Tales from the Blunt End, Part 2

Starting Again

My plan was to increase my FTP w/kg to around 2.5. I wanted to start with an accurate FTP test, then begin a program. Losing 10% body weight and gaining 10% FTP would improve my w/kg 22% and I would be close to my target and hopefully a podium shot in a D race.

So the day after the fateful Crit Race I wrote about in Part 1, I decided I needed to devise a plan to get quicker in a more structured and formulated fashion. With extra motivation, determination, and purpose, I went into my pain cave*, wrote the blog piece for Eric, hit send, crossed my fingers, and left without ever touching the bike. I wanted to do a new FTP Ramp test, and I knew I needed to be fresh for the best result.

* In my case, by “cave” I mean spare bedroom and by “pain” I mean it’s a painfully poor set up, more on this another time.

The day after blog day I was ready. I knew from my previous Ramp Test that it’s as much about the mind as it is about the body, I really had to force myself to keep going during the last few seconds as my legs ground to a halt. I wonder how much variation there is from riders with similar fitness who just refuse to quit, and those that stop too early. Does the test expect you to quit early and compensate? I certainly feel my FTP is generous, I doubt I could hold it for a full hour. I ended up pushing a maximum of 311 watts which seems very low, but with cumulative effort and tired legs at that point, my cadence had dropped to a slow pitiful crawl.

The last time I did an FTP Test I scored 196, this was November 2019 when I was weighing close to 118kg, or 1.66 w/kg. After this, I did the 6 week FTP builder plan. I presume this made me fitter, but I honestly have no idea how effective it was as I didn’t retest myself at the end. Instead I got married, enjoyed Christmas, ate far too much on our honeymoon in Italy eating pasta and pizza, and didn’t cycle again consistently until the start of April. I considered hiring an Uber bike one day to get around Rome but the unfamiliar road markings and driving on the right put me off, plus riding an electric bike still makes me feel like a fraud. Prior to the honeymoon I had dropped weight though via an experiment with Intermittent Fasting, getting as low as 102kg, and over the course of April, Zwift had generously estimated that my FTP had gone up to 202. This gave me a 1.98 w/kg FTP which is what was written in my Zwift profile when I raced Crit City at the start of May.

My retesting day yielded some mixed results. Firstly, my weight was no longer 102kg, the honeymoon had not been kind to the scales. I was now tipping 109kg, which set me back to 1.85 w/kg, and after consultation with WADA, also disqualified me from the Crit City race result completely for weight doping. Ooops!!! I avoided a ban for being honest, plus there was no evidence to prove I had benefitted from the deception in anyway. I was slow even when cheating.

Secondly, my new FTP came in at 217, so a new high of 1.99 w/kg. A net gain of 0.01 w/kg, small victories! This is where I considered the fact that Zwift thinks I can hold 217 watts for an hour. I doubt I could hold 155 for a full hour, so unsure what maths or witchcraft they are using. At the very least, even if the FTP is not accurate to a real life 1-hour effort, the Ramp Test offers a consistent method of checking progress, provided you’re also consistently tenacious.

So my new initial targets are as follows:

The Plan

I’ve had lots of tips about the best ways to increase FTP, and I have not ignored any of them. They are all very sound suggestions and I plan to try every one of them later on to see which ones possess the best pain to progress ratio. The reason I haven’t listened yet is I was already into week 4 of a 6-week FTP builder by the time my post went live. I’m determined to finish it to have an idea of how much improvement it can offer at my level of both fitness and commitment. As with all training, you only get out what you put in, and with the effort I’ve been putting in so far I’m expecting a spot on the Ineos roster. Domestique will do for the first year.

My first gripe about this plan is that it, and presumably all others, run from Monday to Sunday. Sessions are drip fed depending on when you do the previous one and it won’t let you complete multiple sessions on the same day for example. As a result, if you start a plan on a Saturday, you won’t complete week 1 before week 2 starts, the remaining sessions from the 1st week will be lost. A little frustrating as not everyone works a Monday to Friday job. It contains about 6 hours of cycling per week with an equal amount of staring at the data in the Companion App and Strava data afterwards too. Somewhat of a commitment when you have a full-time job and other important things like dogs to walk and Netflix to watch, but it’s less than I was doing on an average week.

