Riding with Geoff Thomas - 10 years after the first Tour De France!

So, today I took a well-earned day off from the usual work jobs of teaching and marking. Instead, I 'practiced what I preach', by taking former England footballer, friend and Cancer Survivor Geoff Thomas out for his first training ride in preparation for his 'Tour de France 1 Day Ahead'. If you've not heard about this yet, then in short, Geoff is riding the route of this years Tour De France 1 day ahead of the professionals, to raise money for Cure Leukaemia - a charity that is comitted to bringing the latest cancer drugs onto the UK market for use by cancer patients.

Geoff is an experienced cyclist and of course an ex professional sportsman... and yet he still requires some input once in a while to get motivated and get the training in that needs to be done if he is to make it around France. It was good to help out in this respect and we have some more rides planned in up until the July start of the event itself. There's not much time left for Geoff to get his training in, but his first Tour De France (10 years ago) was trained for in a simlar fashion (except last time he was only just out of treatment!), so I'm confident he'll yet again complete the route and fingers crossed, raise the £1 million he hopes for Cure Leukaemia.

Geoff actually coped really well - I was surprised by a) his slightly less 'hill adverse' attitude - possibly because he realises it's 'now or never' for his physical preparation! b) his strong climbing given that he'll happily admit to not being a regular rider of late and c) his greatly reduced 'fuel tank' capacity - which he puts down to avoiding 'beige foods' i.e. carbohydrates...

It was great to be out in the Shropshire Hills again. I really must make a concerted effort to do longer rides more often... children, wife and job permitting, I'll be aiming for a long ride every couple of weeks as a minimum!

I'll keep you posted on Geoff's progress!

If you want to read more about Geoff's challenge, then go to www.beforethetour.com 

Paul

Post Number 3: Macrocycle, Mesocycle 1 and an Iphone Tip!

So then, the Master Plan! Macrocycle Jan Cycling endurance / Leg strength Feb Cycling endurance / Leg strength March Cycling specific strength + endurance April Cycling specific strength + speed work May Cycling speed work June Competition July Competition Aug Cycling specific strength + speed work Sept Competition A bit more detail on the first phase of this programme... Mesocycle One Cycling Training January’s cycling training will be trying to fit in as many hours as life allows on the bike in order to build up my endurance. I start back at work on 13th Jan so will aim to get five big rides of 5 hours or more in over, during and after Christmas. There are also group evening rides on a Tues and Thurs night which I will try to ride to add in some extra hours. I actually started this mesocycle* of training 2 days ago (the day of my last blog). The ride was also significant for two other reasons – Firstly, it showed how much fitness I have lost since the Summer and also because on it, I discovered that when wearing gloves, Iphone cameras can be operated with your tongue! With a bit of luck, my monthly total of time on the bike will be around 30 hours (not much by most people’s standards, but realistic for me (Think SMART goals – better to under promise and over deliver to keep motivation high!). The intensity of these rides will be low – as much because my legs will be sore from the strength training I’ll be doing as from the requirement to keep intensity low so that I can ride more frequently. There are certain variables that you can change in training to adapt your training to suit you. These are Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type (of exercise). Generally, if one goes up, another must come down to compensate –though if you’re not doing much training then perhaps all of them could be upped! Of course, I’ll add in a small amount of harder stuff every so often (in the form of Strava KOM’s!), purely so that my body doesn’t fall into a ‘lazy state’ due to it not being challenged very much! *A Mesocycle is a period of training time that has a specific goal attached to it. They usually are 5-6 weeks in duration (the average time it takes to see an adaptation in the body), but could be shorter or longer depending on what you're doing. This mesocycle for me will be a bit longer as endurance takes a while to acquire! Strength Training I love strength training almost as much as cycling itself – it’s frustrating though that the two don’t always work in synergy with one another! I tend to gain a fair bit of upper body bulk, which isn’t ideal for lugging up hills on a bike. However, I do like the fact that I’m not the average weedy cyclist! There are many benefits to strength training that you won’t get by riding a bike and for me, these offset the downsides… I'm lucky enough to have my own mini gym in my garage... the Olympic bar and squat rack are definitely going to be important to me this winter! My strength training actually started back in October – doing endurance based stuff. This general conditioning phase has strengthened the muscles around my back and also added flexibility to my joints. Therefore January’s strength programme can be fairly advanced. So in January, I’ll mainly be doing 5 sets of 5 reps of each exercise with a heavy load on (close to my maximum lift). In a nutshell, this means that I’ll gain strength through increased muscular coordination, rather than by building bigger muscles (muscles tend to grow most - hypertrophy, with slightly higher rep ranges and lighter loads). The overall effect of this training should be increased strength but no extra bodyweight (I hope!). High resistance / low rep training has been shown to cause ‘neural fatigue’ after a few weeks – this causes you to start losing strength, so I’ll be sure to look out for the tell-tale signs (no improvement or even reduction in amount lifted). My next blog will have the exact strength programme I’m doing contained in it. (I toyed with the idea of not giving my ‘secret recipe’ away, but figure that’s probably not the point of writing a blog like this!). January Goals To keep me entertained and because you only live once, I’m making more of an effort to get ‘out and about’. Every month I’m trying to ride somewhere I don’t normally visit. In January I’m aiming for North Wales and the Peak District. Another goal in this period is for me to improve my diet and lose an inch or so from my waistline! I’ll be focusing on eating less refined food and more fruit and veg. I’ll also be aiming to feel hungry a little more often than I currently do! Let’s face it, unless I feel hungry at some point, I’m not going to lose the ‘back butter’ and ‘belly jelly’ that I’ve been slowly gaining since Harry came along 2.5 yrs ago! I’m actually going to go the lengths of weighing and measuring bodyfat (skinfold calliper method). I’ll also take some circumferential measurements as a record. By the way, first impressions on how this blog writing is working for me are good... I've already done 2 workouts I wouldn't have bothered doing normally! Paul

