Category: Cycling Events

The first big event I’ve done in ages, RVV was finally going to happen. Adrian had said last year that he really wants to do it, and I said straight away that if he does, I’ll ride it with him. Only later did I decide to do a marathon, which happens to be 8 days after the ride, but RVV shouldn’t be too tough, so it’d be fine……

I flew to Brussels from Munich and unpacked my bike bag and left it at the airport so I could stay mobile all weekend, Adrian picked me up at the airport. We went straight to Oudenaarde to get our start number, my T shirt and finisher medal, a bit weird!

We were staying in Ghent, which is 25km from Oudenaarde, we thought we’d get the train to the start, but were pretty worried that the bike places would be full and we wouldn’t be allowed to travel. We were planning on getting to Oudenaarde at 8:30 and we had to start by 9am, so it would be a bit tight if we couldn’t get the train.

Everything worked out though, the train was jammed with bikes, but we were allowed on. We got straight to the start and set off. There were a lot of people on course, I worried it was going to be a case of us crawling around for 144km, we even waiting in a queue to go around a tight corner after a few km!

In the first 30km there were a shitload of cobbles! I’ve never ridden cobbles before and pretty much hated them immediately. My bottle holder shook loose on the first cobbled section and I stopped to fix it. My multitool fell apart in my hand, so I just chucked the bottle holder and put the bottle in my back pocket.

On the next cobbled section, my GPS shook loose and fell on the road, that went in the back pocket too.

It was about 0°C and windy at the start, I was dressed nice and warm. I had a long arm top, then a baselayer, then a long arm jersey, then my warm jacket! I also had my leg warmers (which constantly fell down) and heat pads on my toes, along with neoprene overshoes. I was warm enough when we were riding, but still cold when we stopped or descended!

On the first cobbled climb of the day, I dropped my chain at the bottom and it jammed behind the cassette, I could fix it but it took a while. I had the best click in of my life to get going again just as the gradient kicked up.

Adrian was riding well and had waited after my many mishaps at the start but soon was getting ahead of me on the climbs too. I was luckily faster on the descents and more technical sections (not cobbles) so we could still ride together.

I could feel that my legs were getting tired way before the end of the ride and I also was a little hungry going into the 2nd food stop after about 78km. I ate a bit of cake, 2 waffles and a gel and was good to go. Almost straight away we hit the Koppenberg, maybe the hardest climb of the day. It was damned hard, over 20% and cobbles, luckily it wasn’t too long and I never felt in trouble, even though I was crawling, my main worry was that someone would stop in front of me, which they luckily didn’t.

On we went, my bike had stopped falling apart (my cross bike btw) but my gears were pretty jumpy, I was having some problems using my bottom gear, even though I really needed it.

Adrian was generally getting away from me on the climbs and cobbled sections now, I still felt generally fine, but my climbing legs were done. As soon as the climb was done, I could speed up and kick on again though.

The rest of the ride kind of passed by and soon came the famous last 2 climbs, the Oude Kwaremont and the Paterberg. The Oude Kwaremont started on road but changes into cobbles. By this point I hated cobbled so much and just wanted to survive the climb. I was looking out for the church at the top but couldn’t see it (it’s on the Muur, not the Oude Kwaremont!).

I was waiting for the steep bit to come, but it didn’t, the climb is more of a bad cobbled section than a hard climb really, if it was asphalt, it would be a breeze.

So on we went to the final climb, the Paterberg. It’s supposed to be a bitch, but when we got there, it really wasn’t so bad. It is steep and it is cobbled but it is also very short. It felt like it was over before it began and the climbs were over, it was time to get the head down and do the last 14km to the finish.

Adrian had been putting ever more time into me on the climbs and led on the way to the finish. There was a big headwind, so I tried to take the lead a bit. Soon we were in the last 5km and I was on the front, I felt like I was riding through treacle, I could come to a stop! With only about 1.5km to go, I looked back and saw that Adrian had dropped, I guess he wasn’t cruising as much as I had assumed. I waited and we rode the bolt straight last 1km to the finish. I considered doing the Gilbert stop and bike pick up, but decided against it with so much traffic.

It was over, I didn’t much enjoy the ride, but I am happy to have done it. I will watch the pro races with a new respect in the future, how they race up the Koppenberg and others is beyond me! I would quite like to try again with some more bike fitness, but I’d also like to never ride cobbles again, so I’m not sure.

As long as I didn’t catch Corona at the ride or afterwards, I don’t think it hurt my marathon too much. I currently have a bit of a cold* on the Wednesday after the ride, but if that clears, I’m good to go on Sunday, the weather forecast looks great, I’m scared, please let me be 100% fit and I’ll break 2:50.

