Fitness Test

Wow. I've watched the brother do this before and found it quite amusing - anyone with an older sibling will relate to the warped joy of seeing them do something out of choice that makes them suffer. However, it's not really as funny now I've done it myself. It was pretty hard, and I don't think I'm built for suffering.

Andy Blow - the guy who did my test has a depressingly good palmares - Ironman, Half Ironman, Olympic Distance Triathlons... So he was built like a racing snake, jolly cheerful, but the man's a pro. Not really the kind of person I want to feel unfit and overweight in front of but hey ho, in for a penny and all that.

The humiliation for which I had paid £145 started with a weigh in. Joyous. Then a body fat percentage check using electrodes. 22.2% in case you're interested. Not too depressing and for me quite pleasing as it is just below being smack in the middle of average. 20 - 25% is were you're meant to be, or at least that's what the chart on Andy's wall said. But apparently endurance athletes like me (bless him) should be aiming for the very bottom end of this or indeed off it all together in the 18% - 19% region. Hmmmm.

Then came the actual testing - stationary bike, heart rate monitor, SRM cranks and a computer screen to follow my pathetic progress.

Basically the test comprised of me riding for 3 minutes at a steady cadence and power. Then Andy turning up the gears and me increasing the power for another 3 mins. And repeating that till I couldn't do it anymore. Andy interspersed this with stabbing me with a pen to take a blood sample for my lactate (?) and asking what my perceived rate of exertion was. I didn't really have the heart to tell him it felt hard from when I walked in the room and it hadn't got any easier. So I stuck to the chart he held up which had words like "steady" on it.

Then I got a rest. Which I liked. I got water.

Then the hard bit began.

Starting at the point I finished at last time - which from memory I described as "fuckin horrible" - not on the chart but I think he got it. I had to maintain a certain power output for a minute, then Andy turned it up by 25 watts. You have to maintain the power output for a whole minute or you don't win (I'm making up my own rules now) but basically whatever the last complete minute before you explode is ridden at gives you your MMW or some such abbreviation. Just to point out, Andy did a great job of explaining what all this was about and why we do it and sent me a very clever report afterwards. But I'm not good at science and for that reason tend not to pay attention so thus I don't know what my MMW will help me with but apparently mine is 300 - which I was quite pleased with. Until I spoke to the brother - who despite me telling him I was coming off the back of 2 days heavy training (how he must laugh, he'd just done Amstel Gold and was about to go into Fleche... for training) said that "to be honest France, I thought you'd be better than that"

Arse.

So in short - I did it to find out my Zones - which are a little higher than I thought. And I got lots of extra numbers, which seem to serve to inform me I am not as fit as I could be, I'm carrying too much weight and I have a lot of work to do.

I think you'll agree - £145 well spent.

Week 12 down - 11 to go

Managed to stick religiously to both the eating and trianing plan.. Which I am disproportionately chuffed with myself about. So in brief I did:

Monday (before I got the "plan")
60 mins spinning
1500 Cals

Tuesday
2 hours at Zone 3
2100 cals

Wednesday
Split Session - wierd 50 mins morning followed by weird 55 mins evening - on turbo
Ate 2150 cals

Thursday
1 hour Zone 3
Ate 2100 cals

Friday
Day Off
Ate 2000 cals

Saturday
2 hours Z3
Ate 2500 cals

Sunday
3 hours 15mins Z2 and Z4
Ate 2600 cals

I hate Zone 3. Going for my fitness test today as I had to postpone it on Friday. Bloody well hope I have been working in the right zones. Cant believe how often I say zones these days.

Shit...

...Aren't I?

So I didn't manage the Cheshire Cat - but I did lose 3 kgs. So not too shabby. And it was the World Track Cycling Championships in Manchester and 4 of my clients won Gold medals. It was my duty to party with them. I would have been letting not only them but myself down if I hadn't - I may be boring cycling Fran these days but the inner drinker is never going to leave me all together. I got very very drunk.

Oh and that friend in the know. Useless. Taken a month to get a plan. But have it now and am totally on it. And it would appear there are other people as deranged as I willing to not only ride the etape but write about it too..... http://etapemadness.blogspot.com/ They are following the same plan as I am - so rather than tell you about it - I'll let them - as I think they manage to convey the horror of it all better than I can.