Post Number One

Right then, my first blog.  

Why am I writing a blog? Well, if all goes to plan, 2014 should be a good year for me ... possibly the biggest and best of my life (though being an optimist I'd like to think that all my years will get progressively better even after this one!). In my head, this blog will achieve 2 things; it'll firstly be a personal record for me to remember 2014 by. Secondly, it'll be a blog that is avidly followed by thousands of people all looking for an insight into cycling training! Obviously, that's in my head... the reality might be a bit different... just a few hundred followers... or less, maybe.

My 2014 year should be the biggest of my life for the following reasons:

1. My better half is expecting our second child (first little girl) in April
2. I will be marrying my better half in December
3. With a little luck and good judgement, I will be riding my bike at various big events during the Spring, Summer and Autumn

I doubt very much that the first two points will be of much interest outside of my immediate family, therefore I'll be focusing most of my dubious writing talents on the cycling bit. I will also try and throw in a few mildly funny anecdotes along the way to liven up what could otherwise be a blog with about as much life in it as Ronnie Biggs (for future reference the Great Train Robber died today).

So, today's date is Wednesday 18th December 2013. By my reckoning that gives me 13 days (I'm not superstitious) to get a year long cycling training plan together for 2014. I could wait until the New Year and call it a 'Resolution' I suppose... but there is something about a 'New Year's Resolution' that I believe condemns the idea to a pointless, short existence before dying an unremarkable death. So I'll get cracking before then and start as I mean to go on from January 1st.

In the fitness / coaching game (for that is my background), a year long training plan is called a 'Macrocycle'. So I'm going to build my own macrocycle around a number of personal goals I have. With any luck, my training should help me achieve these goals with minimal wasted time and effort. (I can't afford to waste time with my training these days as I have rooms to decorate and wedding table centre-pieces to manufacture besides other things apparently).

Of course, life could well get in the way of my perfectly laid out plan (macrocycle). So it's important that I take into account that some things might need to change. The best I can hope for is that the things within my control are organised effectively. So I'm going to spend a few days thinking and jotting idea's on beer mats until I'm confident that what I'm hoping to achieve is SMART - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-framed. Now I know, you've heard of SMART goals before, so I won't bore you with the detail right now. That pleasure will come in a future blog.

Oh yes, if you've read this far then you may be wondering what cycling events I'm thinking of achieving... Well, here goes:

• To complete the National Marathon Mountian Bike Championships 
• To achieve a 'fast' 10 mile time trial time
• To ride the 'Raid Pyrenean' sportive (Riding the event for Cyclists Fighting Cancer)
• To compete in the Team Pursuit at the European Masters Track Cycling Championships

I'll go into more detail on these goals and others as well as why I've chosen them over the next 13 days!

Thanks for reading!!

Paul