I haven’t raced for a while, as you can see by my lack of race reports. Training is kind of going well, I am cycling well and running is a bit on and off, but generally good too. Swimming isn’t where it should be, but I have a base and should be able to build from here.

So where is the problem? Well my recovery has been really bad all year. I do some harder training and I have DOMS for days afterwards. Here’s a good example. We did a 10x800m set in run training. It went okay, but all the next day (Thursday) I was very sore in my quads. We had arranged a bike ride on Friday to Feldberg and I could ride well, but that on top of my pre-existing DOMS really knocked me out for 3-4 days.

Anyway, enough of that, this is about Eschborn. I decided to sign up on the day this year so I had some rest time on Tuesday. I had to get the 6:39 train from Kastel though, so I was up early! I ate a bucket of oats and was on my way. I had bought myself a speed suit for this race along and my upcoming Time Trial in Wörrstadt. I felt a little silly stading around in it before the race, but when were riding, it felt comfy and fast.

I set off just after the first starting pen and with the Team Skoda boys. There were a few of them who were really strong and wanted to push the pace from the start, which I was happy about! After getting into a rhythm we were moving well and after 38 minutes of hard work, we caught the/a main peleton. I made a stupid mistake of not moving to the front of the peleton.

Pretty soon the course started heading up, not steep at first, but soon it hit Feldbegr proper. My problem was that the peleton was falling apart, and I had to keep bridging to the next group. On Feldberg I was passing all the people who were falling off the groups ahead, but only slowly reeling in the big groups. Near the top I finally caught them, but decided to kick on at my pace, knowing that my decending skills are not the best.

At the top my average speed was 33km/h, last year it was 29km/h if I remember coreectly, so I was much faster. I also decended well for me, I could keep my place more or less, I mean some were faster, but I passed some people too.

On the climbs I generally seemed to be one of the strongest riders near me, often riding away from the group that formed on the flats. The tarmac on the roads was lacking quite a lot of the time, I don’t like hitting potholes at 70km/h!

There were more small uphills on the decent of Feldberg than I remembered, but nothing too hard. I was still feeling strong when we headed to Mammolshain, home of the famous stich.

This time I didn’t leave the entire group behind, but was still one of the faster riders. Very steep climbs aren’t my forte, but the 17% stich was still fine for me, even though I lost a lot of gears on my Merida compared to my Canyon I rode last year (36/28 vs 34/32).

At the top I knew it was all fast and easy to the end. A group formed again, but it didn’t work well together. I, and others, were shouting for people to take short pulls, but all too often they would get to the front and stop working, or try to stay at the front without having the legs to do it.

Anyway, I crossed the line in 2:48, which is about 30 minutes faster than last year, but the course was slightly different. Looking at Strava segments, I was much faster on every part of the course this year, so I am happy with how it went.

Post Race:

I headed to the Skoda VIP tent and ate some pasta and cake, then drank some Apfelschorle. I felt good and waited for Marco to finish to chat with him before heading home. After a while I headed off with rucksack on back and soon found that I felt like dirt! I couldn’t breathe, I think I had eaten too much or something, but as soon as my heart rate reached 130, I was in trouble.

I rolled home very slowly, and pretty disappointed after a good day up to that point. I guess it might really just have been a digestive problem, as my stomach wasn’t good for the rest of the day, but wheezing like that isn’t a good thing…

Anyway: next up is the results of my blood test to see if I have Diabetes (no need to get into that too much, long story short, I am sleeping badly because of a dry mouth, could be diabetes, probably isn’t) then Mainz half marathon on Sunday. I should run between 1:19-1:30 there, more exact I can’t really say, things seem very variable at the moment!

After completing Sweet Spot Base I before Christmas, I had tested my FTP at 330w. I felt that that was too high, so after 2 weeks mainly off over Christmas, I set my FTP to 310w and started the Sweet Spot Base 2.

The first week started off fairly easily with 4 Sweet Spot workouts planned with one easier session during the week. I pretty stupidly decided to run for 15km on Saturday before my harder 90min session, so swapped it for the easier Sunday session (which also felt very hard). The problem was that on Sunday my legs were toast, so I switched from the planned 90 minute Kaweah to the easier and shorter 60 minute Kawaeh -2.

That led me to see that I was pushing it too hard for early January, so I decided to cut back on my weekend running and skip the easy midweek ride. That should make it possible to complete the plan.

