Day 150\ Falling apart...

Right, the team part of Athletic Population would appear to be falling apart at this point. After the withdrawl of Smernicki in order to cruise round a German industrial estate in Lycra. Then followed little Hill, who has chosen to move house in order not to have to buy a bike. Now Head of Tour Ethics, Langton, is hanging in the balance due to back pain from his extraordinarily long back. Doesn't sound like anything some deadlifts couldn't fix.

literally falling apart

Day 148\ Back in the swing of it....

Back into the swing of things, the last 3 weeks training have made me feel like i am making some progress at least one of my two interval sessions i would rate as decent, and i need to start making the second session count. Rattling up any sort of distance is going to be difficult until i'm sorted out with a proper bike. However i'm out and about again and feeling the better for it.

a swing

Last week i also had my fitting done at Lab3cube in Padova so i have had the recommendations back and am waiting to see the video of myself on the bike. On the weight loss front i have managed to drop 3kg which is not bad going maybe 4 as i suspect my 103 however many weeks back was a little doctored. I'm feeling better having shed a few Kg's and see no reason why i can't sit happily at 95kg. My main goal for the rest of Feb is to make both interval sessions count and get down to 98kg. There i've said it.

Day 138\ Chocolate Milk & Recovery......

Now i'm in the habit of training and recording what i'm doing and the numbers are starting to rack up, i need to get in the habit of fueling better particularly during (mainly hydration but also carbs when i start riding longer) but more importantly immediately after sessions.

apparently does more than it says in the tin

For a while now there has been a movement towards chocolate milk as a bonafide 'ergogenic'. Yes you read correctly. Some of the research is flawed as the chocolate milk simply contains more calories than it's CHO sports drink rival. However the recently published paper by Gibson et al 2010 does provide us with one very interesting result.

Although performance markers were no different between the 2 groups doing intensified soccer training, as you would expect after only 4 days unless you were starving one of the groups, Creatine Kinase was reduced in the chocolate milk group. CK is an important enzyme in the production of energy and is used as a marker of muscle damage. It therefore makes sense that we would want to minimise it particularly if your training daily or taking part in contact sports, high intensity work or resistance work.

From my point of view it's yummy, cost effective and i don't need asking twice :-)

ref: Gilson SF, Saunders MJ, Moran CW, Corriere DF, Moore RW, Womack CJ, Todd MK. Effects of chocolate milk consumption on markers of muscle recovery during intensified soccer training. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition 2010, 7:19

Day 137\ Monthly Numbers......

POsitive POSitive POSITIVE is the name of the game. I'm booked in at LAB3cube Padova next week to have my metabolic tests done and also be video'd on the bike and have a fitting, not that i necessarily need it after seeing Scherrit but it's part of the package. So quite excited by that now onto month by month numbers.

Month By Month

First lot of numbers are my training times and Km's cycled. When taken in isolation they don't really stack up to much but over time they will help with the balance of training, the percentage of training time made up of restoration v gym v bike. The massive spike of other activity in January is also what's known in training terms as 'a really smart skiing holiday'.

Day 134\ Numbers Numbers Numbers.......

Right it's a numbers game this training lark and training for cycling is the biggest numbers game of all. Last weeks numbers are in and i'm pleased to say it's my best weeks training since november and i'm feeling all the better for it. It looked like this

mon am gym 45mins pm 2x30mins bike
tues 27mins intervals bike and core
wed rest
thurs 30mins intervals bike and core
fri gym 45mins
sat 60 mins bike

Which when put in numbers is like this 288mins Av RPE 6.33 Daily Mean Load 199 Monotony 1.32 Strain 2348. Monotony was a bit high which made it the 3rd most 'Strainful' week. But that can be rectified with the bit between my teeth on the interval session, and a longer gentler ride to give more variation in intensity and duration thus less monotony and therfore strain.

Numbers Numbers Numbers

Month by month the numbers tomorrow.

Day 133\ One For the Future....

Thinking about other challenges and how to take Team AP forward after Lapinarello, so how about this...

The Engadin Ski Marathon

Day 129\ Short & Sweet...

Ok was tired yesterday after mondays double header, so kept it short and sweet and feeling well today, here's what i did.

Short & Sweet

Swiss Ball
Triset of Leg Extension/Mantis & Russian Twist 3x8

+4 x 20s Plank (varing rotation at shoulders and flex at knees)

5mins steady cycling

5x1min fast supersetted with 5 Overhead wall squats with a medicine ball between my back and the wall.

5x2 Chins + Bicep curls 30kg

2x8 triset from start

Done 25mins RPE 7