So in brief and to get things back on track - I am currently bike-less as I am having a newer, cooler, faster, lighter Dolan built, but want to take my SRAM groupset with me so have had to put Old Faithful in the capable hands of "Spike" at Manchester velodrome for a week to strip down and re-build. So all my work at the moment is being done on an exercise bike. Seriously 2 hours on an exercise bike is wrong. Boring and wrong.

Oh and tomorrow I am going for lab testing - fitness and fatness. It's going to be demoralising I think. The brother thinks there's still a chance they'll discover that we are both genetically gifted... he's going to be horribly disappointed. I'll have to let him down gently.

A New Approach

Ho hum. A not very auspicious start to the blog I know. But it is early doors and I have been training so let’s keep things in perspective.

So what have I been up to? Well, lots and lots of turbo work, and very little out on the road. I have found a “sort of club” that do a ride every Saturday in the Surrey hills and I’m dead keen to join them but for various reasons, including working for the last three and next two weekends, being knocked off my bike by a white van man (which led to swollen elephant knee and buckled front wheel), and the fact that it involves being up at 7am on a Saturday I am yet to make it out. So I have done a minimum of 3 maximum of 5, hour-long turbo sessions a week and ridden to and from work every day that I’m in the office. I’m not going to lie, it’s dull.

The lack of coach is actually beginning to ruin my morale, mainly because I made some pretty good progress in the early days with Simon and the 80% world of pain he introduced me to, losing weight, getting fitter and all that jazz. Whereas now I have reached what I think in exercise parlance is known as a plateau. There are several reasons for this in my own expert opinion 1) is that I have lost sufficient weight to fit into a size 12 and vanity, as much as I may veil it in a cloak of earnest desire to succeed in a physical challenge, is my main motivator 2) I am totally clueless when it comes to exercise, I want to see quick easily measurable improvements and when that stops happening I find it hard to motivate myself 3) I have begun to wonder if there is not more to life than taking my turbo with me on business trips so I can train in my hotel room after meetings (I kid you not)

So I have decided to take on a new attitude and deal with my issues one by one

1) The “Vanity” Issue

I know it makes me a very shallow person, and that there is more to life than looks, but to be honest I don’t care, it works for me. And as much as I like being a size 12 there is still considerable room for improvement in the whole “hot bikini body” quest. So I have set myself a target of losing another 10kg. So, embracing the small targets approach, I have decided that by the Cheshire Cat in 5 weeks I want to have lost 4kgs.

2) The “what the f*^k am I doing” issue

I have taken the bull by the horns and sent my proposed programme for the next 5 weeks to my “friend in the know”. He has promised to send me a revised, hard-core, get-results, no-messing-around programme. I should have it this evening when I do I’ll post it.

3) The “is there more to life than this” Issue

Hmmm not when training for the etape there isn’t. So I have decided that success in 1 and 2 will give me enough satisfaction that I won’t worry about having no social life and alienating my friends. I have also decided to give up booze altogether until the Cheshire Cat, thus meaning my evenings will be boring all the time and thus a turbo session may begin to seem like a fun and stimulating alternative to the monotony.

So there we have it. The next phase has begun. Fully reinvigorated and ready to go.

Which is lucky because I got my entry and hotel confirmation through today.

18 weeks to go.

Crap.

Long time, no write

I would like to start by saying that I have been genuinely busy and hugely rubbish at keeping up with my blog. I know that. I feel bad, but let's move on. I am guessing in these early days no-one has been pining for my latest installment anyway.

What have I been doing I hear you cry (mum). Well as mentioned I now have my turbo trainer in situ - it's pretty darned good too, tres easy to use and even needs plugging in (which if I'm honest I don't really understand but none the less like the cycling lemming I am I plug it in whenever I use it.) Which brings me neatly to using it. It's tough. A friend of mine who knows a thing or two about this training stuff suggested that sticking to my current as-long-as-I-can-at 80%-max-heart0-rate approach may lead to insanity when not out on the open road so gave me what can only be described as a bonkers little interval session to do. It involves getting on and riding for 10mins at 80% max heart rate in the big ring - lowest gear. Then moving down the gears riding each on for a minute until the hardest gear then coming back up again. Then riding at 80% for 10 minutes and repeating. It's mental. It really hurts but I'm figuring it must be good for me.... I hope.