Sweet Spot Base 2 has VO2 intervals on Tuesday evenings. I don’t have much experience with them, but the first week was fine with 14×30 seconds at 120% FTP repeated 3 times. The intervals weren’t long enough to bite and my trainer often shortens intervals by 3 seconds anyway, so it was all pretty easy. The next week was 6×1 minute at 120% 3 times. It was a bit tougher but fine.

The next week was 3x2mins 3 times. The 2 minutes were 45 seconds at 120%, then slowly reducing to 110% until the end of the interval (see above – Mills). I found those tough. I couldn’t help but look forward to the last weeks intervals, 6x3mins at 120% with dread. I didn’t think I could do them, but when it came to it, I lived with the pain for the 18 minutes and could grit it out. Phew!

The weekends are really tough if you ask me. The harder 90 minute session on Saturday is usually hard, but doable, but that leaves me a bit cooked for Sunday, when I have 2 hours of ever increasing amounts of Sweet Spot to do! Due to being a bit under the weather in week 4, I had to skip the harder Saturday over/unders, but otherwise I managed everything in the plan.

I will point out that I once managed my full weekend rides and bricked it with a 7km run, that was pretty good! The only other brick I managed was after a shortened Sunday ride (due to illness).

Week 5 is just nasty! It starts with the aformentioned 6x3mins at 120%, then has 4x10mins at FTP, on Saturday is 6×10 minutes just below FTP, but with 30 second bursts above FTP (Laconte – that was the hardest session I have done), followed by 3x30mins at sweet spot on Sunday in a 2h session. I’m writing this on the following Monday and my legs are toast!

Just as a by the way, I did ease my FTP up throughout the plan, after 1 week I moved it to 315w, then 11 days later to 320w. A couple of days later I went to 325w before finally settling at 330w as my last Ramp test had given for the last couple of weeks.

So now I am planning on doing my recovery week (hopefully some outdoors, weather permitting), then starting the Base Half Distance triathlon plan mid. Now that looks a lot easier than Sweet Spot Base II, I don’t see anything as nasty as Laconte in there, in fact it looks easier than sweet spot base I, so maybe I can start to run and swim more to be ready for the season.

The next plan will start with a Ramp Test again – my result was …. 342w!

At the end of 2016 I bought myself a Wahoo Kickr Snap so that I could train in winter for Roth. I used it occasionally, but pretty soon the weather got better and the trainer started collecting dust.

Winter Training

As this season was such a nightmare, I think I could do with laying some base for next year nice and early. My cycling was realy weak this year, it used to be my strength, but this season I would frequently lose minutes to Michael, Basti and Christoph.

TrainerRoad

So I decided to start on the Trainer Road Sweet Spot base plan. There are three levels- low, mid and high. The low only has 3 workouts per week, which seems like it would be too little for me. The mid has 5 which might be a little too much and the high has 6, definitely too much.

I decided on the mid, thinking that I could always skip the easy ride if I want. The next step is the FTP test. I know that there is an 8 minute test and a 20 minute test, both of which aren’t much fun, but now TrainerRoad has a Ramp Test which it uses to quickly find your FTP.  The Ramp Test kicks up quite a few watts every minute until you can’t go on anymore. My FTP was set at 325 from last time I had used Trainer Road, so I left it there. After not very long I was done, and my FTP was said to be 282w, a bit disappointing but not too surprising.

One weird thing was how the test showed up on Strava

It showed me not hitting the blue bar watts, although I was in Erg mode with powermatch. I decided to switch off powermatch after that so that I could rely on the Kickr Snap, even if it is wrong it should be consistent.

The Workouts

The first workouts didn’t feel too taxing, so much so that I decided to start eeking up my percentage for each ride until I found my level. After really struggling with a weekend 90 minute over/under ride at 105%, I was happy to set my FTP at 292w.

I’m not finding riding on the trainer too bad surprisingly. I thought it’d be incredibly boring, but even the 90min rides are ok if you always have something to do. During the easy parts I do 2-3 minutes in aero with 1 minute rests, whereas when it’s more difficult, I just try to survive, or do the cadence drills that the software suggests.

Illness strikes

After 4 weeks of the plan, I was going to Nice for the weekend, I had rearranged the plan so that I would ride before leaving on Thursday, and do the hardest workout of the week (the over/unders of McAdie +1) on Sunday. I’d increased my FTP to 301w after feeling like the workouts were getting a bit too easy. But when I got home on Sunday, I suddenly felt really ill, so training was called off.

I was ill until Thursday, but on Friday my Dad came to town for the weekend, so I decided to take off until Monday, meaning I had 10 days off the bike.  I jumped back into the final hard week of the plan and though the first couple weren’t great, I managed everything with my 301FTP.

