I think my coach will forgive me.

This was my first real ride outside since the bike fitting, and first longer ride with speedplay pedals, so I thought I’d talk about both.

First, the fitting. I felt a lot better on the bike. I was on the hoods with elbows bent a LOT longer than I have in the past. In the past I’d go to the tops a lot more. The fitter moved me lower, and further back, replacing my stem with a shallower and shorter one, and also swapped out one of the spacers underneath the stem with one half the size. The fitting has not made me more efficient, as evidenced by my last power test, but it has made me more aerodynamic and comfortable. I’m not as stretched out as much anymore, so by default, I am lower, and fighting less wind. I find that I am achieving better speeds with the same amount of effort. I think that also speaks to the training regimen I am doing. I benchmarked myself, and I was going at a moderate clip, and there’s one point I always use as a benchmark, and my previous best was about 1 minute or so off where I was today going with a moderate to hard effort.

The Speedplay Pedals were fantastic. The double sided entry is a world of AWESOME. Didn’t have to look down once to clip in once. Just had to get my foot near and stomp in. No hot spots, nothing,

All in all, I have to say that I am pretty pleased with how my training is taking place. I’m not seeing the improvement that I want to see, but I have to figure that I’m only starting base 3. Next week we start Build 1 and it’s at that point where I think we’re going to see some drastic results. I mean I’m five pounds lighter than where I was, my cadence on average is up 5-10 rpm from where it was, and tonight, I definitely felt better going up climbs. Well climb is what I used to call these hills before I encountered real hills. They are better described as slightly uphill segments. When I got to one, I would just get in a comfortable gear, put my hands on the tops and just spin my way up at 90+ rpm. I actually got so excited by how I felt on them and how easy they felt that I would actually accelerate on the hill to faster than I was cruising on the flats. Using smaller cogs for everything. I’m actually seriously considering swapping out my 11-25 to a 12-28, I mean, I’m never in my smallest cog. EVER. I might as well get a lower gear as a reserve for when I’m going vertical than have a top end I never reach.

I did this today. The science here holds pretty well – the same way the best wings are double fried. The skin was crisp, and the meat tender and juicy. As for the difference between this and say fresh chicken, I would say that the double fried chicken was crisper, but I did not care for the taste of the canola oil I used. I think that peanut oil would perhaps been better. Or maybe a better kind of canola oil.

I don’t think I would buy chicken outright to double fry it, but there certainly is no better way to reheat fried chicken. The best way to handle leftovers.

Also, I tried Trader Joe’s organic ketchup for the first time. I liked it! I’m used to Heinz, I’m sort of a ketchup purist, but the TJs brand was a little more flavorful, and organic. Did you know they put high fructose corn syrup in regular ketchup? I know Heinz makes organic ketchup, and I actually prefer their packaging, they make great bottles, but Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry them. I’m just trying to avoid HFCS. It’s in EVERYTHING.

On my last call with my coach, he mentions that I should start to feel more energy and a lot mellower. I tell him that it’s the opposite. I feel very well rested, but am very much more irritable. I’ve always had what friends call a very low personality tolerance, and it was being reduced even further. People everywhere would just annoy the crap out of me incredibly easily. He explains that it’s probably hormones, and that himself, he gets very irritable coming off of a peak. I gather that’s what’s happening to me, and he then says, “See your body’s changing…”

There is a pause, and we both just start laughing.

I’m working on the power. And what do you think is easier/cheaper – dropping five pounds off of the weight of my bike, or losing a good amount of weight?

I’m going to start tracking my calories and fat intake. I’ve completely given up soda, diet and regular. (Diet soda will actually cause you to gain weight). I’ve cut down the amount of alcohol I will drink. And I am soon going to be drastically cutting down how much cheese I will be eating. I freaking love cheese. I freaking love pizza.

Looking to hold myself to about 1500 calories a day, plus whatever I can add from my workouts.

This is going to be the toughest thing I’ve ever done. I love food. Not just food, but food that is bad for you. I am going to unleash every trick in the book. Small utensils and small plate, to make it look like I’m eating a ton. Drinking a glass of water before each meal. Drinking some green tea during the day. Having small healthy snacks throughout the day. I’m aiming to drop 1.5-2.0 pounds a week.

