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.

So either I’m right or I’m imagining things, but in a week of seriously upping my protein intake in conjunction with targeted workouts, I am noticing muscle growth in both my upper and lower legs in areas that did not have definition before.

The most surprising thing of it all, is that I thought I ate a lot more protein than I actually did. I guess that I needed more!

I loved the winter indoor training and the coach leading the class, but it was frustrating. My LBS, where the class is held, is 8.5 miles away from my apartment, and about 12 miles from where I work. To get a Zipcar, get home, throw my bike in the car, and then drive to the bike shop and get there approximately 10-15 minutes before the class started at 6:00 p.m. I would have to leave work at about 4:25. That is with me having all I needed at home already laid out the night before. I would walk to the Zipcar, drive it home, run inside, throw on bib shorts, throw my other clothes in my bag, move that and my bike and then drive 8 and a half miles.

Trying to do all of that – freaking out that traffic would keep me from my class, added a real amount of stress to my life twice a week, like a metronome. That and add in the fact that Zipcars, although cheaper than owning a car, are not cheap. 8 hours of car rental a week plus the cost of the class – that money could be better put to use elsewhere.

Like hiring a coach. I found this coach through the recommendation of a friend. I sent him an email detailing my circumstances, and we had a good hour long talk on the phone, and I’m feeling good about it. So I hired him. I had a bunch of paperwork to fill out detailing information about myself and my goals, and I await my first batch of plans. I think this will be a much more effective training plan for me getting personal attention at a fraction of what I was paying. I don’t need someone to motivate me, I’m plenty motivated on my own, I need someone to tell me what to do. I don’t know what I’m doing and I need the knowledge that a professional has. I’ll report back once I get my first set of workouts.