now.
Here’s the data from the ride. I don’t have the greatest analysis software so I may have to go buy Training Peaks and the software to let me run windows on my mac. We will see.
The ride was broken in three as is the norm for my tuesday ride. First 2 hours is generally easy going through the early morning london traffic. Then I do about 3 hours with Russ where we tick along quite nicely. Then I have 1.5 hours or so home just riding how I feel.
The first period my HR average about 95 and my watts well under 200. Then 2.5 hours with Russ, average watts 207 and HR 107. The first hour after this on my own I averaged 218 at 121bpm. Interestingly this felt very relaxed riding. Throughout my cadence was mid 70s
Looking at HR zones I spent the first third largely just nudging bottom of zone 1, second bit largely in zone 1 and final third nudging into zone 2. This is what I would have described as a decent solid ride. I’d certainly feel I got good training benefit from it but looking at the data it really was quite an easy ride. It took the typical form of my progressively riding more strongly. I’m looking forward to being in Christchurch and seeing what my more solid solo efforts translate to. However, tomorrow I may get an idea as there’s going to be some more Mid Summer Madness.
Since coming back from New Zealand I’ve felt my swimming has been slightly on a back burner. It took a short burst of training at Club La Santa to get it back in to shape but even that was just solid steady state swimming. This last week I’ve had a couple of squad sessions where I was able to get a measure of where I am and I must admit I was very pleasantly surprised. At the end of one session I managed a 1:11 100m and on Monday near the end of the main set I did a 5:15 400m with paddles. Paddles usually slow me down. This is so encouraging as I’ve maintained my swim form with what I would have thought was less than maintenance training.
Running has really been pretty easy. I’ve been concious of giving my foot an easy time and thus didn’t run for two weeks. I’ve now done nothing longer than 1 hr runs and not run more than 3 days consecutive. I’ve felt good running. My plan is to not push the running at all pre the European Long Course. After that whilst moving in to my new home I will give running a little more focus.
I feel fully motivated with my training at the moment. I’m ticking a long nicely at about 30 hours a week which I find very comfortable to do. Given I’ve been getting three long rides in each week you can see the bulk of these hours comes in 3 days meaning the other days are quite relaxed. It’s making me feel really refreshed and I plan to continue like this for a few more weeks before really starting to focus on Kona preparations. I can’t wait !