The first week is over.
Quick conclusion – it will not be easy. Some parts went as planned, some did not.
But first things first – I took a challenge at the beginning to find a training plan the turbo trainer that will serve as a good warm-up for the next months and will introduce me into the training regime. The choice was limited to plans which do not take much more than an hour a day, for not more than 4-5 days a week and that will take about 4-6 weeks to complete. Each session had to consist of a short warm-up, followed by a series of various difficulty intervals and ending with a cool-down period. You can find millions of such plans on the internet, so don’t waste too much time searching for the “perfect one”, but select one that fits all your requirements and start pedalling.
After setting up the sessions for the first week I’ve begun testing the plan.
Being a lazy person I just took the %FTP values from the plan and put them into TrainingPeaks session planner. Then rode the plan like %FTP = %FTHR. That, at the time of planning, didn’t seem as much of a problem. But believe me, it was.
The first week went like this:
As the %FTP and %FTHR have similar values near the sweet-spot and are getting away from each other the further you get from it, I did have an easy training at below the sweet-spot and a very difficult one above it. As I always tried to be in the upper range of the training zone %FTHR I ended up making a lot more effort to ride as the plan required. Better read this article.
This week’s summary:
I sure did make a lot of a couple of harder training sessions. It was difficult, but did it give a proper effect? Maybe. But maybe such effort at the very beginning was unnecessary?
For the next week an correction has to be made to eliminate this mistake.
Lessons Learned:
- Don’t oversimplify
- Proper research and planning is crucial
- If possible find a plan which is based on values which you can measure and interpret correctly
Cover image courtesy of: Simon Connellan on Unsplash
Caesar's Cycling 