This is the last scheduled workout of the plan, it’s called Galena and it sucks! it’s not that hard, but it is 90mins long and has 3×20 minutes at sweet spot. It is mentally draining, normally I have breaks or some change in effort to make it more interesting, but damn Galena is boring!

Strangely the 2nd last hard workout was this one: Palisade. It’s also 90 mins long, but it wasn’t too bad at all! The intensity is higher than Galena, but you can split it up into sections and something is happening quite often. I’m starting to think that indoor training is 90% pyschological!

Anyway, I should have had 1 easy week left in the plan, but due to me missing a week, and the easy week looking incredibly boring, I switched in a sweetspot week, along with McAdie that I had missed after Nice

McAdie was tough, 4×12 mins with 1 minute under FTP, followed by 2 minute over FTP, 4 times in a row. I managed it ok though. The next day, and the final day of my amended plan, I decided to do Carson +2.

The final workouts

I have done Carson a few times, it is 6×5-7-minute intervals between 88-94% FTP totaling 36 minutes of Sweet Spot work. Carson +2 is 90 minutes long though instead of 60 and had 9×5-7 minutes instead of 6.  With tired legs from McAdie, it was a real fight to finish it, I was even ready to bail out after 1h, but managed to talk myself out of it!

So that was Sweet Spot Base I Mid. It’s 80% fairly easy/manageable, with the over/unders sometimes being hard as hell. I’ll start on Sweet Spot Base II Mid after Christmas, that looks like it starts sprinkling of VO2max stuff, which should be interesting!

So the only thing left to do now is the Ramp Test again. I had a 282w FTP before the training plan, and afterwards… 330w! I think that’s a bit high, but wow!

Last week I was at home and saw a whatsapp message in the TCEC group, Marco had won a start place for the Skoda Rund um Frankfurt bike race, but he had already signed up. He was offering his place to whoever wanted it, I jumped at the chance!

So after signing up and signing on the day before in Eschborn, I was on the start line on May 1st, a bank holiday here in Germany.  The race was only 100km long and had 1 big hill and a few little ramps, but nothing crazy.  My cycling isn’t great at the moment, I still feel generally pretty crappy, but I have been getting some miles in, so I thought I’d do alright.

6am is no time to get up on a bank holiday, but to catch the train at 7:13 from Kastel, it was necessary.  I met up with Marco there, he’d accidently paced odd shoes (from different pairs) so was a bit bemused.  We got to the start and headed to the VIP area. Marco had also got us VIP entry, so we could park our bikes, leave our bags and eat/drink as much as we pleased, not bad!

The race started at 8:45. At 8:45 we had only just found out L block! We were in the slowest and last to start block as we were both first timers.  By about 9:20 or so we could actually set off.  I expected the roads to be packed and to be stuck in traffic, but actually the roads were wide as h*ck so traffic was rarely an issue.

I jumped into a few passing group, my average was up at about 40km/h but that was with the wind.  When we turned back into the wind the pace started to relent and the need to stay in a group was increased.  After a fairly uneventful first 45km, I hit the lower slopes of Feldberg.  It is an 11km climb, but not steep at 5% average.

I twiddles my way up the climb, passing people by the hundred.  I didn’t feel like I was redlining it and was comfortable. It gets a bit steeper at the top, but not for long and not too bad.  Then started the decent.

I am not a good descender, but I try!  Lots of people passed me on the way down, but I got down in decent order for me.  Almost before I knew that we were down, we hit a 2.2km climb. This was a bit steeper, but still fine. Someone in the crowd had a strange wind up whooping machine, it was hella annoying!  I was pleased to be just passing through.

The decent continued with only a brief restbite for a steep cobbled road with was a funny shock to the system!  I managed to get back into some groups and for a while we made good time.  After about 85km the tunr off came for the 90km race, or your could go on and do the full 100km version. I was amazed at how many people took the 90km way out!  It’s only 10km and 1 steep ass hill difference!

So to Mammolshain, home of the Mammolshainer Stich.  The total climb was about 2.5km, but the bad bit was only about 200m somewhere in the middle. I got out of the saddle, but decided to see if I could spin sitting down. I could, so I cruised to the top of the steepest bit being careful not to sprint, the climb didn’t end here!

When the climb actually did end, it was all downhill or flat to the end. The last few km clicked away in a decent group and except for there being no sign to say that we had to turn to the finish right at the end, it was all easy going.

I crossed the line in 3h15m with a 30.6km/h average.  Not great by anymeans, but okay.