Day 46\ Getting there...

After possibly the worst training session ever on monday morning i have managed to rattle out 3 decent sessions the last 2 days. Back that up today with a cycle to the club tonight and gym tomorrow and this week will work out alright. Nutrition this week however is leaving a little to be desired........ Enjoying Vern Gambetta's Tweets

Day 43\ Intensity and pissy weather

The weather is pissy, i need to find some intensity in my gym sessions and i need to rattle out some time on the bike today and the weather is rank..............

Day 41\The numbers are in.....well the first lot....

Right so amongst other things i have been making a note of my training time and a global rating of perceived exertion for each session. This is recommended by experts more expert than my inexpert self. By multiplying training time by the average of the GPE's gives the weekly training load. How monotonous all the training sessions are is calculated by dividing the mean daily load by the standard deviation on the mean daily load. This rating of monotony is then used to multiply the weekly load which gives us STRESS (Foster, 1998).

Why this is important can be demonstrated from my first 5 weeks of dabbling

          Week    Week 2    Week 3    Week 4    Week 5
Time  299       245          150           240         260
WL   1592    1298          555        1307       1390
M     1.63      1.79          0.55        0.9         1.07
Stress 2595      2324       307       1173       1494      

If we compare week 2 to week 5 we can see that despite training times and loads that are practically the same because there was greater variety in my training in week 5 the stress placed on my body is 36% less. Now if i had done my long cycle on saturday as i should of done my training time would of been 350 mins, 42% more than week 2, but the stress would only of been 9% greater. So now the importance of keeping a good record of training, reviewing it and planning what your going to do next should be more apparent.

Day 36 \ Need to get on top of things, Big Science 1st up monitoring....

Saturday marked a step forward with 90mins spent on the bike, 34km in total and 1150kcaland 6.5/10. The first 17km being covered in 40mins. Oddly when i turned round to come home the wind seemed to also change? Also i did manage to overtake a man on a racer, he was about 70 and using the lowest gear he had, it also didn't last long as he got me back a couple of km later. After about 50 mins the changes to the saddle were making no difference whatsoever and my barse was hurting also a little later i wasn't sure if it was just my inappropriate footware allowing my feet to get clod or in fact pins and needles from aforementioned barse ache. Time will tell.


Monitoring


Monitoring provides essential information for Athletes, Coaches and support teams regarding:

• Response to training load
• Impact of environmental conditions
• Effect of lifestyle factors
• Effects of travel and jet lag

In other words it provides us with a means by which to understand if we are getting what we want out of our training and preparations. Body weight and skinfolds represent the minimum for athlete follow up (Lac & Maso, 2004) and given the importance of body composition/power to weight in all sports, are therefore vital. Given the critical importance hydration and nutrition play in recovery and performance (Murray, 1998; Maughn et al., 2007) hydration will be added to this and the occasional food diary to keep my cake intake in check or as the geeks say, 'to provide qualitative information regarding calorie intake, food skews and bad habits (Lac & Maso, 2004). Hydration should be monitored and noted daily ideally at the same time each day with the aim of initiating exercise in euhydrated status (Galloway, 1999). This can be done on rising and pre-training if possible using a visual chart (Opptiger & Bartok, 2002). It's not definitive but is convenient.

Given the role of stress in the development of Overeaching and Unexplained Underperformance Syndrome, plus the need to balance stress and recovery for appropriate training adaptations to training (Selye, 1936) it would seem prudent to measure it. Therefore allowing heavy training yet minimizing the risks of OR and UPS and optimising adaptations

Foster (1998) provides a simple behavioural method for monitoring stress, strain and monotony. Training load is calculated as the product of session duration and Global RPE (In other words how hard was the session between 1-10). This takes into account the different effects of duration and intensity (Fry & Kraemer, 1997) and indices of Monotony (daily mean load/ standard deviation) and Strain (weekly load/monotony) can be calculated. It was found 84% of illnesses were found by a spike in training load, 77% through a spike in monotony and 89% in strain. This system has been utilised in Overreaching studies in both Rugby League and triathlon (Coutts et al., 2007a; Coutts et al., 2007b). Information can be calculated using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond) and compared with the incidence of illness, subjective feelings, mood states and Morning Heart Rate to assess tolerable training loads (Foster, 1998).

Right so now you know why i'm puting down how hard everything is......

Day 31 \ ‎Not much science going on.....

 ‎"you miss 100% of the shots you never take"

Wayne Gretzky

Didn't train yesterday as now the weathers changed if i don't get my session done early i struggle to get out and do it in the afternoon. However the lights are now sorted on 'the bike' so i have no excuse. Tonight's  session about 14km on the bike and 30mins TRX. Let's see how it goes.


Almost

20mins on bike / 20mins TRX then 90 mins later 15mins on the bike, 600kcal and i would rate it as a 4/10

Note to self: should of lowered saddle some time ago as 'Barse' is much less agitated.

Day 29 \ Back in the saddle.....literally

Ok i admit it the first thing i should of done is buy a pair of cycling shorts, as they do seem to reduce the pain from a slightly too high saddle nudging into your barse. Tonight 26km, 823kcal, 65 mins, 5/10 and this morning i was 104kg. A couple more than i had hoped but i paid the price of not doing naff all in Rome.

Day 16 -28 \ Honeymoon . . . . . . .

Ok so i had planned to try and do a session every day i was in Spain and 3 while in Rome, that didn't quite happen but i did ok....in seville atleast. First day didn't do anything then managed 5 days on the bounce as follows

Thur 30th 16mins + 4 mins (20s\10s) + 10 mins Abdominals 6/10
Fri 1st 10mins 120bpm, 10mins 145bpm, 10mins 160bpm +10 mins core 6.5/10
Sat 2nd TRX - 30mins 6.5/10
Sun 3rd 40mins 12bpm + 5mins Core 4/10
Mon 4th 7mins + 3mins (20s\10s) 6mins + 3mins (20s\10s) + 10mins abdominals 6.5/10

Then it was all downhill from there although did do a couple of marathon walking days in Rome.