The ‘foundation’ workouts pop up a lot and I hate them, not because the intensity is high, but that continual fast cadence. It’s like trying to sprint down a really steep hill, your legs spinning wildly to keep upright. I’ve traditionally been a slow peddler so a 90-100 cadence is unnatural and tiring in itself, but I especially loath having to maintain this during the rest periods. I’m sure all it’s doing is destroying my knee and ankle cartilage. Zwift doesn’t penalise you for incorrect cadence, but it must be there for a reason so I always keep it up the whole way through. It must work though as I find I gravitate naturally towards the 90 mark now and longer rides seem easier.

Strength sessions catch me out and Zwift really needs to make a small alteration to them. The sessions either want you to sprint in a big gear for each effort or for you to pedal slowly instead, doing a kind of single-leg squat effort. The problem is, the message that tells you to go fast or slow doesn’t appear until after the effort starts, when I’m usually grimacing too much to see anything. Zwift needs to make these messages appear prior to the efforts starting so you know what to expect in advance.

I remembered well enough from my previous use of this plan that the first 3 weeks are quite relaxed, so I also took the opportunity to complete the Unemployed badge for 14 consecutive days cycled. Starting with the FTP Ramp test, I just skipped all my rest days for the first 2 weeks, adding in short rides. It was really easy until the cumulative effects of not resting took its toll on the 13th and 14th days. I could barely feel my legs, the only indication they were moving being the onscreen cadence. This was a great eye opener into the exact importance of ensuring you have recovery rides and rest days in your schedule.

I also love a trophy, and digital trophies on Strava are even better as they don’t need dusting. So at the end of the 3rd week I also decided to conclude my nearly 90-minute long workout by completing the May Gran Frodo award. Disappointingly this has nothing to do with the Baggins family tree, I just needed to turn the 30km from the workout into a 100km loop.

Riding My Luck

Towards the end of week 4 I had decided to join some colleagues for a Meetup ride. The first guy I spoke to was super keen and rides a lot. He’s a little older than myself, describes himself as similarly sized to myself, and although his FTP is higher I felt we could ride together reasonably well. He told me there would be a female colleague joining us. I said great, the more the merrier. Then he told me she’s much younger than us and a triathlete. This did not bode well. Thankfully he promised me a no-drop ride as he can’t keep up with her either.

I then happily agreed to join, until I saw he had picked the Tour of Fire and Ice route ending at the top of the Alpe. Last time I rode up the Alpe on the shorter Road to the Sky route it took me over 3 hours, and this was supposed to be my active rest day too. I joined them anyway and programmed in my rest day workout, but realised after we started I had incorrectly selected the much harder Foundation program button.

I set off at my prescribed 115 watts to warm up, I was locked to this and didn’t want to do more this day anyway. I was pushing a measly 1.12 w/kg, the speedy triathlete was pushing 4.5 w/kg as she flew off into the distance. We flew through the first section, with me mostly dangling at the end of a long piece of elastic at the back of the pack. Occasionally the elastic would catapult me past my 2 colleagues at lightening pace before they cruised past me again. I wondered if Strava would be giving me new sector PB’s I would never be able to beat, but that doesn’t seem to be the case upon later inspection. As we neared the base of the Alpe I had a minor emergency in the house which meant I had to jump off the bike. By the time I clambered back on, nearly tipping the whole bike over due to my haste, the elastic to my colleagues had snapped completely and I was left to trudge up the bottom part of the Alpe alone with no company.

This was not the only disaster in the first 4 weeks. I had a few rides where I forgot water bottles or towels, and once or twice I had a weird technical glitch with my fan where I inexplicably failed to make any contact with the ‘on’ button, or even plug it into the wall. Thankfully, my biggest fan is my wife and she is very good at resolving tech issues and water shortages so I don’t need to get off the bike mid-session.

There was some fortune in my first 3 weeks too. Several of my workouts ended almost exactly at the finish banner of my intended route, planned for efficiency of course. The Zwift gods were kind this day!

Perhaps more importantly, my weight has dropped from 109kg to 104kg. Just 2kg from my recent best and nearly half way to my 10% target. Without factoring in any FTP gains, this brings my w/kg up to 2.08. I’ll talk more about weight loss in my next post, along with the remainder of my 6 week plan and results of my next FTP test.

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