With a decent length MTB race into the powertap, and a good MTB training ride as well, I can finally do a Quadrant Analysis, just to visualise the demands of training on the road and racing on the MTB.

The purple dots on the chart show that an active recovery ride on the road is very consistent (tightly grouped dots) and in the low power, high cadence quadrant, as expected. A 20min threshold interval (green circles) on the road is not as tightly grouped, but still fairly tight, around the middle of the chart where it should be as the centre of the chart is threshold power and cadence after all. I note that during my 20min TT's I teld to wander in to the high force, low cadence quadrant too much. Highlighting my cadence needs to be picked up and kept consistent during those.

A nice 3hr race at Sparrow today, I usually love these as the race is short enough that I am out of my depth and extremely challenged, but long enough I don't do too bad. Today though, was not going to be "usual".

This head cold has me barking up filth and generally feeling crap, hardly an excuse though, the real problem for me today was mentally backing up from a very lackluster FTP test yesterday, where my average heart rate was a new record low of 146bpm. I could not get it above 150bpm at any stage, and my AT is 160 (where it would normally sit for one of those tests). Not good, I think I am just super fatigued, well I hope that is what it is anyway!

That test result meant, I knew I would go rubbish today and the dashed red lines on the graph are what my HR would normally be around in a 3hr; today I struggled to get into that zone at all, and that graph is lap 2, by lap 4 my HR never even gets above the bottom red line at any point. Frustrating stuff. I need a new ticker!

In the lead up to Easter I had some awesome food on my mind as motivation to keep training hard, I knew when I crossed the finish line there were slices, chocolate, cake and things yummy awaiting me. This time though, I have a different motivation, this I am pushing through the fatigue, getting up at 5am everyday, riding in below 0'C, for these three little guys.

I want to show them that anything is possible, no matter how old you are, how many kids you have, how much you loved computers over sports at school, you can achieve anything, if you really really want it, and work hard for it; and if they set their minds to it, they can make their own dreams come true one day too.

So the next 40 days are for you three little angels, you make my day, every day.

PS: The photos are from some Adam took last night while giving them a guitar lesson, so cute ;)

I usually do the same style of training for each 24 solo I do, that is a very traditional 12 week block of training, broken up into 3 sections of 4 weeks each. 3 building weeks, then a recovery week make up each 4 week section. Right now I am in that middle block of 4 weeks, the toughest part...

This is my 4th solo 24 with proper training, and every time, I have noticed the same phenomenon, that the heart rate I can sustain plummets. It's quite depressing and the first few times I saw this, I thought maybe it was just my body getting fitter and that my heart was beating slower because it was better at pumping blood and oxegen to the muscles, but if that were true, I would have been able to get my heart rate above 140bpm at the XCO race on Sunday, but I couldn't (I averaged a crappy 140bpm). It's like some horrifying redline limiter has been put on my heart and it just won't go above 145bpm anymore, no matter how angry or motivated I get, or hard I hard I try, it just won't.

I took out the new toy for a spin today, for some hill repeats at Majura. I'm using the ANT+ Powertap MTB with a Garmin Edge 705 head unit, and so far, I'm very impressed!

You can have upto 8 configurable data fields on the screen at one time (enough to satisfy any numbers geek like me ;)), and there's two screens that you flick between with a touch of a button, giving you 16 bits of tasty info to tantalise your inner nerd.

The feature that really grabbed me for my hill repeats was the auto lapping, at the bottom of the course I hit the lap button and raced up the hill, then at the top I hit "lap" again and noted my laptime... all well and good and very normal for any polar/srm so far... then I raced down the downhill course back to the start, where I usually procrastinate and fiddle not wanting to hit the lap button and go up that awful hill again (who likes pain? Not me! :)), I need to put off the inevitable and psyche myself up a bit first ;)

Last month I had a 20W dip in performance when I tested myself 3 weeks after Nats. Clearly I was still smashed up pretty good from the race. A week later, I tested again and had already gained 10W back. Today, I smashed it out and have gained a further 20W, giving me a 10W PB! Wheel speed was 40k/h just before Nationals and today it was 42.5k/h, confirming the power changes are about right.

Here's a shot of the birthday boy on his new MTX, the bike is possibly a tiny bit too big, but he's handling it alright and will grow into pretty quick I hope. No he just needs to get used to having some proper brakes, gears and suspension :)

As for me I got in my first big ride since Nationals, knocking out a tidy 100 miler with Dave. Kev joined us for most of the way, being smart, he opted out of the run up Corin ;)

The route was a shorter version of a 200ker that I did in the lead up to Nationals, so I was hoping to pull similar numbers today, which might mean I am getting some form back. Sadly last time I managed 30.2k/hr, but today I only managed 29.4km/h... dammit. So I'm still struggling to come back up to speed after Nationals, but my previous form is in reach, just gotta lift my game...

I've been doing a lot of reading these last few weeks, and it turns out the basis for all my training has been pretty badly flawed... that is I've always based by training zones on my maximum heart rate (MHR), training aerobically has been 70-79% of MHR for me. This is a silly thing to do as you never really acurately know your MHR though, so the numbers I have for my zones are based on a guess, making them useless.

Both Coggan and Friel believe you should set these heart rate zones by percentage of lactic threshold (LT), which is the average heart rate you can sustain in a 20 minute all out effort. I'd have to agree that setting zones from LT makes a lot of sense for tagetting the right energy systems in training, especially when you consider MHR never really changes, but LT does with fitness.

Not believing the test I did last week, I decided to run it again, suspicous the shithouse result may have been due to poor recovery from Nationals.

This week I have clawed back half of the drop, pulling an average 290W. Getting halfway back to where I was pre Nationals is a bit of relief, but I was (of course) hoping to be back at full pre race levels. This drop in form is hard to take when Brett is off getting 3rd at the Tumut 3hr and Mr English is winning his first 100ker, props to you guys (and congrats!!), I dunno how you guys back up like that!

I'll just have to keep tapping away and trying to get my form back on track...

A nice little 70k run through the Brindy's today, it had been ages since I was up there and it was a perfect Autumn day for an outing today! 20'C and not a breath of wind, just gorgeous!

Took Kev for his first ride up Warks Rd, Mt Corree and Two Sticks (the same route as this one I did a year ago), a nice little intro for him to the area, and the bugger almost cleaned the Mt Corree climb on his first ever attempt (taken out only on the final pinch, damn that concrete and rock section!), I didn't make it either, footing off in a fatigued induced moment of idiocy before we even got half way up!

When we next return I've got some nicer runs planned, and some killer climbs that should test him a bit harder, since clearly that wasn't enough of a challenge for Kev ;)