What I think is going to help me the most is tracking what I eat and the calories in it fastidiously. I’ve ordered a kitchen scale so I’ll be able to track food I make at home. But I have to hold it to 1500 calories a day. Weekends are going to be the toughest, as I get lazy and don’t want to cook and end up just ordering take out.

I have two and a half months until the beginning of road season. This ain’t the beginning of the off season any more. I’m willing to die on the bike/trainer/rollers, but I’ve never been willing to change my diet. That ends here. My success or failures this season will depend on my ability to lose those pounds.

After that, we get back into the swing of things, but here, the workouts also change. Instead of Max Strength workouts at the gym, I’ll be doing Strength Maintenance workouts. Slightly less weight, more reps. But here’s the thing, the time that I spend on the bike will be at a higher intensity, more zone 2 work. I’ll also be doing new workouts like Force Reps, Form Sprints, and Tempo Intervals.

I really cannot wait for my power test. It will tell me how absolutely terrible I am in clear cut numerical form. : ) And it will give me my threshold power. I am dying to know what it is. I’m afraid it will be much lower than what I expect, and I’ll need to lose weight like whoa to make up for it.

I want to talk about the advantages of training with power in case you weren’t familiar. Power meters allow you to measure how much work or energy you are spinning your rear wheel with. Speed is not an accurate measure because when you are on the road, you have to calculate the incline of the road you’re on, and wind resistance, which is forever changing. You can’t use heart rate to calculate work, because there are a lot of factors which can influence that as well – your last cup of coffee, how much sleep you got, things that are stressing you out. However, a watt is a watt is a watt.

Hub based power meters are the baseline for power meters when it comes to cost. There are cheaper iphone based solutions which suck, and there are much more expensive solutions that go in your crankset, which only offer a marginal amount of improved accuracy over the hub based power meters.

A week and a half into the experience, I wanted to write about it. I hired a virtual coach. It’s not some computer that I feed my information into and it spits out workouts and schedules, but he’s a real live coach based out of Kentucky. Coaches out here are expensive. Pretty much $200 a month is where you start for someone just to assign you workouts and look at your data. At this stage in my development, I don’t need a coach to be with me on rides, I need someone to assign me things to do, because I sure as hell don’t know what I’m doing.

I’ll go into the two plans that Rob, my coach offers. First is month to month. Workouts are delivered via Training peaks, you get an assessment, goal setting assistance, a new plan at the end of each month, three emails a week in communication and at the end of the month, Rob looks at your completed workouts as he creates a new set for you and reviews how you did. This is only 45 a month. He also has a week to week program which is the same, except he he reviews my performance each week, and though he can deliver a new weeks workout every week, he delivers a month at a time and adjusts on the fly as necessary – he’s stated that giving people a month’s worth at a time and then modifying it if needs be actually works out better for people because they can make plans without waiting for the next set of workouts. Communication is also increased to 1 one hour call a week and an email a day. And to be honest, we don’t talk on the phone we use Skype – cell reception isn’t great. And in both plans, you have to use an HRM or power meter.

So far, I’m very happy with the experience. Rob called me when I first expressed interest, and we spent a good hour and a half just talking about what coaching was, what it was like, and we spent another hour on the phone before my first week started to make sure I understood everything. He’s always responded to my emails in less than a day and is awesome to work with. Side benefit, anytime someone wants me to do something or go somewhere I don’t want to, I just say, oh I can’t, my coach says I can’t do that, or my coach has me scheduled to do a strength workout that day.

He also coaches recreational riders, so friends such as Scott J. will find value here. It’s nice knowing that I have a professional I can turn to for advice. And the cost is great. I use the week to week plan, and it’s still half of what a local coach would charge me for the same level of service. I would recommend him to any cyclist interested in improvement. I mean the month to month plan is only $45 a month. I bet you spend that much at Starbucks in a month!

If anyone is interested, let me know, I can refer you to Rob, who truly is awesome, and will be responsible for what I hope are many successes this year.