So I've been doing that. And when I've been in the office I've been riding to and from work - which is a 28km round trip commute through central London (Shepherds Bush to London Bridge) and I just recently went to LA for some meetings and decided to take my bike, stay in a relatively nice area next to the Pacific Coast Highway and get out on the open roads. It was lovely and I did about 7 hours in total with a great 3 hour ride on the first day.

The coach who was helping me seems to have disappeared off the radar so I am now coach-less and taking advice from a variety of well intentioned, well informed friends and colleagues. David is totally useless when it comes to training advice - generally he tells me to ride as hard as I can for as long as I can - so I am now on the hunt for a new programme as I feel a little directionless at the moment and the Cheshire Cat looms heavy on my conscience. Which is not good.

PS I now have power cranks on my bike! And a funny little red box on my handlebars that tells me my cadence, power output, speed and heart rate. No idea what power is all about. But it's cool. I feel profee.

Training in Spain

This is the mountain goat, with some mountain goats

Spain didn't turn out to be quite the training extravaganza I had in mind. My flight from London was delayed by 3 hours so we didn't get to Girona until 5.30 which didn't really leave much time for going out on the bikes. So instead decided to do a longer ride on the Saturday with the mountain goat. And I'll tell you what, I'd forgotten how funny that girl is to ride with. The ride she chose is a 60km loop with lots of uphill bits including a 6km climb. At the base of said climb we decided, rather stupidly, to eat our energy bars, which we're cookies and cream flavour and peanut and toffee flavour. Now, trying to eat, climb, breathe, talk and laugh all at the same time is not easy, and the more we tried the more we laughed, weaving around the road, chewing with our mouths open getting slower and slower with toffee, peanut, cookies and cream dribbling down our faces. It's at time's like this you realise who your friends are, cos man it was not pretty. Anyway, once the hysteria had subsided I had what I can only describe as a seminal moment. Or to be more precise a seminal 6km. I actually enjoyed the climb, we kept a good steady pace and I was actually able to talk, and although wasn't able to achieve my half-wheeling ambitions I did feel like for once the mountain goat wasn't wishing she could ride at her own pace. It's a miracle. Turns out losing weight and training more really does help.

In total we did 62km in 2.35mins which considering the amount of uphill involved we were both quite chuffed with.

I haven't been riding my trusty Dolan on my last 2 trips to Girona as both have been short and I couldn't be bothered to lug it back and forth so instead I have been borrowing one of Slipstreams Team issue Felts. I have to say I never thought changing your position on a bike would make so much difference. My left butt cheek hurt for the majority of the ride and then for the entire evening after it. Which worried me. So I decided to skip the planned short loop on Sunday - which sucks as it's so far my favourite ride in that area. Never mind, next time.

On an entirely separate issue, I rode to and from work yesterday and then did my first Turbo session. I will save turbos and commuting for another day though.

Right, apparently the key to success with this training malarkey is to have short-term challenging goals, and apparently getting slim enough to fit into a size 8 Gucci skirt doesn't cut it so I have instead picked the far less glamorous but potentially more challenging Cheshire Cat Sportive on 30th March.

It has such a cuddly name I think. Which is bizarre because it looks like the kind of ride that's more likely to slap you in the face than give you a hug. It's 97.5 miles and has several climbs, one of which reaches, at its steepest point, 1:4 i.e. 25% i.e. what the hell is that doing in a bike ride?

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I entered via http://www.kilotogo.com/cheshirecat2008.htm Having done a few triathlons in the early days of my insanity I have to say that "sportives" really are reasonably priced. £27. And I bet I get a banana at the feed station. Love it.

I'm off to Girona in Spain tomorrow for Dave the brother's birthday. 31 in case you're wondering. Old huh? And will be out training tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday in the beautiful Spanish countryside. I will be accompanied by the mountain goat, but she's suffering from tendonitis, which although terrible for her is great for me, I intend to try and half wheel her up some of the climbs. Because it'll be one of the few times I ever can. And that, my friends, is good for morale